NEW Research CRUCIFIES Jesus Mythicism 

The Christ myth theory has been crucified? I predict the Christ myth theory will rise again!

If Jesus was a historical figure but we know nothing about the historical figure then to me there’s no big difference between that and a mythical character. To me this debate is almost irrelevant.

This is the silliest debate ever. The difference between a totally made up person vs a historical person about whom we have a bunch of made up stories is a thin one indeed

Sorry not sorry but I still find Dr Carrier's argument much more compelling.

Definitely bring Carrier on to refute these claims

Sounds like total bull shit.

I'm still not sure how someone can accept the mimesis hypothesis and say the scriptures point to a historical apocalyptic preacher named jesus. You simultaneously believe some stories of jesus mirror Homer, while understanding his works were not historical. But the biblical accounts point to a real historic human, just this one, the other works are obvious myth, but just the jesus one is real. This hits the ear like apologetics.

3:59:31 so the current evidence for Jesus are either forgeries or highly problematic & we should trust your theory on the historical Jesus ?

Whether Jesus existed or not really doesn’t matter. The resurrection is the part that rational people know is mythological - that is what matters!

May I use Ireland as an Example? It's really a good Example too since it was a hodgepodge of religions that bled into their Catholicism like Judaism to Christianity. When Romano-British monks sailed over to preach their gospels- they slowly rewrote Irish mythology. Suddenly gods and demigod ls were changed to kings and warriors of the pagan days. Jesus could simply be a mythical figure later generations reworked to their own still.

Every mythological character (that was later euhemerized) can be minimally described in a way that makes his existence plausible. This doesn't work (as argument for historicity) for any of them... except for Jesus 🙄: -Minimal historical Asclepius: Greek lived, Greek healed some people, Greek died. Later he was mythologized. These are very mundane claims. Doubting his historicity is not reasonable. -Minimal historical Achilles: Greek lived, Greek went to war, Greek died. Later he was mythologized. These are very mundane claims. Doubting his historicity is not reasonable. -Minimal historical Orpheus: Greek lived, Greek played music, Greek died. Later he was mythologized. These are very mundane claims. Doubting his historicity is not reasonable. -Minimal historical Moses: Jew lived, Jew went hiking on the desert with his friends, Jews got lost, Jew lead them to safety, Jew died. Later he was mythologized. These are very mundane claims. Doubting his historicity is not reasonable. And so on...

Doesn't anyone on this thread understand the difference between "prior probability" and "evidence"?

If we decide that the Rank-Raglan part of Carrier's argument is flawed and we throw it out, the rest gives a probability of historicity of around 50%, right? The promise in the title of OHJ claiming we have reason to doubt is still fulfilled. Having everything else cause negligible net movement in the probability is disappointing.

I'll do a complete listen-through later but I scrolled through the pictures and played it at twice the speed when the visual wasn't self-explanatory. I find the argument totally unconvincing. First of all, it deals singly with the Rank-Raglan scale on the mistaken assumption that this scale is the pivotal argument against the existence of Jesus. Second, it claims that Romulus being the only fictional character after the 10th century BCE is enough to cast doubt about Jesus being a mythical character. The huge failure in thinking here is that the sole existence of Romulus is enough in itself to justify including Jesus in the group of fictional characters and that is the development and crystalization of the Jesus myth in the Roman empire where a Jewish hero constructed along the lines of Romulus would get acceptance. Romulus would naturally be the model foremost in the mind of any mythmakers. There is no need to have 33 "recent" fictional Rank-Raglan heroes or even more than one.

This new research better not be fictional 😂

About the *dramatic date* : mythical characters are placed in the distant past (and sometimes, distant lands) because, this way, there are no witnesses or evidence that could contradict the storyline. The Gospels were written in a distant land and the witnesses and evidence were gone (Jerusalem destruction). In that sense, the Gospels were describing an inaccessible past, very similar to describing a distant past. It's like writing in 1950 about something that happened in ground zero Hiroshima before the bomb, and then trying to determine if it is true by finding witnesses and evidence. What I mean is that if you want to write realistic fiction, you write a story that cannot be fact checked (because witnesses have died and documents destroyed, or because it is top secret, etc...). We have plenty of examples in modern thrillers such as "The andromeda strain" or "The Hunt for Red October".

3:25:25 the point is that we call them "histories" when they're written by HISTORIANS!!! What HISTORIAN do we have writing about Jesus? Ever?

i dont understand why this matters, i see no difference between completely ficitonal or having some core real person and bunch of fake stories around him

What I dislike about these presentations is that the primary focus is debunking Carrier. I think a better approach is for them to explain why thier methodology is better instead of just claiming consensus.

Ill wait to see what richard carrier says here or maybe have him on!

derek, any chance of a 20 min video that succinctly goes through the main points ? (thanks for the detailed reference list)

The idea that Jesus met a bunch of criteria that match other mythical beings suggests, doesn't prove, he too might be mythical. But I don't think the opposite is true. Not meeting these doesn't prove Jesus or anyone else WAS historical. Sherlock Holmes was not claimed to have been born of a virgin, nor any other match. Just means the author was good at avoiding details that would make his creation come across as false. EVERY argument by Dr. Carrier could be proven wrong but that doesn't prove there was a historical Jesus. I could offer a lot of arguments why I don't think there is a Santa, and if you shot them all down, still doesn't mean there IS a Santa. The other problem is that we don't really have any evidence other than the NT as to ANY details of Jesus's life. If it was later claimed he came from a virgin birth, it might mean he was mythological or it might simply mean this detail was made up. Seems we are back to square one. Don't find this discussion "crucifying" mythicism. Might have given it a paper cut or two, at most.

Ten minutes worth of content packed into 4 hours.

4 and half hours of yapping

I don’t really understand why Derek is so aggressive against the idea of mythicism. I don’t feel like I need to hang my hat conclusively on either position, but surely mythisicm is just as plausible, if not more so, given the lack of evidence available. So why does Derek seem so desperate to go against the idea. You’re not even a Christian, bro. Like why are you so invested in Jesus being a person?

Rather than sit through 4 hrs of this, I quote a summary from their article "We make use of a recent survey of primary sources which has identified a large number of additional historical ancient Mediterranean Rank-Raglan heroes ..." The summary continues and seems rather interesting. When Dr. Carrier comments on this, I'll be able to form an opinion. As it is, it's best just to wait.

Brian Boitano is a real guy. Not magical. But the kids on that South Park episode ascribed great feats to their hero. People make up stuff about people who were just a guy. Like George Washington. Of course he told lies. He was deeply involved in spycraft throughout the war.

17:27. This is not how Bayes' Theorem is typically represented. Let's check if it's correct. I'm assuming the symbol in front of h in front of the first denominator is the logicians' way of representing "not"; i.e., a complement. h | b means h given.b. P(h | b) = P(h and b) / P(b). (And as in the intersection... I'm surprised, given the use of a logician's symbol for not, that the conjunction symbol ^ was not used.) P(not h | b) = P((not h) and b) / P(b). The sample space S = h Union (not h). b = S and b = (h union (not h)) and b = (h and b) union ((not h) and b). This is a disjoint union, so P(b) = P(h and b) + P((not h) and b). This, P((not h) and b) = P(b) - P(h and b) in the first denominator. This yields that the first fraction is (P(h and b) / P(b)) / ( P(b) - P(h and b)) = P(h and b) / (P(b) * (P(b) - P(h and b). Now, what are these commas in the second fraction? "And"; i.e., conjunctions or, to the mathematicians or statisticians, intersections? I shall un-pause to check what Kamil is claiming.

I am interested in the topic, but not 4 hours worth. I would give it 5 or 10 minutes, maybe more if the first bit makes me think you have something to say. Can you make a summary? The 24 page paper "The Prior Probability of Jesus Mythicism Re-evaluated in Light of the Gospels’ Dramatic Date" cited in the description is on topic. The main new information is in citation 23 on page 10, “Mytho-Historical Heroes: The Raglan Archetype in Application to Ancient Mediterranean Persons,” forthcoming, which is also linked in the description and has the scoring. ...and now I have skimmed the latter paper. I don't know enough history to verify details, but clearly they do a more detailed analysis than Carrier did. They make a good point.

Understanding Bayesian thinking is very important, as Bayesian statistics are used in several applications these days, and it's a practical tool for analyzing our beliefs about many things. It has been controversial historically because establishing prior probabilities is subjective. However, it's often necessary, and unavoidable, at times to establish prior probabilities because it frames the question of what to believe differently. I'm currently reading Everything is Predictable: How Bayesian Statistics Explain Our World, by Tom Chivers (Atria, 2024). So far, I've found this book does a good job explaining the nuances-- and why Bayesian thinking is a practical tool to add to our toolkit in analyzing problems. What is the prior probability of a minimalist historical Jesus who became mythologized? I have only started looking at this new content from this presentation, but this is where I start from: If I saw Carrier's 1 in 3 and Gregor's 99%, I would say between the two Carrier's is more reasonable. Uncertainty over a question has a starting point of 50/50, and so there needs to be a basis for moving in one direction or another. My subjective priors are based on seeing how writers can be very creative, and we have a gap in our knowledge about who these NT writers were, except for Paul, and there is evidence of editing and redaction in his letters. We also see evidence that gospel writers are essentially reworking previous texts rather than trying to create accurate histories. Carrier's 1 in 3 for historical minimalism is quite charitable. For a comparison, I followed FiveThirtyEight in their election forecasts (using Bayesian methods) in 2016, and right up to the election their predictions for a Trump win was around 30%. Thirty percent is very good odds for an outcome. A claim of 99% certainty in an outcome is highly suspect and looks like an extreme outlier.

Let me know when you have Carrier on for the rebuttal to this “evidence”. I’ll send funds for that.

Loads of men named Iesous existed. What criteria do you use to non arbitrarily designate one of them as the Jesus in the gospels? How close is close enough? Which details of his life matter and which ones don't?

I call bullshit and there is no evidence at all.

From what I can tell after diving fairly deep as a nonexpert, the gospels character of Jesus is an invention based on a loose composite of real people, mostly Judas the Gallilean, his sons and followers. The anonymous authors took events in Josephus, mimesis of bits of GrecoRoman tales, plus their own inventions like the birth stories. The real people were transformed by Hellenized educated Jews post Jewish wars including Bar Kochba into the mostly peaceable Yeshua, whose name was chosen to echo the Septuagint character. Vinzent has convinced me Marcion or a protoMarcion was first and Paul's letters heavily edited many forged, overall dubious. The 4 gospels responded to Marcion. acts + the 3 letters of "the apostles" Peter James and John were drafted/ forged perhaps by Eusebius to connect gospels to Pauline corpus. The TF is demonstrably a later Xian interpolation. That there is no record of a Jesus outside of the gospels is telling. Christ is not a last name its a title, could have been anyone. And I agree its a distinction without a difference and ultimately unprovable either way. The rock on which historicists have stood has crumbled to dust though IMO in the face of scholarship. The gospels are propaganda and fictions, not history even by ancient standards. And to most modern Xians, their beliefs do not depend on historicity anyway.

We can solve this, which parts of Jesus are verifiably real with supporting evidence?

I love the copium responses of "Well it doesn't really matter anyway". After these same people have been debating this topic for the past 10 years, commenting on videos, making videos, and reading every single one of Richard Carriers books.lol Now all of a sudden, it doesn't matter.

I have a stats background. I like kamil he seems like a really smart guy.however, I’m really uncomfortable with this approach. The reference groups seem subjective. How do you account for false positives in your reference group? How do we know what is real about the people in your reference group or about Jesus.

i don't see any evidence for a historical Jesus. just some work of Carriër has been refuted. i was hoping for more.

Im not convinced that the Jesus of the Gospels was a real dude.

Ok but what year. And to what parents. And in what city. And what was the historical inspirations name? And who wrote the gospel.

Dear god 4 hours?? 😂 can I get a TLDR??

One thing I would love to see for mythicism that I've never quite been able to pull together is a basic narrative for how Christianity started without a historical Jesus and how and when belief shifted from the wholly mythic figure to Jesus having been historical. What did the various NT writers and other figures they mention believe? If Paul taught a mythic Jesus, did he get the idea from a real Peter and James (possibly through their followers)? How did they get started? Did they invent it? Or was there some long existing sect? Or did Paul invent it all, including them? How did things shift within a couple decades from Paul to the Gospel accounts clearly putting Jesus within history? There's a clear and straightforward narrative for how the Christian story likely developed starting with the historical Jesus. I can't figure out an equivalent for mythicism. And all the sources I've looked into delve straight into the weeds of the lack of evidence or of parallels with other mythological figures or the like.

I did listen to the entire episode & found it well argued & compelling. As someone trained as a scientist and frequently frustrated by lack of rigor in the humanities, mich less NT studies, both Carrier's and Gregor/Hansen's efforts to up the game is refreshing. Repeatability is a key component of research. In this case, their critique & analysis of the tool in question was brilliant. Interrater reliability is a metric we used in text analysis and this is effectively what they were assessing. Vague categories indeed lead to a wide open space for inconsistency. This is also widely applicable to other fields - psychology, health, survey research, etc. All that said, I also agree that the actual evidence for a historical Jesus is weak to nonexistent. That overrides priors IMO. Certainly there is no evidence outside Christian texts for any of the activities claimed Jesus to have done. A lot of them are mimesis of existing well known stories - Homer, Dionysis, etc. or interestingly, are in Josephus as happening to other presumably real people. The supernatural healings, exorcisms & various consummable miracles are based in the cultural stories of the time + the various charlatans and conmen and wonderworker types prevalent then [and now!]. As previously noted my current best guess is the Jesus character is based on various historical people in the Gallilean People's Front (or was is Judean PF? Haven't watched Life of Brian lately but honestly Monty Python's tale is as probable as any - the non-Messiah IDd by his denials per Mark). The anonymous authors of the gospels were highly educated & Hellenized. They had a lot of texts to use as sources in their version of historical fiction & bio writing. None of that needs an actual Jesus to have lived. Personally, I seek the best info, data, arguments about this topic & do not really care beyond curiousity. I don't label myself as anything except human. Happy to change my mind or update knowledge wherever it leads as a nonbeliever. The difference between minimal historicity & mythicism is almost a distinction without a difference in most regards. On the whole, believers don't care. That said I do think that deconstructing the wider false truth claims can & does deconvert people. See also Mormons - Joseph Smith's scriptural production is now readily debunked as anything but bible fan fiction with some racist Moundbuilder + seed of Cain/Ham thrown in to double down on the prejudices of the day. Learning that they have been deceived and lied to leads to many members to a truth crisis & often rapid deconversion out of both Mormonism & Xianity. This one amazing, weird, improbable life we get on our currently livable planet urgently need people grounded in naturalist reality & focused on bettering our communities & survival for all human + non. If belief helps people do that (tikkun olam etc) that's fine. But apocalyticism + reactionary patriarchal heteronormative Christofascism is ascendent & threatens modernity. Challenging the evidence & narratives matters. Keep up the good work & good luck with your move, Derek

The Jesus myth was created when Peter brought together a bunch of different things from his own studies (and his presumable schizotypality), and had an experience indistinguishable from meeting "the risen Christ"! Later, Paul had a similar experience! People don't realize how important these "experiences" are in the creation of new "movements"! I only know this because I've had similar experiences myself! There's also a lot of research on this! Carrier referenced that book about the cargo cult movements! I forget what it's called (something about a "Trumpet"), but I think it's an extremely important source! I haven't read it yet, but I need to lol

When a researcher needs to lower himself to the "go fuck yourself" standard to make a point, you've lost the argument Why would any scholar value anything after that comment Bad move whatever your name is

A very recognizable Jesus-like figure (a high priest literally named Jesus) appears in the book of Zechariah 500 years before Jesus was born. This Jesus was given a white robe and gold crown and told he would start a new branch of Judaism, and then he was given permission to go create the new temple. The exact same temple that later Gospel Jesus would drive the money changers out from (quite possibly in a similar manner to how a different guy named Jesus cleaned things out to begin with). Even if Jesus wasn't 100% mythical, it would have been very easy to take tall tales and folklore that was previously related to Zechariah's original Jesus and misapply it to this later man with the same name at the same temple doing the same holy kind of stuff. Whether or not he was mythical, he was still mythical.

Derek's grandstanding at about 42 minutes in is a bit silly. He hasn't checked this, nor has anyone else, at least not anyone beside those peer reviewers. But we have a problem as I see it. This could very well cause problems for the method of prior probability. It might. But that doesn't mean mythicism is crucified. THat's silly. There is so much more to talk about and work through. But that's if I even grant their stated claims here. As I said I looked into their first claimed character and find their evidence completely lacking on that guy. Others? Well, Ahab being scored a 10 would be a stretch anyway...but they don't give us much to reference for their scoring claims on his anyway. Its stuff like "we just think so" or they score 4 points by providing us reason to accept 2 of them. I'm just not going to buy something because I want to, like Derek. There has to be some investigation. Some caution to accept this kind of stuff and chances for responses. Carrier's work has been out for a decade or more and the responses, up until now, have been extremely terrible and largely embarrassing, if you ask me. That's why people still hold to it. You can't simply point to some quality scholarship that gives us good reason for historicity. This obviously comes up short since it's simply an attempt to go after Carrier's prior claims. So please, tone it down. Get some real good work out there first, at least.

In looking at the paper cited (I haven't watched the whole video), the first and main point is the expansion of the Rank Raglan reference class to include mostly ancient Mediterranean historical figures with after 10th century BCE dates: Agathocles of Syracuse, Ahab son of Omri, Alcibiades, Alexander the Great, Apollonius of Tyana, Aratus of Sicyon, Aristotle, Caesar Augustus, Caligula, Claudius, Cleopatra VII, Cyrus the Great, Demetrius I Poliorcetes, Domitian, Galba, Hadrian, Hiero II, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Mithridates VI Eupator, Nero, Otho, Pericles, Plato, Ptolemy I Soter, Pyrrhus I of Epirus, Pythagoras, Solon, Tiberius, Titus, Trajan, Vespasian, Vitellius One thing I'm looking for is that Carrier put a high number of match points of the 22 criteria in Rank Raglan-- more than half the criteria need to match to be a member and conform to this mythotype in Carrier's approach to establishing a prior. The more criteria met, the more likely the figures are mythical (not just that the stories about them have a few mythical qualities added later). If the match points are lowered, I would expect many more historical figures would likely be swept into the class. But if what we're reading in the NT has so many match points with mythic storytelling, then just adding in "dramatic date" as one more factor doesn't seem right to me as a way to tilt everything to making Jesus historical. Depending on which way the data tilts from 50/50, I'm not sure there is enough in the paper to make it shocking if Jesus was actually mythical. The strong tilt towards historicity in the paper seems like it depends on simultaneously downplaying the mythic elements in the NT to make Jesus align with many more historical characters, while at the same time saying that the many mythic story elements are present because a historical Jesus just happened to be highly mythologized. Given all the data points, I still wouldn't be surprised very much if the Jesus figure was mythical or historical either way. That's how bad the data still is. By mythical I mean a created literary figure but perhaps with biographical elements from actual people, just not all pinned down to one person. Mythicism is a great hypothesis to work with-- for example, when I read Mark, I read it as if the author is treating the celestial savior figure as a literary creation to instruct and sometimes chastise his actual historical believers. I sense the work of someone from a Pauline community, creating this figure to counter the centrality of Peter and some others in the early Christian movement by writing words for this celestial savior to match the views of a particular sect of early Christianity, which appears to me have been a very diverse movement in its early days. Humans are highly creative, but also very susceptible to accepting things as historical without question. The diversity of Christianity today, with followers staunchly believing in the historicity of their particular belief sets (often contradictory), shows to me how beliefs in historicity can take hold and propagate, despite the massive mythical qualities.

Still no more than 50% chance that the guy existed. And 100% that if he did we only know myths about him. Thomas Brodie’s work is great.

This was torturous on so many levels. I lasted 45 minutes without pulling out every single one of the last remaining hairs on my head. Probability at times seems like the quantitative version of post-some modern inspired analyses. Even in qualitative methods, one requires a form of empirical reference. This was ridiculous from any human based epistemology and/or logic, but what about the technological malfunctions?!! Honestly, this was like rolling in broken glass and having a nice lime and salt bath afterwards.

There is a Star Trek episode based on the similarity between the Sun and Son of God... 😂

The problem starts when you refer to the ancient documents as 'evidence'. The bible is true because the bible says it's true.

Sometimes i think the prospect of realizing that our past beliefs were 100% fiction is too much for some people to bear so the hold on to the last shred hoping, wishing that some semblance of it was real. Not unlike a nasty breakup where despite it being over you hope and try to hold on to any part of it that might have been real because it would hurt too much for it not to be. Jesus is fake, buddies. He just is. No amount of apologetics can change that.

What's the point of saying that there was a historical Jesus who was just a Jewish rabbi named Yeshua or maybe multiple rabbis named Yeshua but without any magical powers? How is that any different from claiming that there was a historical Spider-Man but he was just a guy or maybe multiple guys named Peter from New York who got hit by a spider but didn't gain any magical powers? The information for a non-magical Jesus or Spider-Man, is so general and simple that it could represent multiple people instead of one actual person who existed.

I think “mythicism” strictly applies to those who say the whole thing was just a religious fairy tale, manufactured. Most “mythicists” are not that hard line. However the idea jesus is a composite historical character, who’s actual life didn’t much resemble the gospels (some Judean rebel) is within the historical mainstream.

I think it’s great that the Son of God came down for 30+ yrs and all they recorded was a few hours of what he said. Great job past people.

do these same problems undergird Campbell's Hero's Journey?

Why not evaluate the Baysian prior probability of a biographic story of a god man having any figment of any historical truth, having been written for the first time when and where Mark appears to have been written?

seems like an extremely loose interpretation of the Raglan score for the living people. Not sure this is helping your hypothesis that the contemporary Jesus story is mostly myth because the real history of the person as told in the Septuagint is more than CHristians can swallow. npi

Does this theory account for the possibility that a real person who is revered in his/her lifetime is described in terms of mythological characteristics later on?

Thanks dor this deep dive into literary analysis, one of many ways to examine ANY part of reality. I take BIG picture overview approach. Add up 1 written record of original story, 2 corroboration of other sources and stories, 3 physical evidencees of 1 &2. 4 Check the scientific assumptions that analyze old articacts (errors creep on for MANY reasons like solar flares and radioactivity decay rates variability) 5 get accurate cosmology, 6 use people as sensors for experience that does not get covered by current measurements tech, such as Remote viewing, Out of Body experience and experiments, NDE which currently demands human narrative to amass current time frame stories, 6 throw in cultural interpretation and psychology and 7 draw lines connecting the whole existence together like a giat AI level PKM(Personal Knowledge Manager) and 8 Propose experiments to make life better or better understood. In my "spare time" I have observed that all the separate cultures of rhe world have unique angles.on our past, probably more aligned with Electric Universe or plasma universe combined with Shroud of Turin, Jesus and Krishna of Mahabharata and Monroe Insitute, Farsight RU-vid channel and personal experience that maahes everything together into a Star Trek Mr. Spock after movie 1 of "Fascinating!!!!". I know that I know nothing. Thanks again for the deep dive here. Keep exploring ❤

Is anyone else's comments being deleted? I've posted replies a couple of times but they keep disappearing. I don't think Derek is deleting them (there's nothing insulting or offensive in them) so it might be something with RU-vid. Don't know.

I remember mentioning in a comment that the name referred to mythicism and you were like “no, it’s cos we discuss myths and mythology around the world’. Kinda lame only now u choose to own it..

Well, one thing I know for sure is that you do not get pregnant from eating mandrakes. Mandrakes are an antispasmodic drug and pain killer. Also, I find it interesting that all of these dates that they gave you for these peoples ages all seem to coincide with Numerology. Just like the 17 years old, it equals 8, which is the number of manifestation.

Carrier and I don't exactly "get along," but I would never besmirch his research. When it comes to research, he's my fkn hero lol 🤣

Can we get a precise cut of this? I'm interested, but not 4,5 hours interested.

The community here leans towards mythicism, it appears... hahaha so do I; sorry Chrissy

Don't get me wrong, I"m very happy they are doing this. Its actually a long time coming. 10 years ago or so Carrier had his book published and as I see it, no one's given an adequate response. And to Derek's over-embellished point, there hasn't been a solid effort in the literature to establish Jesus' historicity. Maybe we have something here. But, I'm pretty skeptical after reading their papers and checking a few sources. just starting from teh top of their list in setting the prior, Agathocles of Syracuse: 4, 6-8, 9-11, 12-13, (14), 15-18, 20-21. 78 Score: 15-16 points. Sources: Diodorus of Sicily, Library of History 19-21; Justin, Epitome 22. Now look at the source. They claim Agathocles scores on point 4 (The circumstances of his conception are unusual) because it was said via an oracle to Alexander that his kindgom will have strong succession to calm Alexander's worries. No mention of Agathocles--who rose to prominence not as a leader in place of Alexander but as a guy rule tyrantly ran Syracuse. No mention of an unusual conception at all, nor circumstances of his conception. Not like Jesus' conception with it's unusual circumstance and method. But somehow they insist this is a score? They complain about a few of Carrier's points, but then do this? This is silly to me. They then go on to score #6 (Before he becomes ruler, an attempt is made to kill him, or there is a concern about it. for Agathocles, and their reference says "Agathocles’ father Carcinus exposed infant Agathocles because of the inauspicious oracle. His mother saved him and left him in the household of his uncle Heracleides, where he was raised until the age of seven". THa'ts not in Diodorus of Sicily, Library of History 19.2 at all, as they reference. If it is I challenge it. It's not there. I read it. Couldn't find it. Here's their quote: "Agathocles’ father Carcinus exposed infant Agathocles because of the inauspicious oracle. His mother saved him and left him in the household of his uncle Heracleides, where he was raised until the age of seven (Diodorus of Sicily 19.2)" note the reference. This would be a reference for point 7 as well, which they score: He is spirited away, saved from death or flees. No. their reference doesn't say that. But look again what they say about Heracleides. It's supposed to be Agathocles' uncle in their note. But when you find Heracleides in their reference - Diodorus of Sicily 19.2, you find Heracleides is a son of Agathocles. But no mention of an Heracleides being his uncle. Nor no story of his father exposing him due to the oracle,nor his mother hiding him away with is uncle. Agathocles was not to succeed Alexander, but was called the Tyrant of Syracuse--the guy who tried to run Syracuse, on Sicily, attacking and battling those from Lybia. They score for Agathocles point12 (He marries a queen or princess) and 13 (He becomes ruler or is hailed as ruler). They don't provide us with any reference to confirm these two. But I see nothing in any of hte materials that he married a queen or princess or even was hailed as a ruler. Indeed, "Twice he attempted to make himself sovereign of Syracuse; and twice he was driven into exile" - Justin, Epitome 22. They score him with; (15) He prescribes laws. (16) He loses favour with the gods or some of his subjects. (17) He is driven from the throne or a city, there is an intention to do so, or he leaves of his own accord. For reference to confirm these three scores: Agathocles was reportedly poisoned by Menon and by his own grandson Archagathus. Diodorus of Sicily (Library of History 20.101, 21.16) frames his death as a consequence of his impiety towards the gods. So...16? That's not all three scores. That's one score. There is no reference to prescribing laws, like Jesus' commands. I'd grant 17, but they failed to provide a good reference. Ok. They score him for: (20) His immediate successor is not his child. (21) His body is not buried or turns up missing. Fine. I won't dispute this, because he was burned alive, according to one source and his wife dutifully cried over him as he died of disease in another account. But still, they score him as 14-15 based on what seems to me some shoddy guesswork. I'd say he's closer to 5 or 6. I wonder how many more of their 33 will bring as much skepticism to me as this first one. I hate to based them all on my minimal investigation into one. But, I mean, it's at least curious. I guess the great dispute going forward is going to be over the prior probability and how we actually categorize Jesus and these other players.

The trouble with mythicists is the historical challenge in proving a negative -- which is usually a difficult thing to do. The key to winning a debate while taking such a stance is to place the onus on the historicists: prove that Jesus existed -- which is nearly impossible. After all, the Jesus story is so commonplace that it is nothing special: and anything *special* (such as the miraculous elements to the story) which gets presented as history becomes a case of special pleading. Why, then, aren't the miraculous stories surrounding the Buddha historical?

35:00 Jesus's mum and dad MIGHT HAVE BEEN ROYAL i.e. The King and Queen of Edessa... so, already, this data's not worth it. :(

Kamil is back, great! Invite him more, he is awesome! 🥳

There was probably “a guy” who did what?

I still think mythicism is a useful hypothesis. If we're ever going to find out anything about the historical Jesus, then we need to rule out as much myth as we can out of the whole story.

Also, has anyone tried a comparative analysis with other religious figures such as the Buddha and Mohammed?

We can all learn so much from civil debate. Half way through I’m still on my fence.

3:21:17 no. Carrier isn't dogmatic at all (except when it comes to China 🤪). I can definitely say I've "tested" him on this! 🤪

Apollonius of Tyana was the real historical Jesus in the time period discussed. Yeshu, the Jewish Messiah, was the Teacher of Righteousness, and lived 100-146 BCE, and had absolutely nothing to do with Jesus Christ who was both manufactured and mythical.

Thankful for work and the ways it helped me some amazing things about Christianity I never saw. I think I've realized that these texts are art in the medium of language. We need to look at overall ideas and values, and not literalism!

The James ossuary has been thought of as a forgery but as far as I know this has been retracted and it’s now considered genuine.

"Probably a guy" makes one a mythist An Apologist holds that based on evidence there is no other possible conclusion than there was a Jesus of Nazerthus. If you feel the evidence might support there was a Jesus; you redefine what a Jesus might be as "just some guy" that while unlikely there could be a Jesus ... then like Dr carrier (who holds there is a 1:3 chance) they are Mythists

After all this is over, we are still left with nothing more than there just may have been a guy, which is still no evidence to say it's so, dispute the evidence to the contrary.

great will they meet with Carrier

I don't have time to watch this, but I did read the paper. Nicely done, and thanks to all of you.

So the history of many individuals organisations and institutions that exist in his name and work to elevate , improve man's dignity and rights learnt from him is accidental and got nothing to do with his teachings .

1:15:47 you guys are using Aristotelian true/false logic. Carrier might not say this explicitly, but he seems to be using a more dialectic 2x2 "Hegelian" logic 🤷

You couldve and shouldve opened detailing this the _new research_ by summarizing its most cogent points. People have been adding figures to Raglans' scale since it was published. How does that support the historical claim? Dont know.

I'd like to hear what they have to say but four hours? Aint nobody got time for dat.

I'm an hour and half into this, from what i gather Rank-Raglan Hero scale was inconsistently applied by the originators, taken by Carrier and inconsistently applied, they took it and tried to consistently apply it and mythical and historical people now qualify. So it raises the prior probablity that Jesus existed. I find this debate just silly when it comes down to the "historical Jesus" is wholely irrelevant to the mythical jesus that developed afterwards.

The family, no one knew them? They never had spoken of their family tree or bloodlines to each other? Or they all died without offspring? Surely someone would have write about Jesus parents or siblings etc? We are more or less saying the family witness the rise of the religon founded on their relative amd never say anything about it including their own children. Alternatively they all dke somewhat unexpectedly and the memory of their bloodline dies with them. Any person who knew them also takes their secret to the grave

I haven't watched the video yet, I just read the description. Even if the myth is based on a real person, he didn't live in Palestine. That name was given to the land by Rome only after the Great Revolt, which took place about 40 years after Jesus' supposed crucifixion.

I believe one of the Jesus Christs from the beginning of the first century, like Judas or Galilee or Simon of Peraea was one of the major inspirations for the Jesus of the Gospels. They rebelled against the Romans and the Jews pinned their hopes on them to bring the Kingdom of god, but they were brutally killed and left to rot. The Jews in their crisis of faith, and thoughts of "why has God abandoned us"? Came up with the idea of the essence of the messiah resurrected in the spirit and winning the ultimate battle against evil by offering himself as a sacrifice. Josephus, the Gabriel stone and other sources support this theory.

Jesus of Nazareth was hung on a cross under a sign that read "King of the Jews" and was called "king of Israel" as he died. 40 years later Jerusalem would fall to a foreign army. Jesus son of Nun killed the king of Jerusalem and hung him on a tree 40 years after being rejected by the Israelites who wanted to stone him. The book of Acts 3 times says Jesus was hung on a tree, twice said by Peter and once said by Paul. Jesus of Nazareth was taken down at evening. Jesus son of Nun took the king of Jerusalem down at evening. Jesus of Nazareth was put in a tomb. Not a finely-chiseled-four-walled object like we see in modern days, but in reality a cave. Have you seen the tombs of the kings of Jerusalem? caves, really. Jesus son of Nun put the body of the king of Jerusalem in a cave. Jesus of Nazareth's tomb had a large stone rolled in front. Jesus son of Nun piled large rocks in front of the cave. Jesus's body disappeared. The pile of large rocks (and presumably the body of the king of Jerusalem) remain "to this day." Jesus of Nazareth is based on Jesus son of Nun (and Jesus son of Jehozadak, and Elishua, who's name means "el saves"). How can a new Jesus story by Mark, based on previous Jesus stories, represent the dealings of a real person named Jesus???

Did I hear right? Chrissy said they weren't a christian but believe in the Norse gods?

The most underwhelming part of this debate is where he comes to the conclusion that Jesus 99% chance existed, after immediately saying that those type of numbers are suspect. By Kamil’s logic the evidence supports the number; Carrier would believe his numbers are supported by evidence. Both are built on interpretive information.

4 hours is way too long. can you make an abridged version for us laymen? 4 hours is like my whole weekend

2:01:50 "This whole idea is bullshit" I'm glad Kam said it cause this has been tedious

God seems to have been around in antiquity then disappeared.

Dr Richard Carrier's face right now: 🥱

Jew lived and Jew died is an ordinary claim not requiring extraordinary evidence. Jew lived and was declared Messiah/ an emanation of God with decades/ century of his life& death requires extraordinary evidence to prove historicity.

After 3 hours, I'm ready for an intelligible summary. I'm curious, but I just can't anymore.