I recently watched this video of Richard Carrier on the MythVision Pod. Richard Carrier is considered to be one of the top scholars in support of the Jesus Myth Theory.
The question he is responding to is the comparison of Jesus to other gods of myth. Apologists (rightfully) point out the close time between the historical setting of the Jesus story and how there is nothing similar for the pagan gods. That is actually a very good argument.
Carrier responds by suggesting that we do not know when the stories of Heracles or Bacchus began circulating and when they said to have lived. That is correct but not very helpful. We know when the first surviving texts were written and they are many centuries after the supposed events. In many cases, there is not even a historical setting for the god for us to date!
He then suggests that the date between the setting of Jesus and our first mentions are more than enough time for a a complete legend to develop. One of the problems we have with that is that there are numerous early traditions about Jesus and not just one. Plus, people were arguing for Jesus as a historical figure during the lifetime of people alive while Jesus lived.
Carrier points to supposed development in the resurrection story to show that the historical Jesus could be just created. It is not clear that the resurrection story of Jesus is being changed. There are no contradictions between the accounts. Just because Paul doesn’t mention the empty tomb but the Gospel writers do doesn’t demonstrate that an entire life of Jesus was created out of nothing.
I regularly find Richard Carrier to lack the basic common sense normally used by historians in reconstructing events and figures of the past.
