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I am sorry to be contrarian, but I do not think Richard Carrier represents the best scholarship today, and the mainstream scholarly view is in fact that Jesus w

I am sorry to be contrarian, but I do not think Richard Carrier represents the best scholarship today, and the mainstream scholarly view is in fact that Jesus was a real person. The theory of Jesus as myth is in fact considered a fringe theory without much scholarly support. Here is one piece of evidence for the existence of an actual historical Jesus: Paul claims to have confronted Peter in person in Galatians, which is one of the Pauline epistles considered to be genuine. This is solid evidence for Peter being a real person. Peter is supposed to have been one of Jesus's disciples. So how can we plausibly claim that early Christianity did not have a Jesus? This is the same level of evidence for many Greek philosophers being real people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Carrier#Reception_and_criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Carrier#Reception_and_...

moloch-hai 4y ago
There are methods to distinguish original text from later insertions and alterations. Paul is generally agreed to be a distinct author writing in the 60s, but with numerous later insertions and alterations, often by Eusebius (or possibly his teacher). For example, a rant in Thessalonians excoriating Jews for executing Jesus is transparently Eusebius, by several different lines of evidence. Somebody named Peter could easily exist and be written about without need for a physical Jesus. Lots of cults of the time "had" a Jesus/Yeshua. It was more or less required. Having a live Jesus, and that Jesus actually saying and doing what was very clearly made up decades later, are not the same. Wikipedia is notoriously unreliable about current scholarship, being heavily 'curated' by retired professors with nothing left to do but defend what they picked up in grad school against new information.

moloch-hai 4y ago

There are methods to distinguish original text from later insertions and alterations. Paul is generally agreed to be a distinct author writing in the 60s, but with numerous later insertions and alterations, often by Eusebius (or possibly his teacher). For example, a rant in Thessalonians excoriating Jews for executing Jesus is transparently Eusebius, by several different lines of evidence. Somebody named Peter could easily exist and be written about without need for a physical Jesus. Lots of cults of the time "had" a Jesus/Yeshua. It was more or less required. Having a live Jesus, and that Jesus actually saying and doing what was very clearly made up decades later, are not the same. Wikipedia is notoriously unreliable about current scholarship, being heavily 'curated' by retired professors with nothing left to do but defend what they picked up in grad school against new information.