Talk:Christ myth theory/Archive 31

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Review of "clean-up"

Per WP:BRD. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:44, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Extended content

Alvar Ellegård diff edit-summary: "no citations", removed Alvar Ellegård, in The Myth of Jesus (1992), and Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ. A Study in Creative Mythology (1999), argued that Jesus lived 100 years before the accepted dates, and was a teacher of the Essenes. According to Ellegård, Paul was connected with the Essenes, and had a vision of this Jesus. That's two citations. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:23, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Thomas L. Thompson diff edit-summary "per talk page, Thompson is simply not a mythicist and so adding him here is incredibly misleading", removed subsection on Thomas L. Thompson. No explanation has been given at the talkpage; [Thompson] is regarded as a mythicist by Bart Ehrmann, a label which Thompson hmself rejects, as clearly stated in the subsection. So, definitely related to the topic. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:32, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Bultmann diff edit-summary " bultmann's views are outdated, as the very sentence in which he is mentioned shows", removed though theologian Rudolf Bultmann notes that the gospel authors had no interest in history or in a historical Jesus. No objection, I guess, though Bultmann does not seem to be irrelevant. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:38, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Frazer diff edit-summary "this section is about proponents of mythicism, not non-mythicist authors who have vaguely influenced mythicism"; removed The work of social anthropologist Sir James George Frazer has had an influence on various myth theorists, although Frazer himself believed that Jesus existed. In 1890, Frazer published the first edition of The Golden Bough which attempted to define the shared elements of religious belief. This work became the basis of many later authors who argued that the story of Jesus was a fiction created by Christians. After a number of people claimed that he was a myth theorist, in the 1913 expanded edition of The Golden Bough he expressly stated that his theory assumed a historical Jesus. References Serious? The influences on mythicists are not about mythicism? A reference by Price? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:41, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Christ myth theorists Christ myth theory#Christ myth theorists diff edit-summary all this is explained elsewhere in the article (sometimes more than once) and so is entirely redundant - no; this section presents the variety of stances taken by CM-Theorists. Removing it violates WP:NPOV. If there is repetition, you may consider merging it with other sections. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:18, 14 January 2019 (UTC) van Manen diff edit-summary no citation for wilhelm being a mythicist, removed Theologian Willem Christiaan van Manen of the Dutch school of radical criticism noted various anachronisms in the Pauline Epistles. Van Manen claimed that they could not have been written in their final form earlier than the 2nd century. He also noted that the Marcionite school was the first to publish the epistles, and that Marcion (c. 85 – c. 160) used them as justification for his gnostic and docetic views that Jesus' incarnation was not in a physical body. Van Manen also studied Marcion's version of Galatians in contrast to the canonical version, and argued that the canonical version was a later revision which de-emphasized the Gnostic aspects. References The topic of this article is the Christ Myth Theory, not only Christ Myth Theorists. Van Manen, and the Dutch Radical School, are relevant for the topic. See also Van Voorst, cited at Radical criticism, and The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus in Past and Present, which refers to Van Manen. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:28, 14 January 2019 (UTC) (Lack of) biographical information diff edit-summary the page ought to mention what scholars actually think Paul says of the historical Jesus, replaced Modern biblical scholarship notes that "Paul has relatively little to say on the biographical information of Jesus," viewing Jesus as "a recent contemporary." Bishop and historian Paul Barnett explains that Paul's relative lack of detailed reference to the historical Christ is usually explained in one of two ways: either Paul knew only that there was such a man but knew (or cared to know) little more (Bultmann), or he knew quite a lot but didn't need to elaborate this in his letters beyond what his readers already knew. with Christopher Tuckett summarizes the view of mainstream historians regarding what Paul records regarding the historical Jesus; Even if we had no other sources, we could still infer some things about Jesus from Paul’s letters. Paul clearly implies that Jesus existed as a human being (‘born of a woman’ Gal 4.4), was born a Jew (‘born under the Law’ Gal 4.4; cf. Rom 1.3) and had brothers (1 Cor 9.5; Gal 1.19). Paul also claims possible character traits for Jesus (cf. ‘meekness and gentleness’ 2 Cor 10.1; Jesus ‘did not please himself’ Rom 15.3) and he refers to the tradition of the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper (1 Cor 11.23–25), taking place ‘at night’ (1 Cor 11.23). Above all, he refers very frequently to the fact that Jesus was crucified (1 Cor 1.23; 2.2; Gal 3.1 etc.), and at one point ascribes prime responsibility for Jesus’ death to (some) Jews (1 Thess 2.15). He also occasionally explicitly refers to Jesus’ teaching, e.g. on divorce (1 Cor 7.10–11) and on Christian preachers or missionaries claiming support (1 Cor 9.14). References This edit removed sourced info, and replaced it with some other info which may be relevant, but which violates WP:NPOV when presented without the preceding info. Remember, this article is about the CMT and it's arguments; only presenting (synthetised) arguments against it is not the objective of this article, nor in line with basic Wiki-policies. I've re-inserted the Eddy & Boyd-statement, but left out the rest. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:46, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Overview of main arguments - bullit-list and bolding diff, edit-summary summarizing and removing odd bolding - discussed above; a bullit-list gives a neat overview of the main arguments. Also "summarized" the overview of arguments, leading to errors like Paul's Jesus is a celestial, non-earthly being that do not contain references to Jesus doing anything on earth. The summary removed information which was elaborated in the detailed exposition on the arguments: why? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:33, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Dating diff, edit-summary empty section?. Serious? There are two sub-sections, giving first (!) the mainstream-view, and then the mythicist view. Sloppy editing. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:36, 14 January 2019 (UTC) "reorganizing" diff, edit-summary reorganizing. Why? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:38, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Historicity of the Gospels diff changed a subheader from "The Gospels are not historical records" into "Historicity of the Gospels." The section is about the arguments of the CM-Theorists, but soit. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:42, 14 January 2019 (UTC) First the mainstream view, or first the mythicists? Lack of surviving historic records diff, edit-summary reorganizing -- the myth thesis needs to be presented before it can be critiqued - that's a good point, except for one major 'but': most of those mainstream sources are not responding to mythicists, which turns the critique basically into WP:OR and WP:SYNTHESIS. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:46, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Brother of the Lord diff, edit-summary ditto - indeed, ditto. And why were the links to the Bible-texts removed? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:57, 14 January 2019 (UTC) "redundant references" diff, edit-summary redundant references - did you actually read what you removed? A reference, a note, and three extensive 'quote-notes' (....). {{Refn|name="Price.2003.Name"}} is the refernce proper; {{efn-lr|name=Ph2:6-11}} is a note with the text of Ph2:6-11. No need to remove a proper reference, or an informative note. Since hte whole paragraph was changed, I'll re-insert the proper reference, and the note, when arriving at the edits which did change this paragraph. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:13, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Ah, here the note on Ph2:6-11 was removed. See above. I've re-inserted the line + reference, and the note. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:24, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Liberal theology diff, the citation doesn't support the claim, therefore it can all be removed - you're right about the citation not supporting the statement; you're not right that it can therefore all be removed. Liberal theology is quite relevant, since it is also sceptical about Biblical narratives. diff, edit-summary never cited - well, not cited anymore; but okay.... Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:17, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Notes diff, edit-summary all these are never cited - I'm quite sure you dodn't check them one by one, given the number of red links. I'll re-insert them all, and check them later (and also re-remove several them; time to get rid of them). Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:49, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Yes there were a lot of "the named reference was invoked but never defined" red notices created, needs to be dealt with. While this revision is taking place can we get rid of some or all of those long and unnecessary footnotes and "quotes" which expound the views of Richard Carrier at tendentious length? I don't think Raphael Latester should be used in footnotes at all, he is not a scholar or notable. I won't start trying to deal with it now while you are working on it though.Smeat75 (talk) 13:20, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Totally agree with getting rid of most of those notes; we'll work on it, okay?Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 13:59, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Yes.Smeat75 (talk) 16:27, 14 January 2019 (UTC) I was trying to get rid of some of those red "invoked but never defined" error notices but I gave up because whatever I did just created another one somewhere else,it is like whacking moles. The way IP 74 put all that stuff in there is horribly complicated.I may have another try, in the meanwhile I reverted it back to JJ's last version.Smeat75 (talk) 22:15, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Yes, it's complicated. Frankly, I've been thinking if IP74 should be topic-banned... serious! Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:30, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Paul-Louis Couchoud diff edit-summary this is an early 20th century proponent, not modern proponent - already re-inserted; Paul-Louis Couchoud influenced the thought of several mythicists. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:54, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Diversity and parallels diff, edit-summary none of these are ever cited in the page - it is. I'll review it later. It removed a lot of notes. Anyway, this summary (which includes edits not reviewed yet) may be better than it was before; I'll leave it this way for the moment, and check the notes etc. later. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 11:02, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Same for this one and thisone. While this one has already been re-inserted, and edited. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 11:04, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Celestial being - order of info diff, edit-summary rearranging - here too, the mythicist view has been placed before the mainstream view, which may devaluate the portion mainstream to WP:SYNTHESIS. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 11:12, 14 January 2019 (UTC) The summarizing may be good diff. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 11:16, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Exaltation Christology diff, edit-summary this is about the mainstream view of Jesus' historicity in Paul, not early Christology - you may have a point here; pity for the info, 'cause it's quite interesting. I'll leave it like this. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 11:21, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Scholarly reception diff, edit-summary unnecessary heading, removed "Lack of support for mythicism" - well, I think that subheaders improve the readability, but we'll look at that later. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 11:24, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Thompson (again) diff, edit-summary thompson is not a mythicist, and his personal dispute with ehrman over the fact that he's not a mythicist is hardly relevant - seems quite relevant to me. Already re-inserted. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 12:05, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Wells (again) diff, edit-summary summarizing -- this is way too long - wells was removed, re-inserted, and condensed again, so that's fine now, I guess. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 12:08, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Doherty diff, edit-summary summarizing this absurdly long section - why 'absurd'? Note that Bauckham (high Christology) has been removed; not that helpfull, qua consistency. I'm not sure about this summary, but I'll take a closer look later. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 18:39, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Price diff, edit-summary summarizing absurdly long section - again, that's not a substantial argument. I'll take a closer look at this later, too. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 18:42, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Carrier diff, edit-summary summarizing absurdly long section on carrier -- also, this section is about Carrier's views, not their reception - same argument. And why should it not be about the reception of Carrier's views? WP:NPOV requires to present various sides; in this case, nit just Carrier's views, but also the criticism. I'll take a closer look at this too, later. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 18:48, 14 January 2019 (UTC) I took a closer look. Per WP:NPOV, it would be good to include Gullotta's critique, but hey, maybe that's already too much honour. @Smeat75: what do you think? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:38, 19 January 2019 (UTC) Yes I think the summary of Gullotta's review is valuable.Smeat75 (talk) 12:51, 19 January 2019 (UTC) ‎Questioning the competence of proponents diff, edit-summary thompsons minimalism is irrelevant to mythicism, and Ehrman's views are simply being misrepresented here - why irrelevant, and what is misrepresented? This is unsufficient. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 18:50, 14 January 2019 (UTC) diff, edit-summary no need for this to exist as its own section - why not? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 18:59, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Pauline epistles diff, edit-summary these sections say the same thing, so I replaced the latter with the redundant former - do they? I don't see it. I've re-inserted the whole section on "Celestial being"; the original version simply makes more sense, including the ""Early High Christology Club," which is one sentence. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:16, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Enough for today; I'm a volunteer, not a payed staffer. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:33, 14 January 2019 (UTC) I would like to help with this but hesitate because I fear I might just create more work for you.Smeat75 (talk) 23:42, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Thanks; you're a kind person. There's a gnome in me too, which is released with this kind of work. So, that's okay. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:29, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Josephus diff, edit-summary reorganizing, not to mention habermas is not notable - again, first the mainstream, then the mythicists, to avoid WP:SYNTHESIS. And why was the brotherhood-secton removed? diff, edit-summary summarizing, removed The other mention in Josephus is as follows: ...the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James Why? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:26, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Red notes diff, edit-summary never cited in page - incorrect; the cite is what you removed with this edit - after you'd removed the whole note... Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:35, 15 January 2019 (UTC) diff, edit-summary never cited in page - idem. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:24, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Personification of Logos and Wisdom diff, edit-summary "separetly" from mythicism? thus irrelevant - no, not "thus" irrelevant. But, kind of WP:SYNTHESIS, so okay to leave it out. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:10, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Diversity and parallels diff, edit-summary summarizing - I'll take a closer look at this later. Maybe it's worthwhile, maybe not. diff, edit-summary all of this already has its own section (Celestial Jesus) and so is utterly redundant - if it's redundant, you can try to merge it, not simply remove it. Also, this is specifically about parallels with Jewish beliefs (contradictio in terminus; early Christianity was also Jewish). I'll take a closer look at this later too. diff, edit-summary summarizing - closer look later. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:22, 15 January 2019 (UTC) I've re-inserted the subsection on "Jewish belief in a celestial angel called Jesus" per above. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:30, 16 January 2019 (UTC) Early-20th-century proponents diff, edit-summary summarizing - why? Removal of sourced info. I'll take a closer look later. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:31, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Right. It also removed (bold text) Also in 1909, German philosophy Professor Christian Heinrich Arthur Drews wrote The Christ Myth to argue that Christianity had been a Jewish Gnostic cult that spread by appropriating aspects of Greek philosophy and life-death-rebirth deities. Not deemed relevant?... Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:33, 17 January 2019 (UTC) I've copied the (extended) info on Robertson to J. M. Robertson. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:13, 18 January 2019 (UTC) Remsburg diff, edit-summary Remsburg, according to the page, is not a mythicist, and so he is not an "early 20th century proponent" at all - from the lead: The Christ myth theory (also known as the Jesus myth theory, Jesus mythicism, or Jesus ahistoricity theory)[1] is "the view that the person known as Jesus of Nazareth had no historical existence."[2] Alternatively, in terms given by Bart Ehrman as per his criticism of mythicism,[3] "the historical Jesus did not exist. Or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity."[q 1] So, Remsburg seems acceptable here too. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:33, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Arguments - van Voorst diff, edit-summary this is already covered in the overview and so is redundant - Van Voorst is WP:RS which provides a reference for structuring the myticist-arguments in this way. More reflection would be helpfull, when you intend to improve the article. NB: the proper refeence apparantly also was replaced with more of those extensive notes; I'll try to recover the original reference. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:43, 15 January 2019 (UTC) I've merged the short section with an overview of the arguments, merged with the bullit-list diff. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:30, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Lack of biographical information diff, edit-summary all of this is already covered in the 'celestial Jesus' section and so is redundant - if so, then try to merge it, not simply remove it. I'll take a closer look at this later. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:50, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Celestial being (again) diff, edit-summary summarizing - I'll take a closer look later. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:52, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Jesus lived in a dim past diff, edit-summary summarizing - I'll take a closer look later. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:54, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Does the expression "...may have lived in a dim past" occur in the sources? It looks like a mistake to me; there is a "dimly remembered past", but the expression above would refer to an era in which daylight was hardly seen(??). Imaginatorium (talk) 16:27, 16 January 2019 (UTC) @Imaginatorium: ai... must have been quite ages indeed - or my English is not always sufficient. Thanks. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 18:38, 16 January 2019 (UTC) Pauline epistles (again) diff, edit-summary summarizing - I'll take a closer look later. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:57, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Genre diff, edit-summary removing redundancy, unnecessary information and reorganizing - why is it "unnecessary"? And again: first mainstream, then mythicists. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:00, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Weaving together various traditions - Wells diff, edit-summary well's view that Jesus *existed* is not supposed to be in a section explaining mythicist views - why not? Because you follow your own definitin of "mythicism"? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:04, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Josephus and Tacitus diff, edit-summary redundant since both Josephus and Tacitus already have their own section - no, not redundant, but introductory. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:06, 15 January 2019 (UTC) John Allegro diff, edit-summary no citations are given to support that this guy is a mythicist - I see two book titles by Allegro; maybe you can explain why he is not a mythicist? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:11, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Mainstream historical view diff, dit-summary irrelevant - why? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:15, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Straus diff, edit-summary since the page admits Strauss is no mythicist, he can hardly be labelled a 'proponent' - it does not mean that he's irrelevant, but soit. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:18, 15 January 2019 (UTC) I have expanded the header and re-inserted Strauss; while not a mythicist, Strauss had a great influence on the western modern understanding of the Bible, and also influenced mythicists. According to David Strauss, Strauss's third way, in which the miracles are explained as myths developed by early Christians to support their evolving conception of Jesus, heralded a new epoch in the textual and historical treatment of the rise of Christianity. Robert Price, as quoted at A TIMELINE OF JESUS MYTHICISM: “Shows the purely mythic character of all gospel narratives. The best book on the gospels ever written, even today!” The subsection of the Wiki-article itself continues with German Bruno Bauer, who taught at the University of Bonn, took Strauss' arguments further; as noted before, there's a structure in this article. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:44, 17 January 2019 (UTC) I've also corrected and shortened the subsection on Strauss. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:59, 17 January 2019 (UTC) Radical Dutch School (again) diff, edit-summary either not about mythicist proponents are is based on unreliable sourcing - the Radical Dutch School has been discussed before. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:10, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Dating and authorship/genre diff, edit-summary summarizing - reversed the mainstream-mythicist order; I'll take a closer look later. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:14, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Non-working citation diff, edit-summary non-working citation, therefore the claim is uncited and can be removed - tht's rich, first remove the note, then claim that the statement is uncited an can be removed. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:17, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Tacitus diff - again, reversing the mainstream-mythicist order. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:20, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Mack diff, edit-summary not a mythicist view - no, indeed; first the mainstream view, then the mythicists. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:24, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Historical Jesus diff, edit-summary this is not in debate among historians and scholars - incorrect. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:26, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Real being diff, edit-summary useless tedious explanation of every detail of the myth thesis - maybe; maybe not'I'll look at this later. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:28, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Redundant notes diff, edit-summary redundant - maybe, or matbe not. To be discussed separately, when going through all the notes. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:31, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Done - next, and proposal Done. Now, check all the notes, and remove as many as possible. Then re-assess various sections and subsections. May I propose that IP74 does not add any further note without discussing first? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:33, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Just a comment, thank you for the great improvements to a really bad article. 2600:1700:1111:5940:D9F6:63D1:857A:104 (talk) 19:08, 17 January 2019 (UTC) Down to just 13 notes, compared to the 31 we had before. That's a reversal... Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 21:54, 17 January 2019 (UTC) Not done yet... - Celestial being diff, edit-summary not relevant to criticism of mythicism, removed Most scholars view the Pauline letters as essential elements in the study of the historical Jesus [etc - not so sure. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:32, 19 January 2019 (UTC) Maccoby diff, edit-summary "Maccoby" citation is so vague as to be useless, changed Some scholars have also argued that Paul was a "mythmaker," who gave his own divergent interpretation of the meaning of Jesus, building a bridge between the Jewish and Hellenistic world, thereby creating the faith that became Christianity. into Some scholars have also argued that Paul gave his own divergent interpretation of the meaning of Jesus, building a bridge between the Jewish and Hellenistic world,. References "Vague"? Or some aversion against the word "myth"? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:35, 19 January 2019 (UTC) diff, edit-summary on the other hand, this paragraph, too, is irrelevant to criticism of mythiicsm, removed the rest of that line - sure, if you first remove the reference to myth-making. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:36, 19 January 2019 (UTC) Scholarly reception - Maurice Casey diff, edit-summary summarizing, removed Maurice Casey - why? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:43, 19 January 2019 (UTC) Ah, I see; doublure with "Questioning the competence of proponents." Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:00, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Revert

@Yamla: could you please explain this revert? Your edit-summay, rv, cited quote uses 'on', not 'one' makes no sense to me. Which quote are you referring to, and why did rever a whole serie of edits, and includes the removal of multiple references and notes. Why? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 18:12, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Ah, I see (emphasis mine):

Ehrman also notes that mythicist views would prevent one from getting employment in a religious studies department:

These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land one in a bona fide department of biology.

References

I'm taking the liberty to re-revert the rest, presuming that was a misunderstanding, minus the "e"-typo in the Ehrman-quote. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:07, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Ugggh. Yes. My intention was to revert the change to the quote, and nothing else. Your action is appropriate. Thank you for correcting my mistake. --Yamla (talk) 19:44, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Main arguments

I've re-ordered the info in the Christ myth theory#Arguments section, to more strictly follow Bauer's threefold argument. I hope that this makes the structure clearer, and adresses Wallingfordtofay's concerns about the repetition of arguments. Some more fine-tuning is probably needed, but this is the basic idea. Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:08, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Historiography

I still think that the traditional views on Jesus should be given before the scholarly views. The argument that the existence of Jesus is purely a historical question, may overrate the background of the scholars on this topic. See Michael Licona (2016), Is the Sky Falling in the World of Historical Jesus Research?, Bulletin for Biblical Research, Vol. 26, No. 3 (2016), pp. 353-368.

See also Keith & Le Donne; Price is not alone in his criticisms of the criteria being used in the quest for the historical Jesus, nor in his "Jesus agnosticism." Nor is Thompson: "...a larger process of accounting for how and why early Christians came to view Jesus in the ways that they did." Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:12, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

I agree that the "criteria" are weak at best. The criterion of embarrassment is particularly ludicrous - just about every pagan god worthy of a temple died a humiliating death somewhere along the line - and then came back to triumph over his enemies. Perhaps this info should be placed in the Historical Jesus or Historicity of Jesus articles - if it isn't already there? Wdford (talk) 19:32, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Highlighting the "consensus" that Jesus existed, but ignoring the current state of the field, in which doubts and concerns about the criteria on which this "consensus" is based are a serious topic of debate, realizing (again) that they are literary-critical tools and not historiographic tools, is a violation of WP:NPOV. See also WP:PCR. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:59, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

Compare to this:

The radical solution was to deny the possibility of reliable knowledge of Jesus, and out of this developed the Christ myth theory, according to which Jesus never existed as an historical figure and the Christ of the Gospels was a social creation of a messianic community." (source: Farmer, William R. 1975 "A Fresh Approach to Q," Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults (Vol 2), eds. Jacob Neusner, Morton Smith Brill, 1975) p. 43)

The CMT does not stand on its own, but is a (fringe) conclusion in the research on Jesus. Relevant developments in the mainstream view on this, especially when they come back to the question of "the possibility of reliable knowledge of Jesus" are, well, highly relevant for this article. See also Valerie Tarico & David Fitzgerald (2017), Evidence for Jesus is weaker than you might think:

This scholastic mess has been an open secret in biblical history circles for decades. Over forty years ago, professors like Robin S. Barbour and Cambridge’s Morna Hooker were complaining about the naïve assumptions underlying the criteria biblical scholars used to gauge the “authentic” elements of the Jesus stories. Today, even Christian historians complain the problem is no better; most recently Anthony Le Donne and Chris Keith in the 2012 book Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity.

Back to Schweitzer, more than a century ago; and, in a practical way, back to Bultman: what does Jesus mean for us today? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:45, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Neil Godfrey

Joshua, one of your more recent edits has been to include a refer to vridar.org, Neil Godfrey's blog. Godfrey is a ridiculously unreliable source and I've removed the citation. Another check reveals that vridar is cited a few times in the page. Do you have any reason for why they should be included, or should I just move ahead and remove them?Wallingfordtoday (talk) 02:07, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Ah, I see. He gave a nice summary of Keith & Le Donne (2012). We can move the link into a note, though; the book is relevant, and the link gives a summary of chapter 1. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:43, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

As a PS: this topic is overwhelming. Not the CMT, that's quite comprehensible, but the Historical Jesus research... That may also be a reason why the CMT is relatively popular: much more easy to comprehend. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:06, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Joshua, before you add in Godfrey's website again, let's discuss it here. Again, vridar is very unreliable and as a link it should appear nowhere here, even if it provides a nice summary that can be conveniently sticked into the notes. In fact, I'm on the verge of removing all the vridar notes since this isn't the kind of place we'd want to send readers, not mention a violation of WP:RS.Wallingfordtoday (talk) 21:23, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

There's a difference between WP:RS and notes. But what makes Godfrey unreliable in regard to his summary of chapter 1 of this book? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:32, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Neil Godfrey and Tim Widowfield, who both write at Vridar . . . happen to be some of the most astute and well-read amateurs you can read on the internet on the subject of biblical historicity. I call them amateurs only for the reason that they don’t have, so far as I know, advanced degrees in the subject. But I have often been impressed with their grasp of logic and analysis of scholarship. I don’t always agree with them, but I respect their work.
— User:Richard Carrier, March 2014

2605:A000:160C:A1EE:71D3:58AC:F719:3A53 (talk) 14:39, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Wallingfordtoday, we should probably not include blogs. As for the quote the IP left, it's a bit beside the point. Someone can be absolutely right without being RS. RS is not necessarily about knowledge. Amateurs writing blogs are not RS, no matter how insightful they might be. Jeppiz (talk) 15:32, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Yep, Jeppiz is right. You can't include a source because this or that blog written on it is insightful. I'm going to go ahead and remove all references to vridar.Wallingfordtoday (talk) 16:34, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

This is not a big deal. The vridar references don't actually add anything useful to the article, and removing them costs nothing in lost detail. On the other hand, we cannot permit blogs to be used as references - we will be drowned in POV ranting. If Godfrey has made any original and valuable points, he will have been quoted by somebody in an RS somewhere. Wdford (talk) 19:28, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

• 10. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Listening to the Sounds of Silence is written by Doherty, not by Godfrey.
• Interview with Earl Doherty is an interview with Earl Doherty. WP:SELFSOURCE: "Self-published or questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves."

Besides, Doherty mentioning that he started his website in 1996 underscores the rest of the info in that section (emphasis mine):

Ehrman notes that "the mythicists have become loud, and thanks to the Internet they've attracted more attention". Within a few years of the inception of the World Wide Web (c. 1990), mythicists such as Earl Doherty began to present their argument to a larger public via the internet. Doherty created the website The Jesus Puzzle in 1996, while the organization Internet Infidels has featured the works of mythicists on their website and mythicism has been mentioned on several popular news sites.

References

It should be relevant to the CMT-haters, since it explains why the CMT took such a high flight: no need to go through all the specialist (which are not accessible anyway without access to academic publications; a grave mistake with regard to publications being payed by the community, but accessible to only the happy academic few), just the readily accessible highlights. Academic journals can never stop this, especially not when the basic assumptions are questioned within the field itself by mainstream scholars, not only by mythicists. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:59, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Joshua, you can add back the self-reference link, but the other one is still unreliable, whether it was written by Doherty or Godfrey.Wallingfordtoday (talk) 23:54, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Doherty is the author, not Godfrey. That is, Doherty is the source. The fact that it is published at Godfrey's website is irrelevant, unless you can explain, in a convincing way with refefence to Wiki-policies, how that makes Doherty unreliable as a source for his own opinions. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:07, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Fair point - Doherty is obviously the best source for his own opinions. Wdford (talk) 09:32, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Continuous addition of critiques within scholarship by non-mythicists

Joshua, I just checked back on the page and continue finding you adding criticisms within scholarship of scholarship rather than criticism of mythicists against scholarship. This Wiki page isn't about what Meier or Hendel (a non-NT scholar who has no expertise on this topic) thinks is wrong with scholarship, it's what mythicists think is wrong with scholarship.Wallingfordtoday (talk) 16:54, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

Nope. The section is on "Mainstream historical-critical view"; the mainstream approach has had it's criticisms too; per WP:NPOV, those criticisms should be mentioned too. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 17:31, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

Nope. There should not be ANY section in this article on a "mainstream historical critical review". That deserves it's own Wiki page. Mythicism is not a "mainstream historical critical review".Wallingfordtoday (talk) 21:18, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

As explained before: context is needed. It would be helpfull if you'd folllow Wiki-policies, not merely your personal opinions about what Wikipedia is and how it works. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:22, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

JJ is correct. See Wikipedia:Fringe theories for more information. Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 09:51, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

It's Mainstream historical-critical view, by the way, not mainstream historical critical review. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 14:49, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Thompson a mythicist and intensity of article length, part 2

I've been off of Wikipedia for the last several days because of my workload, though I'm here now. I see Joshua has reinsterted many things, so let's begin by trying to discuss this one. Joshua, you've reinserted Thompson on the basis of him fitting the definition of mythicist per Ehrman's point of view. I don't quite see any such thing. As far as I'm concerned, Thompson's point is that Ehrman misrepresented him when styling him as a mythicist, not merely differed in the definition of his terminology so as to include Thompson's views into mythicism.

Another issue we'll focus on for now is something was reverted back I didn't want to see. A lot of editing I did had to do with the unbelievably intensity of the length of the article, which tediously goes over every mythicist explanation of debated verse rather than provides summarizes of mythicist views. Some of the explanations of "mythicist views" aren't actually mythicist views at all. Every scholar, for example, thinks that Christology was influenced by Jewish Wisdom literature. So what's the point of the section on this? Not only that, but for some odd reason, there are two different sections both about the exact same thing: Jesus being a celestial Jesus. I can hardly tell why, though it's been apparently brought back into the article because it's "interesting" or "seems relevant" or something. Wallingfordtoday (talk) 23:10, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Regarding Thompson, this seems to depend on which definition one takes of mythicism. Following the 'eucumenical' definition (Jesus is a myth), he might be regarded as a mythicist. Following the limited, or 'activist' definition, he isn't, apparently. Alternatively, we can look at how he is regarded by other sources; e.g., Ehrmann. What do other sources say? And which sources are relevant in this regard? And then, we can also look if he is relevant to this article. So, that's three criteria. So, what are the opinions of other editors?

The Wisdom-parallel may be a mainstream-view, but it's also an argument used by several mythicists. So, that makes it relevant, I'd say.

Regarding the celestial being, I've explained this before. There's a subsection on that topic in the section on Paul; and there's a subsection in the section on "Diversity and parallells," which makes comparisons with Jewish ideas. But you're right, there's an overlap; Paul is mentioned there too. I'll take that one up too, and try to merge what can be merged. First finish the notes & quotes.

Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:15, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

• Thompson is reading the themes and motifs found in the gospels in the context of the ancient tradition of the entire “Middle East”.
  

Mǖller, Morgens. "Paul: The Oldest Witness to the Historical Jesus" in T.L. Thompson and T.S. Verenna, eds., Is This Not the Carpenter (Equinox, 2012), 117-118.

[When] my friend and former colleague, Thomas L. Thompson, in The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David from 2005 seeks to dissolve the Jesus figure of the Gospels as a historical figure, making him, so to speak, the epitome of biblical and other—far older—Near Eastern concepts of a royal Messiah, the question of historicity invites us to look in other directions for an answer, rather than to try to identify ipsissima verba Iesu or situations which could have been historical recollections. This is not to deny that the Jesus story in the Gospels is saturated with reminiscences of Old Testament figures and events, the Old Testament being the medium of the Near Eastern Messiah myth. Moreover, in this respect, Thomas L. Thompson's book is an abundant and impressive arsenal of evidence.

2605:A000:160C:83E1:100C:75B8:CB44:F8E5 (talk) 07:13, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Robert J. Hutchinson (2015), Searching for Jesus: New Discoveries in the Quest for Jesus of Nazareth---and How They Confirm the Gospel Accounts, p.8, regards Thompson to be a mythicist. WP:NPOV:

Articles must not take sides, but should explain the sides, fairly and without editorial bias. This applies to both what you say and how you say it.

Which would mean, I think, that Thompson can be included, per the broad definition of mythicism, and per Ehrman (and Hutchinson); that his arguments should be briefly mentioned; and that his rejection of the mythicist -qualification should also be mentioned. NB: here too, we see what difference it makes to state that 'the story of Jesus is largely a myth', or to state 'Jesus didn't exist'. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:39, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

I've merged the two subsections on Paul and the celestial being. Maybe it needs some fine-tuning. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:54, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. First of all, Searching for Jesus: New Discoveries in the Quest for Jesus of Nazareth---and How They Confirm the Gospel Accounts is hardly a reliable source. It's clearly a popular Christian apologetic book meant to prove the Bible. I think you're misunderstanding the point regarding Thompson. What Ehrman has said about Thompson is irrelevant, because according to Thompson himself, Ehrman is misrepresenting him, rather than just having some sort of semantic difference. If you think Thompson believes "Jesus is a myth", you'll need to define what he means by myth and show me where he says this, and which definition of mythicism in a reliable source this equates to. Otherwise, his inclusion as a mythicist is totally baseless.

On the Wisdom literature, I think you also misunderstood me here. Yes, I'm aware that mythicists discuss it. The point is that the arguments they make aren't new, or have any particular thing to do with mythicism. They're just repeating what scholars say. This is not at all notable for the mythicist position.Wallingfordtoday (talk) 04:17, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

What Thompson thinks of Ehrman's qualifications of his (Thompson's) work, is only relevant insofar that it should be mentioned, since Thompson disagrees with Ehrman. Ehrman is one of the most notable authors on the topic; if Ehrman argues that Thompson is a mythicist, that's noteworthy, and not "baseless." See WP:RS and WP:NPOV; see also this note, which cites Maurice Casey.

The fact that myhticist have a similar stance on the Wisdom-literature as mainstream authors, does not mean that it is not notable. It's a core argument for several mythicists. When you provide an overview of their (main) arguments, you provide an overview of their main arguments, not of their (main) deviations from scholarship. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:23, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

PS: The Messiah Myth, "About the book":

...in The Messiah Myth Thomas L. Thompson argues that the quest for the historical Jesus is besides the point, since the Jesus of the Gospels never existed.

Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:32, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

The key term in that "about the book" is where it says the Jesus "of the Gospels" didn't exist. Neither does Ehrman think such a Jesus existed. But Thompson was quite clear that he never argued that Jesus didn't exist, period. I also find your argument regarding Ehrman unconvincing. A false claim in a notable book remains a false claim. If a notable author called Thompson a creationist, and Thompson went on to write a full article on how he was misrepresented, that would clearly fail to justify inclusion of him as a creationist. You've also offered no references for the Wisdom claims of mythicists being central to any of their views. Given this deadlock in our views, I think we should let another person or two break the deadlock.Wallingfordtoday (talk) 23:47, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

From the Wiki-article:

Thomas L. Thompson (born 1939), Professor emeritus of theology at the University of Copenhagen, is a leading biblical minimalist of the Old Testament, and regarded as a myrhicist by several authors.("Ehrman.2012.p11_15", "Casey2014"

Ehrman:

A different sort of support for a mythicist position comes in the work of Thomas L. Thompson.

Thompson:

Bart Ehrman has recently dismissed what he calls mythicist scholarship, my Messiah Myth from 2005 among them, as anti-religious motivated denials of a historical Jesus and has attributed to my book arguments and principles which I had never presented, certainly not that Jesus had never existed.

Ehrman does not state that Thompson denies the existence of Jesus; Ehrman states that Thompson gives "A different sort of support for a mythicist position." So, Thompson is misrepresenting Ehrman; and Ehrman regards Thompson to take a mythicist position. See also Ehrman's definition, as quoted in the lead, a paraphrase of Doherty:

the historical Jesus did not exist. Or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity.

Ehrman does not state that mythicism is limited to the stance that Jesus did not exist.

Regarding the Wisdom-argument, you stated:

Some of the explanations of "mythicist views" aren't actually mythicist views at all.

You further stated:

The point is that the arguments they make aren't new, or have any particular thing to do with mythicism. They're just repeating what scholars say. This is not at all notable for the mythicist position.

From the Wiki-article:

According to Wells, Doherty, and Carrier, the mythical Jesus was derived from Wisdom traditions, the personification of an eternal aspect of God, who came to visit human beings.

References

Wells (1996), The Jesus Legend, p.xxv:

I continue to regard[ this Jewish Wisdom literature as of great importance for the earliest Christian ideas about Jesus.

They (the mythicists) try to explain where 'Jesus' came from, if not from an historical person. That's part of their argument, and quite relevant; they're not just shouting "Jesus didn't exist!", they're saying "Jesus was (and is) a myth, and this is part of this myth." They explain where the myth came from. That's quite relevant. And if that's in line with mainstream scholarship, it makes it even more relevant, showing that they're not complete cranks. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:59, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

I can accept the point you make regarding the Wisdom stuff, though you're certainly not right to say that this shows they're complete cranks. Accepting the earth is round doesn't make a creationist less of a crank. Anywho, in order to maintain the Thompson part, you'll need to show, at this point, that Thompson believes Jesus had nothing to do with the founding of Christianity to sustain Ehrman's definition.Wallingfordtoday (talk) 16:57, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Among many other works, Thomas L Thompson wrote the book "The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David". (Random House, 31 Mar 2013). The on-line review states that: "But in The Messiah Myth Thomas L. Thompson argues that the quest for the historical Jesus is beside the point, since the Jesus of the gospels never existed. …. In Thompson's view, the contemporary audience for whom the Old and New Testament were written would naturally have interpreted David and Jesus not as historical figures, but as metaphors embodying long-established messianic traditions." That sounds fairly conclusive, don't you think? Wdford (talk) 08:46, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Ehrman and Casey regard him as a mythicist, and threat him as such in their publications. Ehrman is a relevant WP:RS source. But what you may be hinting at is that Thompson is not part of this popular ('populist'), polemical CM-'movement', as he himself also implies. Can we make that clearer, somehow, without committing WP:OR? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:49, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

My quote above is actually found inside the book itself, in the intro section called "About the Book".

It seems to me from this book that Thompson clearly regards the Jesus-figure of the gospels as mythical. Thompson states in Chapter One that "The assumptions that (1) the gospels are about a Jesus of history and (2) expectations that have a role within a story's plot were also expectations of a historical Jesus and early Judaism, as we will see, are not justified." Thompson obviously wants to be categorized as a serious historian rather than a pseudo-historian, but at the same time he clearly regards Jesus as a non-historical figure. Perhaps we can just quote him in his own words? Wdford (talk) 10:34, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Careful about making the same mistake Ehrman did. Thompson pointed out to Ehrman that he's not at all saying Jesus didn't exist, just that a lot of the stuff is legendary. This is, in fact, exactly his views, and he should be distinguished from what people mean when they use the word "mythicist". However, Thompson has not clarified whether or not he thinks that Christianity does, in fact, go back to Jesus, so this itself is not out of dispute.Wallingfordtoday (talk) 23:18, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Just wanted to drop in my own two cents here to the point about the length of this article. I think that this version is much tighter and sums up the key points in a way that a reader coming to the topic could get her or his head around. I think a reversion to something like this would be advisable. Magic1million (talk) 19:38, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

See Talk:Christ myth theory#Continuous addition of critiques within scholarship by non-mythicists:

As explained before: context is needed [...] Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:22, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
JJ is correct. See Wikipedia:Fringe theories for more information. Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 09:51, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:42, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Philip Davies

Joshua, I only sometimes look here. Now by a quick look it seems to me that you are currently the main originator of article changes. Just one comment. It seems to me that even the reference to http://www.bibleinterp.com/opeds/dav368029.shtml has again disappeared. I find obvious that Davies' voice, in particular articulated in the second and third paragraph, should be represented in the article; at least to demonstrate that not all scholars in this area are "Ehrman-like". In my attempts in the past, always somebody replied to me "Davies also writes there "Am I inclined to accept that Jesus existed? Yes, I am."", by which such "somebody" meant that we should thus ignore Davies' words in the above mentioned paragraphs. I can only hope that you are not like such "somebody", and that you will find an appropriate way to represent such voice in the article. (I am not a native speaker, and I also have no energy to try to "fight" myself for such an obvious thing.) Thank you.Jelamkorj (talk) 20:05, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Ehm.... I'll try to find back the reference, and then read what your comment is about. This is a loaded article, of course; I try to keep a balance between the different factions. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 21:16, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

@Jelamkorj: Davies was used as a source for this note:

While proponents like Earl Doherty, Price, and Carrier, are concerned with the origins of Christianity and the genesis of the Christ-figure, the perception of and debate about the Christ myth theory has increasingly turned to the simpler question whether Jesus existed or not({{refn|group=q|name="existence.simplification"}}) and consequently with some scholars proposing a more moderate position.({{refn|group=q|name="Davies.2012.evidence"}}

"existence.simplification":

Simplification:
* Ehrman (2012), p. 4: "The reality is that whatever else you may think about Jesus, he certainly did exist. That is what this book will set out to demonstrate."
* Thompson (2012a), §. Comment #4: "I think it is very difficult to establish the historicity of figures in biblical narrative, as the issue rather relates to the quality of texts one is dealing with. I work further on this issue in my Messiah Myth of 2005. Here I argue that the synoptic gospels can hardly be used to establish the historicity of the figure of Jesus; for both the episodes and sayings with which the figure of Jesus is presented are stereotypical and have a history that reaches centuries earlier. I have hardly shown that Jesus did not exist and did not claim to."
* Dykstra, Tom (2015). "Ehrman and Brodie on Whether Jesus Existed: A Cautionary Tale about the State of Biblical Scholarship". The Journal of the Orthodox Center for the Advancement of Biblical Studies (JOCABS). 8:1: 29. As for the question of whether Jesus existed, the best answer is that any attempt to find a historical Jesus is a waste of time. It can't be done, it explains nothing, and it proves nothing.

"Davies.2012.evidence":

Davies, Philip (August 2012). "Did Jesus Exist?". www.bibleinterp.com. The Bible and Interpretation. Retrieved 29 January 2017.: "The rather fragile historical evidence for Jesus of Nazareth should be tested to see what weight it can bear [...] I don’t think, however, that in another 20 years there will be a consensus that Jesus did not exist [the "Jesus atheism" viewpoint], or even possibly didn’t exist [the "Jesus agnosticism" viewpoint], but a recognition that his existence is not entirely certain would nudge Jesus scholarship towards academic respectability."

A fine piece of WP:OR ("existence.simplification") and WP:SYNTHESIS ("Davies.2012.evidence">), I'm afraid... It seems to me that the perception of and debate about the Christ myth theory has increasingly turned to the simpler question whether Jesus existed or not applies to blogs and internet-fora, not to the scholarly discussions.

Davies' comment that a recognition that his existence is not entirely certain would nudge Jesus scholarship towards academic respectability. makes sense, though; it seems to me that the shifting focus from "the" historical Jesus to 'Jesus as remembered by the early Christian movement(s)' is somehow "similar" to what Davies says here. Somehow, the articles on the historicity of Jesus are not up-to-date; they lack an overview of research from, say, the last 15 years. This is also indicated by the repetition, in all those articles, of the two 'basic facts' of Jesus'life that scholars agree on: baptism and crucifixion. That is, they can agree on that following the criteria-methodology. But, as recent critics seem to have pointed out: what does that tell us about Jesus' meaning, the impact he had on others? Something's missing... As Davies himself writes: it is how he was understood that matters, it is that which created Christianity.

Also, the reservations some recent scholarship has show about the possibility to "know" who the historical Jesus was, comes close to Price's "agnosticism," which indeed reminds of Davies' comment.

What may also matter here is this comment by Davies: What I can see, but not understand, is the stake that Christians have in the unanswerable question of Jesus’ historicity and his true historical self [...] an already accepted dogma looking for rationalization [...] [Paul's] writing is almost certainly the only extant direct testimony of someone who claims to have met Jesus (read that twice, and see if you agree before moving on). That is, the central subject of Paul and the Gospels is not "the" 'historical Jesus', but the arisen, exaltated Christ, who was in Heaven, and appeared from there at earth (Ehrmann). That's not a historical Jesus, but, excusez le mot, a mythological Jesus. It seems to me that there is a middleground between hardcore mythicism on the one hand, and hardcore opposition to mythicism at the other hand... Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 21:31, 15 February 2019 (UTC) / update Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 16:41, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, Joshua, I can see that you have reintroduced Davies (I corrected a typo in "Davis"). I would myself stress "the rather fragile historical evidence for Jesus of Nazareth" to show that not only the mythicists do not find this evidence "overwhelming" (despite the claims by Ehrman and the like) but I will not try to interfere in the article. (Btw., I remember reading Robert Funk who surely accepted historicity but acknowledged that there are also good reasons to doubt it; unfortunately, I cannot recover where I read this by Funk.) But at least the wikipedia readers have now again the possibility to "click" on Davies, and realize that the situation is more complicated than the people like Ehrman try to claim.Jelamkorj (talk) 15:28, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Robert W. Funk ap. Neil Godfrey (22 October 2018). "Postscript to my Constructive Exchange post". Vridar. "In my view, there is nothing about Jesus of Nazareth that we can know beyond any possible doubt. In the mortal life we have [of Jesus] there are only probabilities." – 2605:A000:160C:83E1:9065:A807:83CA:E7FF (talk) 17:00, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Which echoes the idea presented in a 1934 Cambridge University Press book called Christianity and the nature of history which said "The sociological fashion reflected in the rise of Formgeschichte lends colour to Christ-myth theories and indeed to all theories which regard Jesus as an historical but insignificant figure". Note that the wording puts Christ-myth theories in the "theories which regard Jesus as an historical but insignificant figure" category. If they had been different things it would have said 'The sociological fashion reflected in the rise of Formgeschichte lends colour to Christ-myth theories as well to all theories which regard Jesus as an historical but insignificant figure'--2606:A000:131D:4413:44A8:F236:E5E0:F4E5 (talk) 13:56, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

All of section Five should go.

"Individual proponents are irrelevant"

It's somewhat tiresome that we rehash the same old arguments year after year. A FAQ would be needed. To state the obvious: individual proponents are irrelevant. We should present the arguments, not the persons. Having a paragraph on every lunatic (and some serious ones as well) who believes in the CMT is completely irrelevant. Frankly, who cares is Onfray or Ellegård believe in CMT? They are as much authorities on Jesus as Trump is on tomato salad.
In short We should of course keep all arguments for CMT made in reliable ssources and we should of course reference these arguments. We should remove the entire section about individuals. It serves no purpose, just makes the article longer and more repetitive without adding anything of value. Jeppiz (talk) 11:56, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Interesting idea, though I don't think that individual proponents are irrelevant. The whole idea is propagated by just a few individual propoenents (and repeated by a host of blogs and minor authors, of course). Giving a short overview of the main proponents seems relevant to me, as some sort of "Who's who." Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:20, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Joshua! I agree, and your reply made me realise I was unclear, so I will expand a bit. I do think we should still have an overview of main proponents, but perhaps more in the style of a sentence or two in a common overview paragraph. Both the historical ones and the current main proponents, very briefly mentioned. (For the likes of Ellegård, Onfray etc. I think we can ignore them entirely) Jeppiz (talk) 15:36, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

I think I agree with Jeppiz, the entire thing can be relegated to a paragraph at most that gives a nice and concise "who's who" summary. I've already done major work summarizing these sections, but frankly, they're still far too long. Many of the proponents listed aren't even proponents at all, but have simply influenced other proponents (David Strauss, John Remsburg, James Frazer, etc). Almost a third of the section on Thomas Brodie isn't even on mythicism but about the personal repercussions to Brodie's career for supporting mythicism. Individual names of advocates should only come up as specific arguments are mentioned throughout the article.Wallingfordtoday (talk) 17:05, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

David Strauss was highly influential on the western understanding of what "myth" is, laying some of the fundamentals on which CMT could rise; James Frazer also influenced the CMT'ists. That's what makes them relevant here. A theory is not only about it's proponents, but also about it's ideas and influences. The Remsburg-list has also been used, and expanded, by CMT'ists. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:38, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

The section with "Key arguments" was added four years ago; it's interesting that the empahsis of the article seems to be shifting more and more from a collection of bios (ha! oh irony) on CMT-authors, to an overview of their arguments. Yet, some essential elements are missing from such an overview:

• I'm reading Thompson now; interesting read. He explains what "myth" is. Which made me realize that, apart from the short section on Strauss, our article does not explain what "myth" is. This looks like an omission to me. I'm not sure, by the way, if Wells, Doherty, Price or Carrier explain what 'myth" is. Ehrman (2012): Rarely do mythicists define what they mean by the term myth.
• We also don't explain - don't know? - how the post-War CMT parallels the second quest for the historical quest for Jesus, nor how it is informed by, or neglects, the third quest. Casey (2004) is relevant in this regard, arguing that Wells repeated the Religionsgeschichtliche Schules arguments (anybody care to expand that article?). Wells clearly correlates with the second quest, and dismisses the variety of Jesus'es portrayed by this second quest. Doherty is also mainly informed by the second quest, I guess, but give his publication-dates, may also have incorporated publications from the third quest. How about Carrier, who leans on Doherty? And how about Price, Thompson, and Brodie?
• What's also missing is why the CMT has gained such a popular appeal. Ehrman (2012) refers to websites which spreah the CMT-gospel, but devotes must of his 2012-publication to the well-known CM-authors. Yet, it is this popular appeal which has given the CMT such a weight, provoking strong reactions from both sides, also here at Wikipedia. There's probably no scholarly study on the present-day popular appeal of the CMT, but it's relevant here.

It seems to me that the addition (or expnasion), somehow, of these three elements, would improve the quality of the article, lifting it above the polemical level of "'Jesus didn't exist' - 'See, all mythicists are cranks'." But I don't know, yet, how to do that in a usefull way. Some history of science, c.q. history of ideas, is needed here, not more theology. And, of course, the section-headers "19th- and 20th century proponents were chosen to reflect the content of the sections, but not as a restriction of those contents to proponents only. Context is needed to understand the CMT. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:57, 21 January 2019 (UTC) / update Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:47, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

From Encyclopedia Britannica, Religionsgeschichtliche Schule:

an approach that emphasized the degree to which the Bible and the ideas contained within it were the products of their cultural milieu [...] studied the influence of various ancient religious and philosophical traditions on the emergence of Christianity [...] Christianity’s customs and dogmas developed over time and in response to socioeconomic factors as well as influences from other traditions—in particular, Hellenistic Judaism and the religions of the Roman Empire.

Sounds familiair indeed. This kind of info makes the CMT more understandable, as well as the criticisms. Especially for the editors who don't like the CMT: this kind of info helps to explain why the CMT is dismissed by mainstream scholarship, neutralizing the polemical counter-argument that it's all Christian fundamentalism etc. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:49, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

As always, I would propose that we use the "definition" of a myth as it is used by the Mythicists - to use any other definition would distort the context of the CMT. Perhaps in the Proponent sections, we should try to give the "definition" of "myth" as it is used by each Proponent, to the extent possible? Wdford (talk) 08:55, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

I've already been going through Wells (1997), The Jesus Legend, to find some info on the background of his interest, but that book seems to contain little on what a "myth" actually is. Yet, the Wiki-article on Myth is already informative. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:32, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

This is largely a non-scholarly theory and the word "myth" is used inaccurately to mean "something that is not true". Academic definitions of "myth" are not relevant here. Some have tried to switch the term used to "Jesus ahistoricity theory" but it has not caught on.

There is no point in having this article unless there is some distinction made between mainstream scholarship and this idea. If this article is twisted round to say "Jesus did not perform miracles therefore the Jesus of the gospels is a myth" there is no point in having it.

It is indeed a popular idea on the internet and elsewhere that Jesus did not exist. "Jesus Never Existed, After All", article in the Huffington Post 2017 [1]. Raphael Lataster has published one book titled "Jesus Did Not Exist" and another called "There Was no Jesus" [2] And here is a youtube vid of Lataster with Richard Carrier, an hour and a half, expounding on the title of the video "Jesus Did Not Exist " with Richard Carrier and Raphael Lataster', as the description says why we believe Jesus is purely a myth and was not an historical figure. Not a historical figure, that is what this means. These are only a few examples among thousands There needs to be some article on WP on the popular and simple idea "Jesus did not exist", showing why the scholarly consensus rejects that. If this article isn't going to be that, there should be another one elsewhere.Smeat75 (talk) 16:00, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

@Smeat75: if that's their understanding of what "myth" is, then that's a really poor understanding. Sad. Apparently, they don't understand David Friedrich Strauss "third way." Anyway, even more reason to explain how the methodologies differ, and why mainstream scholarship rejects the methodology, and therefore also, the conclusions, of mythicists. NB: it also illustrates why Thompson doesn't want to be placed in the "Jesus-did-not-exist party"; while, actually, his approach is truly a myth-oriented explanation, in the full and rich sense of the word. Maybe the article shpuld be moved to "Christ myth theories"? ;)Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:28, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

I fully agree that the article should be renamed "Christ myth theories" - there are clearly nuances of opinion among the mythicists themselves, and their detractors constantly attempt to package all of the various Myth Theories into a simplistic (and incorrect) "they all say Jesus never existed so they are all cranks" package.

I agree. John Remsburg's The Christ (reprinted as Christ Myth in 2007) expressly breaks "myth" down into three broad categories: historical, philosophical, and poetic. To quote Remsburg regarding historical myth - "The event may be but slightly colored and the narrative essentially true, or it may be distorted and numberless legends attached until but a small residuum of truth remains and the narrative is essentially false." In fact the real old stuff, be it Frazier, Robertson, Mead, or Remsburg didn't throw Jesus the man out with the mythical Gospel Jesus bathwater. Even Constantin-François Volney was will to consider that where was an obscure historical figure (though he felt he had been integrated into an already existing mythology) As New Testament scholar Ian Howard Marshall pointed out in his I Believe in the Historical Jesus the very term "historical Jesus" has an insane range from Jesus existed exactly as described in the Gospels to Jesus existed as a human being in the same way King Arthur existed as a human being (there is something there but the details of the actual person have been effectively lost). Heck, Bart Ehrman even includes a Jesus who existed "but had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity" (ie Jesus either cooped an existing movement or it was turned into Christianity after he died) as part of the Christ Myth...and that reference is in the freaking lede.--2606:A000:131D:4413:99C7:38A4:1301:F7F9 (talk) 14:18, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Bart Ehrman is expressing what the "mythicists" think there, he isn't saying he agrees with it.Smeat75 (talk) 14:34, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

You missed the point being made - the Christ Myth Theory is not just Jesus didn't exist as a human being and that definition is coming from someone who is against it. Israel Knohl's The Messiah Before Jesus postulates that Jesus was inspired the incidents surrounding a previous messiah who was killed by the Romans in 4 BCE. Then there is Michael O. Wise postulates a messiah who died 72 BCE. If either of them are right and Jesus did commender and already existing "Christian" movement then he per Bart Ehrman's criteria "had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity" and would part of the Christ Myth Theory. --172.75.0.187 (talk) 11:47, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Providing context

Smeat75, and also Wellingfordtoday, thanks for your input and thoughts. It is challenging, and is providing new thoughts about the necessity to provide context, not just persons. I've added info on the historical quest for Jesus, including the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule. Apparently, the CMT has to be understood against the backdrop of this quest; the RgS, especially Bultmann, has played an important role in the waning and waxing appeal of this quest, and is regarded as an important influence on Wells, who initiated the revival of the CMT. Mentioning the RgS correlates with the critique on Wells that his approach is an outdated RgS-approach.
Somehow, it must be possible to incorporate the (scholarly) understanding of what "myth" is in this section; that also opens the possibility to introduce the 'nothing but myth' approach of some mythicists, in their respective sub-sections. Smeat75, would you be able to find (written) sources which explicitly apply this kind of reductionism?
To the section on "Present day#revival" we should something about the influence of internet, as mentioned by Ehrman (as an aside: I was introduced to the CMT about ten years ago, thanks to internet), and the popularization and polemical stances to which this has led. I hope we can find more info on this.
Altogether, I think this provides more context, making clearer where the CMT comes from, and why it is rejected by mainstream scholarship. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:25, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

To make full sense of this, we should actually use the "definition" of "myth" which the mythicists themselves use - if we use a different definition then we might misrepresent the Theory. Wdford (talk) 19:39, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

The Christ myth theory is a fringe theory. We do not define fringe theories using the definition of those theories the fringe theorists use. For instance WP does not define Paleolithic diet as " based upon characteristics of ancient diets that will help to optimize your health, minimize your risk of disease, and lose weight" as paleodiet.com does but as " a modern fad diet[2] requiring the sole or predominant consumption of foods presumed to have been the only foods available to or consumed by humans during the Paleolithic era.[3]" - cited to reliable, scholarly sources. Scholarly sources are always preferred.Smeat75 (talk) 21:41, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Scholarly sources are always preferred, except when they blatantly misrepresent the topic under discussion. The WP "definition" of the Paleolithic diet is totally accurate. However if the paleodiet gurus had somehow misread the naming conventions of ancient periods and had called their Paleolithic Diet the Paleocene Diet by mistake, then for WP to define the diet as "a fad diet consisting of charred dinosaurs" would be a blatant misrepresentation of the topic, although perhaps pedantically correct. Wdford (talk) 22:02, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

The thing is, as shown in older versions of this article, the Christ myth theory has had so many definitions over the decades that there are some that are not fringe theory. If you go over the real old stuff you find that things are not as simple as is claimed in the article. For example, John M. Robertson stated "All that can rationally be claimed is that a teacher or teachers named Jesus, or several differently named teachers called Messiahs, may have Messianically uttered some of these teachings at various periods, presumably after the writing of the Pauline epistles" (Robertson, John M (1910) Christianity and mythology) In the same work Robertson states "it is historically possible, and not very unlikely, that there were several Jesuses who claimed to be Messiahs" Further on he says "After Paul, there might conceivably have been, say, three Jesuses who taught and figured as Messiahs — a second Jesus without cognomen, a third who was a Nazarite, a fourth who "came eating and drinking."" Note what a man who Albert Schweitzer said "contested the historical existence of Jesus" is not saying Jesus didn't exist as a human being anymore then Sir James George Frazer did (who clearly stated "My theory assumes the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth"). It is the situation of seen with Wells where even after excepting the Jesus of the Gospels was based on a real man was still called a Christ Mythist.--2606:A000:131D:4413:44A8:F236:E5E0:F4E5 (talk) 13:42, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps a good solution would be to reorganize the article along the lines of the various theories that CMT might refer to, with a brief narrative describing each. Rather than giving all the historical views, the contextual accounts could be nested under the heading that best fits the aspect of CMT they are refuting. This could allow the merging of a number of the existing sections - at a minimum synthesizing sections 1 & 2 and pulling in and contextualizing the sections on the proponents. Maybe a primary section heading like "Primary theories of CMT" and then sub-headings stating the viewpoint, like "There was no historical Jesus." Then, under that sub-heading we could have a brief overview of the arguments against Jesus existing as an historical person, the arguments against that specific understanding (e.g. Tacitus & Josephus, etc.) and then a *brief* catalog of the proponents of this CMT viewpoint. I am hopeful that an approach like this could be used to pare down the article length substantially. Magic1million (talk) 21:27, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

The (main) different stances are mentioned in the beginning. But thay are not stand-alone theories; those authors have influenced each other. For a coherent presentation, I think it's best to keep them together. As for section one and two: section provides context fot eh Cmt, while section two gives an overview of the main arguments, as a further introduction. It seems to me that it works fine. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:13, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Actually as represented by the article the very soft Christ Myth theory of Drews and Robertson are portrayed as being part of the Jesus didn't exist camp despite the fact when you read what they actually say they make no such claim. More over on older version of this page stated that per G. A. Wells (1969) "Stages of New Testament Criticism," Journal of the History of Ideas, volume 30, issue 2 that Volney allowed for confused memories of an obscure historical figure to be intergraded into the myth but was a little vague on just what that meant though G.A. Wells' last (Paul's Jesus was legendary but the Gospel Jesus was based on an actual person but that guy was not crucified) version which was called "Christ Myth" would be the most recent version.--2606:A000:131D:45A7:9A0:427E:1A97:DEBE (talk) 19:04, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Here is what a leading rationalist of his day (a historicist who opposed mythticism) said: Archibald Robertson (atheist) (1946), "We know next to nothing about this Jesus. He is not the founder of anything that we can recognize as Christianity. He is a mere postulate of historical criticism—a dead leader of a lost cause, to whom sayings could be credited and round whom a legend could be written." 2605:A000:160C:A38F:FCBB:C800:8AC5:F1ED (talk) 00:27, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

New Book WP:weight

Lataster, Raphael (2019). Questioning the Historicity of Jesus: Why a Philosophical Analysis Elucidates the Historical Discourse. BRILL. ISBN 9789004408784. This volume explains the inadequacy of the sources and methods used to establish Jesus' historicity, and how agnosticism can reasonably be upgraded to theorising about ahistoricity when reconsidering Christian Origins.

Previous work by Lataster per the book bibliography

· Lataster, Raphael. Review of Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, by Bart Ehrman. Literature & Aesthetics 24 no. 2 (2014): 137–138.

· Lataster, Raphael. Review of Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths?, by Maurice Casey. Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review 5 no. 1 (2014): 166–168.

· Lataster, Raphael. Review of On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, by Richard Carrier. Journal of Religious History 38 no. 4 (2014): 614–616.

· Lataster, Raphael. “Bart Ehrman and the Elusive Historical Jesus.” Literature & Aesthetics 26 no. 1 (2016): 181–192.

· Lataster, Raphael. “Bayesian Reasoning: Criticising the ‘Criteria of Authenticity’ and Calling for a Review of Biblical Criticism.” Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences 5 no. 2 (2013): 271–293.

· Lataster, Raphael. The Case Against Theism: Why the Evidence Disproves God’s Existence. Cham, Switzerland: Springer 2018.

· Lataster, Raphael. “The Fourth Quest: A Critical Analysis of the Recent Literature on Jesus’ (a)Historicity.” Literature & Aesthetics 24 no. 1 (2014): 1–28.

· Lataster, Raphael. “The Gospel According to Bart: The Folly of Ehrman’s Hypothetical Sources.” Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Australian Historical Association Sydney 7th July 2015.

· Lataster, Raphael. “Is There a Christian Agenda Behind Religious Studies Departments?” Accessed 18/02/2013. http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/2013/01/23/is-there-a-christian-agenda-behind-religious-studies-departments-by-raphael-Lataster, .

· Lataster, Raphael. “It’s Official: We Can Now Doubt Jesus’ Historical Existence.” Think 15 no. 43 (2016): 65–79.

· Lataster, Raphael. “Jesus Scepticism: An Examination of the Arguments for Various ‘Jesus as a Myth’ Theories.” Master’s thesis University of Sydney 2013.

· Lataster, Raphael. “On Richard Swinburne and the Failings of Christian Theistic Evidentialism.” Literature & Aesthetics 26 no. 1 (2016): 23–40.

· Lataster, Raphael. “The (Overwhelming) Improbability of Classical Theism.” Paper presented at the Oxford Symposium on Religious Studies Oxford 1st August 2016.

· Lataster, Raphael. “A Philosophical and Historical Analysis of William Lane Craig’s Resurrection of Jesus Argument.” Think 14 no. 39 (2015): 59–71.

· Lataster, Raphael. “Questioning the Plausibility of Jesus Ahistoricity Theories – A Brief Pseudo-Bayesian Metacritique of the Sources.” Intermountain West Journal of Religious Studies 6 no. 1 (2015): 63–96.

· Lataster, Raphael. There Was No Jesus There Is No God: A Scholarly Examination of the Scientific Historical and Philosophical Evidence & Arguments For Monotheism. Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2013.

· Lataster, Raphael and Richard Carrier. Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists. Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2015.

• What is the WP:weight of this book for this article? – 2db (talk) 04:14, 15 July 2019 (UTC) && 14:03, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for posting it. At the moment (this book has just been published) I'd say its WP:weight is very light. The publisher (Brill) is good, and the authors holds a PhD so that's a start. On the other hand, the author seems to a very fresh academic who does not (yet) have any academic position. Another drawback is that he seems to be one who introduced this hilarious Bayesian nonsense (not saying Bayesian statistics are nonsense, not at all. I have used them myself in some academic publications. Their applicability here, though, is nonsense). At the moment, I don't see any reason to make any changes to the article because of this book. That may very well change, depending on how it is received in the field. Jeppiz (talk) 09:03, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

I just add a word of support for 2db. The book by Lataster is surely very relevant to the topic. Jepizz' personal opinion on "hilarious Bayesian nonsense" surely plays no role here. Yes, you are right, 2db (in your remarks below) that we have no real academic text to which one can refer for so called mainstream scholarly arguments regarding Jesus' historicity. As also stressed by Lataster, Ehrman's book is just a "popular" book but Wikipedia policy says that "academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources, such as in history, medicine, and science". Lataster rightly writes that "such books do not exist", and he thus has to deal with what is available. In WP:Due and undue weight we can also read "If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts" but it is not so easy here. Therefore some editors replace this with some derogatory remarks etc. that are far from academic respectability. It seems that these editors think that whatever Ehrman utters can be handled as "a reliable source", but Lataster's reviewed book (with foreword by Prof. James Crossley) should first wait until we know how it is received in the field (i.e., what Ehrman and such will say about it, if anything)? If one would believe that what is written in the article about "Scholarly reception" is indeed scholarly, then Lataster is, in fact, one of the idiots who overlook "the overwhelming evidence" and entertain strange fringe theories instead. Good luck, 2db, in your effort to contribute to the article. (Sorry that I will not be of any more help than this expression of support.)Jelamkorj (talk) 19:55, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Ehrman states that his book Did Jesus Exist? was written for a popular audience and that in regards to the question of the Historicity of Jesus, "I was not arguing the case for scholars, because scholars already know the answer to that question." [Ehrman (25 April 2012). "Fuller Reply to Richard Carrier". The Bart Ehrman Blog.] --2db (talk) 05:30, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Current Jesus ahistoricity theory content

Jesus ahistoricity theory content from Swedish WP

The ahistorical hypothesis is a hypothesis in Bible research, which means that the Jesus figure described in the Bible is not based on any historical person.

In history research one cannot always achieve complete certainty. It can therefore be quite reasonable that one has more than one hypothesis that deals with the same historical event and these different hypotheses complement each other, as long as one cannot show that one of these hypotheses with overwhelming probability is the true one. The core of the ahistoric hypothesis is thus whether or not Jesus existed as a historical person. It differentiates it from Jesus myth which says that what we believe we know about Jesus is largely myths but does not exclude that he existed as a historical person.

In the case of Jesus of Nazareth, two hypotheses are possible, namely that he has existed as a historical person or that he has not existed as a historical person. It is this latter hypothesis that is usually called the ahistorical hypothesis and which is described in this article. In fact, the difference between the hypothesis that Jesus existed and the ahistoric hypothesis has no greater historical significance, since in any case we have no reliable historical knowledge of Jesus and it remains disputed which historical value the various stories of Jesus have.

Dykstra, Tom (2015). "Ehrman and Brodie on Whether Jesus Existed: A Cautionary Tale about the State of Biblical Scholarship". The Journal of the Orthodox Center for the Advancement of Biblical Studies (JOCABS). 8 (1): 6.

Brodie and Ehrman are both competent scholars, both are assessing the same body of literature acting as historical evidence, and yet they reach diametrically opposite conclusions.

more...

This is possible because each approaches the same literature with different assumptions. Two of the most important assumptions that determine how you interpret any given writing are related to its dependence on other literature and its literary genre, and it’s in precisely these two areas that Ehrman and Brodie differ.

The Jesus-as-myth scenario is plausible if all of the writings about him can ultimately be traced back to a single source, meaning that all of them are ultimately inspired by a single original inventor. It’s not likely that different people would independently invent the same imaginary person with the same name and a similar life story. Therefore, the strongest argument for Jesus’s historicity is that multiple literary witnesses to his life are independent – that is, they are documents written by authors who had no knowledge at all of each other’s writings. That is precisely the approach Ehrman focuses on first in his book. He counts seven independent narratives about Jesus...

• Perhaps a new article should be created that enumerates all the items of evidence for the two hypotheses (ahistoric/historical), side-by-side and citing the the scholar(s) with the most WP:weight for each hypothesis.

As I understand, apart from Casey (2014), Ehrman (2012) and Case (1928, 2nd ed.) [1912], it appears that no other scholar(s) of the New Testament has ever put together a sustained argument that Jesus lived since 1912 ?

note on Casey & Ehrman's work; Ehrman quote; and note on Case's work

◦ Carrier (4 March 2014). "Critical Review of Maurice Casey's Defense of the Historicity of Jesus". Richard Carrier Blogs.

So far only two contemporary books [Casey (2014), Ehrman (2012)] have been written in defense of the historicity of Jesus (nothing properly comparable has been published in almost a hundred years).

◦ Per Ehrman (5 May 2012). "Did Jesus Exist as Part One". The Bart Ehrman Blog. [now bolded]:

I realized when doing my research for the book [DJE] that since New Testament scholars have never taken mythicists seriously, they have never seen a need to argue against their views, which means that even though experts in the study of the historical Jesus (and Christian origins, and classics, and ancient history, etc etc.) have known in the back of their minds all sorts of powerful reasons for simply assuming that Jesus existed, no one had ever tried to prove it. Odd as it may seem, no scholar of the New Testament has ever thought to put together a sustained argument that Jesus must have lived. To my knowledge, I was the first to try it...

◦ Widowfield, Tim (16 February 2015). "'It is absurd to suggest . . .' -- Shirley Jackson Case on The Historicity of Jesus". Vridar.

Case engages in a prolonged argument against “the spuriousness and the late dating” of Paul’s epistles (Case, 1912, p. 70). Later on he defends the consensus dating of the canonical gospels. In a chapter entitled “The Gospel Evidence,” he lays out his case for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John being written “within fairly defined limits,” namely “the last thirty-five years of the first century.”

Reading his set of arguments today, I’m struck by how little has changed.

--2db (talk) 19:11, 15 July 2019 (UTC) && 04:33, 23 July 2019 (UTC) && 02:32, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

The vast majority of scholars does indeed suppose that there was a man Jesus; what's more, they suppose that his personal impact is onme of the reasons that Christianity came into existence. To speak of 'two theories', as if they on a par, ignores this scholarly consensus. Developing a sustained argument dor the historical existence of Jesus may be relevant for mythicists; the relevant question for mainstream scholarship is how Jesus led to Christianity. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:59, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

To speak of 'two theories', as if they on a par, ignores this scholarly consensus.

• Do you mean the consensus of Casey & Ehrman on the question of the "Historicity of Jesus", supported by the "vast majority of scholars"?

Thompson, Thomas L. (2005). The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David. Basic Books. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-7867-3911-0.

Twentieth-century scholarship, with its faith in history, assumed a historical Jesus as its starting point. It shared Schweitzer’s personal dilemma: a choice between a Jesus who fits modern visions of Christianity and Mark’s failed prophet. But they always assumed there was a historical Jesus to describe.

Cf. Arnal, William E. (2015) [2005]. The Symbolic Jesus: Historical Scholarship, Judaism and the Construction of Contemporary Identity. Routledge. pp. 76–77. ISBN 978-1-317-32440-9.

Lataster, Raphael (2019). "Inadequate Methods". Questioning the Historicity of Jesus: Why a Philosophical Analysis Elucidates the Historical Discourse. Brill. pp. 129, 149, n. 92. ISBN 978-90-04-40878-4.

The recent defences of Jesus’ historicity by Bart Ehrman and Maurice Casey lack lucid and competent methodologies, rely on highly questionable documents, and further make use of sources that no longer exist, if they ever did.
[...]
If the consensus view that a historical Jesus certainly existed is based on such tenuous methodology, it would seem reasonable that the consensus view should be reviewed, while not necessarily immediately rejected as false. Let us end this section with a mainstream scholar’s admission that such methods — like the earlier and often mentioned appeal to imaginary sources — are idiosyncratic; that they are unique to historians who specialise in the New Testament texts:

more...

The idea of formulating certain “criteria” for an evaluation of historical sources is a peculiar phenomenon in historical-critical Jesus research. It was established in the course of the twentieth century as a consequence of the form-critical idea of dividing Jesus accounts of the Gospels into isolated parts of tradition, which would be examined individually with regard to their authenticity. Such a perspective was not known to the Jesus research of the nineteenth century and it does not, to my knowledge, appear in other strands of historical research. In analysing historical material scholars would usually ask for their origin and character, their tendencies in delineating events from the past, evaluate their principal credibility — for example, whether it is a forgery or a reliable source — and use them together with other sources to develop a plausible image of the concerned period of history. It is not by accident, therefore, that the rather curious “criteria approach” has evoked many criticisms. [So says Jens Schröter, in Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne, eds., Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity (London: T&T Clark, 2012), pp. 51–52.]

--2db (talk) 05:52, 24 July 2019 (UTC) && 18:50, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Casey (2014) v. Ehrman (2012) per WP:weight & Wp:rs

Per WP:weight, Wp:rs, etc., what (if any) difference is there between Casey (2014) and Ehrman (2012)?

• Lataster, Raphael (2019). Questioning the Historicity of Jesus. Brill. p. 100, n. 8. [Per Casey (2014), Jesus] it is quite likely that the book was not peer-reviewed, since it is actually a popular book, and not a proper monograph published by an academic press.

Cf. Casey, Maurice (2014). Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths?. Bloomsbury T & T Clark [A&C Black]. ISBN 978-0-567-01505-1.

• Comment by rjosephhoffmann [R. Joseph Hoffmann]—18 August 2012—per "The Jesus Process: Maurice Casey". The New Oxonian. 22 May 2012. "Bart Ehrman’s book on the historicity of Jesus is entirely inadequate as a defense [of Jesus’ historicity]."
• Lataster, Raphael (2019). Questioning the Historicity of Jesus. Brill. p. 99, N. 1. Casey acknowledges Ehrman's "bold attempt", but alluded to the latter's "regrettable mistakes". [Casey (JEAMM), p. 17.]
• Per Trent Horn, "a good popular introduction might be Bart Ehrman's book Did Jesus Exist?. Unfortunately it is not a scholarly treatment like Dr. Carrier's [book]". [Trent Horn; Richard Carrier (October 25, 2014). "Debate: Did Jesus Exist?". YouTube "MABOOM Show" [Published on Nov 10, 2014]. (@time 1:39:00)]

Cf. Ehrman, Bart D (2012). Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. HarperOne. ISBN 9780062206442.
--2db (talk) 00:08, 29 July 2019 (UTC) && 00:38, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Is this going somewhere

With all due respect, 2db, please keep in mind that this is WP:NOTAFORUM. Do you have any concrete suggestions for how to improve the article? If so, please state them clearly and briefly, and with a brief argument for why they are improvements. Jeppiz (talk) 20:05, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Per my article contribution §Leading_scholars_on_the_question_of_the_"Historicity of Jesus",

It is possible to identify the leading scholar(s) per historicity, agnosticism, and mythicism in regards to the question of the "Historicity of Jesus" and the article should clearly present who and why they are the leading scholar(s).

• Ehrman's position as "the leading scholar" appears to be compromised by the criticism of his peers Hoffmann and Casey who also hold the historicity position. Whereas Casey's position appears to be without criticism from any peer who also holds the historicity position.

--2db (talk) 02:49, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

@2db: this was completely WP:UNDUE, and WP:SPAM for the book of your buddy. See also WP:COI. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:16, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

User:Joshua Jonathan do you concur that Lataster (2019) complies with WP:rs policy regarding the most (as in scholarly) WP:rs?

• As I understand, scholars and their corresponding works reaching the pinnacle of WP:rs are privileged in many ways, e.g. baseless allegations of WP:UNDUE, WP:SPAM, WP:COI are often dismissed as without merit. However User:Joshua Jonathan is an experienced WP contributor and perhaps knows something I do not? It would not surprise me.
• Jeppiz asked how to improve the article, I opted for WP:CYCLE to present my proposed article improvement.

--2db (talk) 06:11, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

I am not replying for User:Joshua Jonathan , but I agree with his comment. It is not at all obvious that I started fulfills WP:RS and WP:DUE. From what I've been able to see, Lataster appears very interested in self-promption but with no real academic credentials. Furthermore, I very much contest the idea we should identify "the leading scholar". Why would we do that, and how would that not violate WP:OR. We are interested in the academic arguments put forward, not so much in the individuals making those arguments (as long as we're sure they meet WP:RS. Jeppiz (talk) 08:56, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Placing Lataster at top of the page, as the sole content of a new section, does not serve the goal of building an encyclopedia, but only serves the interests of promoting the CMT. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 14:50, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Holocaust denial = Questioning the historical reality of Jesus ???

I have two points to make here. Both concern the very extensive textbox "Quotes on the historicity of Jesus" (in the section Reception > Scholarly reception > Lack of support for mythicism):

First, and of imperative importance: I insist that the final section of the above-mentioned textbox ("Comparison with Holocaust-deniers") be deleted. There is no conceivable justification for comparing (a) the mass murder of millions of innocent people within living memory with (b) doubting or questioning the existence of a single person 2,000 years ago, no matter how holy. I am not being polite about this, since there is nothing to be polite about. Making such a comparison is tantamount to trivializing all those meaningless deaths. I am convinced that Jesus would agree with me on this.

Secondly, and of importance only for the credibility of this article: I suggest that the entire textbox be deleted. In this textbox (excluding the section on holocaust denial) are collected 65 quotes arguing against any and all forms of denial, doubt or questioning of the historical existence of Jesus, and 4 (!) quotes that support such denial, doubt or questioning (and please note that all four quotes are extracted from the original source in such a way that it is easy to gain the impression that they too are arguments against such denial, questioning or doubt). This is quite the opposite of the "neutral point of view" (WP:NPOV) that is one of Wikipedia's basic standards.

Filursiax (talk) 23:16, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• Support - I agree, the textbox should be removed - it appears to be POV pushing - also, the textbox is embedded in the article twice, once at the "A historical Jesus existed" section and once at the "Lack of support for mythicsm" section - the header in the textbox "Comparison with Holocaust-deniers" should definitely be deleted, it's a Reductio ad absurdum argument - Epinoia (talk) 00:17, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

• There are many different issues at play here. First and foremost, we do not remove anything at all because someone is offended. That's an established WP policy we don't even have the right to change on this talk page. So any argument referring to taking offense or WP:IDONTLIKEIT is a moot argument if it's the only part of the argument. In this case, I am more receptive to the question whether this text box (the work of one user unless I'm mistaken) is really WP:DUE. That's something we can definitely discuss. Jeppiz (talk) 08:41, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose It seems to me we are quoting scholars, it may be overlong. But that is a different question to outright removal. If someone says something dumb it is not our job to conceal it.Slatersteven (talk) 08:48, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

• Reply I have just discovered that the same text box is found on the pages Historical Jesus and Historicity of Jesus. I have not had time to look further, but it seems possible that it is embedded in other articles as well. This is some kind of campaign, and in my opinion it should be stopped. If you try to access these pages on a cell phone, the intention becomes very clear: the text box is permanently open and acts like a tremenous obstruction in the middle of the article, seriously discouraging readers from accessing the rest of the text. I am not an experienced Wikipedia editor, but I have read extensively in Wikipedia, and I have never encountered anything like this before. — Slatersteven: Thanks for your remarks, but this is not simply a matter of "quoting scholars," because: (a) far from all of the quotes are from scholars, (b) the quotes are presented without any kind of contextualization and do not form a natural part of the argument or presentation in the article, and (c) the quotes keep repeating the same point and are thus redundant. I also question your assertion that "[i]f someone says something dumb it is not our job to conceal it." If this principle is applied e.g. to an article on chemistry (a random user enters the page and denies that NaCl is the chemical description of table salt), I assume that his entry can be removed? — Jeppiz: I understand your objection, but I cannot see that this is a case of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. I guess I didn't make this clear in my previous post, but my objection to the holocaust comparison is not a matter of personal likes and dislikes. If one of my students had made a similar comparison, I would have arrested him/her on it immediately, because: (a) it is an invalid comparison (comparing apples and oranges), (b) it amounts to pushing a personal agenda, which approaches hate speech (which I assume that Wikipedia does not condone), and (c) it does not form part of an argument, but is simply a mass of quotations without context. If the holocaust comparison is to be introduced into this article, it should form part of the main text, not be smuggled in, in a text box. As far as the rest of the text box is concerned, I repeat my assertion that it violates WP:NPOV by offering 4 quotes which (only slightly) support the opposition and 65 (+ the 8 holocaust quotes) that refute it. In view of the fact that this is an article about the opposition, this is particularly undesirable. Filursiax (talk) 10:23, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Again I can see issues with this (as I imply) but I am against just an outright removal on ground of "but its offensive".Slatersteven (talk) 09:01, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

But we are not making it, we are quoting people who have made it. We should not ignore such comparisons. Far from it, it is our job to put the various sides of this debate and how they see it.Slatersteven (talk) 11:37, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

• Support removal or major trimming. The text box falls foul of WP:UNDUE as far as I am coincerned, nevermind the severely adverse effect it has on readers using a smartphone. - Nick Thorne ^talk 12:02, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
• Slatersteven, I'm not sure if I understood your last message. Normal practice in an academic article or a textbook would be to include relevant quotations, but integrate them in the main text. The quotations may of course represent widely differing views, but they need to be contextualized and be made part of the main argument/presentation. In addition, just to add flavor, a few (like max 5) quotes could be put in a textbox, providing that the main text makes it clear why they are there. But in this case we are dealing with a total of 77 quotes! — Nick Thorne (and/or others), I am not an experienced editor and don't know how to proceed. Can the textboxes be deleted, and if so, who does it? I don't know if I feel competent yet. I may not even have editing rights to these pages, since I don't have much experience editing Wikipedia. Filursiax (talk) 22:01, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Some points on quotation usage from Wikipedia:Quotations:

1. Where a quotation presents rhetorical language in place of the more neutral, dispassionate tone preferred for encyclopedias, it can be a backdoor method of inserting a non-neutral treatment of a controversial subject into Wikipedia's narrative on the subject; be very careful.
2. Quote boxes should generally be avoided as they draw special attention to the opinion of one source, as though Wikipedia endorses it, and this may violate the neutral point of view policy.
3. Using too many quotes is incompatible with the encyclopedic writing style.
4. Quotes shouldn't replace plain, concise text.
5. While quotations are an indispensable part of Wikipedia, try not to overuse them. WP:QUOTEFARM

- I believe the Wikipedia:Quotations guideline supports the removal of the quotebox - Epinoia (talk) 01:35, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

I've moved the quotebox to a separate page, given the oriblems with mobile usage; it is now proposed for deletion. I conquer that the comparisons with Holocaust-deniers are exaggerated, though of course it still is an overview of what authors say, not what Wikipedia says. Nevertheless, enough reasons to remove the link to the quotes-page per WP:BOLD. The main issue of course still is WP:CHEESE. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:58, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks, Joshua Jonathan, for removing the textbox from all three articles, and thanks to everyone contributing to this discussion. (A practical question: Do I need to register my vote for deletion of the new page? If so, how do I do it?) Also, I am very happy to have been directed to WP:CHEESE. Admirable! Filursiax (talk) 11:46, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

• Glad to see that Holocaust denial comparison nonsense is gone. It was such a non sequitur that it was clearly an ad hominem aa the 1958 finding aids for the 3,000 tons of truly contemporary (i.e. between 1938-1945) records presented at the 1945-1946 Nuremberg Trials was 62 volumes--just 4 books shy of the number of books (66) traditionally in the entire Bible! Then between 1958 and 2000 they added another 30 volumes, bringing the total to 92 books. If anything it showed just how misguided some of the pro historical Jesus people are.--2606:A000:131D:45A7:3D51:8917:27CC:455D (talk) 00:55, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Competent non-Christian scholars

The 'A historical Jesus existed' subsection includes the claim:

Yet, that there was a historical Jesus is not in doubt. New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman states that Jesus "certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees".

Both citations reference Ehrman's own works.

Any chance that someone could add a reference from one of those competent non-Christian scholars to back up Ehrman's assertion? Many thanks. JezGrove (talk) 12:11, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

I take it that you didn't read the introduction? Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 04:47, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

I take it you don't understand the meaning of either "competent" or "non-Christian" nor the fact that Ehrman's claim has been shot down by a little pear reviewed piece called On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014) ISBN 978-1-909697-49-2 ISBN 978-1-909697-35-5. I should mention that Carrier lambast both the historical and mythicist sides for not following social science rule in how they handle their "evidence". Oh, you want to complain about the "competent" part? That is in one of the pathetic rebuttals to the Christ - it is effectively an back handed ad hominem attack. WHat's good for the goose is good for the gander--174.99.238.22 (talk) 10:31, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

G.A. Wells

Hi,

I see there was an add by an IP editor [3] and then a revert [4] with the reasoning being: "WP:CHERRY; lede clutter; Wells not a historicity expert; scholarship outdated and reliant on the heavily debated Q source; Wells always held that the Pauline Jesus was ahistorical."

After looking into the original add, the revert did not make much sense, since for one it does not look cherry picked at all and it does not clutter the lead at all. The source does state his views from previous decades of writings on the matter (Wells has quite a few prominent writings on Jesus not existing since the 1970s at least so he is a prominent authority on the topic from the mythicist side) and Wells summarizes his views in that quote that was provided by the IP editor. Since G. A. Wells is one of the earliest modern revivalists of mythicism (is featured in this article as such), and certainly has an academic background, his views are certainly more relevant than amateur mythicists. The other reasons provided were not good either since Wells views are his own. Like every other mythicists, it not mainstream. In terms of "outdated", that is an odd claim since, for instance, recent mythicists like Richard Carrier use really old and outdated ideas like 19th century/early 20th century literary theories like Otto Rank and Lord Raglan in their current writings. With stuff like this, that does not seem like a good reason to object to Wells change of mind on the matter.

Certainly seems relevant to mention that even multiple decades long mythicists like Wells have changed their minds on the matter, no? I was under the impression that he remained an mythicist and am still surprised by this new info. If, no objections, then this add seems relevant enough to restore.Ramos1990 (talk) 03:36, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

What is the consensus definition of the historicity of Jesus and what is the Peer Reviewed work (WP:RS) in defense of the assumption of historicity that confirms said definition is the consensus definition?

Does Wells' definition of the historicity of Jesus align with this consensus?

--2db (talk) 04:22, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

I agree it's "lead clutter"; the term "even" implies an argument, not a summary of the article. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:46, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

He was a prominent mythicist early on and changed his views later on. Not much of an argument, but certainly an interesting point that even a prominent mythicist shifted his views on the matter. I know a good spot for it would be in the GA Wells section as that is a section about him.Ramos1990 (talk) 04:53, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Definitely interesting, and relevant. Though, of course, we use a 'broad' definition of 'mythicism'. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:26, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Question

What determines "fringe"?

Does Wikipedia consider the strength of the arguments when labelling something as "fringe" or is it merely the number of people labelling something that matters? Thanks --Damiano Tommasi (talk) 02:18, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Strengths of arguments is subjective and there is no way to measure it on wikipedia (certainly wikipedia editors are not the deciders of the strength of any particular argument) aside from consensus views (peers in a field holding a particular view). Wikipedia is not a source for truth, it is a collection of scholarly views on a topic - so we do not determine the truthfulness of a claim - rather sources are the ones that can make such statements because they have actual expertise. We just cite what these experts have to say on a matter. Usually fringe views are designated as such by mainstream sources too so for example, with Jesus denialism/mythicism, there are almost no scholars that hold such a view. It is not for a lack of trying.Ramos1990 (talk) 03:55, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

The current edit gives undie weight to a fringe view point, it is not a minority view point as even the source says- Raphael Lataster is a mythicist that even says as much even if he does not agree it is not. As such we need better and more diverse references before be can call it a "minority" view when it represents a minuscule numbers of academics in the relevant fields. It like quoting holocausts denialists that their claim is held by academics, which it is by those on the fringe but no mainstream academics would recognized them as a minority view point - just fringe. Hardyplants (talk) 05:06, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

I reverted the edit where it talked about a "minority view". Jesus mythicism is fringe by most scholarly accounts. There are about 10 sources for that sentence including Ehrman, Grant, Van Voorst, Gullotta, Gray, Hurtado, Price, even Latatser. The last two are mythciists (Latatster claims to be "agnostic" but his text verifies that he is actually a mythicist with his worshipping of Richard Carrier's mythicism). The quotes in the article for that snetnce establish that this is the current view held by those in the field. It is not just a minority view, it is flat out fringe. Lataster is not a scholar in Jesus studies and he has not written much on the issue. He does not represent the field in any real way. He fails to show that the fringe status is untrue in the text. I have read it myself. He merely disagrees with it and makes his case by appealing to theories that were once fringe and that somehow became the mainstream in the future like Evolution and heliocentrism on page 2. He eve states "...it may one day be considered reasonable.." It is certainly not today considered reasonable at all. I suppose creationism will be mainstream in the future then.Ramos1990 (talk) 05:36, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

To give a very clear answer to Damiano Tommasi. No, WP certainly does not, and should not, consider the strength of academic arguments: we have several policies against that. It is not for users on Wikipedia, many of whom lack the necessary academic qualifications, to decide between academics. To take a current and similar example: Wikipedia does not let users decide how effective different Covid-19 vaccines are, merely report the academic findings on that topic. Jeppiz (talk) 19:59, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Historicity is the consensus only by assumption

[W]e need better and more diverse references before be can call it a "minority" view...
— User:Hardyplants

• Rather we need modern peer reviewed references before it be can labelled a "fringe" view on WP.

I am awaiting a cited quote of the peer reviewed "sources" on the historicity of Jesus that support Hardyplants claim. And also equal or surpass Lataster 2019 per WP:RS. However this may not be possible given the following:

“ [There has] been no peer reviewed monograph in defense of the assumption of historicity for over a hundred years—not since Shirley Jackson Case published a now-deeply-outdated treatment for the University of Chicago in 1912 (a second edition released in 1928 isn’t substantially different (Case, 1928).

[...]
Which is why it’s fair to say historicity is only the consensus now by assumption, not argument; because no new defense of it has appeared. Instead, excuses are thrown together here and there for believing that assumption valid, which are all ad hoc, contradictory, contrafactual, or fallacious, and altogether ignore competing theories rather than properly ruling them out.

” — Richard Carrier

The leading historicity scholars are Maurice Casey and Bart Ehrman, whose individual works on the question of the "historicity of Jesus"—as a sustained argument that Jesus lived—are not comparable to any other work by a contemporary scholar who also holds the historicity position. Casey and Ehrman are the only contemporary "secular" scholars to comprehensively address this issue, as Ehrman writes, "Odd as it may seem, no scholar of the New Testament has ever thought to put together a sustained argument that Jesus must have lived." Ehrman also notes that his book Did Jesus Exist? was written for a popular audience and that in regards to the question of the historicity of Jesus, "I was not arguing the case for scholars, because scholars already know the answer to that question."

• Case, Shirley Jackson (1928) [1912]. The Historicity of Jesus Christ: A Criticism of the Contention That Jesus Never Lived, a Statement of the Evidence for His Existence, an Estimate of His Relation to Christianity (2 ed.). University of Chicago Press. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Ehrman, Bart D (2012). Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. HarperOne. ISBN 9780062206442. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Van Voorst, Robert E. (2000). Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8028-4368-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

"The consensus is only by assumption"

--2db (talk) 05:45, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

There are numerous admissions to fringe status already in the 10 or so peer reviewed sources for that statement. Can't you see them? The ref group for fringe status is "q 2". The case is closed. Carrier's blogs are not reliable sources and even Casey and Ehrman's admissions that there have been very few obsessive efforts on mythicism verify that the topic is so fringe that very few have focused on it exclusively. There has not been a need to show the obvious - that Jesus existed. Van Voorst's collection of sources are also far superior to Carrier or Latstaters books because Van Voorst actually marshals powerful evidences to the forefront. Carrier and Lataster's efforts were just to dismiss evidences, not build or show evidences verifying that Jesus did not exist.Ramos1990 (talk) 05:55, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Ad infinitum; how often have we discussed the fringe-status now? See WP:DONTGETIT. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:13, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Per Richard Carrier and his arguments a review and refutation can be found in this academic work: "Despite the fact that most professional academics reject mythicism, interest into the theory has not subsided. Casey and Ehrman ascribe this to some atheist activists’ disdain for organized religion (especially the Christian tradition) and the increase of online and independent publishing platforms.9 Interest in mythicism has also been amplified by internet conspiracy culture, pseudoscience, and media sensationalism related to the historical Jesus and Christian origins.10 In short, the majority of mythicist literature is composed of wild theories, which are poorly researched, historically inaccurate, and written with a sensationalist bent for popular audiences."

"Richard Carrier review and refutation"

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Hardyplants (talk • contribs) 06:22, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

There are about 10 sources for that sentence including Ehrman, Grant, Van Voorst, Gullotta...
— User:Ramos1990

• Out of context much?

The way Ehrman & Gullotta are being taken out of context is obvious:

• Gullotta, Daniel N. (2017). "On Richard Carrier's Doubts: A Response to Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt". Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus. 15 (2–3): 310–346 (314). doi:10.1163/17455197-01502009. [NOW BOLDED]:

Even Ehrman concedes that there are ‘a couple of bona fide scholars . . . Their books may not be known to most of the general public interested in questions related to Jesus, the Gospels, or the early Christian church, but they do occupy a noteworthy niche as a (very) small but (often) loud minority voice’. [Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, p. 3.]

Gullotta clearly agrees with Ehrman—whom he quotes—that "bona fide" scholars comprise a minority view. --2db (talk) 07:00, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

That is not a minorty but an trivial view point, and no two mythists agree with each other with each having a diffrent take and none have been taken seriously by much of their respected fields. A minorty view has to have some suport within it the respected field Hardyplants (talk) 08:10, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

User:2db, of course fringe views are minority views by default, but what makes minority views fringe is the ways they go about making their claims and also how unseriously they are taken by scholars. Gullotta clearly states "[Per Jesus mythicism] Given the fringe status of these theories, the vast majority have remained unnoticed and unaddressed within scholarly circles." Its in the sources. If you cannot read them then you may need to get another browser. There are 10 sources from peer reviewed sources and leading scholars and even mythicists themselves confirming the fringe status of mythicism in their own writings for that statement.

Why do you keep on relying on Carrier and Latastser too? Are there no other scholars available? Carrier and Lataster are known for their atheist activism poisoning their own research. They are not leading voices in the fields of Jesus studies because most of their stuff is from blogs and self publishing on that topic.Ramos1990 (talk) 08:23, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm not clear why you think being an atheist activist would make anyone more likely to believe the myth theory: an atheistic view of Jesus is equally tenable whether he existed or not. On the other hand, the majority of biblical scholars are in some sense Christians which does very strongly predispose them to believe in a historical Jesus. So you might want to think again about whether you really want to discount atheist scholars as ideologically "poisoned" - that could come back to bite you. My own impression is that the best writers on both sides of this argument are doing their level best to be led by the evidence. --Doric Loon (talk) 11:04, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Regarding this revert: to state that mythicism is a "minority opinion" is an understatement, and gives to much value to the mythicist pov. it simply is not supported or maintained in mainstream scholarship. And Lataster, obviously, is not an adequate source for such a statement. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 11:10, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

you might want to think again about whether you really want to discount atheist scholars as ideologically "poisoned"
— User:Doric Loon

Quite correct indeed...

After presenting a current positive quoted citation from a highest WP:RS source. I asked for peer reviewed quoted citations of current sources that support the negative claim.

• RESPONSE: One quoted citation taken out of context to push WP:True.
• RESPONSE: Risible nonsense deployed to Wiktionary:suck the air out of the room. A massive WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT.

User:Doric Loon, you should expect significant misrepresentation of WP policy on this issue. You will have to lawyer up and become an expert on WP policy and conflict resolution.
Best of luck --2db (talk) 14:23, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

– see WP:BURDEN, "burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material" – it is not up to anyone else to provide "peer reviewed quoted citations of current sources that support the negative claim" – cheers, Epinoia (talk) 14:42, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, "editor who adds or restores material", being Joshua Jonathan; Ramos1990; Hardyplants. --2db (talk) 15:10, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

That's already referenced, and has been so for a long time. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:32, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

[H]as been so for a long time...
— User:Joshua Jonathan

Yes, and now it is outdated or refuted or always has been taken out of context to push WP:Truth.

• User:Joshua Jonathan clearly did not meet WP:BURDEN to restore content that was challenged and removed.

--2db (talk) 15:52, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

@2db:, please read the definition of verifiability form the WP policy page. I think you are not understanding what it means. Here is the policy definition: "verifiability means other people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source." There are quotes and page numbers for the claims of fringe status found so that claims are verified for sure. Verification does NOT have to do with truth, that is the job of original research. We don't verify a claim is true or not - that is not our job, we verify that a claim is tracible to a source.

I know you love Carrier and Latatster, but Lataster is not a "highest WP:RS source" he is just a source like any other. There is also no such thing in wikipedia policy stating or ranking sources. Furthermore, Lataster's views are not representative of the actual experts in the field of Jesus studies. His book is also not a book with expertise on the matter as it is a philosophical text on the question. Not a book by an expert in history or 1st century Palestine or a researcher involved in Jesus studies. There is also no burden because there are already 10 sources cited for fringe.

@Doric Loon:, I was not stating that being an atheist makes one a mythicist. Though there is lost of evidence that this is true (atheist publishers tend to publish on mythicism such as American Atheist Press, Pitchstone Publishing, Prometheus Books, etc), many atheist researchers on Jesus are are inline with Jewish, Christians, Hindu, and Buddhist schoalrs. So it is not just Christians that believe Jesus existed, most non-Christians scholars agree. On the other hand when it comes to mythicism, it generally emerges form atheist circles. Bart Ehrman has documented this in Did Jesus exist under the "Mythicist Agenda" - "[Some] mythicists are avidly antireligious. To debunk religion, then, one needs to undermine specifically the Christian form of religion. [...] the mythicists who are so intent on showing that the historical Jesus never existed are not being driven by a historical concern. Their agenda is religious, and they are complicit in a religious ideology. They are not doing history; they are doing theology." (pages 337-338). Ehrman is an agnostic and he has observed this phenomenon first hand since he participates in atheist conventions frequently.Ramos1990 (talk) 20:01, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

@2db:, no. Sorry to say so but that is just you misunderstanding the policy. BURDEN does not mean that you can sweep in and remove whatever you want, no matter how well established, and then claim the 'burden' is on whoever restores it. Please read WP:BRD as well. Jeppiz (talk) 20:03, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Wow. Appreciate you reporting User:2db on the administrators notice board for violating 3RR [5]. It was getting out of hand.Ramos1990 (talk) 20:33, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

The Nazareth Name Problem

Nazareth

I have been asked to 'make a case' regarding my inclusion of information regarding the Name and location of Nazareth.

My edit is as follows:

Arguments against Jesus being mythical include the problem of Nazareth and its existence before and during the time of Jesus. The people in the Gospel of John are depicted as objecting to the idea that Jesus was the Messiah because he came from the wrong town. But the Gospels of Matthew and Luke contain stories explaining how Jesus happened to be born in the right town of Bethlehem. The stories attempt to explain that although Jesus was from Nazareth, he was actually born in Bethlehem. Archeological evidence presently does support the presence of a town/village where Nazareth is today, however there is no archeological or scriptural evidence to support the area being called Nazareth in the first century BCE. Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Southern Florida, James F. Strange, stated in 1992 that: "Nazareth is not mentioned in ancient Jewish sources earlier than the third century CE. This likely reflects its lack of prominence both in Galilee and in Judaea." However, in a recent book published by Professor Ken Dark of the University of Reading, new archaeological excavations appear to indicate that the area called Nazareth today was, to quote Professor Dark: "substantially bigger than previously thought, religiously very conservative and politically very anti-Roman." This may open the question as to why the name 'Nazareth' was not mentioned in ancient Jewish sources. The area that is now called Nazareth has been occupied for about 9000 years, and there has been a city there since the later neolithic/early bronze age.

References

I see absolutely nothing wrong with the above information. It draws on known facts, from qualified Professors, and if Nazareth was a big town that wasn't mentioned, it questions why it was mentioned in the New Testament. If the area was called Nazareth, then that historicizes Jesus, as logically the NT writers wrote Nazareth because he came from there. If the area was not called Nazareth, why did the NT authors create the name?Adam Davis 83 (talk) 07:19, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

@Adam Davies 83:

• first time you placed it in the lead diff; that's not the right place, snce the WP:LEAD summarizes the article;
• second and third time you placed it in the introductory overview of CM theorists diff, diff; that too is not the right place for such info.

Objections against the CMT are treated in the Christ myth theory#Mainstream and mythicist views on the arguments, as objections given by CMT-proponents, and in Christ myth theory#Reception; at best, your info is at place at Christ myth theory#Other criticisms.

Regarding the info you added, which source states that Arguments against Jesus being mythical include the problem of Nazareth and its existence before and during the time of Jesus.? Who states that Jesus must be mythical, because there was no place called Nazareth at that time? After that statement follows an expose about Nazareth and Bethlehem; how dos this relate to the historicity of Jesus? No clue. And even if this is an argument for the historicity of Jesus, where do mythicists argue against this argument? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:50, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Also how does the fact Nazareth existing at the time mean Jesus had to be real, London is real, Alfred Pennyworth is not. Nor does its size have anything to say about its name. Nor do any of the quotes seem to support anyone contradicting "Nazareth is not mentioned in ancient Jewish sources earlier than the third century CE. This likely reflects its lack of prominence both in Galilee and in Judaea.".Slatersteven (talk) 10:16, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

I may need to reword this bit - 'Arguments against Jesus being mythical include the problem of Nazareth and its existence before and during the time of Jesus.' Mythacists argue that because there is no evidence for the name Nazareth, the Jesus of the Gospels could not be from 'Nazareth', therefore, the Jesus of the Gospels did not exist. ref: Frank Zindler (1998), Did Jesus exis? Adam Davis 83 (talk) 13:27, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Still now sure this works. Do the sources say this?Slatersteven (talk) 13:49, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Sort of, but only in a note. It's part of the argument that the NT-writings are not historical documents. I think it's WP:UNDUE: too much detail, from a minor author on this topic. And then, the intention seems to be to disprove the CMT; if that's at stake, wealready have enough. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 14:12, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

My intention is not to disprove anything. I am simply adding information regarding the historicity of the name Nazareth. May I also add information from an article written by Tim O'Neill for his website, History for Atheists:

Not only is the idea that Jesus came from Nazareth a common element in all four canonical gospels, it also seems to have been an awkward fact that did not fit well with the gospel writers’ claim he was the Messiah. This indicates it is likely his origin in this small village was a historical fact. Jesus Mythicists often deal with this by removing Nazareth from the story and some even claim all the archaeologists are wrong and Nazareth did not even exist. (Source: The Nazareth myth

This is why I feel the fact that Nazareth is not mentioned in ancient Jewish sources is important, given the latest archaeological findings by Ken Dark, which apparently shows the area called Nazareth now as being, I quote from above: "substantially bigger than previously thought, religiously very conservative and politically very anti-Roman.Adam Davis 83 (talk) 08:43, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Then can we have a quote that contradicts that the name is new(ish), not just the location has been inhabited for a long while?Slatersteven (talk) 09:15, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

I still think it's WP:UNDUE. Where do we fit it in? It's a Criterion of embarrassment; we only provide a link to that criterium, without going into the details. We give an overview of main arguments (and rebuttals), and of the main proponents; that's already a lot of information. Should we also give all the arguments Earl Doherty provides? And, we don't even mention Tim O'Neill in the article. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:33, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

@Slatersteven There are no quotes that contradict Nazareth being a new name. Here are the facts simplified: Jewish Prophecy said the Messiah would be from Bethlehem - Jesus is stated as coming from Nazareth - Jews are depicted as rejecting him because of this - the Gospels state he was born in Bethlehem, but came from Nazareth - the argument is that there are no mentions of the name Nazareth before or during Jesus' time - that means the name 'Nazareth' is confusing, as there is no archaeological or scriptural evidence for that name in BCE times - one argument is the area, known today as Nazareth, was insignificant so wasn't mentioned - new archaeological excavations appear to show that not to be the case.Adam Davis 83 (talk) 11:18, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

THe we can't use these sources to claim it was, the best we could do is say the site was occupied. But as this is not about Nasseresth it's hard to see wh7y we need that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Slatersteven (talk • contribs) 11:23, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Who is this ^? you didn't sign your name? It is relevant because if the area was not called Nazareth, then there couldn't have been a specific 'Jesus of Nazareth', as there is no evidence for that name.Adam Davis 83 (talk) 11:45, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Sorry forgot to sign, it was me. Please read wp:or and wp:synth, we can't use sources to say something unless they say it.Slatersteven (talk) 11:52, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Ok, you mean a source needs to state exactly what I have just stated? Adam Davis 83 (talk) 12:34, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Sort of, not "exactly" but it has to say what you want to add closely enough for anyone else to come to the same conclusion as you.Slatersteven (talk) 12:41, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

List of relevant cites with quotes

[O]ne argument is the area, known today as Nazareth, was insignificant so wasn't mentioned - new archaeological excavations appear to show that not to be the case.
— User:Adam Davis 83

Please list all relevant cites with quotes (if possible) for: "new archaeological excavations appear to show that not to be the case". --2db (talk) 15:20, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

David Keys, New archaeological evidence from Nazareth reveals religious and political environment in era of Jesus

Adam Davis 83 (talk) 15:36, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

I will admit to now being very confused about what you want to say. Are you saying that there is not evidence the town was called Nasserath or there is? Slatersteven (talk) 15:40, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I am saying, based on the previously cited sources, that there is no evidence that the area we NOW call Nazareth, was called that before or during the time of Jesus. Adam Davis 83 (talk) 16:10, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

@2db: you know everything about all CM theorists; do you which of them use a "Nazareth myth" argument? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 16:18, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

A man named Rene Salm is one. He states Nazareth didn't exist. But that is innacurate, the area known as Nazareth today exists, of course, but there is no evidence that area was CALLED Nazareth. Adam Davis 83 (talk) 16:28, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm finding some more.

• RationalWiki:

some people (including René Salm and other Jesus mythicists) have questioned whether the connection with Jesus could have been true, and suggest that there is no evidence of Nazareth existing in Jesus's time.[2] Nazareth is now a large regional centre with a population of 76,551.[1] So it exists now, but its earlier history is less clear.

The idea of the non-existence of Nazareth was first publicised by the atheist activist Frank Zindler.[3] Salm is now the leading proponent, in his books The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (2008) and NazarethGate: Quack Archeology, Holy Hoaxes, and the Invented Town of Jesus (2015).[4][5] He claims that Nazareth did not exist before 70 CE.[4]

Frank Zindler has a Wiki-page, and co-authored a book with Robert M. Price. Oddly, Zindler's page does not mention those two publications.

• Rene Salm, The Myth of Nazareth, no Wiki-page.

I suggest adding this info to the Frank Zindler page. He's already included in the CMT-category, and has a link in the CMT template (bottom of the page). I think that suffices. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 16:30, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Ok, thank you. Adam Davis 83 (talk) 16:42, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

The archaeological evidence does not support any argument made for the historicity of Jesus. Per this article, it should be the preface when presenting the Mythicist argument that the author of Mark refers to Jesus from Nazareth (ἀπὸ Ναζαρὲτ) once, and to Jesus the Nazarene (Ναζαρηνοῦ) four times, thus the Markan author's use of the term Nazareth is likely an intertextual allusion to OT scriptures or a sect divergent from the Essenes, etc..

• R. M. Price 2003, p. 53. "[T]he difference between “Nazarene” and “Nazorean” does give us reason to suspect that the familiar epithet does not after all denote Jesus’ hailing from a village called Nazareth. “The Nazarene” would imply that, but not “the Nazorean.” That seems to be a sect name, equivalent to “the Essene” or “the Hasid.”"
• Comment by Richard Carrier—6 May 2017—per "The Guardian on Jesus: Dear oh dear...". 19 April 2017. Richard Carrier Blogs.

  [T]he scriptures the [early] Christians were then using predicted three things about the messiah (and we know this, because they say so): that he would be born in Bethlehem, that he would come from Galilee (even though Bethlehem isn’t in Galilee), and that he would be a “Nazorian,” which actually doesn’t mean someone from Nazareth (the word is significantly different, though similar enough to sound almost like it). . . . There is no evidence Jesus was ever imagined to come from Nazareth before the Gospels invented the idea; all by trying to make their invented stories match select scriptures...

--2db (talk) 17:31, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

If the authors were depicting a 'Jesus' was from a particular sect that was similar sounding to Nazareth, then fine. It still leaves no evidence for the name 'Nazareth' in bce. Adam Davis 83 (talk) 17:44, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

David Keys (https://twitter.com/davidmkeys) should be queried as to the sources for his journalism reporting that: "Detailed new research suggests that Nazareth . . . was substantially bigger than previously thought..." [David Keys (17 April 2020). "New archaeological evidence from Nazareth reveals religious and political environment in era of Jesus". The Independent.]

Possible Sources:

• Dark, K. R. (2008). "Roman-Period and Byzantine Landscapes Between Sepphoris and Nazareth". Palestine Exploration Quarterly. 140 (2): 87–102. doi:10.1179/003103208X312845. "A reinterpretation of the Roman-period (late first century BC to fourth century AD) . . . landscapes between Sepphoris and Nazareth..."
• Dark, Ken (2020). Roman-period and Byzantine Nazareth and Its Hinterland. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-367-40823-7. This book presents a new social and economic interpretation of Roman-period and Byzantine Nazareth and its hinterland as a whole, showing the transformation of a Roman- period Jewish village into a major Byzantine Christian pilgrimage centre.

--2db (talk) 03:31, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Since Rene Salm was mentioned, it's important to remember he's nowhere near meeting WP:RS even when discussing CMT. Jeppiz (talk) 11:57, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

• René Salm. "Why the Truth About Nazareth Is Important". (American Atheist Nov–Dec 2006, pp. 14–19).
• Salm, René (2008). The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus. American Atheist Press. ISBN 978-1-57884-003-8.
• Salm, René J. (2014). Nazarethgate: Quack Archeology, Holy Hoaxes, and the Invented Town of Jesus. American Atheist Press. ISBN 978-1-57884-038-0.
• René Salm. “The archaeology of Nazareth: An example of pious fraud?” Paper delivered at the Society of Biblical Literature convention, Chicago, November 2012. [BULLETIN FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION 43 : VOLUME 41, NUMBER 3 / SEPTEMBER 2012]
• Salm, René (2016). "Pious Fraud at Nazareth". In Loftus, John W. (ed.). Christianity in the Light of Science: Critically Examining the World's Largest Religion. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1-63388-174-7.

--2db (talk) 13:34, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Lead paragraph clarification

Hello! The lead says that most scholars of antiquity "reject the Christ myth theory". But, it seems that there are a few different theories presented, which makes this statement sound a bit strange and unclear.

Specifically, it would be helpful to edit that sentence, or add something immediately after it, to clarify the scholarly consensus (if any) on the notion that "he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and the accounts in the gospels." I'm personally not familiar with this topic or the sources, so I am posting here Pythagimedes (talk) 02:27, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Yes @Pythagimedes: the viewpoint of Emeritus Professor Thomas L. Thompson should be prominently featured in the article lede. But don an oxygen mask in response to the inevitable risible nonsense that will be deployed to Wiktionary:suck the air out of the room.

• A massive WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT in reponse to the fact that WP:RS Casey (2014) and WP:RS Ehrman (2012) cast Thompson as a mythicist.

The “minimalism”/“maximalism” viewpoints is an example of a complete reversal of the consensus over a twenty year plus time period. Many of the attacks made against “minimalism” then, are similarly made now, against "mythicism". [NB: Many WP contributors still cite twenty year old refuted sources.]

What has been branded “minimalism” by its critics, is actually a methodology, an approach to the evidence: primary; secondary; archaeological; biblical. Minimalism is in fact the conclusion derived from following that methodology. In short, this methodology is the study of a region or era by applying normative methods to the primary archaeological evidence and only then interpreting biblical literature in the light of that primary evidence. The alternative “maximalism”, in short, reverses this process and starts with the assumption of the historicity of the biblical narrative (post demythologization), and then interprets the archaeological evidence through that narrative lens.

• Godfrey, Neil (9 February 2020). "Interview with Thomas L. Thompson #2". Vridar.

interview with Thomas L. Thompson

[...]

8) What is the future of mythicism views inside the academic community, considering the publication of many related books and papers in previous times? Would you agree that mythicists could follow the steps of biblical minimalists?  

Minimalism is a movement in biblical studies which brings the study of biblical narrative closer to what is normal for historians. As far as I am aware, most mythicists also understand this, though I think they may be too quick to judge the single issue of whether he existed. The proper question is rather a largely literary question than an historical one. Until we have texts, which bear evidence of his historicity, we can not do much more with that issue. We can and must, however, ask what the texts mean—as well as ask what they mean if they are not historical (a minimalist question). My professor Kurt Galling from Tübingen was once asked how one could tell whether an Old Testament text was historical or literary. He answered: If Iron floats on water it isn’t! The reference is found in the Elijah Elisha stories, whose reiteration has dominated the gospels. One might also use the story of the bear who kills the 42 children and certainly Elijah’s flight out into outer space.

--2db (talk) 16:26, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Not sure you addressed the question. User:Pythagimedes was asking about clarification on denial of Jesus not being involved with Christianity. The quote is already there. It just need to be rephrased or extracted onto the lead. In any case, not sure why you complain about scholarship from 20 years ago when most of the mythicists including the recent ones Carrier and Lataster used Rank and Raglan which are from the 1900s and 1930s following outdated Freudian models from the 1900s.Ramos1990 (talk) 01:18, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Thomas L. Thompson is an Old Testament scholar and therefore lacks the proper degree of knowledge to analyze the New Testament. His views have been widely rejected by New Testament scholars.-Karma1998 (talk) 09:37, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Hatnote

The current text of the hatnote of the top of this article is "For the body of myths associated with Christianity, see Christian mythology and Jesus in comparative mythology. For the scholarly study of the historical Jesus, see Historicity of Jesus, Historical Jesus, and Quest for the historical Jesus. For sources on Jesus, see Sources for the historicity of Jesus and Historical reliability of the Gospels."

This is insanely excessive and is not helpful to our readers. Hatnotes should be short and should be limited to actual ambiguities, not subtopic. Naturally, I shortened the hatnote to only list those articles with both "Christ" and "myth" in the title, and was reverted by CycoMa with no explanation. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 07:49, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree with the revert; all links are relevant to the topic. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:36, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

If the links are relevant, they shouldn't be in the hatnote. Hatnotes are disambiguation, so they are primarily for links that aren't relevant but happen to have similar names. Relevant links should be incorporated into the text of the article. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 15:26, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Hatnotes are disambiguation, so they are primarily for links that aren't relevant but happen to have similar names. That's not always true. In fact, the majority of links at Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:About are used the same way this hatnote is used. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:37, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Well, certainly not the majority, but way more than should be. You've essentially made an other stuff exists argument here. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 19:35, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

It should be blatantly obvious to any reader that I haven't actually argued anything, but I guess you missed that. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 12:21, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Oiyarbepsy. The hatnote is strictly for "similar article titles that might get confused", that is, disambiguation. See WP:HATNOTE. It is not a list of helpful related topics. I agree that the various subtopic links might be valuable, but they should be part of the lead section then as normal text. They are not hatnote material. SnowFire (talk) 15:30, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

I also agree with Oiyarbepsy and SnowFire. They make good points, plus the shortening does make the lead less bulky.Ramos1990 (talk) 02:51, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

• Comment The hat note has been condensed now. I think it's good as it stands. The see also section may be a bit excessive but I think that's a much better spot for excessiveness than the hatnote. ––FORMALDUDE^(talk) 04:31, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Exalted after his death?

Christ myth theory says

"According to mainstream scholarship, Jesus was an eschatological preacher or teacher, who was exalted after his death."

This appears to contradict Resurrection of Jesus, which says

"The post-resurrection appearances of Jesus are explained as visionary experiences that gave the impetus to the belief in the exaltation of Jesus"

Do we really want Wikipedia to present the Exaltation of Christ (which redirects to Session of Christ) as a fact that is supported by mainstream scholarship? --Dalek Supreme X (talk) 00:54, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Corrected diff. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:38, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Raphael Lataster does not assert that Jesus did not exist

Per Lataster:

I do not assert that Jesus did not exist. I am a Historical Jesus agnostic. That is, I am unconvinced by the case for the Historical Jesus, and find several reasons to be doubtful. To compare these terms to those often used when discussing the issue of God’s existence, the ‘historicist’ is the equivalent of the ‘theist’, and the ‘mythicist’ is the equivalent of the ‘strong atheist’ or ‘hard naturalist’. The oft-forgotten ‘Historical Jesus agnostic’ is the equivalent of, well, the ‘God agnostic’.

I'd like to throw one more term into the mix. Not all ‘atheists’ are ‘strong atheists. Some are simply ‘agnostics’. I would like to propose, then, that we use the term ‘ahistoricists’ to encompass both the ardent ‘mythicists’ and the less certain ‘agnostics’. This avoids the false dichotomy, which I think historicists (much like theists) have been taking advantage of. They often frame the debate as only being between the right and the wrong, the reasonable and righteous historicists versus the silly mythicists, ironically appearing as unnuanced and dogmatic fundamentalists in the process. (As with the common false dilemma, presented by apologists, of ‘the truth’ being found in ‘Christianity’ or in ‘strong atheism’.)[Lataster, Raphael (2019). ISBN 978-9004397934. pp=2–3.]

--2db (talk) 00:24, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Modern scholarship uses the term Jesus myth theory

While Christ myth theory and Jesus myth theory are used as synonyms, they don't really have the same meaning. Alternatively Neil Godfrey gives the following definition:

A Christ mythicist is one who believes the literal truth of the myth of Jesus Christ as set out in the epistles and gospels of the New Testament, or who believes that those myths, even if they have only limited or no historical foundation, nonetheless contain symbolic or spiritual value for those of the Christian faith.[Godfrey, Neil (1 July 2019). "Definition of a Christ Mythicist". {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help) Vridar.]

Which echoes the 1909 definition given by John Remsburg:

[T]he Christ is understood [as] the Jesus of the New Testament. The Jesus of the New Testament is the Christ of Christianity. The Jesus of the New Testament is a supernatural being. He is, like the Christ, a myth. He is the Christ myth. [Remsburg, John Eleazer (1909). The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidences of His Existence. New York: The Truth Seeker Company.]

WP policy is to use the terms of modern peer review scholarship (Carrier, Gullotta) for article names. --2db (talk) 22:58, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

"Defence of biblical criticism was not helped by revival at this time of the 'Christ-myth' theory, suggesting that Jesus had never existed, a suggestion rebutted in England by the radical but independent F. C. Conybeare." (Horbury, William (2003), "The New Testament," A Century of Theological and Religious Studies in Britain Oxford p. 55). So there are scholars who use "Christ-myth theory" to mean "Jesus Myth theory" as recently as 18 years ago.--174.99.238.22 (talk) 12:51, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Per Justin J. Meggitt (2019): "…'The Minimal Jesus Myth Theory' proposed by Carrier.…" (Page 9 0f 27) [‘More Ingenious than Learned’? Examining the Quest for the Non-Historical Jesus. New Testament Studies, 65(4), 443-460. doi:10.1017/S0028688519000213] --2db (talk) 00:30, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

One example doesn't change the fact that there are scholars who use "Christ-myth theory" to mean "Jesus Myth theory". While not reliable per the guildlines other articles here use "Christ-myth theory" and "Jesus Myth theory" interchangeably. For example, Robert M. Price: "His most notable stance is arguing in favor of the Christ myth theory — the claim that a historical Jesus did not exist". More relevant and reliable Price has a book "The Christ-Myth Theory And Its Problems" (2012). "Christ-myth theory" and "Jesus Myth theory" have been used interchangeably in most of the literature over the last 200 years. Trying to say they are different when a look at the material shows otherwise doesn't do anyone any good and just muddies what is already cloudy water.--174.99.238.22 (talk) 18:47, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

eds John W. Loftus, Robert M. Price (2021). Varieties of Jesus Mythicism: Did He Even Exist?. Hypatia Press. — clearly Price is now using the modern terminology as will any future WP:RS from an academic press. A wish-full word wall that this is not the correct academic correct terminology now being used, ignores WP policy --2db (talk) 04:09, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

The thing is 'laypeople still use "Christ-myth theory" and "Jesus Myth theory" interchangeably and that is who wikipedia writes for - laypeople. Besides some works cite the older material which does use "Christ-myth theory" and "Jesus Myth theory" interchangeably. Looking over the talk page archive there seems to have been a name change in this article from "Jesus Myth theory" to "Christ Myth theory" not only because of the recent scholarly material that existed back then but what showed up the most often in searches.

Besides "Varieties of Jesus Mythicism: Did He Even Exist?" isn't actual out yet according to a 9/15/2021 blog post by co-author John W. Loftus per the "should be available in just a couple of months!" comment. Taking Loftus at his word that means the book you are referencing wouldn't be out until November of this year and that is assuming nothing goes haywire as happened with Carrier's book which came out two years later than he first thought it would. We need to see if any of the 16 works within the book uses "Christ myth" for 'Jesus never existed'. Going just by the title is ridiculous in the extreme. Never mind that one of the papers in the book, Why Mythicism Matters" (David Fitzgerald), won't even appear at the conference until Oct 31, 2021 (it is sitting on YouTube waiting for the conference in which it will be presented).

As for Vridar, the tags for the very article cited above involving Thomas L. Thompson (a year after the definition you point to) are "Tags: Biblical Scholarship, Christ Myth Debate, Thomas L. Thompson". "Christ Myth Debate" is defined there as "All posts, for and against, the Christ Myth hypothesis are included here, except for posts relating in depth to Earl Doherty’s works. Posts relating in some depth to Earl Doherty’s ideas are found in the tag, Christ Myth Debate: Doherty."--174.99.238.22 (talk) 03:05, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Again a word-wall that avoids any engagement with Wikipedia:Article titles and presents no modern usage in an academic press of the now deprecated terminology "Christ myth theory", with said deprecation noted by Gullotta, Daniel N. (2017). "On Richard Carrier's Doubts: A Response to Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt". Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus. 15 (2–3): 310–346. doi:10.1163/17455197-01502009.

David Fitzgerald presented "Why Mythicism Matters" at the Historical Jesus eConference (July 24-25) moderated by GCRR’s Darren Slade (Ph.D., Theology & Church History) who introduced the eConference as being about "Jesus Mythicism" (once again the modern terminology is used in a modern academic conference). The presentation has always been available to purchase at https://www.gcrr.org/historicaljesusconference. --2db (talk) 05:37, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

"excessive citations"

@CycoMa: I've reverted your addition of the "excessive citation" tags. The references are already bundled; it's possible to group them into single reference numbers, but that will make the syntax quite complicated. And the large number of references is due to the heated discussions and disagreements on the topic. Regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:32, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 1 October 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. There is consensus that the proposed title is not the common name. (non-admin closure) Extraordinary Writ (talk) 15:12, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

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Christ myth theory → Jesus myth theory – Per this talk §.Modern scholarship uses the term Jesus myth theory — modern scholarship uses the term(s) "Jesus myth theory", "Jesus mythicism" and has deprecated (i.e. made obsolescent) the term "Christ myth theory". In current popular usage "Jesus myth theory" or "Jesus mythicism" is the most common terminology used. 2db (talk) 00:18, 1 October 2021 (UTC) && updated 09:35, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose - The Redirect, which is already in place, is all that is needed. The lead already specifies synonyms in the first sentence. Moving the article to a synonym won't do anything useful because for one, the terms are interchangeable. There is no official unified exclusive switching to one particular terminology in the literature or by scholars. They are still mixed. If people type "Jesus myth theory" it redirects here correctly. Other terms like "mythicism" are also valid and used more widely but it makes no sense to change the article to "mythicism". It is one of a few labels describing similar theories of Jesus denial. Christ myth theory also has a decently long history so it has a historical basis to keep the article named after it's historical foundation - from which modern mythicists keep on tapping from.Ramos1990 (talk) 02:55, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose -said thread does not give a clear explanation, let alone a convincing argument, why "Christ myth theory " would be "depracated." The only 'argument': WP policy is to use the terms of modern peer review scholarship (Carrier, Gullotta) for article names. This smells like a WP:COI. A simple search at Google Scholar gives 4 pages with links for "Jesus myth theory," and 14+ for "Christ myth theory." Ergo: Christ myth theory is the common name. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:03, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

User:Joshua Jonathan please provide the query used. A non-naive search would enclose the search term in quotes e.g. "Christ myth theory" and constrain the search by a modern time period e.g. "October 01, 2017 – Today" --2db (talk) 08:25, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

The first part I might agree with if I understood what "non-naive search" even was (non native speaker doing a search, search without quotes?). As for "modern time period" that is so vague as to be useless. We have sources in other articles that define "Modern history" as 1500 to present via reliable sources. More over why "October 01, 2017 – Today" rather than say "October 01, 2001 – Today" (a generation)?--174.99.238.22 (talk) 19:57, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose - as above. In addition, it is my understanding that the two terms are not really the same. "Jesus myth" means that Jesus never existed, a position which is NOT generally upheld by scholarship. However "Christ myth" means that there has not yet been a "Christ" (or messiah), or that Jesus the man was not the "Christ", and this position is widely accepted by scholarship. A lot of writers seem to regard the two terms as being synonymous - as per above - but various Christ-myth authors distinguish between the two. Wdford (talk) 17:11, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose - Even if we use the 2017 - Present at Google Scholar as suggested we get 61 results under "Christ myth theory" while "Jesus myth theory" gets a paltry 10 results. Here are two of the "Christ myth theory" results:

"One of the most im- portant positions are religious myth theories which connected with Christ myth theory [2, p.5–9 etc.], the hypothesis that Jesus of Nazareth never existed, or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and the accounts in the gospels." - Wipper's Religious myth theory 2017

"However, if we are tempted to rectify this ideologically loaded narrative of the history of the question, by providing a smooth, linear, diachronic account of the development of the Christ-myth theory, from de Volney and Dupuis, or Bauer, to the present day... " - More Ingenious than Learned'? Examining the Quest for the Non-Historical Jesus (2019 Cambridge University Press, 06 Sept 2019)

I agree with Joshua Jonathan, this smells like a WP:COI. Even Cambridge University Press uses the term "Christ myth theory" in the 'Jesus did not exist' context especially regarding the history of the idea.--174.99.238.22 (talk) 19:57, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Per Weber D. I. (2017) "R. Wipper’s Religious myth theory". Vestnik SPbSU. Philosophy and Conflict Studies, vol. 33, issue 1, pp. 127–133. DOI: 10.21638/11701/spbu17.2017.114.
Again a naive search analysis, Weber cites no sources dated between 2016–2021, so it is not to be expected that he would using modern terminology or even to be aware of modern terminology. --2db (talk) 21:01, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

The desperation to make this concrete plane fly isn't working. How in the name of sanity is a paper from 2017 going to cite sources from 2018-2021?! The only thing we have gotten is was "Varieties of Jesus Mythicism: Did He Even Exist?" which as I explained (which you blew off as a "word wall" ie obviously didn't even read) has not even been formally published yet and one of the author's own words likely won't see publication until Nov 2021. This is all ignoring papers generally have a year or even two delay from writing to publishing.--174.99.238.22 (talk) 22:42, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Strauss

I've firsted copy-edited the latest addition by 2db diff, and then reverted diff their revert diff of my copy-edit. They added:

Academic criticism of Christian dogma per beliefs in miracles, immortality, the trinity, and incarnation of the reigning lord of the Christian church, Jesus Christ has "arrived at a Christianity depersonalized and anonymous, reducing Jesus to nothing more than a gifted genius whom legend had gradually deified."

References

"Arrived at" refers specifically to David Friedrich Strauß (1808-1874)); to say that "academic criticism" has arrived at his description of Christianity is a gross generalization, a reverse of the time-sequence (Strauss was one of the first critics, not the endpoint of academic criticism), and WP:SYNTHESIS. Also, it does not fit at that section, which gives a general overview of mythicist arguments, not an historical introduction. And the sentence Academic criticism of Christian dogma per beliefs in miracles, immortality, the trinity, and incarnation of the reigning lord of the Christian church, Jesus Christ is incomprehensible. Nor do I see how it is supported by the quote from the source. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:04, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 14 October 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. (non-admin closure) Natg 19 (talk) 04:37, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

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Christ myth theory → Jesus mythicism – In current popular usage "Jesus mythicism" is the most common terminology used. "Christ myth theory" has been deprecated (i.e. made obsolescent) in current popular usage. Per this talk §.Critics of the historicity of the Christ the christ (i.e. the lord of the Christian church) is a myth as held by virtually every secular person on the planet. To call someone a "Unicorn mythicist" for denying that Unicorns exist makes as much sense as to call someone a "Christ mythicist" for denying that Christs exist. WP policy is to name articles so as to distinguish them from similar sounding topics. WP policy is also to name articles with names appropriate to finding modern academic scholarship that engages with the topic's current academic debate and therefore cites modern scholarship. 2db (talk) 17:00, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose, to this, sure most people do not believe in Christ, but then they do not believe in many religious figures. Sorry, but Christ myth theory is the theory that Christ was a myth. That seems to me to be perfectly in keeping with the idea most people believe he was one.Slatersteven (talk) 17:04, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
  • The topic of this article is about the current academic (a)historicity debate for Jesus not Christ and the history of said debate --2db (talk) 17:54, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
    • They are the saem.Slatersteven (talk) 18:03, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

• Obvious oppose Request makes no sense and is dangerously close of violating WP:NOTAFORUM. What is more, 2db's continued use of Wikipedia to push their personal conspiracy theories is starting to become downright disruptive. I have no problems with people having different opinions, but when one user spend years on end arguing that they are right and all academics are wrong, that the academics are biased, and that WP editors standing up for an academic consensus are all biased, it does become disruptive. I'm sure 2db thinks they are right and that I say this because I'm part of the conspiracy/the cabal. Well, nothing I can do about that. WP is not the place for people pushing their own agenda over academic consensus, regardless of whether they are anti-vaxxers, Trump apologists, flat earthers, creationists, or CMTs. Jeppiz (talk) 19:47, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

I have said this before - a lot of this friction could be avoided if this article simply stated that mainstream scholarship holds that the human Jesus was a real historical person but accepts that the "Christ" divinity claims are unhistorical/mythical (or whatever word you prefer). How hard would that be? Wdford (talk) 20:07, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Of course, that is perfectly reasonable; I doubt any serious historian would accept divinity claims. I think Ehrman makes this distinction quite well in some of his books, making it clear that Jesus' divinity (which he himself does not believe in) is purely a matter of faith and not outside the realms of historical research. Jeppiz (talk) 20:24, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

The flaw there is Ehrman himself stated that Jesus who existed but didn't found Christianity (ie either coopted a pre-existing movement or it was formed by Jesus' followers) would be a "mythical" Jesus. Carrier points to John Frum as one of his examples and yet we have records of three natives taking up that name 1940-1946; so John Frum both did and did not exist. There have been suggestions that the Gospel Jesus is a composite character formed out of various would be messiahs but composite characters by their very nature of fiction ie do not exist. 174.99.238.22 (talk) 00:07, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Strong oppose The proposal make no sense and is not far short of gibberish. Several assertions are made without a shred of evidence. Reject out of hand. - Nick Thorne ^talk 22:39, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose as was the consensus on the first attempt to move this page just 2 weeks ago see section "Requested move 1 October 2021" above This is getting ridiculous. This was just proposed 2 weeks ago with consensus being against this move. If the proposer of this move, 2db, attempts to defy consensus again, we may have to report to an admin. As it becoming WP:DISRUPTIVE.Ramos1990 (talk) 03:03, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose & close, for the same reasons as above & before. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:24, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. Christ myth theory is the wp:COMMONNAME in scholarship for this theory.--Ermenrich (talk) 23:46, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose the argument earlier for "Jesus myth theory" is more compelling than this one. As far as I can tell, Ehrman recently created the neologism "mythicism" and it isn't in common use. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 00:47, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment this isn't quite the Shakespeare authorship question (and thus those Discretionary Sanctions aren't relevant here), but the meta-history may be interesting. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 00:47, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose This is ridiculous. The Christ Myth theory has always had two sides to it: The Gospel Jesus didn't exist (Volney) and there was no human being that would reasonably fit the descriptions in the Gospels (Dupuis) camps. New Testament scholar Ian Howard Marshall pointed out in his 2004 I Believe in the Historical Jesus that the meaning of historical Jesus had a huge range. If Christ myth theory is the opposite of historical Jesus than it logically also has a huge range. Carrier had to actual define what was meant by a non-historical and historical Jesus and even his definitions have issues. The Jesus described by John Robertson (Gospel Jesus was a composite character), Remsberg (Jesus preached a form of Judaism that his followers turned into Christianity), G. A. Wells' Jesus Legend on (mythical Paul Jesus + 1st century teacher), and Dan Barker (there was a first century preacher but his name need not have been "Jesus") all fall between Carrier's to definitions - neither historical nor Christ/Jesus Myth. 174.99.238.22 (talk) 23:53, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

"largely mythological"

Some time ago, the sentence

the view that "the story of Jesus is a piece of mythology", possessing no "substantial claims to historical fact."

was changed to

the view that the story of Jesus is largely mythological, and has little basis in historical fact.

References

paraphrasing Bromley; later, it was moved beyond the Ehrmann-definition diff. In the past few days, the sentence was removed diff "simplified, removed duplication", and then merged into the overview of stances diff "These two sentences are identical - why duplicate them one after the other?" Well, because it first was not there, and beacuse they give a slightly different definition.
I've re-inserted the original sentence. The first sentence is the most accurate, directly quoting the source. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:19, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

OK, but now it is just as bad as before – only differently bad.

I still don't understand why we all accept that there are at least three different "strands of mythicism", which we actually describe in the very next paragraph, but only the most radical version thereof – as defined in the words of a Christian clergyman 38 years ago – is elevated to the opening sentence? What makes this particular definition/source so special, and why does it receive this exalted treatment over the other sources and definitions?

Perhaps a better opening sentence would be something like this:

"The Christ myth theory, also known as the Jesus myth theory, Jesus mythicism, or the Jesus ahistoricity theory,[1] is the view that the Bible stories of Jesus are not historically factual. There are three strands of mythicism. A moderate view is that there may have been a historical human Jesus, who was dimly remembered and who was subsequently fused with the mythological Christ of Paul.[3][4][q 2] The most radical view is that there was never a historical Jesus at all, only a mythological character, who was later historicized in the Gospels.[q 1] A third view is that there may have been a historical Jesus, but if there was one, nothing can be known about him."

I am also not sure what is the difference between the "third view" and the other two "views"? How did Price specifically differentiate a third "view"? It seems that the three views can be boiled down to (a) there was definitely a historical human at the base of it; (b) there was definitely no historical human at the base of it; or (c) there may have been a historical human at the base of it, but we can't be sure. If this is what it boils down to - as seems to be the case - why don't we just say so?

What about the "view" that aspects of various Jesus-type gods/persons were stitched together by the early churches to create a novel composite figurehead for their proto-Christian religion, and that one of those component figures may have been a historical prophet or teacher named Jesus, but that we can no longer be sure there had ever been a real person at the root of the whole thing. Is that not the "third view" of Price, or is it perhaps a fourth view?

Wdford (talk) 14:39, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Bromiley gives a somewhat 'softer' definition, less polemical; Ehrmann's definition is more straightforward. Matter of tone, given the contentous nature of the topic. The sentence the Bible stories of Jesus are not historically factual is unclear and not to-the-point; the main thesis is: 'Jesus did not exist'. The differenc between "there was never a historical Jesus at all" and "there may have been a historical Jesus" seems quite obvious to me. If you want to know how Price reached ths conclusion, c.q. possibility, just look-up the source. Which source discusses this 'stitched together' thesis? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:53, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Ehrman's definition is more accepting of the important nuances, as well as more accurate. Again I ask – why do you think that Bromiley's definition deserves special prominence in the lead?

I also question your view that "the main thesis is Jesus did not exist" – especially because the article openly reports that there are three (?) theses, and does not give any of these "views" any prominence over any other view. Why do you choose to give such prominence to the "radical view", rather than to the "moderate view"? Why give any view prominence over the others?

Of course there is a difference between "there was no Jesus" vs "there might have been a Jesus". My question is – how is the "third view" different? I have read the work of Price – that is why I raise the question. Price accepts that there "might have been" a historical Jesus, i.e. basically the "moderate view".

Price also reports the hypothesis that the Jesus story closely parallels the various "dying and rising gods" of that time period, and that the Jesus story contains variations of almost all of the 22 recurrent features of the "mythic hero archetype". Price calls this "The Third Pillar of the traditional Christ-Myth Theory". [Source: Jesus at the Vanishing Point, by Price, pages 75-80; in The Historical Jesus: Five Views; see at [6]

Wdford (talk) 18:58, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Price again - Deconstructing Jesus - page 23 : "The Jesus Christ of the New testament is a composite figure." see here [7] Wdford (talk) 19:05, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Both Bromley and Ehrman are saying similar things. They are placing emphasis on the radical view since it is clearly the most common one espoused in both the literature and most well known in public debates (Maurice Casey in his "Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths?" (2014) does the same emphasis on the radical view). Price on the other hand, breaks down the threefold arguments of the "Traditional Christ Myth Theory" used by mythicists in his entry of "Historical Jesus: Five Views" (2009). They are two separate claims.

According to Price, the first pillar of the traditional Christ myth theory is "Virtually everyone who espoused the Christ-Myth theory has laid great emphasis on one question: Why no mention (a miracle-working Jesus in secular sources?" (p. 62), the second pillar is "The second of the three pillars of the traditional Christ-Myth case is that the Epistles, earlier than the Gospels, do not evidence a recent historical Jesus." (p. 63), and the third pillar is "The Jesus story as attested in the Epistles shows strong parallels to Middle Eastern religions based on the myths of dying-and-rising gods. (And this similarity is the third pillar of the traditional Christ-Myth theory.)" (p. 75).

At the moment, the way the lead is written looks fine to me. It emphasizes the most common overarching view (radical) that scholars have rebutted (e.g. Bromley, Ehrman, Casey), then mentions the other two overarching views that also exist (moderate and agnostic), then breaks down the threefold arguments commonly used by mythicists of the radical, moderate, and agnostic positions. Perhaps the sentence "A third view is that no conclusion can be made about a historical Jesus, and if there was one, nothing can be known about him. should switch the "third view" for "another view" to not confuse Price's third pillar. Perhaps that is the confusion?Ramos1990 (talk) 03:44, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

The problem is that there are more than three different "views" to this complex issue, and that the way these three "views" have been summarized in the lead is a bit arbitrary, and doesn't properly summarize the info in the main article text. Furthermore, the so-called "third view" as per the current lead is basically the same as the "moderate view".

I think the confusion really stems from the fact that there are indeed three "stances" overall:

1. There WAS NEVER any historical human Jesus, and the entire gospel saga was always just myth and fiction, which was then historicized;
2. There MAY HAVE BEEN a historical human Jesus, and then many layers of myth and fiction were added to his life story, and historicized;
3. There CERTAINLY WAS a historical human Jesus, and then many layers of myth and fiction were added to his life story, and historicized.

The problem for the myth-critics is that the third stance above is actually the view of mainstream scholarship, leaving only two "mythical" stances. I think somebody may have been trying to find a "third mythical view" to fill the unexplained void?

If we replace the "three strands of mythicism" paragraph with my wording above, rather than use the incomplete "summaries" as it stands presently, I think it will solve the problem.

Wdford (talk) 12:22, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

The three stances described in the lead are a summary of the stances described in the article, based on sources. Your third stance is not what's included in the CMT, nor is it described or explained as such in the article. And the moderate view and the agnisticist view are not the same. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 12:47, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

"My" third stance is not part of the CMT, it is mainstream. However if we explained this properly in the lead of this article, it would resolve a lot of the confusion. I keep asking what is the difference between the moderate view and the agnostic view, but nobody else seems to know either. The so-called agnostic view is ascribed to Price, but Price clearly follows the moderate view. Wdford (talk) 13:00, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

• Moderate: "Some moderate authors, most notably Wells, have argued that there may have been a historical Jesus, but that this historical Jesus was fused with another Jesus-tradition, namely the mythological Christ of Paul."
• Agnosticism: "whether there was a historical Jesus is unknowable and if he did exist, close to nothing can be known about him."

Wells c.s. have propoesed theories about their supposed historical and mythological Jesus'es (how do you spell that?); Price c.s. say that we can't know if there was an historical Jesus. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:15, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps change the word "moderate view" to "minimalist view" or "reductionist view" or something like that? On G.A. Wells, Robert Price says "Some mythicists (the early G. A. Wells and Alvar Ellegard) thought that the first Christians had in mind a Jesus who had lived as a historical figure, just not of the recent past, much as the average Greek believed Hercules and Achilles really lived somewhere back there in the past. Others, like Earl Doherty? believe the original Christology envisioned a Jesus who had never even appeared on earth (except in visions to his believers) and whose sacrificial death amid the angels had occurred in one of the lower heavens, where these beings were located in ancient belief." (The Historical Jesus: Five Views p. 65). None of these reflect mainstream view. Mythicists do not actively argue for the existence of Jesus and never actively provide evidences - definitely not at the level that "There CERTAINLY WAS a historical human Jesus". I have yet to see mythicists argue with each other over whether or not Jesus existed. They argue over each other's methods perhaps, but not on that point.

Instead they minimize everything until you have a phantom or a vague historical shadow of him at best and he is nonexistent at worst. Robert Price falls under Jesus did not exist or if he did he reached the vanishing point. Even the "Deconstructing Jesus" book verifies it in the dustcover flap which summarizes that book "This is no surprise, Price demonstrates, since the Jesus Christ of the gospels is very likely a fictional amalgam of several first-century prophets and messiahs, as well as of purely mythic Mystery Cult redeemers and Gnostic Aions. To show this, Price follows the noted scholar Burton Mack's outline of a range of "Jesus movements" and "Christ cults," showing the origins of each one's Jesus figures and how they may have finally merged into the patchwork savior of Christian dogma. Finally, Price argues that there is good reason to believe that Jesus never existed as a historical figure, and that responsible historians must remain agnostic about a "historical Jesus" and what he stood for."

Through all of this jumping back and forth that mythicists do, I think that the 3 overarching views (Jesus never existed, he may have existed but was mythologized, and we cannot know much about him) in the lead are good enough without bloating the lead. The article flashes out all the nuances. But in general these are the main mythicist conclusions found in the literature.Ramos1990 (talk) 18:07, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

It's true that different CMT proponents hold different views on a similar theme. The lead should explain this properly and neutrally, but concisely and without bloating. I'm not sure that "three strands" is the correct number - is there a source for this number?

The lead currently describes the "moderate view" as a historical Jesus who was fused with "the mythological Christ of Paul." This describes the views of Wells, but not Price, who also accepts a potential historical Jesus with added mythology, but who posits particularly that the gospel Jesus was largely a composite of Old Testament characters and contemporary pagan gods and hero's (i.e. the Mythic Hero Archetype). This view is not mentioned in the lead, but is replaced for some reason by the "agnostic" view. Since Price is one of the most qualified myth theorists, how can we leave out the main part of his views and say this is "good enough"?

Price actually wrote: "It doesn’t prove there was no historical Jesus, for it is not implausible that a genuine, historical individual might become so lionised, even so deified, that his life and career would be completely assimilated to the Mythic Hero Archetype. But if that happened, we could no longer be sure there had ever been a real person at the root of the whole thing." (Deconstructing Jesus, pg 518)

If we use my suggested wording that the moderate version states "there MAY HAVE BEEN a historical human Jesus, and then many layers of myth and fiction were added to his life story, and historicized;" it would cover all the proponents who hold some version of "historical human person onto which myths were grafted", including both Wells and Price. The other extreme would be those who hold that it was all pure myth, with no historical person at all, which is already covered.

I did say very clearly that the view of "There CERTAINLY WAS a historical human Jesus, and then many layers of myth and fiction were added to his life story, and then historicized;" is actually "the view of mainstream scholarship". This should be mentioned in the lead for clarity, instead of a paragraph that repeatedly states the CMT is not the mainstream view, without explaining that the mainstream view also accepts that much of the gospels is not historically accurate (and that Jesus was not the Christ or divine messiah), and that the difference really comes down merely to whether or not a historical human Jesus existed underneath all the myth and fiction.

Wdford (talk) 14:59, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

The current wording does say "there may have been..". Perhaps just widening the last part of that sentence to "who was later mythologized" would cover the variants of mythologizing. I would switch the current Price ref from 1999 with Decosntructing Jesus and your page 518 since it lays out his thesis much more clearly. But to clarify, Robert Price's view is actually agnosticism from what you quoted and from Robert Price's main wiki article. Also I checked "Jesus is Dead" (2007) and that clearly shows his agnostic view: "Having got that straight, let me say that I think there are four senses in which Jesus Christ may be said to be a fiction. First (and, I warn you, this one takes by far the most explaining): It is quite likely, though certainly by no means definitively provable, that the central figure of the gospels is not based on any historical individual. Put simply, not only is the theological Christ of faith a synthetic construct of theologians — a symbolic Uncle Sam figure — if you could travel through time, like Superboy, and you went back to First-Century Nazareth, you would not find a Jesus living there." (271-272) He also did an interview espousing the same thing [8].

The differences between mainstream views and CMT do not boil down to just whether or not they believe Jesus existed. The differences are many including the methods mythicists use. Maurice Casey mentions for instance that the general lack of expertise or relationship to academic institutions and being unaware of current trends in scholarship; overreliance on arguments from silence, dismissal of what sources actually state, superficial comparisons with mythologies, very late dating of Christians sources (away from mainstream dating), among other things are common among mythicists and lead to very different conclusions than mainstream views (see "Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths?"). Bart Ehrman in "Did Jesus Exist?" also breaks down numerous differences between how mainstream scholars view the evidence and how mythicists view it and explains why they are not in line with mainstream scholarship. The article already fleshes out the differences between mainstream and mythicist views so there is not much to add here.Ramos1990 (talk) 00:14, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Indeed. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:07, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

I added a bit more for clarity. Thanks for the extra source. Wdford (talk) 16:37, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

You are very welcome. I made few clarifications too. I think it gets the gist of it.Ramos1990 (talk) 02:16, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

I agree with almost all your edits. However a particular flaw with this article has always been the way that it consistently obscures the fact that mainstream scholarship also regards much of the gospel stories as non-historical (or even "mythical"). If that undisputed point was clarified properly in the lead, a lot of the confusion and confrontation would disappear. I have therefore imported some detail from the Historical Jesus lead section in an attempt to close the gap. This wording is still a bit vague and tentative, but it has been fought over for decades, and represents the current compromise consensus. Wdford (talk) 11:17, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Good edits. They look constructive. I think it was a good idea to bring in the wording from the Historicity of Jesus article here (was thinking of including that myself) since the state of scholarship is pretty divided still with only a few points having nearly universal agreement. Right now it is pretty clear that the range of views go from the theological to the mundane. This wording has caused no issues in the Historicity of Jesus article and is very NPOV. It gets to the point. Considering that many scholars actively interpret historically unverifiable things like miracles and resurrection in diverse ways (e.g historical, real, theological, spiritual, non-historical, real for believers of the day, real for the early church, consistent with biographical narratives of the 1st century, mythical, etc) it would be incorrect to push for any one particular "trigger" term. I will add a neutral historical/non-historical or something like that that I think would not provoke either side. I will also cite Robert Price for the 3 pillars sentence. I think that would satisfy everyone since as you say many have fought over this wording for decades.Ramos1990 (talk) 02:37, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Carrier's criteria for what a historical and a mythical Jesus should be our baseline. Right now his work is the only peer reviewed work to clearly define both.

Historical Jesus

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 worshipping him as a living god (or demigod)

"If any one of these premises is false, it can fairly be said there was no historical Jesus in any pertinent sense, And at least one of them must be false for any Jesus Myth theory to be true." (Carrier, Richard (2014). On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix Press. pp. 33–34. ISBN 978-1-909697-35-5.)

"But notice that now we don't even require that is considered essential in many church creeds. For instance, it is not necessary that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. Maybe he was, But even if we proved he wasn't that still does not vindicate mysticism. Because the 'real' Jesus may have been executed by Herod Antipas (as the Gospel of Peter in fact claims) or by Roman authorities in an earlier or later decade then Pilate (as some early Christians really did think) Some scholars even argue for an earlier century (and have some real evidence to cite) ... My point at present is that even if we proved proved the founder of Christianity was executed by Herod the Great (not even by Romans, much less Pilate, and a whole forty years before the Gospels claim), as long as his name or nickname (whether assigned before or after his death) really was Jesus and his execution is the very thing spoken of as leading him to the status of the divine Christ venerated in the Epistles, I think it would be fair to say the mythicists are then simply wrong. I would say this even if Jesus was never really executed but only believed to have been Because even then it's still the same historical man being spoken of and worshiped."

Mythical Jesus

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).

"That all five propositions are true shall be my minimal Jesus myth theory." (Carrier, Richard (2014). On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix Press. pp. 53. ISBN 978-1-909697-35-5.)

Note Carrier allows for a Jesus to exist well before the 6 BCE - 36 CE range normally given. The problem is such a "historical" Jesus has also be put into the "Christ Myth" category. Where the line is varies depending on the author and right now Carrier is the only one to give clear definitions of both positions in a peer reviewed work by a reliable academic publisher. --174.99.238.22 (talk) 20:27, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

No. Carrier is not the baseline for what a historical Jesus and what a mythical Jesus is. He is not an authoritative figure, he has no academic standing, most of his works are self-published on Jesus, he has never had any tenure at any academic institution and has made very little impact on research on Jesus - his latest book on mythicism is not even peer reviewed (Jesus from Outer Space). Clearly WP:UNDUE. Mainstream sources are what establishes the historical Jesus, and mainstream scholars have diverse criteria for this. The many mythicists that have written stuff on Jesus also have diverse criteria for what a mythical jesus is too. Both are to be summarized as collections of views, not privileging any one particular author.Ramos1990 (talk) 23:19, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

I was not talking about "Jesus from Outer Space" but rather On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt which is directly sited in the above. On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt is peer reviewed by a recognized publisher (Sheffield Phoenix Press) despite the whole bunch of BS to claim otherwise. Heck, even the wikipedia listing for Sheffield Phoenix Press states " All SPP’s titles are peer-reviewed, and authors are promised that their work will be kept in print indefinitely." On the Historicity of Jesus is a Sheffield Phoenix Press title ergo it has been peer reviewed. Carrier on his blog (Killing Crankery with Bayesian Reasoning: The Kooky & Illogical Postflaviana Review) even laid out exactly how the Sheffield Phoenix Press peer review process works.

What have those "mainstream sources" directly said about the information in On the Historicity of Jesus (rather then ignoring its points and arguing the strawman of the month)? On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt has been out since 2014, certainly there has to be something peer reviewed contesting its points, so what is there? As for mainstream establishing the historical Jesus they are all over the place. The rest of your post is just ad hominem attacks regarding something was not even on the table. --174.99.238.22 (talk) 22:13, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

No one is arguing that "On the Historicity of Jesus" is not peer reviewed. The issue is that that alone is not enough to place much of the mythicist weight on that one source. There are many mythicist views of which his is only one (and his really resembles Earl Doherty since Carrier has admitted influence by him in OHJ and elsewhere). Robert price is a more prominent mythicist scholar that regularly publishes with mainstream scholars representing mythicism comprehensively [9] for instance. I was only mentioning that Carrier has not widely published in peer reviewed setting on most of his stuff on Jesus [10]. Most of it is either self published or published by non academic publishers, including his latest mythicist book after OHJ. Furthermore his work has already been critiqued by mainstream scholars for example [11], [12], and of course Bart Ehrman has criticized his views prior to the book even coming out too [13]. Of course there are more critiques than that. Mainstream scholars on any ancient topic will rarely agree on much (e.g scholars on Socrates and the "Socratic problem", scholars on Pythagoras, etc) but they agree on some basic points and that is usually it.Ramos1990 (talk) 03:15, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

The first rebuttal is behind a paywall (Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus may be published by Brill but the journal's name practically screams "biased" but it is reliable so we are kind of stuck with it) and the second ("Lord Raglan’s Hero And Jesus: A Rebuttal To Methodologically Dubious Uses Of The Raglan Archetype" by Christopher M. Hansen) is on only on one (Element 48) of the 48 points Carrier and not on Carrier's conclusion. I have no idea why Carrier invoked Lord Raglan's points as it seems to vary depending on which author used the thing as demonstrated by the Sienkewicz, Thomas. "Lord Raglan's Hero Pattern". Department of Classics. reference in the Rank–Raglan mythotype article. It doesn't help that some of the criteria in that thing are vague. What is meant by "He meets with a mysterious death"? There is nothing "mysterious" about crucifixion (Jesus) or firing squad (Tsar Nicholas). You could likely get nearly as high a result with Emperor Shōwa.--174.99.238.22 (talk) 03:01, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Well that is the problem with using the Rank–Raglan mythotype as a method for determining historicity. A rather large number of historical figures fit various points of the mythotype. Let's see how wide Raglan's theories were:

• "Father is a king" Which would include just about any prince in hereditary monarchies, as well as many royal bastards.
• "Father often a near relative to mother" And how many people are the result of marriages or affairs between siblings or cousins? See for example List of coupled siblings and List of coupled cousins.
• "Attempt to kill hero as an infant, often by father or maternal grandfather" Do you realize how common infanticide is?
• "Hero spirited away as a child" The definition would fit most victims of child abduction.
• "Reared by foster parents in a far country" Which would fit several people in foster care, as well as people adopted by foreigners.
• "No details of childhood" Which in the absence of surviving records, could fit anyone from Hammurabi and Horemheb to modern celebrities such as Peter Laird and Jim Lawson.
• "Marries a princess (often daughter of predecessor)" Which could fit any number of historical figures who married princesses, whether they succeeded to a throne or not.
• "Becomes king" Which would literally fit any male monarch.
• "Driven from throne and city" Basically, a deposed monarch. See our Lists of monarchs who lost their thrones.
• "His children, if any, do not succeed him" Which is typically the fate of kids who were heirs to deposed monarchs.
• "His body is not buried" Which would also fit people who were murdered or killed in battlefields, and whose corpses were not recovered. Dimadick (talk) 13:50, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

The rest of the Rank–Raglan mythotype isabout as bad:

• "Hero's mother is a (royal) virgin." Royal is optional
• "The circumstances of his conception are unusual" define "unusual"
• "He is also reputed to be the son of a god"; great way to claim authority before the idea of divine right came along. Alexander the Great did this.
• "On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future Kingdom". Make sense even they weren't in direct line.
• "A victory over the king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beast" Basically a "let's show how awesome this guy is" point.
• "For a time he reigns uneventfully". Let's be real here. Just how many kings don't have economic/social/poltical problems during their reign?
• "Prescribes laws". I have to ask just what non-constitutional monarch doesn't prescribes laws?!? Why is this even on the list?!?
• The Mysterious death often occurs on top of a hill but this is broken up into two points.
• "Has one or more holy sepulchers or tombs" another weird one.

The list read like a vague group of criteria so as many "legendary" figures could be used while excluding "real" ones. The fact that some historical people score high while some fictional people score low shows the thing to be a total joke. It is not even good indicator of "something is wrong here". Carrier would have been better off throwing that thing into a bin. As for the other points there is Ehrman on Jesus: A Failure of Facts and Logic (April 20, 2012) which addressed Ehrman's points and their problems (both in presentation and with regards to facts). As for the article behind the paywall (On Richard Carrier’s Doubts by Daniel N. Gullotta) there is On the Historicity of Jesus: The Daniel Gullotta Review by Carrier. If Carrier's statement of "It starts with Gullotta declaring sixth grade math is beyond him and therefore should be ignored." is true the red flags should be going up. For most US university you have to take college level math courses to even get your application looked at.

• "In his conclusion Gullotta only mentions my lower bound probability of “1 in 12,000” but not my upper bound, which is a “1 in 3” odds Jesus existed, the actual conclusion of the book (he mentions the “33%” only in passing mid-article). By altering his conclusion to hide that fact conceals from casual or inattentive readers what my actual conclusion was: that the probability Jesus existed could not reasonably be higher than 1 in 3."
• "I actually repeatedly exclude from consideration any of the fancier historical Jesuses Gullotta is talking about (quite explicitly: read pp. 31-35, and pp. 24-27). He thus misrepresents my book as arguing against some set of already-rejected versions of a historical Jesus, rather than allowing for a mere “gist” of a Jesus (as Gullotta puts it)." just sent up more red flags than at a Moscow Communist rally.

So the only "rebuttals" we have to Carrier's work either center on something (Rank–Raglan mythotype) we likely all agree he should have never put in the work or a Jesus other than the one he defined. Those are not rebuttals to Carrier's work. So we have any that refute Carrier's actual points or ultimate conclusion without doing a snow job on the reader?--174.99.238.22 (talk) 01:19, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

This article is not about Richard Carrier. This is WP:NOTAFORUM. We as editors are not here to do a book review of any one author's arguments. For this article, he is just one voice out of many other mythicists and his version of mythicism is only one out of the many variant theories of mythicism. But I will just say a few things. The 48 elements you mentioned are just background info which do not lead to any particular conclusions on historicity. Some of those elements are very basic and generally agreed upon by scholars (e.g. earliest Christians were Jews, there was diversity concerning what the messiah was expected to do), but many of the elements are disputed or not really supported by scholars (e.g. Christianity had secret doctrines and different ranks of membership with more advanced members learning more secrets similar to mystery cults.) So these 48 elements are non-sequiturs and most do not seem to be accepted by mainstream scholars. And Carrier does not base his overall conclusion on these in the book by the way. Also, Carrier seems to not be able to interpret data correctly since he seems to incorrectly assess even currently living people and religion. He calls some scholars that have criticized his book "Christians", when they are actually "atheists" like Christina Petterson [14] - clearly showing his ideological bias in his analysis of people and religion. He proceeds to write a whole review of her [15] under the belief that she was a Christian fundamentalist the whole time! He could not even analyze her correctly in that long rebuttal to her. Carrier's strong interest in Rank-Raglan (he spent quite a lot of time on it in OHJ) should indicate how sloppy he is as a scholar in general. And after almost a decade of his book coming out and the prior book before that one coming out too, his conclusions have not been accepted by mainstream scholars for numerous reasons. Instead, numerous rebuttals have already been issued by numerous scholars (Carrier has a list in his blog of 22 scholars by his own count criticizing his book alone) and you can spend the money or find the rebuttals online to see the actual analysis by some of the critics and gauge their rebuttals for yourself. Up to you. But such a discussion belongs elsewhere.Ramos1990 (talk) 04:30, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

The mainstream scholars can't even agree on what a historical Jesus even is. "The "historical Jesus" reconstructed by New Testament scholars is always a reflection of the individual scholars who reconstruct him. Albert Schweitzer was perhaps the single exception, and he made it painfully clear that previous questers for the historical Jesus had merely drawn self-portraits. All unconsciously used the historical Jesus as a ventriloquist dummy. Jesus must have taught the truth, and their own beliefs must have been true, so Jesus must have taught those beliefs." Dr. Robert Price (Christ is a Fiction).

"What one Jesus reconstruction leaves aside, the next one takes up and makes its cornerstone. Jesus simply wears too many hats in the Gospels – exorcist, healer, king, prophet, sage, rabbi, demigod, and so on. The Jesus Christ of the New Testament is a composite figure (...) The historical Jesus (if there was one) might well have been a messianic king, or a progressive Pharisee, or a Galilean shaman, or a magus, or a Hellenistic sage. But he cannot very well have been all of them at the same time." - Dr. Robert Price

Even Albert Schweitzer stated that the historical Jesus was a creation of the researcher rather than the man who actually lived ca 1st century but he also shows that many of the critics of the Christ Myth don't even get what the point being raised even is: "I especially wanted to explain late Jewish eschatology more thoroughly and to discuss the works of John M. Robertson, William Benjamin Smith, James George Frazer, Arthur Drews, and others, who contested the historical existence of Jesus." Frazer was so exasperated with the idea that he was denying a historical Jesus that he flat out wrote "My theory assumes the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth". G.A. Welsl had much the same treatment even though he was accepting the Gospel (but not Paul's) Jesus had a 1st century historical person as a foundation. If you go back and actual read them John M. Robertson and Arthur Drews weren't exactly throwing the possibility there may be a human interwoven to the story out the window but the accounts we had didn't seem to tell us anything about such a man. Even

Stripped of the extreme crazies Christ myth theory is less about Jesus being an actual flesh and blood man but rather taking the Paul-Gospel account and seeing how much lines up with history and if you strip all the things that should have been noted in secular records but weren't does any useable remain or are you left with some small otherwise nobody that just happened to hit the historical lottery? Perhaps "Varieties of Jesus Mythicism: Did He Even Exist?" when if finally comes out will help...or it could just make things even more than a migraine.--174.99.238.22 (talk) 23:49, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

The irony of course is that mythicists cannot even agree with each other about Jesus either, despite them being so few relative to the number of mainstream scholars. Price, Carrier, Couchoud, Wells, Brodie, Freke and Gandy, Acharya S for example all have such variant and contradictory portraits of Jesus that none of them are compatible with each other and each one of their Jesuses is a reflection of each of these mythicists - made in their own image. They only all agree that Jesus did not exist and that is where the common ground ends. The book that you just mentioned (Varieties of Jesus Mythicism: Did He Even Exist?) proves the point. Look at the contents [16]. Even Richard Carrier already commented on it and acknowledges the wide range of craziness among mythicists in that upcoming book: "Mainstream experts mostly already agree the miraculous Jesus didn’t exist, but what about a merely human Jesus? This anthology usefully exhibits the full gamut of doubting even that, from the absurd to the sound. Some contributions are not credible, but some are worth considering, and several are brilliant, indeed required reading for anyone exploring the subject." [17] Looks very messy and all over the place. It will not be peer reviewed either as they state that it will be published by Hypatia Press which is not an academic publisher, but a partisan one. It is what it is.Ramos1990 (talk) 00:32, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Take a look at John Remsburg's work (referenced Critics of the historicity of the Christ section above) as to why there is that variation as there is a huge variation in the meaning of "myth":

1. Historical myth: "a real event colored by the light of antiquity, which confounded the human and divine, the natural and the supernatural. The event may be but slightly colored and the narrative essentially true, or it may be distorted and numberless legends attached until but a small residuum of truth remains and the narrative is essentially false. A large portion of ancient history, including the Biblical narratives, is historical myth.
2. Philosophical myth: an idea clothed in the caress of historical narrative. When a mere idea is personified and presented in the form of a man or a god it is called a pure myth.
3. Poetical myth: a blending of the historical and philosophical, embellished by the creations of the imagination.

New Testament scholar Ian Howard Marshall in his I Believe in the Historical Jesus talked about the spectrum of the historical Jesus "two views of the historical Jesus which stand at the opposite ends of a spectrum of opinion about him." At one extreme is the view that Jesus is a "totally fictitious creation like King Lear or Doctor Who" (sic) and the other is the the Gospels are entirely factually accurate. He wrote that neither works and "[W]e shall land in considerable confusion if we embark on an inquiry about the historical Jesus if we do not pause to ask ourselves exactly what we are talking about."

In Eddy, Paul R.; Boyd, Gregory A. (2007). The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition. Baker Academic. we have a this huge range broken into four broad categories and even they admit categories are "admittedly over simplistic", "ideal-typical", and a "useful heuristic" and therefore should not be taken as absolute definitions. Yet everybody and his brother seems to say that historical and mythical have clear definite definitions.

Logically, if the "Historical Jesus" is all over the map than its counter argument is going to be similarly all over the place. Heck, if either Michael O. Wise's 72 BCE messiah or Israel Knohl's 4 BCE messiah actually founded Christianity (or Chrestianity as that is how it is spelled our earliest manuscripts) and Jesus took that over rather than actually founding it would fall under Bart Ehrman's definitions of a "mythical" Jesus even if everything else in the Gospels is historical accurate. It doesn't help that there are conflicting evidence there may have been a pagan group called "Chrestians" who followed a Chrestus as far back as the 1st century BCE.

The whole argument is akin to saying that Columbus sailed west to prove the Earth was round is mythical/historical or that the Battle of Troy was mythical/historical. And about as nonsensical as either all or nothing answer is wrong.--174.99.238.22 (talk) 01:40, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

I might add that contrary to the FUD spread around Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt is double blind peer reviewed. Carrier himself spelled this out: "Independent, established professors whom I don't know personally, peer reviewed my book for Sheffield, just as such persons do all books at all academic presses. The standard is two. So any book you read from a bona fide academic press will have been peer reviewed by at least two professors of the subject not known to the author. Indeed, the process is double blind, just as for journals."--174.99.238.22 (talk) 06:41, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

'Theory'

This article necessarily refers to the term "Christ myth theory" as a popularised though misleading term for the view that Jesus did not exist as a historical figure at all, though incorrectly (and possibly deliberately) conflating the terms to dismiss the view that Jesus is not also 'divine'. That being as it is, the article should not further misuse the term "theory" elsewhere in the article. This is especially the case because POVs generally expressed on the subject of this article cross over with misuse of the term in the related context of evolution being 'just a theory'.--Jeffro77 (talk) 01:26, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

"Virtually all"

@CompliantDrone: the phrase "virtually all" has been discussed over and overagain, here and at Talk:Historicity of Jesus; I suggest you first scroll through the talkpage-archives before even starting the next discussion on this. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 22:01, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

The phrase "virtually all" should have a notice attached to it that WP does not hold this viewpoint per se, but it is the claim of what WP accepts as reliable sources. --2db (talk) 17:56, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Given that WP should not hold viewpoints at all, and that sourced claims always represent the viewpoint of the source, this claim is no different than literally millions of other similar claims. As any competent reader will already know this, it's hard to see what the case for a notice would be. Jeppiz (talk) 18:31, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

WP:VOICE

Usually, articles will contain information about the significant opinions that have been expressed about their subjects. However, these opinions should not be stated in Wikipedia's voice. Rather, they should be attributed in the text to particular sources, or where justified, described as widespread views, etc.

--2db (talk) 23:58, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

No such "notice" should be 'attached'.--Jeffro77 (talk) 00:26, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Reading through the lead, there is a quite egregious POV problem. The lead first conflates the 'Christ myth theory' as both views that No Jesus existed at all (i.e. 'Jesus myth') and there may have been a historical Jesus, but elements of myth were added (i.e. Christ myth). To then say that the conflated definition as a whole is widely considered a "fringe theory" is highly inaccurate. It is widely accepted by scholars that Jesus likely existed, was a disciple of John the Baptist, and was executed by the Romans, but there is not solid agreement on essentially anything else of the historical Jesus. More importantly, there is considerably less agreement among scholars that Jesus is 'Christ'. The view that there was no historical Jesus at all is widely considered a fringe theory by scholars, but to also imply that scholars also reject the view that Jesus was not 'divine' is rampantly dishonest.--Jeffro77 (talk) 00:42, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, of course, no argument there. Obviously there is no scholarly consensus that Jesus was Christ. The name "Christ Myth Theory" is a widely accepted term for what is in effect the "Jesus Myth Theory". It's unfortunate, but not something we at WP came up with. If you have suggestions om how to improve it, while keeping with the terms scholars use, that would be great. Jeppiz (talk) 02:22, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

The preference for the term 'Christ myth theory' is itself strongly influenced by a religious POV. A proper resolution to this problem would take more time to consider than I currently have.--Jeffro77 (talk) 02:41, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

I have replaced the most problematic statement with a more accurate statement about the specific view about a historical Jesus.--Jeffro77 (talk) 11:02, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Though I see your thinking on this, Jesus non-existence is just one strand of mythicism. Scholars reject the others views too such as "Jesus agnosticism" and the mythical fusion (see paragraph 2 in the lead). Shouldn't we just say "Mythicist views" instead of "Views that Jesus did not exist as a historical figure" (which is only one view out of multiple other mythicist views)? The literature is pretty clear that mythicism is not really a part of the mainstream so it should delineate mythicists from minimalists whom some confuse as being mythicist - like the Jesus Seminar. What do you think?

I hear you about the "Christ myth" confusion, but it can be avoided by merely using one of the terms they currently use "Mythicist". The vast majority of scholars including Marcus Borg, Crossan, or even Joseph Hoffman (Jesus Seminar) are not mythicists.Ramos1990 (talk) 01:45, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

The wording I have chosen quite clearly distinguishes views about Jesus being a historical figure from (possibly intentional) implications that 'mythicists' are dismissed for saying Jesus is not 'divine'. I see no good reason to re-introduce that ambiguity. Your suggestion of 'just saying "mythicist views"' might be acceptable if the misleading loaded term "Christ myth theory" were not present in the article. For as long as that term is used, and especially used predominantly, your preferred wording seems unacceptable. (Also, the phrase "non-existence theories" is awful in its own right.) People reading the lead of the article should not be expected to already know what "the literature" says in detail on the matter, nor is it necessary to consider every view in that initial summary.--Jeffro77 (talk) 01:51, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

But again, that only isolates only one strand. What about the others like Jesus agnosticism and fusion views. These are also rejected and both actually do not automatically reject a historical jesus (they are just very pessimistic) and yet they are mythicist arguments that are also rejected by mainstream scholars. Ehrman and Casey use the terms "mythicists" in their wide reaching criticisms in their extensive surveys. These RS should be used as a generic guide on naming the diverse "mythicts views". Also "Jesus mythicists" or "myth theorists" might be another alternative and capturing the breadth of the views and it would avoid the Christ issue you are talking about too.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly see the Christ myth issue you see. But there are alternatives available instead of just mentioning one stand (Jesus non-existence) and leaving the other views unaddressed despite that the sources do include such views as also being rejected in scholarship.

Perhaps just saying "Views held by mythicists" or "Such views are rejected ...." would work. I think "Such views are rejected...." would be a good continuation from the previous two paragraphs and it would avoid using mythicist. What do you think? Ramos1990 (talk) 02:06, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

The 'other' elements you refer to basically boil down to saying 'maybe Jesus didn't exist', or 'we can't say one way or the other whether he existed' (in addition to hard views that 'Jesus didn't exist'). The common element of those views that scholars reject is some level of probability that 'Jesus didn't exist'. If person A says, "cats aren't real", person B says, "maybe cats aren't real", and person C says, "maybe cats are real but there are so many fanciful things said about them that we can't be sure", the single element that most people would reject is the conclusion that cats might not be real, irrespective of the conditional qualifiers. It is not necessary to overcomplicate (or mask) that in the lead.--Jeffro77 (talk) 02:16, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Also, it would not be sufficient to just sometimes say "Jesus mythicists" or "myth theorists" because the whole article is called "Christ myth theory", which inherently frames the subject in a misleading manner.--Jeffro77 (talk) 02:46, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I would have to disagree since the jesus agnosticism position is not saying 'jesus maybe was not real'. Robert Price clearly states "There may have been a Jesus on earth in the past," and "It doesn't prove there was no historical Jesus, for it is not implausible that a genuine, historical individual might become so lionised, even so deified, that his life and career would be completely assimilated to the Mythic Hero Archetype." And the fusion position Wells states "I have always allowed that Paul believed in a Jesus who, fundamentally supernatural, had nevertheless been incarnated on Earth as a man." Hover over the quotes on the second paragraph of the lead.

They do not deny his existence categorically. So this is why I am leaning to just "Such views are rejected...." would be a good continuation from the previous paragraphs 2 and 3 and it would avoid using mythicist. What do you think?Ramos1990 (talk) 02:26, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Since scholars are only really agreed about Jesus being a disciple of John the Baptist and executed by the Romans, it isn't so far from "the evidence is so obscured by myths and dogma that no conclusion can be made about him" could be interpreted, which is a quite slippery slope, as is the view that "it is not implausible that a genuine, historical individual might become so lionised, even so deified, that his life and career would be completely assimilated to the Mythic Hero Archetype". However, calling some hypothetical person in the distant past (from the perspective of the 1st century) "Jesus" would be a false equivalence and would still fall into the category of saying Jesus—as recognised by scholars—didn't exist. Where mythicists conditionally don't deny his existence, that isn't what scholars are generally rejecting. (Also, Wells saying that 'Paul [maybe] believed Jesus was a real person' is not the same as Wells believing Jesus was a real person.)--Jeffro77 (talk) 02:46, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

"Lives of Jesus"

Copied from User talk:Joshua Jonathan#Christ myth theory

Hi. In this edit, you have said to "stick to the term", though the 'term' "Lives of Jesus" doesn't appear to actually be the title of anything, nor is it clear that that plural term is sourced to anything, but instead seems to be an analogy based on a single work with a singular name. Can you confirm whether the plural form is sourced to anything, or otherwise establish why it is necessary to 'stick to the term'? Thanks.--Jeffro77 (talk) 07:36, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

End of copied part

I've corrected the plural. From the Wiki-article (emphasis mine):

A first quest for the historical Jesus took place in the 19th century when hundreds of Live of Jesus were written. David Strauss (1808–1874) pioneered the search for the "historical Jesus" by rejecting all supernatural events as mythical elaborations. His 1835 work, Life of Jesus,[45] was one of the first and most influential systematic analyses of the life story of Jesus

Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:12, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

You have emphasised the title of Strauss' work (which I didn't change), but that is not the issue at all. Strauss didn't write "hundreds of Live of Jesus".

A first quest for the historical Jesus took place in the 19th century when hundreds of Live of Jesus were written. David Strauss (1808–1874) pioneered the search for the "historical Jesus" by rejecting all supernatural events as mythical elaborations. His 1835 work, Life of Jesus,[45] was one of the first and most influential systematic analyses of the life story of Jesus

What is your basis for the actual text in question??--Jeffro77 (talk) 08:33, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

"What" Philip Davies asks, "does it mean to affirm that ‘Jesus existed’, anyway, when so many different Jesuses are displayed for us by the ancient sources and modern NT scholars? Logically, some of these Jesuses cannot have existed. So in asserting historicity, it is necessary to define which ones (rabbi, prophet, sage, shaman, revolutionary leader, etc.) are being affirmed—and thus which ones deemed unhistorical. In fact, as things stand, what is being affirmed as the Jesus of history is a cipher, not a rounded personality . . . Does this matter very much? After all, the rise and growth of Christianity can be examined and explained without the need to reconstruct a particular historical Jesus." (Davies, Philip R. 2012. "Did Jesus Exist?". The Bible and Interpretation.)

• Pattenden, Miles (19 January 2022). "Historians and the historicity of Jesus". ABC Religion & Ethics.

Professional historians of Christianity — including most of us working within the secular academy — tend to treat the question of whether Jesus existed or not as neither knowable nor particularly interesting. Rather, we focus without prejudice on other lines of investigation, such as how and when the range of characteristics and ideas attributed to him arose.

--2db (talk) 13:58, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

That doesn’t have any bearing on the very specific matter in this thread.—Jeffro77 (talk) 23:41, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

"The Life of Jesus" research

[T]he historic Jesus is something different from the Jesus Christ of the doctrine of the Two Natures … We can, at the present day, scarcely imagine the long agony in which the historical view of the life of Jesus [Leben-Jesu-Forschung tr. "Life of Jesus Research"] came to birth… [Schweitzer 1910, pp. 3–4. NOW WITH EMPHASIS]

• Schweitzer, Albert (1910) [1906 in German] (in en). The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede [Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung]. London: A. and C. Black. translated by W. Montgomery. --2db (talk) 13:35, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

None of this explains or justifies the other editor insisting on saying “hundreds of “Lives of Jesus” were written”. Rather than only quoting sources that make no direct comment on the actual question, it may help to simply state whether any source really says that ‘hundreds of “Lives of Jesus” were written”, which seems unlikely..—-Jeffro77 (talk) 23:39, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• Stevens, Jennifer (2010). The Historical Jesus and the Literary Imagination, 1860-1920. Liverpool University Press. pp. 72f, n.3. ISBN 978-1-84631-470-4. (Available Online)

Hugh Anderson states that ‘All the Gospel materials bearing on the life of Jesus were so assiduously studied by liberal Protestant theologians that within the space of a few generations, some sixty thousand biographies, so it is estimated, had been produced’

--2db (talk) 03:16, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

It would help if you would discuss rather than just providing a source with no context, though it seems from the source you have provided here that the specific wording "hundreds of Lives of Jesus" (with a single title given to hundreds of separate works) is indeed not supported by the source. The only question remaining based on that source is whether the article should say hundreds or thousands.--06:02, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

The following phrases:

• Das Leben Jesu
• der Leben-Jesu
• The life of Jesus

are synonymous with

• Biography of Jesus

And

• The lives of Jesus

is synonymous with (and also nuanced sarcasm of)

• Biographies of Jesus

For the article "Biographies of Jesus" is more suitable but less humorous. --2db (talk) 07:20, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

... none of which would seem to justify Lives of Jesus formatted as if it were a title (and the article shouldn't really contain "nuanced sarcasm" either). Thanks.--Jeffro77 (talk) 07:55, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

The secular & non-secular "equivalence" tactic

New Testament scholars should concede that the kind of history that is deemed acceptable in their field is, at best, somewhat eccentric. Most biblical scholars would be a little unsettled if, for example, they read an article about Apollonius of Tyana in a journal of ancient history that began by arguing for the historicity of supernatural events before defending the veracity of the miracles ascribed to him yet would not be unsurprised to see an article making the same arguments in a journal dedicated to the study of the historical Jesus. [Meggitt 2019, p. 458.]

• Meggitt, Justin J. (2019). "‘More Ingenious than Learned’? Examining the Quest for the Non-Historical Jesus". New Testament Studies 65 (4): 443–460. doi:10.1017/S0028688519000213. --2db (talk) 20:52, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

A tactic used per this article is to claim that there is no difference between between the secular academy and the non-secular academy. For example, it is mainstream in the secular academy that the "entire quest for criteria" has failed.

• Crook, Zeba (1 January 2014). "Matthew, memory theory and the New No Quest : original research". HTS : Theological Studies. 70 (1): 1–11. doi:10.4102/hts.v70i1.2716. [Abstract] … although numerous criteria have been developed, refined and used extensively in order to distinguish between original Jesus material and later church material, those criteria have long been unsatisfactory…

[T]he traditional quest criteria do not accomplish what they were intended to…

--2db (talk) 16:17, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

The Richard Carrier "fringe" tactic

A common tactic used per this article is to paint Richard Carrier as "fringe". Therefore nothing in what he writes about is authoritative or trustworthy except when citing his own views. Even when Carrier is restating mainstream conclusions he is "fringe". In the Academy of scholarship it is possible, often likely, that one will find a scholarly work that is WP:RS while its overall thesis is "fringe".--2db (talk) 13:53, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

There are issues in the article regarding the implication that any view expressed by anyone labelled a ‘mythicist’ is wrong by default (though some of that has been mitigated by more correctly stating that it is the specific claim that ‘Jesus didn’t exist’ that is fringe rather than the lazier conflation). However, the only statement about Carrier in the article currently that might misconstrue a mainstream view as that of ‘mythicists’ is “Carrier notes that there is little if any concrete information about Jesus' earthly life in the Pauline epistles.” Other than that, treatment of Carrier in the article seems fairly balanced. More serious is the misrepresentation of Wells’ later works and views as ‘mythicist’ (when Wells himself and Van Voorst say he wasn’t), including characterising his later mainstream position that Jesus was indeed a Galilean preacher as only “minimally historical” in Wikipedia’s voice.—Jeffro77 (talk) 14:15, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

The following content addition should not be an issue.

Rejecting the "Criteria of Authenticity", Carrier writes:

The growing consensus now is that this entire quest for criteria has failed. The entire field of Jesus studies has thus been left without any valid method. [Carrier 2012, p. 11.]

Daniel Gullotta notes that per the criteria of authenticity, "Many of Carrier’s concerns and criticisms have been longed noted and echoed by other historical Jesus scholars." In support of this claim, Gullotta repeats the extensive list of citations (Gullotta 2017, p. 345, n. 127.) that were originally given by Carrier in Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (pp. 11, 293f, n. 2-7). Additionally, Gullotta also gives the following citations that were not given in Carrier's 2012 work:

• Le Donne, Anthony (2009). The Historiographical Jesus: Memory, Typology, and the Son of David.
• Rodriguez, Rafael (2010). Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance and Text.
• Charlesworth, James H.; Rhea, Brian, eds. (2014). Jesus Research: New Methodologies and Perceptions : the Second Princeton-Prague Symposium on Jesus Research, Princeton 2007.
• Crossley, James (2015). Jesus and the Chaos of History: Redirecting the Life of the Historical Jesus. Oxford University Press.
• Bernier, Jonathan (2016). The Quest for the Historical Jesus after the Demise of Authenticity: Toward a Critical Realist Philosophy of History in Jesus Studies.
• Keith, Chris (2016). “The Narratives of the Gospels and the Historical Jesus: Current Debates, Prior Debates and the Goal of Historical Jesus Research”. Journal for the Study of the New Testament. 38 (4): 426–455. doi:10.1177/0142064X16637777.

--2db (talk) 16:53, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

If there are mythicist views about the various ‘criteria’, such could be included in the article if clearly stated and properly attributed. But the suggested addition doesn’t seem suitable. Rather than just an assertion that ‘the quest has failed’, a suitable addition would give Carrier’s view of the manner in which he says they have failed (and Carrier's assertion that there is such a consensus is not sufficient). Providing a long list of citations as a response in the article body rather than as references would also be quite ugly, and doesn’t tell the reader anything about the actual response.—Jeffro77 (talk) 23:32, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

It is notable that the term "minimal historicist" appears to have been coined and defined by Carrier. And it is also the case that the term refers to someone who accepts the same ideas that are in fact the only elements of Jesus' life that are agreed upon by mainstream scholars. And it is also the case that both Wells and Van Voorst explicitly state that Wells was no longer a mythicist from the mid-1990s onwards. And yet the article has dozens of references to Wells' later works that are characterised as the views of 'mythicists', even though those views are also held by various mainstream scholars. Some editors at this Talk page maintain that Carrier is unreliable for presenting any mainstream position (even where Carrier agrees with the mainstream view), though both the article and editors at Talk freely use the terms "minimal historicist" (and related forms such as "minimally historical") to describe Wells and his views. The same editors go on about how 'we must go by what the sources say' to the extent that even the suggestion of putting similar ideas in the same paragraph is supposedly 'synthesis and original research'. Yet those same editors are content with the blatant misrepresentation of Wells' views from 1996 onwards as both a 'mythicist' and a 'minimal historicist'.--Jeffro77 (talk) 10:33, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

The Jesus ahistoricity theory is the antithesis of the Jesus historicity theory. However a thesis/antithesis definition is problematic, because while the consensus may be that the historicity of Jesus is true, what is meant by the term "Jesus"—other than an entirely Earth based Homo Sapient specimen (no longer extant)—is anybody's guess. --2db (talk) 18:30, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

So as far as the mainstream scholarly position goes, no such existential conundrum exists (and to the extent that it might be perceived to exist, is irrelevant here), and it really only serves as a distraction from the actual issues raised regarding article content.—Jeffro77 (talk) 07:12, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Per "the mainstream scholarly position", who are the WP expert sources when the mainstream scholarly position is that the NT corpus is irrelevant to the issue of assigning a probability for the (a)historicity of Jesus¿

[U]nlike ‘guilds’ in professions such as law or medicine, it is not apparent what members of the ‘guild’ of biblical scholars have in common, other than a shared object of study and competence in a few requisite languages, and therefore what value an alleged consensus among them really has, especially on what is a historical rather than a linguistic matter. [Meggitt 2019, pp. 459–460).]

--2db (talk) 12:08, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Another distraction. Can you comment on what needs to be done to actually improve the article rather than offering ‘deepities’?—Jeffro77 (talk) 13:05, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree. Unfortunately 2db has a very long history of similar behavior. I don't doubt that the intention is good, but after years of this, it starts to become disruptive. Compentence is needed to edit Wikipedia and it appears to be missing (see the IP's comment after 2db changed the content of the IP's comment). 2db, I know you think we are all part of some great cabal keeping the WP:TRUTH out (you've made that clear numerous times) but in reality we are editors with different opinions and certainly open to other opinions if sourced and well-argued. Unfortunately, you don't seem to able to engage in discussions. For years now, you just post these ill-argued and badly formated blocks of text, and then complain of a cabal when others are not convinced, like you again do above. At some point, even well-intentioned editing becomes disruptive if it doesn’t add anything and just repeats the same argument (see WP:HEAR). After several years of the same behaviour, and no improvement, I fear we're already past that point. Jeppiz (talk) 23:28, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Mythicists generally get offended more than the rest here
— User:Ramos1990

Yes I see that clearly. --2db (talk) 01:07, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Falsely characterising editors as mythicists to avoid discussing article content (or for any other reason) is inappropriate. See also WP:NPA.-Jeffro77 (talk) 02:24, 1 February 2022 (UTC)