Toto

Is this the evidence you referred to? It's very different from a layer of ash that has a high correlation with volcanic eruptions.

To be clear, the idea of "expectations from the evidence" is your own invention, not peer reviewed or accepted by scholarship. You have yet to figure out how to remove your own (or others') subjective evaluations and/or lack of imagination from the calculus.

For instance, you claim that "the common Jewish expectation of the messiah at the reputed time of Jesus was that the messiah would be a conquering military hero." If this is true, what happens after the Jewish Wars, when it is clear that the military strategy of going up against a world superpower isn't going to work? Could this not explain the redefinition of Messiah to a crucified victim who will return to lead victorious armies - without the need for any actual crucified preacher?

ApostateAbe

The hypothesis that there was a shift in messianic expectations in the face of the reality of Roman force does NOT expect the consequence of a myth of a crucified messiah. The hypothesis may instead expect the consequence of a spiritual messiah, who exists out of reach of the Roman armies. The hypothesis, then, has little explanatory power. On top of that, there is no known comparable myth of such a messianic figure besides Jesus Christ of Christianity, so the hypothesis also lacks plausibility.

I take my methodology to be a fair simplification of the "Argument to the Best Explanation" (aka "Inference to the Best Explanation"), which is a methodology generally accepted over a broad array of fields of the study of objective reality (see this search in Google Scholar).

All decisions would have to be subjective--it is not the same as a mathematical algorithm, nor can there be a sufficient mathematical algorithm. The most relevant evidence is linguistic and inherently subjective. There is no way to decide relative probabilities except with subjective decisions, but I wish Richard Carrier all the best of luck with his far-fetched proposal.

outhouse

why ???


paul really isnt up for debate.


if he is, so would ever other historical charactor in existance from that time period.


we have more for paul then most people ever would hope to have.

outhouse

not only that your only dealing with a fraction of what makes up jesus historicity.


for me, watching how the roman authors deified a poor peasant jew and struggled with trying to make him more powerful then other roman deities, is plenty.

the biggest struggle was to try and hide the real jesus, which they failed as well at doing. the NT written for romans still shows a tax zealot hybrid jew. The romans put jesus on a cross and then try and hide the fact they are guilty of murdering a real person for tax evasion, a teacher of judaism who was fed up with the roman infection in the temple.

the bible is full of a pissed off jew teacher/healer tired of roman taxes. this isnt a made up deity. its a normal hard working man and the issues a real man would face. The roman occupation is hated by all jews of jesus time, and watching them try to cover up the hatered [a human emotion] of romans is very evident. something you wouldnt do to a non human spiritual charactor that would not care about money or the lack of it.

Doug Shaver

This MJ'er doesn't claim that. If there was no historical Jesus, then Jewish messianic expectations would have been irrelevant during Christianity's formative years in the first century. During that period, we have no idea how many Jewish Christians there even were.

Christians didn't starting talking about a historical founder until the second century when the gospels as we know them were produced. And, from the second century onward, almost no Jews ever became Christians.

If the question, then, is: How could Jews have believed that an itinerant preacher with hardly any followers who got himself crucified was the messiah? the answer is: Practically none did.

ApostateAbe

Yeah, obviously the argument wouldn't work for those mythicists who believe Jews didn't start Christianity.

outhouse

false paul started writing about a "man" and god within a few years of his death. he wrote much the same was as man did regarding 100% mortal men being deified during that period.


not all jews followed the movement because the movement was stolen by romans from the jews from the beginning. they then made the jews out to be the villains and alienated them from the movement.

romans opened up the movement to gentiles, and after the fall of the temple, those few undecided jews either followed this new sect or movement or started following the new jewish governement as judaism rebuilt itself

outhouse

after his death the movement grew, he was martyr for jews only.

it grew within the average hard working jews and these legends spread through oral tradition among the illiterate jews

his legend grew into a deity that the romans capitolized on, possibly for control

EarlDoherty

Which is why Paul had to counter Jewish objectors who called the idea of any "messiah" as crucified, a "folly". The fact that Paul did so (in 1 Cor. 1) is proof that Paul subscribed to a messiah who did *not* fulfill traditional expectations and who suffered death (which he never tells us took place on earth).

Ehrman claims that Paul would never have invented/believed in a messiah like that unless he had actually lived and was known to have been crucified. But every indication in the epistolary record is that everything known to the early Christ cult about that messiah and his actions came from scripture. So the question is, could scripture have been conceived as having told about such a contrary messiah? The mythicist case, and particularly mine, is that the answer is yes. Thus Paul & Co. were not 'inventing' or fabricating a messiah who was unlike expectation, they were 'discovering' in scripture, through perceived revelation, the existence of such a messiah. there is a big difference.

Ehrman is too closed-minded and antagonistic to mythicism to be able to even consider such a theory, let alone address it.

Besides, as others have pointed out, how could early Christians have invented a Messiah who had fulfilled those expectations? No such thing had happened in history and everyone knew it. If the fulfilment of those expectations was placed in the future, then there was nothing to prevent early Christians from coming up with a Messiah who had suffered and died (whether on earth or in heaven, the former suggested by G. A. Wells), especially if that were known from scripture. So Ehrman's argument falls down on any count.

Earl Doherty

Duvduv

It is also the case that since the believers in a historical Jesus relied on scripture, they always felt totally comfortable with relying on interpretations of Jewish scripture pointing to the suffering messiah such as Isaiah 53.

Ehrman is incorrect that the historical Jesus needed to invent a successful messiah. Especially if they also believed the eschaton and the return of their suffering messiah was just around the corner.