Jesus Mythicism HD 1080p 

Second the recommendation. Excellent work. He's also a very good speaker and has appeared on RU-vid.

I don't think Bart Ehrman has published a defense of historicity under peer-review. In fact I don't think he has published anything under peer-review for many years

@@david8514 evidence is evidence. It's the research that matters not so much peer review in the so-called soft sciences. This isn't evolutionary biology. His research was meticulous with a great deal of well presented evidence. He has presented academic papers recently.

@@david8514 Yes, he made the shift from academic publishing to popular press a while back, but that doesn't diminish his scholarship. For one thing, peer review isn't all that. It doesn't guarantee correctness, only that there are no obvious flaws; it's not a gold standard; it's a minimum bar. And many senior scholars don't bother with peer review. For another, public outreach, as opposed to publishing for a limited academic audience, is something that more scholars should do. Besides, it would be hard to find an academic publisher to take on a defense of historicity because that's taken as a given. Historicity isn't the position that needs to be defended. Let's see the peer reviewed takes that Jesus was non-historical first.

Complete nonsense. There's no need to construct a figure. Go talk to an actual historian instead of pulling things out of nowhere. If you actually had any understanding of the surrounding beliefs of the time, you'd know that it was not necessary to create a figure, revelation or not. There is far too much circumstantial evidence to claim it did not happen.

​@thysonsacclaim Nah. There's basically zero valid evidence for the guy. All the evidence shows up 150 years later. That's like if I wrote a book about Abe Lincoln being on an adventure with Chewbacca, and then 1000 years later people said it was true. It's not valid.

The white Jesus is definitely a myth! Ain't no white people in their bible!

@@mil401 I do already follow Bart Erman, very knowledgeable guy.

Well, we know that Mahoma and Buddha existed, so Jesus existing is not a huge stretch. Of course, the stretch comes from all supernatural claims that follow after.

@@juanausensi499 exactly

My go-to example is a bit obscure, but... There are 2 books purporting to be definitive accounts of Enron collapse; Kurt Eichenwald's "Conspiracy of Fools" and Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind's "The Smartest Guys in The Room" both were written by experienced journalists just a few years after the events with easy access to all kinds of testimony and records, not to mention McLean being an eyewitness of some of the events described. No one ever cast any credible doubts on either author's competency or honesty, as far as those books are concerned anyway. If you read both... There are TONS of discrepancies, large and small, some people central to one book's story hardly appear in the other, there's a very detailed and unflattering to a particular Enron exec description of his interview with McLean in Eichenwald's book, who in her book just says basically "yes, there was an interview," not confirming any of the unflattering details. Then she describes how that same exec outright lied on his resume, seriously misrepresenting his job experience, but Eichenwald just took that CV at face value, etc, etc, I can go on for pages. By that standard, Enron clearly did not exist and had been an amalgamation of several companies, some of them fictitious. Yes there would be weird discrepancies in the sources, esp. if it's something like Gospels, doesn't mean everything in them is automatically suspect. We can reasonably deduce that there was a preacher named Jesus born and raised in Nazareth, who despite being a lower-class construction worker (possibly carpenter) had some knowledge of several Hebrew and Aramaic religious texts, became follower of John The Baptist but then struck out on his own preaching career, got some notoriety and following in Galilee, with some kind of inner circle called "The Twelve" (one for each tribe of Israel) though who exactly they were is a bit difficult to tell, maybe some left him and were replaced. Eventually he went in Jerusalem for Passover, made some kind of protest in The Temple and was arrested and executed by Roman authorities on suspicion of him claiming he's the rightful king of Israel (the Messiah) and fomenting the rebellion. Perhaps he was ratted out by one of The Twelve. His followers (most notably his brother James) however did believe he didn't really die and continued to spread his teachings, that started to gradually accumulate all kinds of misrememberings, exaggerations, reports of hallucinatory experiences, and, most importantly for us attempts to make what was known of his life fit Biblical prophecies. If he was really an amalgam, there wouldn't be any need for two convoluted and fantastical stories of him being "actually" born in Betlehem, or attempts to explain away the fact that he seemingly was a John The Baptist's _follower_ for a while, or, of course, the biggest one of them all, how can he be the real Messiah while being dead? (And no, he's not at all like perpetually resurrected seasonal/harvest deity akin to Horus or Persephone, that's just one of those stupid 19th century guesses.)

@@nebufabu Sorry, but you're not using my standard. Enron clearly exists. I know this because I do not need to rely on somebody's account, but by a multitude of various extant sources that clearly lets me know Enron existed. In your example, the narratives might be different, but they clearly are about Enron, an energy company.

@@daveburklund2295 OK, imagine we're in the year 10 000, and after... a lot of things happened all you have on the Enron at the end of the 20th century is those 2 books and other not-quite relevant odds and ends, including a rude graffiti about Ken Lay archaeologists found where you think Houston used to be.

@@nebufabu And then you have a non-believer explaining to an Enronist that Enron maybe existed or maybe didn't but this whole idea that Enron is the God of Energy was a bunch of stuff added on later.

@Lureeality 🎶🎵 So many Orcs gave their lives for Sauron. Surely, they wouldn't have died for a lie?

There was also significant political ill will against the Romans (which we know later exploded into actual violence), and it seems quite reasonable that apocalyptic preachers might be occasionally executed by the Romans for fear they might be troublemakers or revolutionaries (and some were, but that doesn't mean they all were). Such men were held in pretty high esteem because they were calling out some of the hypocrisies of the Roman-leaning establishment, so the occasional execution or stoning of these radical preachers might be viewed as the killing of righteous men, and the sympathies of many people would lie with the victims. Plus, the Romans and Sanhedrin probably killed enough of those guys that you wouldn't need to have made one up. Just pick a guy who got crucified or stoned. It's not hard to imagine one of those guys getting a posthumous following: If I were a 1st century Judean (Jew or Pagan) aware that Jesus of Nazareth -- one of a number of holy men who had spoken out against corrupt authorities and said some agreeable things, at least that I'd vaguely heard about, and gotten killed for it -- and was inclined to think his death an injustice, I imagine I'd be more willing to lend an ear to his disciples. If I liked what they were saying, or appreciated their communal lifestyle and eye toward reform and rejection of some of the excesses of the state, I might even be persuaded to at least become an associate, if not an outright follower. Could I have been duped? I mean, maybe, but it seems like I'd hold these sympathies because guys LIKE Jesus of Nazareth WERE being unjustly jailed or executed by Roman and Jewish authorities, so even if the guy was a total fabrication I would only believe in the plausibility of his existence because there were similar models that I was aware of. So I think the most likely thing is that Jesus's small sect wasn't particularly militant or trying to actually overthrow the Romans, like some other apocalyptic Jewish preachers of the era were trying to do, and their reaction to his death was to continue quiet preaching and outreach and not violent rebellion. There WERE preachers who DID inspire violent rebellion, and their sects became militant and militarized. Christianity wasn't like that in the first couple centuries it existed, leading me to think probably that the Romans killed the founder of a mostly non-violent sect because they couldn't be bothered to distinguish the likely rebels from the unlikely ones, and this backfired by giving his disciples a martyrdom narrative that helped sell the religion to people already sympathetic to the idea that the state was unfairly executing righteous reformers.

@@Uryvichk These are essentially my feelings as well. If there was no person/preacher named Jesus, there were certainly plenty of preachers doing similar work in the area & most of the locals weren’t digging the Romans. It’s easy to see how such a following could gain traction, given those circumstances.

My favorite evidence for the historical creation of the earth by Yahweh is that if it was just made up, they wouldn't have needed two, different, somewhat contradictory stories explaining how it happened step by step... 😛

@@mil401 I'm a little confused about the point you're trying to make, after reading your last paragraph. If the point is, as that last paragraph reads to me, that having multiple authors try to describe the same thing means that those authors think it is correct, rather than than it is actually correct, then sure. But the comment I responded to didn't say "my favorite evidence for some historical people believed in historical Jesus" but "my favorite evidence for historical Jesus". The fact that some people believe in historical Jesus wasn't the point, nor was it ever in contention. There were/are people who believe a historical Jesus existed, and there were/are people who believe a god created the earth in about a week. I think everyone agrees on that, so it's a rather pointless point to make... The original comment, again, indicated that having two different people describe something differently gives credence to the fact that it was actually real, not that they believed it real. Which is what I responded to with a different something, to show how that doesn't actually gives any credence to that reality. The historical Jesus people believed the same thing about his historical reality, where he was born, and where he lived. They just differed on the details and fleshed them out differently. The historical creation people believed the same thing about the same god being real, it creating the world, and that the things in the world are ones it created. The just differed on the details and order and so fleshed these out differently. This doesn't lend any credence, by itself, neither to there actually being a Jesus born and living in these believed places, or to there being this specific god who really did create the world and specific things that otherwise exist in it. Maybe the cause for you to see the two cases as different is what made you write "explain, say, animals... they existed"? Because the point there isn't to explain animals any more than the Jesus story's point is to explain Nazareth. The point is to say that Yahweh *made* the animals, just like the point was to say that Jesus *lived* in Nazareth. It's not comparing "Jesus existed since two different stories about his life" with "The earth and animals and light existed since two different stories about them", it's comparing "Jesus existed..." with "God created the earth and animals and light since two different stories about it". No atheist or skeptic comes out of reading the Genesis creation story (either or both) thinking that this is really bad proof that the earth, or animals, or light, exist, so it should be doubted unless the religious scholars could provide better proof... Because that isn't the point of the story. Just like nobody who is skeptical about a historical Jesus comes out of reading these stories not really being sure that Bethlehem is or was ever real.

@@mil401 People believing something a few decades after it supposedly happen isn't really an indication it's true. These days, when technically we do fully expect stuff like history and tales of the past to be accurate, you can still easily find a lot people who believe very false and inaccurate myths about things that happened (or, well, didn't happen, as it happens) not so long ago. Extra bonus for things like religion and other political ideas that require strong belief and conviction anyway. I'm sure you don't even have to think very hard to come up with lots and lots of very recent examples. Plus, well, obviously some selection bias, of two separate types. Believers who wrote about Jesus at the time were really likely to be... believers. It's also clearly, I think, easier to find a target audience of believers for a story like "this is about your god Jesus", than a crowd for stories like "this is about, ah, some person who didn't exist so I don't really care to spend time to write about it, and you'd probably not care to read a couple of paragraph on just how I don't know anything about him since he wasn't there". And historically... history wasn't really regarded in quite the same way, it was pretty common to have historical-like stories made to pass a point or an idea and have them function as, and expected and understood to be, myth and allegory. Though to be accurate I'm not certain as to exact timeline of changes in the general perception of treatment of history, so can't say for a fact the status at around 1st century in the Roman empire.

im not saying this comment to side with either side. but the comment here about evidence is a logical fallacy. divergence in mythical narratives doesnt prove anything at all. about anything.

hercules and herecles means he must have been real. right?

I agree, it's an ad hominem fallacy, and there are terrible people in every club. Ideas are not just the people they originate from.

​@@Kohout33 he didn't say his reasoning was bad ppl, and it's not a criticism of their view either (strawmen...? maybe one could say that) It's basically _I fell for their side because of bias, and, not being a historian, I'm back to default of trusting majority of experts in the field_ which is fine and enough for absolutely inconsequential to our life, safety, harm reduction. Unlike some other scientific fields where we all should strive to get into the topic and form correct option, asap even. (think pandemic and droplet vs aerosols transmission as the other side of that continuum, with many other questions in between)

I think the best way to put it is that there *oughtn't be any historical evidence* for the existence of Jesus, assuming he was an ordinary man and preacher in 1st century Judea, as he would have been an utterly inconsequential figure in a backwater province. That said, there *is* a difference between the mythicist Jesus and the historical-but-fictionalized Jesus, and it is this: if a "historical" Jesus had never existed, Christianity would have never existed either. If a mythicist Jesus had never been invented, Christianity _still_ would have existed, albeit in very different form than we know it, and although it might never have picked up steam. In other words, a historical Jesus *is* the originator of Christianity; a mythical Jesus is not.

@@Nikolas_Davis i would argue that if this figure remotely resembled the one described in the book. The one who was a threat to the Roman and Jewish authorities. The one who caused such a movement. The one who followers would go on to die for, or even come close to this, he’d have made enough of a splash to be noted by historians. And if he didn’t even do such things, would he truly be the Jesus of the bible? If there was a king named Arthur that did none of the things of Arthurian legend can it truly be said that King Arthur of aruthurian legend existed in some form? I’d argue not.

Such a preacher may have existed, but if he actually made enough of a splash to upset the romans significantly a roman historian would have mentioned it...

@@jonneexplorer not necessarily. If they did keep records on everyone they crucified, then the vast majority of those records didn't make it through the end of the Roman empire. It's unlikely that we'd have anything beyond what we've got. Tacitus mentions the crucifixion and that's enough

It's not SUPPOSED to matter to the truth claims of the bible. The study of the historical Jesus is about HISTORY.

@@chickenpants Wrong.

@@blorkpovud1576 what am I wrong about?

Kinda false equivalence. Socrates was never claimed to be a god-man, born of a virgin etc

@@_Omega_Weapon I'm not saying they are equivalent in all aspects.

There's at least the possibility that Plato (our only source) had Socrates say stuff that he didn't want to be associated with himself. So that is a real parallel. But there are differences, too - like a contemporary comedy mocking Socrates, and the lack of supernatural claims. We see that all the time - projection of popular stories that may or may not have happened onto real persons that turns their public reception into something that does not have anything in common with the real human. Hitler as a cartoonish supervillain. And that testee giving a somewhat clever answer, who's name was Albert Einstein. When nothing, I mean really absolutely nothing remains of the original person and only made up stories remain, like in Jesus' case, can we still call that historical?

@@lower_case_t Didn't Xenophon also write about Socrates, as well as Aristophanes?

@@_Omega_Weapon holy f*ck THAT DOESN'T MATTER. The supernatural claims of the gospels don't make an ordinary historical Jesus any less likely...

"Mythicism is not the belief in a conspiratorial cabal." There are several forms of Mythicism that say no historical Jesus existed because he was invented by the Romans as a way of (somehow) controlling the Jews. "Mythicism and historicism aren't even entirely mutually exclusive. Every fictional figure in literature that acts and looks human is somehow rooted in experiences that their creator made with real humans." "Mythicism" is a shorthand term for all arguments that there was no historical Jesus. So yes, they are exclusive. "I am not aware of any mythicist who doesn't acknowledge that one or many real persons could have contributed to the popular Jesus character. They just point out that some things in the timeline of early christianity are better explained by an evolving myth than by a real founding character." All Mythicists exclude a historical character. Again, "Mythicism" is a shorthand term for all arguments that there was no historical Jesus. "contemporary records of this particular radical preacher aren't spotty. There are none. Zero." He didn't mention any "contemporary records". HIs words were "ancient historical records". The word "contemporary" was something you inserted. Yes, we have no *contemporary* references to Jesus. But we usually don't have contemporary records for minor figures like him and we have none at all for any analogous early first century Jewish preachers, prophets or Messianic claimants of the time. So we would not expect any for him. But we do have *more* references to him that we have for any analogous Jewish preacher etc. of the time. "the earliest writings about Jesus come from Paul in the middle of the 1st century. And guess what Jesus was then - a divine being that appeared to Paul from the heavens." Except Paul also tells us he was was born as a human, of a human mother and born a Jew (Gal 4:4). He repeats that he had a “human nature” and that he was a human descendant of King David (Rom 1:3), of Abraham (Gal 3:16), of Israelites (Rom 9:4-5) and of Jesse (Rom 15:12). He refers to teachings Jesus made during his earthly ministry on divorce (1Cor 7:10), on preachers (1Cor 9:14) and on the coming apocalypse (1Thess. 4:15). He mentions how he was executed by earthly rulers (1Cor 2:8, 1Thess 2: 14-16) that he was crucified (1Cor 1:23, 2:2, 2:8, 2Cor 13:4) and that he died and was buried (1Cor 15:3-4). And he says he had an earthly, physical brother called James who Paul himself had met (Gal 1:19). So Paul was pretty clear that Jesus had been a recent, earthly, historical human being, while also believing he had since been exalted to the heavens. "we then have no way to date Paul's writings, and it is entirely possible that they were made up by Marcion, who according to church tradition "found" Paul's letters around 130 A.D. " This is total nonsense. No scholar believes Marcion forged the writings of Paul. "it's so metaphorical and obviously a comment on the events of that time that it's hard to believe Marc could have talked about a real person he had heard of. " That isn't "hard to believe" at all. What gMark describes fits the kind of apocalyptic preacher we know were around at the time perfectly. "Most mythicist are agnostics when it comes to historicism." Again, you're highly confused about what the word refers to. A Mythicist, by definition, rejects "historicism". "Inaccuracies in the Bible are an argument for mythicism that I have not even heard before. " I've been dealing with people who repeat Mythicist arguments for 20 years. Inaccuracies in the NT texts is usually the first thing they point to as reason to reject these stories completely and accept that there was no historical Jesus at all. "Why did christianity start as a wide spread group of communities with entirely different views on who Jesus was" It didn't. It just became that in its first decades because that's what cults do in the ancient world. " If Christianity was based on a real founding figure, shouldn't we expect an early consensus about what he actually taught and later diversification instead of the other way around?" The nature of our sources means that we only get snapshots after the early consensus began to fragment. So no. "Why don't the earliest texts not even deal with Jesus' teachings and his life?" Because they are letters written to communities about theological issues, and they assume a shared prior knowledge of Jesus' teachings and his life. When I write emails to my brothers and mention our late father, I don't stop to give them a summary of his biography for the same reason. " No it was not a local phenomenon. Messianic cults were all over the place in Northern Africa, Southern Europe and the middle east." Few of those other cults were actually "Messianic" - words have meanings. That aside, that's irrelevant to his point. He's noting that THIS cult began in a particular time and place and makes sense as something that began in that particular time and place given the ideas and religious traditions that existed there. "Wow, that's a bad analogy." It's not an analogy. He's noting that new sects usually arise from founders and openly trace their origin to that founder. Whereas examples of sects that claim a recent founder but don't have one are vanishingly small to non-existent. This makes Mythicism's claim that this sect claimed a recent founder but no such founder existed immediately unlikely. "No special, unique, exceptional process is assumed by mythicists." Yes, it is. See above. "What's so special about the possibility that popular stories that may or may not have happened involving real people, but that at least massively changed over time" Nothing. But none of the stories of these mythic founders you mention say they lived just down the road a few decades earlier. They are set in mythic prehistory. So the Jesus story is not like them at all and makes most sense if there actually was a recent founder that the later stories are based on. " I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that even followers of rivalling Jesuses contributed their story to the modern Jesus character." Nothing in the earliest source material indicates some amalgam of various Jesuses. The fact that Paul met and argued with Peter, John and Jesus' own brother James makes this idea pretty silly. They are clear he was one person and a fairly recent figure. "That's this weirdly deluded fanatic's 2 cents " Yes.

​@@Sextus666 Weird. But OK, thanks for the comment.

@@lower_case_t "Weird"? You made a series of arguments that were based on errors of fact, bad interpretations and clear misreading of the sources. Given these arguments were misrepresentations and I've studied this stuff for decades, I showed how your arguments don't work. Why is that "weird"? Isn't that what rational people do when they come across patent misinformation?

@@Sextus666 You're welcome to point out factual errors and misinformation A bunch of na-ahs won't do, though. Just an example: According to the definition of mythicism that you're trying to force on me, neither Carrier nor Fitzgerald nor Price are mythicists. Yet they are the guys that P.Z. mentioned explicitly. They, like myself, all admit that there may have been one or more real persons that some of the stories that were attributed to the Jesus figure we know originated from. And that is true for literally any fictional character and any popular story. That doesn't change the fact that there is no direct connection between "our" Jesus and that persons that may or may not have existed. EVERYTHING we have is either made up or bent and twisted and changed beyond recognition. I really think we're done here.

@@lower_case_t "A bunch of na-ahs won't do, though" Obviously, there's a limit to how much detail I can include in a RU-vid comment. Stick around and I think you'll find out I can substantiate every single thing I said in great detail, with full reference to relevant evidence, sources and scholarship. This ain't my first rodeo. "They, like myself, all admit that there may have been one or more real persons that some of the stories that were attributed to the Jesus figure we know originated from." And I, similarly, acknowledge the *possibility* that no Jesus at all existed. I just think that possibility is very low and that a historical Jesus is far more likely. So mere acknowledgement of a possibility doesn't count for much. Yes, those guys make vague gestures toward the possibility of some connection to some guy or guys. They then go on to spent their time arguing that no historical Jesus existed at all. Trying, as you do, to blur the distinctions between those who accept that substantial amounts of what we get in the gospels are not historical and that most of the rest is, at best, uncertain (i.e. pretty much all scholars on the issue) and the tiny Mythicist fringe is either highly confused or deliberately disingenuous. By that reasoning, pretty much *everyone* apart from outright Biblical literalists are "Mythicists", which is clearly absurd. The fact is that there *IS* a distinction between those on the fringe who argue that there was no historical Jesus and those who make up the bulk of scholarship who accept there most likely was one and that we can say things about him that are also likely. That some of the former category occasionally make a hand waving concession that, *maybe*, there was some guy but he's wholly inaccessible doesn't change the fact they are out on the fringe. "EVERYTHING we have is either made up or bent and twisted and changed beyond recognition. " That's a fringe view. The consensus position is that *some* things can indeed be recognised as historical (e.g. origin in Nazareth, baptised by John, preached in Galilee, had a brother called James, got crucified by the Romans). Others are unlikely to be so (the supernatural elements, various anachronisms and geographical errors, details that appear purely rhetorical or theological). And the bulk of the remaining stuff claimed about him is largely possible (Many sayings, lots of the parables, mundane details of travels). To claim "EVERYTHING" is inaccessible to historical analysis is a massive overstatement and a fringe view. "I really think we're done here." If you say so.

Yeah, after considering mythicism I think the more likely issue is that there was significant distortion first by Paul and then by later Christian institutions, such as the Church, which create a modern understanding of what Christianity "is" that does not necessarily reflect how it started. In such circumstances, it would be a lot easier to "feel like" there's an incongruity there that might be resolvable if Jesus didn't exist, but ultimately it doesn't make any real difference and it seems more parsimonious to just concede that there was a guy from Nazareth executed by the Romans whom Paul barely knew but whose following he latched on to, whose direct followers he may have met and communicated with to some degree, and whose sect he began to Hellenize because that's where his interests lay. Not only do I think it's more straightforward, I think it's ultimately more persuasive AGAINST the truth of Christianity as a religious claim, because it's a more plausible model for how the religion would have formed and spread: An existent real-life founder whose life was expounded upon, exaggerated, or mythicized by later writers and whose teachings and movement were steered along a path very different from anything he might have intended by opportunists who wanted to either trade on his charisma or to export his beliefs, and eventually codified into a formal church structure that only passingly resembles the founder's ideas. We see this with some branches of Buddhism and Islam, and certainly with Mormonism; Siddharta Guatama is in a similar boat to Jesus (probably existed, but stories about him likely aren't super reliable), and it seems insane to try to argue that Mohammed or Joseph Smith didn't exist. If Brigham Young and the later Presidents could alter Mormonism's scope and doctrine after the death of their prophet, I don't see why Paul and Peter and James couldn't have done likewise after the death of theirs. That Christianity would fall into a similar pattern of change as other faiths, rather than being the bizarre invention of random evangelists inventing a man out of whole cloth, seems to me both more realistic and better evidence that it is a human creation and not anything divine.

While I agree with you that the Jesus of the Bible is a mythic figure, however, I still think it possible that there was a real person, possibly named Jesus. Consider that at the time Mark was written, there was already in existence a cult that later became Christianity. Also, in the modern era, all cults, that I am aware of, have a single charismatic individual who started the cult. In India today they have dozens of these god-men, as they call them, meaning they are frequently charlatans. I think it reasonable to suggest this same pattern was happening in ancient Palestine. The gospels are written in such a way that the specific character of Jesus varies according to the target audience. For this reason I suggest that the character Jesus may bear only a passing resemblance to the originator of the cult.

"Remember the 4 gospels in the new testament are the ones that the church approved of, there were many others. The 4 they selected were the ones that minimized contradictions and strayed away from making lots of easily demonstrably false claims, they would be difficult to falsify. " If that was the case, they did a pretty bad job. And it's not the case. Those gospels were preferred from the start because they were known to be the earliest ones to circulate. The others only appeared much later - in the second and third centuries - and only a few of them were ever seriously considered to be genuine. And modern critical scholars also agree that the assessment of these early churches was accurate and the four canonical gospels *were* the earliest. So the premise of your argument is totally wrong. "Then you come and say we'll historians have always thought that behind all the supernatural and magical claims there still must have been some real guy as the basis of it because there just must have been and that's now the default so you'd need to present very strong evidence to the contrary. Why? " Because that's how sects like this usually arise and because there are elements in the earliest NT material that does indicate this one arise that way too. For example, Paul talks about meeting Jesus' brother James and Josephus also mentions James in a passage that Josephus scholars consider authentic (A.J. XX.200, as opposed to Josephus' other, highly contested mention of Jesus in A.J. XVIII.62-3). It's a bit hard for a non-existent person to have a brother attested by contemporary writers, one of them first hand. "The gospels that made the cut were specifically selected because they didn't make easily testable claims. The ones that made testable claims or had glaring factual inaccuracies didn't make the cut. " No. That's total nonsense . "The gospel of Mark is somewhat lighter on the supernatural claims than the others, but they still invoke the supernatural often, how much of them have to be fiction for you to just call it fiction? " This is absolutist, black and white, all or nothing thinking. It's not how historians work with ancient sources, which are often peppered with what we consider supernatural claims. "That's not on the order of magnitude as to take the real history and constantly add supernatural aspects to it. " The same sources that differ on the size of armies at Marathon also have plenty of supernatural elements in their stories. Welcome to ancient history. If we rejected all ancient source texts with supernatural elements, we'd be left with almost nothing to work with. "If there was 1sr century rabbi named Jesus who the author of Mark used as inspiration and he incorporated a few of the details he remembered about this figure into the story and then wings it from there, making the rest up, I'd consider that Jesus to be a myth." Okay, but that's not what the Mythicists that Myers is talking about mean when they say Jesus is mythical. So that's not relevant here.

Some views and concepts are timeless

no

no. Paul invented Christianity, eh?

No Jesus was Jewish.