I am continuing to respond to Peter Clarke’s summary of Richard Carrier’s case for the Jesus Myth from this article. The second argument is this:
Jesus only appears as a real person in texts that are highly mythological, i.e., the Gospels. This basically means we only have one book that talks about Jesus as a real person, which is the book of Mark. The other gospels were written after Mark by authors who embellished the story while clearly lifting significant portions directly from Mark. And Mark is written by an unknown author who cites no sources for his information. Notably, a lot of ancient mythical characters were also given elaborate biographies that placed them in history with parents, siblings, birth-places, etc. This includes characters like Moses, Romulus, and Dionysus. In contrast, figures in history who are known to be real people either did not begin as revelatory beings, or we have clear evidence of their historicity.
There are all kinds of problems with this but I will try to take them one by one. The problem is that they are highly “mythological.” What is meant by that is not clearly defined. I talk about the Gospels and myths here. Many accounts of other ancient figures do have “mythic” elements to them.
Then we are told that we only have once source for the historic Jesus and that is Mark. Even if we only had Mark, there would be good reasons to believe that Jesus existed. But this summary is wrong. I agree that it is likely that Mark was the earliest Gospel and that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. However, biblical scholars do not see this as evidence for only one source. Depending on if you believe in Q, in addition to Mark, there is Q (material in common between Matthew and Luke but not in Mark), as well as Matthew’s unique material and Luke’s unique material. Matthew and Luke’s use of Mark does not mean that they do not have their own valid traditions of Jesus to share.
Then there is the bizarre statement: “In contrast, figures in history who are known to be real people either did not begin as revelatory beings, or we have clear evidence of their historicity.” It is not at all clear that Jesus began as a revelatory being before being historical. In fact there are some Jesus Mythicists that acknowledge that there was a historical Jesus upon which the mythic elements were laid.
And “clear evidence of their historicity”? What is meant by that? There are plenty of ancient figures from history that we assume were real in which we have much less evidence for their historicity than Jesus. Nor is it defined what is exactly “clear evidence.”
