On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier - review

Over the past couple of weeks I listened to the audiobook version of Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt and thought I'd share my verdict.

This is something of a follow-up to Carrier's previous book Proving History and Carrier refers to this book a lot. From what I can tell, that book establishes Carrier's methodology for applying Bayesian probability to historical claims. However, Carrier repeats the key points here and I did not feel there was anything I couldn't follow from not having read the previous book.

Carrier starts the book with a sweeping criticism of much of the previous historical analysis of this subject, whether it be arguing for historicity or mythology. Much of it starts with a hypothesis and plucks evidence that supports it and explains away the evidence which does not. This results in several contrasting conclusions which seem convincing individually but quickly fall apart once contrasted with one another. Carrier instead proposes taking an absolutely minimal hypothesis for historicity (ie that a man existed at some period before the writing of the Gospels who was called at some stage Jesus) and a minimal hypothesis of mythicism (ie that a supposed spiritual figure was believed to have had a victory over death in outer space and that this myth was later redacted as pseudo-history) and looking at all the relevant evidence and seeing how well it matches what we would expect given historicity being true and then how well it matches given mysticism is true.

I had mixed feelings about the application of Bayes' theorem to ancient history since there's so little data to work with. In fact quite often Carrier will say things like "I cannot imagine this evidence has more than an 80% chance of being what we would find if historicity is true". But why not 85%? Or 75%? These numbers seem somewhat plucked from nothing. Still, as Carrier usually chooses numbers that lean towards historicity, one cannot accuse him of manipulating Bayes' theorem to serve the mythicist conclusion.

Carrier concentrates on two factors to calculate the likelihood of historicity and mythicism: the prior probability (ie without even looking at the evidence, what is the probability we would expect a figure like Jesus to be historical rather than mythical) and the consequent probability (ie does the evidence we have support historicity, mythicism or neither?). The segment that focuses on prior probability is full of interesting information on mythography and the beliefs of cultures of the time but I also found it pretty weak in its argumentation.

For instance, Carrier points out that Matthew's Jesus meets 20 of the 22 criteria of the Rank-Raglan mythological hero scale. He posits that anyone who fits 12 or more of these criteria has accrued a significant amount of myth about them. He then says although a few historical figures (like Mithridates of Pontus) reach this level, every mythical hero hits this level therefore statistically anyone who hits this level (especially reaching such a high score of 20) is more likely to be mythical than historical. I have a few problems with this. First, is that such a high score of 20 is unjustified. By my count, Matthew's Jesus only scores 13 out of 22, still significant but not to the extent Carrier argues. There are a few of these criteria beyond these 13 that are arguable but Carrier does not defend his application of most of these criteria and when he does defend one in arguing that Jesus could be said to be the son of a king because Joseph was a Davidic heir, this seems reaching - Joseph is not a king, certainly not in the way that say Oedipus' father was and its people like Oedipus to whom Carrier is comparing Jesus. My second problem is why use Matthew as opposed to Mark which Carrier posits as the earliest gospel? Carrier hand-waves by saying it doesn't really matter when these criteria were accrued but it did seem a bit convenient to pick the Gospel that fits the Rank-Raglan mythotype best to focus on. My counts for the other three Gospels are 9 for Mark, 10 for John and 12 for Luke though again some additional points are aguable. Thirdly, Carrier needs to look at what these mythical figures and those historical figures who scored highly on the scale have in common - they are supposed great leaders. Comparing Jesus to minor figures in history doesn't make sense because these figures will never score highly on the scale - not because they are historical, but because they are unimportant to their cultures. While as historical figures important to their cultures (like Mithridates) score very highly indeed. This argument is therefore heavily flawed.

As part of assessing the prior probability, Carrier also looks at the fashion at the time for Hellenic mystery cults which mixed non-Hellenic religions with Hellenic ideas and which invariably focussed on a dying and rising god. This section is fascinating and Carrier makes a compelling case but I had two problems. First, Carrier later argues that Galatians is evidence that early Christianity was Torah-observant and it took Paul and others time to defeat that idea. It strikes me as unlikely a Hellenic cult would be Torah-observant and it seems more plausible that Hellenization of Christianity came later or was initially only a minor influence, something as likely given historicity as mythicism. Second, the parallels between the mystery cults are not as strong as Carrier makes out. As Bart Ehrman later argued, Jesus and Osiris could both be arguably called dying and rising gods but their stories are so fundamentally different that you would only think them similar if you already had it in your head that they were. Also, in this section, Carrier talks briefly about how Jesus is similar to the hypothetical just man thought unjust of Plato's Republic and that both are vindicated for the same reason. This is one of the worst arguments in the book, relying on a questionable interpretation of Jesus' suffering and plain misrepresenting Plato.

On a stronger note, Carrier is able to demonstrate that a figure like the hypothetical minimal mythical Jesus already existed within Jewish thought. The name Jesus was long established with a saviour and the Ascension of Isaiah, in its earliest form, describes a fantastical version of Jesus' victory in the Gospels, only occurring in outer space and involving demons rather than the Sanhedrin and Romans. Most fascinating, was a comparison of Jesus to the figure of Melchizidek, a spiritual king and prototype of the Messiah, though Carrier's interpretation of him is somewhat contentious.

On perhaps the firmest ground on this section are Carrier's examples of modern myth creation - Ned Ludd for instance or the figures venerated by the cargo cults inspired a great deal of myth without ever existing so it is quite possible Jesus was the same. Although as Carrier points out, Haile Selassie inspired plenty of myth whilst being a historical figure so the jury is out whether these comparisons supports mythicism or historicity.

After making this not wholly successful attempt to argue a low prior probability for a historical Jesus, Carrier moves on to the consequent probability and here he is much more successful. First, he utterly destroys the argument that Josephus mentioned Jesus, there just can be no salvaging of this idea without a lot of cognitive bias. He also shows later Roman authors like Suetonius, Tacitus and Pliny the Younger seem pretty clueless about the origin of Christianity. Still, this is hardly damning.

The assessment of the Gospels is excellent. Unlike some mythicists, Carrier does not argue for a particularly late dating for them, going with the general consensus that Mark was written around the time of the Temple's destruction in 70CE with the other three Gospels following after. Carrier successfully pooh-poohs the common hypothesis of a Q source, arguing that Matthew's differences from Mark can be assumed to be his own invention and that Luke uses the same language as Matthew suggesting he was copying him directly. More contentiously, Carrier argues that John is not independent of the three synoptics and was a more creative interpretation of Luke, with elements of Mark and Matthew. Although I don't think Carrier has completely demonstrated this, I am inclined to agree.

As to the content of the Gospels, Carrier points out how much of it consists of redactions of Old Testament scripture and what new content there is, is heavily symbolic. They also can be seen to be structured in such a way that passages parallel one another and there are deliberate contrivances so Jesus can be more closely be seen to fit with what was expected of the Messiah. Most damning is that Jesus' own teachings are shown to be reworkings of Pauline ethics or Old Testament ethics - the Gospels don't actually have one original teaching. Carrier does not argue that the Gospels support mythicism, only that they cannot be taken to support historicism as so much is clearly literary construct and we cannot be sure the rest is any more reliable. Carrier does go off on a few tangents, such as saying Mark was trying to rewrite Homer's Odyssey to an extent hence setting events around the sea of Galilee. He also argues that the "Beloved Disciple" of John is Lazarus. Both of these are interesting conjectures but they don't matter overly to the historicity of Jesus.

Acts and Papias are largely dismissed as highly unlikely adventure stories, again neither supporting historicity or mythicism. Carrier points out that even Irenaeus thought Papias worthless historically due to Papias believing every tall tale he heard. As for Acts, Carrier points out how closely it mirrors the works of Homer and Virgil to the point where nothing it claims can be trusted.

The most compelling of Carrier's arguments are those regarding the Epistles. It seems bizarre that Paul never references Jesus' teachings when making his points. It seems bizarre neither he, not Clement, nor Peter, nor James ever allude to Jesus as a man at all as opposed to a celestial victor. Since these are the earliest evidence, this fits nicely with mythicism and very poorly with historicity. Carrier deals with all the usual defences raised here, such as that the facts of the historical Jesus were already well established, and does an excellent job. He suggests that Hebrews reveals what the original gospel of the celestial Jesus might have been, a fascinating idea. He also fairly successfully destroys the idea that there was much evidence of Jesus having a family, the allusions made by Paul being weak and they plain disappear after a cameo in Acts.

There are some weaker arguments in this section, such as the ridiculous idea that a historical Jesus should have inspired as many writings as Socrates did but on the whole Carrier makes a convincing case. The epistles just do not support historicity, there are no non-Christian records of a historical Jesus and the Christian "histories" are clearly heavily fabricated. While I do not think historicity is as unlikely as Carrier concludes, mainly due to the weakness of some of his arguments for a low prior probability, he has convinced me that mythicism is at least somewhat more likely than historicity. Still, whatever you make of his arguments, this is an endlessly fascinating book which deserves to be read however you stand on the issue.

A few points on the audio version - obviously this version lacks footnotes and a bibliography though Carrier is generally clear about where he's getting his analysis from. Carrier has a clear, energetic voice (though he sounds like he's about 12 years old!) and does a great job adapting his book to this medium.

4/5