Why the Gospels are Myth | Richard Carrier

[Applause] Thanks hi so interesting thing someone asked about my tour this is my 11th stop on a tour of Canada doing 12 cities in Canada in 12 days Waterloo is my last stop tomorrow and then I returned home so it's been really excellent I had a really great time and I've driven the whole way so all the way from Vancouver to here across all the beautiful country of West Ontario and BC and everything so yeah I've been having a great time good turnouts everywhere great people I really like Canada so I'm definitely going to come back and do another Drive tour and spend even more days in each city or at least some of the cities as much as I can do I'll give you a bit of a warning my allergy so on the truck on the course of this path of driving across the country especially with the wired wildfires in the West my allergies have been acting up so this so today they really attacked me and so I took some meds and then we noticed that they're the wrong ones are the sleepy drowsy meds and not the animated meds so I'm struggling to be animated no it's actually easy because once I start speaking I get excited by my subject so it shouldn't be a problem but if I seem kind of weird that's why it's it's the drugs anyway so here I'm gonna talk about why the Gospels are fiction now I use in formal parlance we say myth it really just means fiction not true it's made-up stuff now one of the things we know about how we figure this out for other books in the ancient world is we have a variety of tests that we apply to ancient documents I talked about these in my book proving history the smell test is does it smell which this is the colloquial way of putting it formally is does it just the story looks really suspiciously weird too much weird stuff happens in it it just doesn't look like a factual history and that's not a very formal way to look at it but that is one thing that historians actually do they'll look at a text and say no this doesn't this doesn't look like real things are happening another one of course related to that is the formal criterion of natural probability which is that does that actually happen in the real world and you're looking at a story and you know Jesus kills two thousand pigs with a magic spell then you say well that doesn't happen in the real world alig use a real example later oh by the way the killing the pigs is true he casts demons into two thousand pigs and they all run and drown so Jesus killed two thousand pigs anyway doesn't happen in nature doesn't happen the real world so it probably didn't happen notwithstanding Christian apologists insisting that we should give an exception to the Gospels no we're gonna treat them the same way we treat all other ancient texts if someone Julius Caesar were to cast demons into two thousand pigs they ran in the sea and drowned we would assume that story was fiction and another one is that turns around on its head a lot the times that you hear from Christian apologists is the criterion of vivid narration they'll say oh this looks so vividly narrated it sounds like they're almost there it must be an eyewitness account actually historians of antiquity when we see vivid narration that's usually a telltale sign that's being made up when you're looking at like sober histories they just report facts this is what was written down this is what was recorded as having happened you don't get this detailed vivid narrative of what's going on we have many examples of battles being depicted where generals are having you know conversations in the midst of battle like Alexander the Great for example we know that didn't happen but when you have these little particular vivid details these are things we knew in the ancient world that authors added to add color to the story it wasn't necessarily eyewitness detail and another thing we apply our emulation criteria when we see one story looks an awful lot like another story we've heard before it told about someone else that's usually a good sign that it's made up as well and I'll be talking about some examples as we go along the Gospels in general don't look like histories even if you compare them to other histories of the ancient world they don't have these features that even ancient histories have I mean modern history is of course much more reliable much more detailed having much more careful methodologies in the ancient world it was much more fast and loose and we don't entirely trust all the ancient historians either we don't think everything they wrote is true but the Gospels were particularly bad at this the Gospels don't name their sources usually ancient historia named their sources or they they don't discuss their relative merits either we have examples of ancient historians who not only mentioned who their sources are they have to like a little bit of discussion over which ones they trust more than others and why and explain why they're relying on these sources that so ancient history's not all of them did this but a lot of them did this it was more of a typical characteristic of history the Gospels don't do that you just rush in and tell stories you have no idea who is telling the story where it comes from who's the witness or whatever the Gospels also exhibit no historiographical consciousness in other words they never discuss methods like how did I figure out this was true how did i use the sources in what critical stance did i take and so on they never mentioned the possibility of information being incorrect or the existence of alternative accounts as like one exception where you have the story where supposedly the jews made up the story that the christians stole the body but even that is not portrayed in the same way that alternative accounts will be portrayed in ancient histories it's just told as a story it's part of the story whereas in ancient historians if they were to tell a story that had something kind of wild and strange and that they would like admit this sounds wild and strange but hey that's what my source said so you would get that kind of consciousness i've method in what they're dealing with no the gospels just tell wild tales as if there's nothing to doubt about them as if this happens every day the gospels don't even express any skepticism or amazement at anything they report no matter how incredible it is unlike rational historians of the ancient world like i just mentioned there are also markers of myth when you're looking at a story that's been made up in the ancient world particularly if it's a religious text or a text that is meant to convey something to you so it is supposed to convince you of something or teach you something they have many markers that usually are telltale one of which is meaningful emulation of prior myths meaning if you see a story and Jesus is being portrayed just like Elijah or just like Moses it's the same stories have been updated what they're doing is the same thing that Westside fiction does for Romeo and Juliet where they're taking the same story and they're updating it no one would mistake Romeo and Juliet for being anything other than an emulation and a riff on a fictional text another marker of myth of course is that historical improbabilities are frequent and central to the story no this is different from ancient histories which will mention occasion improbable events but they won't be frequent frequent and they won't be central to the story in fact they will be peculiar and the author will often remark on that fact so what I mean by that is not just miracles all the miracles are an example of an improbable feature but just strange things keep happening incredible coincidences unrealistic behaviors it's not just miracles we're looking at really people not behaving the way that people would behave in the real world we're looking at really unlikely coincidence coincidences of events and things like that and then another marker is there's no external corroboration of central characters or events myths often would include like fan fiction or any kind of historical fiction they often incorporate genuine historical details but they're usually background their character their people that the main character interacts with but the central characters are events we won't find evidence outside the myth usually they corroborate them so when you see these three things especially we see all three of them mashed together in one text that's usually a dead giveaway that we're looking at fiction fiction being posed as history but being posed to teach you something which we call in the ancient context myth so let's go to the we'll go backwards in that order we'll talk about the no corroboration part of the Gospels the life of Jesus you know we have corroboration theoretically for his death but not for his life in fact there are no other sources that attest the events of the Gospels during a life of Jesus except forged documents and revelations even the Eucharist story the so-called Gethsemane prayer we have examples of those in the epistles but they don't match up with the Gospels and they seem to be based on either scriptural sources or personal revelations like I saw this like Jesus came to me and showed me this thing so you don't really actually have corroboration even in the epistles which occurred in that we're written in the 50s ad decades before the Gospels you don't see corroboration for the life of Jesus you don't see anything about his no evidence of his ministry no evidence of his miracles healing exorcism parables none of that are in the epistles of Paul he never mentions them the crucifixion and burial are only vaguely attested in the epistles they don't mention who actually did the deed and in fact the source that's cited for those details is scripture it says according to Scripture we know these things doesn't mention anyone actually being there and seeing them all other sources outside the Gospels just repeat what the Gospels say or what other people were saying the Gospels said so there's no there's no external corroboration beyond the Gospels for the life of Jesus or many of the central events that occur in it so that's one part of it so that's not decisive like that it's possible that that could still be history it's just a it's a red flag we'll put it that way let's go up the list let's go to filled with the improbable this is kind of like the big red flag for myth there are lots of gospel and probabilities you might not have even thought about some of them one of them is that Jesus walks out of the desert from nowhere isn't it the you know Peter and John and Andrew you don't know these don't know this guy from Adam he walks up to them and in 5-minute conversation he says follow me I'll make you fishers of men and immediately the band and their jobs and family and follow this guy that's not realistic that doesn't happen in history so we know that's really an improbable story that's that's exactly the kind of thing we're talking about that's myth that's a mythic thing to have happened the disciples being dumber than a bag of hammers is another example of this where in the Gospel of Mark Jesus miraculously you know feeds thousands of people from just like a basque one basket of food and they witness this and they're like amazed wow he was like he could do this amazing thing you could feed thousands of people from a basket of food and then a week later there's thousands of people in need to feed they're like [ __ ] how are we gonna feed all these people this is a big problem and then of course Jesus does the same thing you know remember that spell I cast on this we're gonna do that again no they don't they forget they got the disciples do not act like regular human beings they also remain consistently stupid and ignorant throughout the entire Ministry of Jesus is like wandering around with this guy following him for a year so that mind you the Gospels just so just show minor episodes is singular events but these guys are hanging out with Jesus for hours and hours and hours days and days and days for weeks and weeks and weeks or months and months and months and by the end of the gospel they have no more knowledge or understanding of anything he was preaching than they do when they first met him as if none of the as if there was no hanging out with Jesus asking questions like what did you mean by that thing and having like hours long conversations about it and having that conversation for days and weeks no there's no sign of any of that interaction going on the Gospels appear to be written as if like a play each scene takes place exactly after the last one ended as if there's no hours and days in between what happened the fact that the Jews needed Judas to identify Jesus as a part of the story that doesn't make any sense he's preaching publicly in the temple he publicly overturns the tables which by the way is a criminal offence and you know they probably would have killed this guy for doing it in fact I'm gonna get to that later but so he does this and they don't arrest him then but then suddenly Wow we got a fight we got to find somebody paid to point out who Jesus is and where he is that doesn't make any sense they would arrest him when he's public they would arrest him when they they know what he looked like they wouldn't need Judas the whole Judas story doesn't make any sense least of all because the amount of money they paid Judas thirty pieces of silver was just one want one month's wages for a minimum wage so imagine being you know being the betrayer and all they give you is like you know a few thousand dollars this doesn't even make any sense in terms of ancient history another example is that in the Gospels all of them they have they show the Jews holding an illegal trial and execution on a holy day that was actually forbidden not only were you not allowed to hold trials at night but you weren't allowed to hold trials on a holy day nor were you allowed to hold a capital trial that started the night before a holy day because you were mandated by law Jewish law for a capital trial lasts two days so the judges could rest and think you know sleep on it before they actually condemned someone to death there many other aspects of the trial that's depicted in the Gospels that are completely fictional do not line up with the way actual trials were conducted in Judea and then of course there are obvious ones you know Jesus flies through the air with the devil that's kind of a giveaway he's fed by angels and magical animals these things actually happen in there that does not happen in history that's that's dead on marker for myth and then you have the usual ones that you know the nativity stories with the wandering star and then angels talking down from heaven to the Shepherd's all kinds of miracle tales the horde of undead I don't know if you remember in Gospel of Matthew after Jesus dies all the tombs open and a horde of undead descend on Jerusalem and and they're seen by many that's me I mean come on we if we read that in any other texture you say well that did not actually happen others are of course I'm going to talk about this particular one more later but the Jesus withers a fig tree for not bearing FIGS quote even though it was not the season for figs end quote people can't magically wither fig trees so that's already a dead giveaway that's not something someone remembered happening that is not a memory that's not war that's something someone made up but also even if you had that power to like curse fig trees and wither them for their very roots you wouldn't do it to a tree for no reason like it's for not burying figs out of seasons like that's the dumbest things ever to do it doesn't make sense as history but I'll get into that more so what's really going on in that story and why that's a marker for myth I'd mentioned before Jesus clearing a Temple Square by the way the Temple Square he clears was such a huge Bazaar that it was actually over a dozen acres filled with hundreds of people and an armed battalion on station specifically to prevent that very thing and yet none of that as present Jesus can himself knock over the tables over twelve acres worth of mercantile activity and the guards don't lift a finger even though there's tons of armed guards and there's actually a plaque on the outside that says you know if you disrupt things we get to kill you we have to actually have a piece of that plaque by the way so so that's the that's a clear example of that's myth that's not something that happened in history and then of course you know the Jews know to guard the tomb in Matthew but not in Mark Luke or John as if the those guys don't even know about the fact that the Jews knew to guard the tomb and put a guard there that information is lost only one gospel does that which is another example of you know kind of embellishing the story adding something on that's not present elsewhere and that's mind you Matthew has the guards on the tomb has the Jews not only know to put a guard on the tomb but they actually put a guard on the tomb and then a monster descends from outer space and paralyzes them magically that's not a story you forget so there's nobody like mark or Luke or John are going to leave that out as if I mean unless they decided out of that stories that can't possibly be true I'm not leaving that out but these are markers from it these are the kind of thing that happens in mythical stories and these improbable ZAR not occasional or incidental but they're frequent and central every chapter is filled with them even in the Gospel of Mark so that's the improbabilities part of it that's another big marker that the Gospels are the logical the Gospels are fictional the last one going up that list is emulating other myths now of course it's long been known mainstream scholars tons of peer-reviewed literature of a bet if established this then a lot of the stories about Jesus are really stories about Moses that have been updated just again like West Side Story to Romeo and Juliet Jesus is the new Moses so they they didn't like the old story so they rewrote the stories put Jesus in them in modern times instead of in ancient times and being Moses and then retold the story and changed things up to sort of communicate how their stories differ from the Moses stories what their values are how their values differ how their message differs I'll give you one example of this from the peer-reviewed literature are the ten miracles of Jesus he does two pairs of five miracles and some scholars have said they keep repeating like there's doublets like there's keeps doing the same thing over and over again maybe mark took two sources and stuck them together uncritically and then double the number of miracles even though there were two separate sets of miracles no actually when you look at the two sets of five they overlap in important ways that show that mark absolutely knew he was putting both sets in there this is a Decalogue it's the Ten Commandments written reified in the terms of Jesus miracles and they're paired up in two pairs of five pairs of two and what you get in in comparing these both of them have mastery over the waters right you have you know Moses commands the sea or commands of the commands the Red Sea and parts the waters and walks across it Jesus does the same thing not quite exactly the same thing he stills the storm so he has control over the waters and he walks on it literally this time so he's even more impressive than Moses Moses had to move the water out of way out of the way and walk on land because apparently if you have the power to part entire seas you don't have the power to walk on the sea for some reason but but Jesus actually walks on the sea so these are emulations it's an example of how they're retelling a story of Moses they're changing it up he's not doing exactly the same thing as Moses nothing exactly the same story but they're conveying the same powers the same principles they're comparing Jesus to Moses by showing the miracles he can do that that emulate Moses they're at their exorcism there's a pair of exorcisms in the Gospels Jesus exercises a Gentile man the garrison demoniac that's that's the one where the pigs died and then he exercises a Gentile woman notice Gentile man Gentile woman these are pairs it's designed to look like that and notice the mystery or the mastery of the waters stealing the storm walking on it both of those together make the Moses miracle so mark knows he's splitting the Moses miracle into two and making a pair and here he has the exercising a Gentile man exercising a Gentile woman he knows it's a pair he's having both genders represented and the Gentile woman is the syrophoenician woman and I'll show in a moment how that relates to Moses then of course he does another gender switch he cures an older woman who had basically she's on her period on non-stop for 12 years if you can imagine also probably not true but also there's a scene where he cures a deaf man with his spit literally Jesus spits on him and cures the Deaf the deaf mute and then there's another another pair where you have curing a younger woman gyruss his daughter and curing a blind man with spit so now we have curing a deaf man with spit clear at curing a blind man with spit and then there's two miraculous feedings right so there's the feeding of the 5,000 the feeding of the 4,000 remember the one that the dumber than the bag and hammers disciples forgot about but anyway notice again Moses did both the water mastery things also first in the same order Moses also defeated the forces of evil he uses miraculous powers to defeat the Amalekites who are actually syrophoenician 'he's so that's why it's a syrophoenician woman it's a reference to the same people and the garrison demoniac is called when the demons are cast into the pigs it's called a legion meaning an army so as here's Jesus defeating an army the same way Moses did instead of an actual army it's this army of demons hiding inside this guy that Jesus asked for some reason cast into pigs to kill them I don't understand why he needed to kill 2,000 pigs for this but you know whatever so the demons are like said are described as soldiers a syrophoenician is in northern Canaanite just like the Amalekites these are clues this is how we're taking pieces of Moses story rewriting them and attributing them to Jesus making Jesus do different things but similar points Jesus or Moses also cured diseases he used the sky tree where some he summoned a magical tree out of the sky and it fell into a river and then our fill into a pool and then people drank the pool and were cured so we have the woman with the hemorrhage he cures we have a flow of blood and we have the deaf-mute who when Jesus spits on him so he's using water to to cure it that he only half cures it because Jesus apparently is not that great but he half cures the guy and he says I see people they look like trees walking about and then Jesus you know the rock okay I got a recast a spell try this again and he does then he's fully seeing but the reference to trees is this reference to the sky tree that Moses used to heal yeah so of course Moses also miraculously fed thousands with manna right he summoned manna from heaven so Jesus is doing a similar thing but like Moses Jesus's miraculous feedings also take place in the wilderness they involve quote/unquote gathering up the food everyone is fed and they end up with more than they start with so it's the same story just being updated and told differently and with Jesus is the main character Moses also by the way caused water of life to flow from the rocks that also is another one of the the flowing water miracles similar to that another example when he when Jesus goes to cure to raise from the dead gyruss his daughter the younger woman Jesus takes it only his top three disciples with him into the bedchamber just as Moses took only three elders with him to strike the rock and caused the flow of water and just as the Jews were perishing and worried about dying mark has a woman perishing and a girl who died so there's they're either taking the same ideas and revamping them in different ways to create new fiction for their uses and notice in Moses a story with the tree the magic sky tree the tree goes in the water and the Jesus case it goes on the disease and then the gospel says if you will diligently hear the voice of the Lord your God and will to do or this is exodus sorry in exodus for the moses miracle occurs the sky tree message is if you will diligently hear the voice of the Lord your God and will do what is pleasing in his sight and will of ear to his Commandments then God will heal you Exodus 15 21 notice therefore jesus heals eyes ears and voice all lining up with them but the same Exodus message conversely the first sequence of those miracles tracks the water from rock narrative the three disciples and so on so mark knows he is doubling the miracle stories to make two sets of ten again this is another example of that just as with his to water power miracles and this is his Decalogue of faith the ten miracles of Jesus Jesus wasn't just emulating Moses so when they're writing stories about Jesus they borrowed stories from Elijah and Elisha in the Kings narrative of the Old Testament many scholars have pointed this out this is a mainstream view there are lots of examples thomas brodie has analyzed tons Luke is the most egregious use of this tactic where Luke is reversing transforming or playing on or adapting these Elijah Elisha stories but telling them about Jesus and updating him to the modern time changing the message a little bit and so on here's an example in 1 Kings 17 we're comparing with Luke 7 they use similar phrases is to open the story it happened after this in Luke that's in the kings and Luke it's it happened afterwards in Kings it's all at the gate of Sarepta Elijah meets a widow in Luke at the gate of nain Jesus meets a widow in Kings another's widow's son another widows son was dead in Luke it's this widows son was dead in Kings that widow expresses a sense of her unworthiness on account of sin in Luke a Centurion had just expressed a sense of his unworthiness on account of sin in King's Elisha compassionately bears her son up the stairs and asks the Lord why he was allowed to die in Luke the Lord commands the boy to rise so we have a reversal of the message and the boy comes to life and cries out in Kings and in Luke says literally and he who was dead set up and began to speak and then finally the stories end with the exact same line identical to the Greek word for word and he gave him to his mother so that same exact phrases in both that's a dead giveaway of borrowing and then in the King story the widow recognizes Elijah as a man of God and that quote/unquote the word he speaks is the truth in Luke the people recognized Jesus a great prophet of God and the word of this truth spreads everywhere specifically says in the story so this is how they're emulating the stories they're updating and revamping them so that's an example of emulation but let's go into more detail into what they're doing and why they're doing this mythic structure I call it the original Lord of the Rings because I'm talking about ring structure if anybody knows literary theory you might know about ring structure they're various variety of different types of ring structure chiasmus inclusio and so on but it's basically is telling a story that's like an onion one story wraps around another story and this method is only used in real histories or biographies when they're non chronological what toniest does ring structure for his biographies but they're not chronological they're their conceptual lists of things and the reason ring structure isn't use for real histories is that of course history doesn't work out that conveniently only myths do that which is you know surprised why we think these are myths ok that seems to be all right so here's an example mark and sandwhiches remember that that woman who had a period for 12 years that story when jesus meets that woman is wrapped around another story where he resurrects a girl of 12 so we have a girl who's been alive for 12 years old where she's not yet having her period and we have an older woman who's been having her period for 12 years these stories are wrapped around each other that's a dead giveaway for mythic structure and these we can look at this as allegory the old woman who's been hemorrhaging and suffering for 12 years as the old Israel the woman who's resurrected the girl who's resurrected and she's the young one she's only 12 years old she's the new Israel you know the 12 tribes being the parallel to the 12 years and then remember that Jesus and the fig tree thing it's the same thing that fig tree where he curses the fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season is wrapped around Jesus clearing the temple and that is significant because of this so you might want to wonder why would someone make up a story like that why would mark specifically say that it wasn't even the the season for figs and the way mark writes it is Jesus is walking along Jesus is hungry and he sees a fig tree in the distance but it was not the season for figs so it mark says that and like Jesus knows it's not the season for figs but he walks up to it anyway is if expecting there to be fruit there for no reason he gets angry there's no fruit there and he curses the tree and says may you never bear fruit again and then the next day they come back and the tree is withered to its very roots now the next day remember what happens in between Jesus goes into the temple and condemns the corruption of the temple cult and turns over the tables and so on obviously a fictional story you know people can't wear their fig trees nor would any real person cure one or curse one for not bearing figs out of season but what we do know from peer-reviewed literature there's people who've done literary analysis as mainstream view the entire story is an allegory for God's abandonment of the temple the fig tree represents the temple cult the anxious ancient Jewish religion was fundamentally based on Temple Atonement rituals every year you End underwent an atonement ritual and that cleansed us all the people of Israel of their sins it was weak magic because you're using animals and animals or weaker mojo animal blood is weaker mojo than human blood so it only lasts a year the spell duration is one year so you have to keep repeating it year after year but what happened of course at before mark wrote his gospel as the Romans came and destroyed the temple and ended the temple cult so this is a huge existential crisis for the Jewish people at the time and it left a big question like why would God allow jeavons to come in and destroy his own temple and end his own cult well mark is telling a story through this miracle story of the wit of the fig tree that's basically the message of which is God decided it is no longer the season for that instrument there's no longer the time for that thing anymore to bear fruit so it will no longer bear fruit anymore so the fig tree is the temple cult so when Jesus curses that he's representing the action of Jehovah or Yahweh in cursing the fig tree and cursing the temple and getting it out of the place and then of course Jesus immediately after the pretty is seen cursed and withered he explains well now what you do is you pray and you get things for prayer and stuff and you don't need the temple cult anymore but the thing is is this is wrapped around the temple story of him clearing the temple so first he goes up to this weird story where he sees this thing it's no longer the season for figs but he curses it it says maybe no longer bear fruit again and then immediately he goes and clears the temple and condemns the corruption of the temple cult and then they walk out and they find the wig fig tree is wither and he says see now do you understand so this is the the whole message here it's the it's it's a story about the temple it's allegory it's not meant to be taken literally and of course obviously couldn't be literally we can see parallels also between the baptism and crucifixion in John John the Baptist in the beginning of Mark cries out with a loud voice Jesus at his death the crucifixion cries out with a loud voice John in the John story an allusion is made to Elijah in the crucifixion story and allusion is made to Elijah in the John case the heavens are torn literally schizo the heavens are torn apart and at the death of Jesus the temple curtain is torn apart skid so the same word and the temple curtain was the symbol of the barrier between heaven and earth so we have both stories showing this and in fact we know that that temple curtain was a gigantic 80-foot tall curtain on which was depicted the heavens so when Mark is talking about that he's talking about the heavens ripping asunder exactly the same thing he says it happens when Jesus is baptized by John the actual heavens renderer are torn asunder so we're having these parallels here to actually symbolize things in in the John the baptism scene of course the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus the pneuma the spirit descended on him it says at the crucifixion the Holy Spirit departs from Jesus he exhaled the pneuma it actually says that literally so he exhaled the spirit and in the John the Baptist scene God calls Jesus his son literally after he tears the heavens apart and says you are now my son in the end the Centurion a Roman official the Romans declared Jesus God's Son so we have this parallel here being made so the stories are meant to line up and and and make you think about what the message of the gospel is these are not memories this is not a memoir now here's another example when you talk about the cyclic and structural complex ring structure of the Gospels now this is interesting there's a whole whole sequence where Jesus from from mark 4 all the way to mark 8 where Jesus does of this does a constant wandering around for some reason and then does all of these events and things happen but if you compare all of the things that happen and this these are the things that include those 10 articles I was talking about but if you look at the structure it has a really peculiar structure the kind of thing that does not happen in the real world in there's three cycles you see in cycle one Jesus is described as with crowds by the sea then there's an eventful crossing of the sea then there's a landing with healings and exorcisms in cycle 2 suddenly Jesus is again with crowds by the sea there's an eventful crossing of the sea Landing with healings and exorcism in cycle 3 Jesus is suddenly with crowds by the sea again there's an eventful crossing of the sea again and there's landing with healings and exorcisms again so you see it's the same sequence three times and in between you have these intervals where you have a first stop second stop and then Jesus goes around it says he circled the towns and then you see the same thing reversed in the second interval Jesus is going around the towns then there's a first stop in a second stop now that's only a part of it when we start looking at it each phase when you look at each cycle has three phases three things that happen each phase one is during the day each phase two is during the evening each phase three is the next day notice what we got here we have all of this [ __ ] that happens happens in three days what also happens in three days Jesus is in the grave for three days it's the resurrection is on the third day so this is all symbolic for the actual message of the gospel they're doing all of this crazy amount of stuff is happening in three days there's highly improbable but all to build up this kind of model now if you look at the intervals you have similar parallels the first each step one starts in a house with women and children each step two features disciples and authorities each step three inverts the other in one they're as amazed family disbelieves in another amazed foreigners believe so you have the family who should be believers are the disbelievers and you have the foreigners it should be the disbelievers are the believers this kind of irony is fundamental throughout mark so every scene in this whole sequence contrasts human expectations with spiritual realities and the faith of outsiders versus the faithlessness of insiders it's the same message told multiple times in this three-day triadic structure that is really classical myth mythical fictional writing this is exactly the kind of thing that does not happen in history but it is exactly the kind of thing that happens when you're constructing a story to have a symbolic meaning here's another example of that this is the entire gospel of matthew is a chiasmus meaning chiasma says you have a b c c d a so you have our c ba so you have one sequence events and then it's all reversed and each one parallel is like a loop that's a whole like an onion literally like an onion so look at this here's the structure it begins with the genealogy a summary of past times it ends with a commission that includes a summary of future times in the beginning mary and an angel arrives and the birth of jesus in the end you have mary and angel arrives on the resurrection of jesus then you have gifts of wealth at his birth and attempt to thwart that birth parallel to that you have a gift of wealth at his death joseph of arimathea and an attempt to thwart the resurrection the guards that matthew puts on the tomb the next onion layer down is jesus' flight to Egypt as a child there's a woe to the children and the Prophet Jeremiah laments the end of the first temple you look at the onion back up you have Jesus is marching to Jerusalem another whoa to the children and Jesus predicts the end of the Second Temple so you see these parallels are built up in here then you have Judea is avoided specifically mark says Jesus avoids Judea but you look at the onion on the other side Judea and Jesus enters Judea you look at the other one now we're at letter F here there's the baptism of Jesus and then when we get to the corresponding and there's the Transfiguration of Jesus so these you notice now suddenly those two things are in parallel you have Jesus crossing the sea twice at liturgy and then notice you look in the same place at the end of the gospel and look at the onion guess what he's crossing the sea twice so you have the exact same thing happening in the onion structure you have John's ministry is described John the Baptist is described the parallel passage John's death is described and that's highly unlikely this is clearly that matthew is constructing his gospel to have this structure where it rings in like this in early section there's a rejection of Jesus you look at the matching section there's a rejection of Jesus again parallel parallel you have the secrets are revealed through Jesus and then you have secrets revealed through Jesus parallels again you have the attack of the Pharisees parallel to the condemnation of the Pharisees and in the middle of all of this the one thing that doesn't have a parallel where everything else is ringed around it the center of the gospel and therefore the center of the message is that the Pharisees determined to kill God's servant so it's the entire structure of Matthew is clearly mythical is clearly set in the order to make to be fiction and to have this onion structure in it notice there's another pre feature this in the beginning you know the phrase they shall call his name Emmanuel which means God is with us and you always wonder like well they never call him Matt Emmanuel so what what on earth was that prophecy about well guess what in the Greek Jesus actually says I am with you always so he actually calls himself a manual covertly at the end of the gospel so those things match up and explain what kinds of things you're told he's gonna be called Emmanuel which means God is with us then Jesus explains at the end oh that means I will be representing God and I will be with you always if we look just at the not only does Matthew have his entire gospel in an onion ring structure the crucifixion is also his story crucifixion narrative is also in an onion rings ring structure so we start with Passover and the crucifixion we end with Passover in the crucifer reference to Passover in the crucifixion we start with priests plotting we end with priests plotting priests plotting to kill Jesus then on the other side priests plotting to prevent the resurrection or guard the tomb at the front end you have Jesus anointed to burial anointed for burial at the other end Jesus is buried and that's particularly weird because to have someone anointed for burial days before they're actually even dead is super weird and it's not something would happen in history but Matthew had to get the ring structure right so he puts it in there you have the preparation where you have Judas is enlisted and the Passover is prepared you look at the parallel end on the other side the results of all that Jesus's lordship has confirmed and the least are faithful then you get Jesus or Judas is exposed and on the corresponding in the temple is exposed you have the Lord's Supper a mock death is inaugurated and then on the parallel side the crucifixion and actual death so the Eucharist and the crucifixion are now being paralleled you have on section G Nazarite vow is made on the corresponding in a Nazarite vow is fulfilled and then you have removal to all Yvette's and Section H and on the other side you have removal to Golgotha so he's like constantly walking to hills at the right time just within this ring structure you have the abandonment and then there's a corresponding Rumaki that goes on the other side you have Jesus asked God not to be released from his fate and then Pilate does not release Jesus you have Judas betrays Jesus and then you have Judas hangs himself you have the trial before the Sanhedrin then you have the Sanhedrin delivers Jesus to Pilate for a Roman trial so you have a Jewish trial and a Roman trial and know it in what is right in the middle of this whole structure the one thing that isn't parallel but everything is ringed around it is the denial of Peter so this whole crucifixion narrative is about showing this single idea of denying Christ and the consequences of it you better not do that or you should you should do what Peter did eventually which has not told him this version of the myth but just repent eventually another example of this and I won't go into full detail on this one is the Sermon on the Mount and again this is mainstream peer-reviewed literature everyone thinks the Sermon on the Mount that's the most beautiful thing that's surely the one thing Jesus taught right actually no it's pretty much the mainstream consensus that the Sermon on the Mount was never spoken by Jesus in fact it was composed in Greek using the Greek Septuagint the Greek translation of the Old Testament as its foundation text and it was written by someone who was already aware that the temple cult was no longer operating because it never mentions what to do about the temple cult and scholars have pointed that out also it has a very elaborate structure which would make it impossible for it to be a memory remember in the way that it's structured the structure actually looks like the kind of thing has to be literally constructed another example in Luke you know that boy Jesus seen where Jesus is 12 goes in the temple and Wow's everybody with his knowledge that whole story emulates the Emmaus narrative in Luke and mas narrative when Jesus dies his disciples are like sad and they're going to the nearest town mas and then they meet this stranger and they realize oh this stranger must be Jesus and so there's this whole sort of storyline going on these two stories are in parallel both take place after the one day after the Passover both involve a couple departing [ __ ] Jerusalem both find that Jesus is not with them his parents when they left Jerusalem find the Jesus isn't with them and the the people who the the couple that are going to mes think Jesus is not with them because they meet the stranger they think he's dead in the boy Jesus version his parents are just wrought that Jesus is not with them in the other story the disciples of because of Jesus was dead also mentions that they were distraught that Jesus was not with them in the parents story in the earlier story there the parents quickly returned to Jerusalem as soon as they realize he is absence the Jesus absent in the envious narrative the disciples quickly return to Jerusalem as soon as they realize he is present because that's the moment they realize oh this was Jesus we gotta go tell everybody so there's the same parallel structure here some things are being reversed some things are being identical in both stories it says they find Jesus after three days are on the third day in both stories Jesus asks them why are you looking for me in the case of his parents and then the other one it says what are you talking about so he's asking a question in both places in both places Jesus amazes them with knowledge of Scripture and then they both have the exact same line or the exact same word the exact same verb is used where you starting with it's necessary for me to be among the things if my father and then in the last section it says it's necessary for the Messiah to suffer these things as parallels all the way up and down the course of this both stories feature people not understanding what has happened both feature a disappearance of Jesus both climax on the third day and both suddenly appear for the first time in Luke despite being far too remarkable for any previous gospel to omit that's a dead giveaway that Luke fabricated these stories to make a point now we can do the same thing with John again looking at peer-reviewed literature where we get this John positions his first miracle at Cana which by the way no other gospel knows about the miracle kingdom but suddenly John suddenly knows about this amazing miracle at Cana the first miracle at Cana takes place on the third day it ends with the second sign that Jesus did which also is at Cana and also on another third day specifically says that Jesus spends two days with the Samaritans in between and that's the same number of days Jesus would later reside in the land of the dead he even dies at the very same hour that he meets the first Samaritan it meets the first Samaritan in the parallel story at the sixth hour it says in both places so his descendent of Samaria and return is thus being posed as a metaphor for his death and resurrection this is kind of a whole allegory for the gospel another example is one of my favorite ones which is about who Jesus his boyfriend was you didn't know Jesus had a boyfriend it's in John the Gospel of John says that the authors of John and the plural yes they say we used as some sort of source something that was written something else written by quote/unquote the disciple whom Jesus loved John's Gospel also says the other disciples asked whether this beloved disciple the same one would never die in the end like was he never gonna die and you might think that's a weird question to ask why are they asking that of him as opposed to someone else or anyone and it also says that the the Gospel of John also has this Beloved Disciple run to see the empty tomb now he's missing from the other versions of this story the other version in Luke Peter rushes to the empty tomb to confirm that it's actually empty once the women tell him but in John suddenly there's an extra dude there who run out runs Peter and gets there first and guess who that guy is the Beloved Disciple who's also not present in any prior gospel and Luke John says that the Beloved Disciple ran to see the empty tomb saw the empty burial cloths and understood what happened which is interesting like why is that significant why did John have him run there and why did he have him recognize what had happened and then it says jot the Gospel of John also mentions another point that the Beloved Disciple was resting on the bosom of Jesus at the Last Supper so they were cuddling so they were in love and they're kind of that's a boyfriend anyway um now one thing we notice when we look at John now John has been messed with the John that we have is an edit of an earlier version things have been added and taken away and moved around out of order so there's actually chronological sequence problems in John because someone re-edited and move stuff around it didn't fix the problems so we don't really have the original version of John but it looks like the original version of John said that Lazarus the the Lazarus the guy that Jesus rose from the dead is the Beloved Disciple because in the remaining sections of John that have survived for us to see it Lazarus is the only other person only person who's ever mentioned and named person who's ever mentioned as resting on the bosom of Jesus at previous suppers so you would expect if it says the Beloved Disciple is cuddling with Jesus at the Last Supper all the other suppers who was cuddling with him it was Lazarus you would think it would be the same person Lazarus is also the only person Jesus resurrects from a tomb and who cast off his own burial cloths think about that so now he this guy whom Jesus rose out of a tomb and he cast off his burial cloths runs to the tomb sees it empty and sees the burial cloth of Jesus and then he understood well obviously the Beloved Disciple is Lazarus he understood because Jesus did this to him in the story Lazarus is also the only person the other disciples would ever wonder whether he would never die because he was risen from the dead so Jesus rose from rose him from the dead so that I was like what what does that mean he's immortal now like or he's gonna die a second time like that question makes no sense unless the Beloved Disciple is Lazarus because Lazarus was risen from the dead so they're asking is he gonna live forever in air or what's the deal and this is the kicker on top of all this the Gospel of John the surviving sections that we have outright says Lazarus is the one whom Jesus loved John 11 verse 3 verse 5 verse 36 so it says Lazarus is the one as the guy Jesus loved and so when it says the guy Jesus when bigeye Jesus loved was cuddling with him at the Last Supper was doing all these other things they're talking obviously the original version mental azeris so Lazarus was jesus's boyfriend I'm gonna do a little interlude here though cuz this is so funny I just have to mention it no this is obvious fiction there's many reasons this is fiction I'll talk about some of them there's no way that's happened they none of this happened in any of the previous Gospels none of the other Gospels ever heard of Lazarus he's inserted in the story they've never heard of the Beloved Disciple he's inserted in the story this is all new stuff has suddenly discovered and there had been some scholars throughout the the last hundred years who published multiple papers saying actually we're pretty sure the Beloved Disciple would be that would be Lazarus but they're Christians don't like that because they want it to be someone else so there's a Christian apologist actual professor as PhD in the and biblical studies James Charlesworth and he wrote a book where a peer review this is my mind you know sorry but I'm telling you it's peer-reviewed academic monograph in which he says the Beloved Disciple can't be Lazarus because Jesus had just recently risen Lazarus from the dead and someone who's just recently risen from the dead can't run faster than someone else I'll let you chew on that one that's the kind of argument should never pass peer review I'm just saying anyway but wait a minute who is this Lazarus guy like John just suddenly the Lazarus is cuddling with Jesus and all the dinners like what's going on with this all previous Gospels never heard of him all preachers previous Gospels there's no such person in the story all previous Gospels fail to mention his great fame as the reason the Sanhedrin tried Sanhedrin tried to kill Jesus John specifically says the Sanhedrin decided to kill Jesus when he resurrected Lazarus that it was the great fame of that miracle that was making Jesus too famous so now we have to kill him you think if that's the great famous thing that happened that caused the elite to kill Jesus that the other Gospel writers before John would have heard of it but they did they have did not there is however only one Lazarus in any gospel before John a fictional person in a parable written by Luke you know the parable of Lazarus which is there's a beggar Lazarus and there was the rich man who kept ignoring him and didn't throw him any homes and then the rich man ends up in hell and he's burning ah and he sees Lazarus also died and sees but he sees Lazarus up resting in the bosom of Abraham cuddling Abraham and he begs him to help him out God just this one dip of water just just for a second that's all I need this is so horrible down here just give me one little tiny bit of mercy and and the response is like no [ __ ] you you you had all the prophets you had all the opportunities you now you're getting what to do and says oh okay that may not fair I guess but could could you resurrect Lazarus can you bring Lazarus back from the dead so that and send him to my brother's to warn my brother's so that they don't make the same mistakes I did and that's when they say like nope we're not going to raise Lazarus from the dead if you didn't listen if they don't listen to the the Scriptures then they're screwed and that's just the way it is so that's the version of the story in Luke so notice what John does with this story so in the parable like I just mentioned Lazarus is a beggar who goes to heaven and there rests on the bosom of Abraham so now we have a Lazarus cuddling with someone resting in the bosom of Abraham a rich man burning in hell begs Abraham to raise Lazarus from the dead so he can go and convince the rich man's living brothers to repent but Abraham says if his brothers haven't believed the scriptures neither will I believe a resurrected Lazarus this is a hole this is a parable I know in Luke it's a parable that Jesus is telling of course the point of a parable like this is kind of obvious it's an explanation for why no one actually returns from the dead so the supposed to be the general resurrection supposed to be the end of end times why aren't the Apostles going around raising the dead I mean I think your mojo of your religion doesn't work you're not raising people from the dead and so they tell this story that while Jesus told a parable it explains this it says that he's not gonna raise anyone from the dead because if you don't listen to the Scriptures that's it which is a typical kind of conman kind of response to why you can't raise people from the dead when you're supposed to be able to but notice John doesn't like this he reverses the story entirely he invents a real Lazarus he takes Lazarus out of the parable makes him real he's a lat real Lazarus who actually does rise from the dead and actually does convince people to repent and has him rest on the bosom of Jesus instead of the bosom of Abraham so Abraham and the parable is deciding who goes to heaven and hell Jesus is now in the role of Abraham he's being described in the position of Abraham so Jesus is the one who now decides who goes to heaven or hell you so you get it this is John as taking a parable in Luke and turning it into a real historical story completely 100% made up all to make the the point the exact opposite of Luke is like no we're gonna have evidence that people did return from the dead and when convince people and I'm gonna make that evidence up because I don't actually have any but so he's correcting Luke right john cites this Lazarus as a witness to the crucifixion empty tomb and resurrection notice the number three they're three things that he's this new this new Lazarus this new Beloved Disciple and he says that Lazarus is there explicitly to convince people so the Lazarus and John has done with the rich man in Luke the parable in Luke is done with that rich man wanted so that's an example of how we get literary fictions the represented as history folded out of things from before that we're not the case so then you often hear objections to everything that I said well rapid legendary development is impossible actually that's completely false it actually happens all the time and I give examples in proving history and in on the historicity of Jesus you hear people say but miss would be gainsaid someone was setting all those stories are false and he say well okay point me to a document where we get to hear what anyone said about what the Gospels have in them like well I can't think of one yeah it's convenient that the no documents written by anyone who actually read the Gospels and disagreed with what was in there we don't get to see that so we actually can't say that the miss would be gainsaid and we have a classic example of this you know the Gospel of Mark when Jesus dies the Sun is blotted out from the whole world for three hours at noon during a full moon by the way which is this is impossible and for those of you who have been studying Eclipse science recently you will understand why you can't have any clips that last three hours you can't have an eclipse that during the full moon and so this is a it would be an astronomic enormous event that we've been witnessed and recorded by tons of astronomers and historians in the ancient world but no one notices it no one gains says it either you don't have any document where someone's like ragging on mark and saying yeah that's that's that's a Clips thing is a stupid thing that couldn't possibly happen no we don't get to read any of the the views of the people who are pointing out that the Gospels had stupid stories in them but we know they're wrong because we know the Gospels you know mark is not either intending that to be literal or didn't there was no real actual event like that because we would have tons of evidence from other witnesses reporting it but and they don't so that's how we know that so then the question is well can't we look at this oh yes so as tons of myth built up around Jesus we get it but maybe we can recover some historical facts right made some sort of historical core using criteria of some kind and I studied all of that criteria that they proposed for this in proving history including I read every singing right and sight in the book every single dedicated study by any scholar who's an expert in the field there was dedicated specifically to discussing the validity of the criteria and all of those studies concluded the criteria suck and can't accomplish what is claimed of them so this is actually the all of the peer-reviewed literature agrees with that the criteria are not usable in the form that they've been presented in the field if you want to know more about that proving history details it in Chapter five so that's just a precis of some of the details of why we can conclude the Gospels our myth and fiction there are many more all of that stuff that I've done everything I told you about today is all in on the historicity of Jesus my book on that including the citations of the scholarship plus dozens and dozens of more examples from every all four of the Gospels so what's happening now is so I've got that book came out in 2014 it's the first peer-reviewed academic press book arguing that Jesus didn't exist in well I as far as I know in history and one thing we're doing with that now is as people often have questions like they say like try to argue they'll there first of all they'll try to argue against the book and then I'll point out like actually kill you didn't read the book because it actually answers that argument on page stuff and such so that's one thing but also sometimes they'll read the book and they'll try to find some other way to try and save things and come up with some other argument so I've been working in conjunction with reality revolutions which is putting on this event today to try and develop an app for your iPhone iPad and Android devices that is basically quite simply you can go through through a navigate a system find an argument or anything about the the historicity of Jesus some argument for the historicity of Jesus some argument against and various other things glossary of terms all of this stuff each piece of evidence that's ever been proposed for or against the historicity of Jesus it's all going to be in there and you can just quickly navigate through and find information and what we'll have is not just a quick summary of that evidence or that argument and why it's wrong or why it's right but it'll also have the page numbers often of the exact material being discussed and on the history of Jesus where you can get the scholarship and all of that stuff we're calling the app crustose me Christ's historicity rebuttal and explanation system tools utilities and services so we're very creative with acronyms there but so that's going to be coming out soon we're in it's in development it's we're testing it now it's in the testing phase when it first comes out it'll have a good bare-bones section of material but we're gonna keep building it out so it's going to grow and grow and grow we're gonna have more and more and more stuff eventually maybe within a year or two it's gonna basically cover every conceivable argument that we'll ever run into except maybe some of the most ridiculous things that you just know off the top of your head aren't true like you know clearly Jesus didn't exist because aliens invented him or something like that but we're not gonna do things like that so this is developed by reality revolutions it's gonna try and include eventually all facts and arguments related to the debate or surrounding the historicity of Jesus it's gonna clewd all the best stuff that that's in favor of the historicity of Jesus - we're gonna put everything in there so that you can see it all and look at how it all interacts it's also gonna have a Bayesian calculator so for those who don't know improving history I argue that you can use Bayes theorem to mathematically model your own reasoning and try to understand what conclusions follow from your own assumptions and in on the historicity of Jesus I apply that model and so I actually come up with some odds of wide range of odds that Jesus existed based on these assumptions about other aspects of the evidence and so forth so what we have in this app this app is actually have a calculator we can put in the numbers the odds and have it do the math for you you can add evidence and do all the things you want to use your own numbers and see what gets out on the other end and this is coming we're hoping in September so keep your eye out for it I'll announce it on all my social media once it's available on the App Store's so my I have a Twitter account I have a Facebook account that's a viewable to the public and that can be followed on Facebook and I have a blog but you can do email subscriptions too so at Richard carrier info you can find the links to all my social media Twitter account Facebook and my blog subscription form so if you want to like see when that comes out keep your eye on that stuff and they app will then exist and you can use it and like I said they'll increasingly grow and get better over time even so that's my presentation I will now well let's take a few minutes because people have extra questions they want to write down on cards and so I've got a few to get us started but if you do have any questions so you just mentioned the Bayesian calculator I'll start with something okay your freshman everyone yeah yeah yeah good now there are some very real events that have happened that on its face seem unlikely but nonetheless are real mm-hmm so how does this Bayesian calculator distinguish between improbable but real events yeah you know like people do win lotteries although the yeah even though it's very unlikely of that to happen how does it distinguish between improbable but real events versus improbable and fictional yeah yeah good question in the simplest form of Bayes theorem the when it gets you is the odds that something is true equals the prior odds times the relative odds of the evidence on it being true or false so you really just have two things multiplied together to get the other one now when you say something like it's a this is an improbable event that's a really weird event so I'm suspicious as to whether it's true what you're really saying is it has a low prior probability the prior odds are against it so you don't expect that to be true you kind of expect it to be false now if it's a case where we actually can prove it turns out Wow okay that did seem improbable but it actually turns out to be true what will happen is you'll make arguments you know say oh here's all the evidence this evidence is there's so much evidence is so solid it would be highly improbable if that evidence would exist unless the theory is true unless the claim is true and when you do the odds for that it turns out it cancels out the prior odds when you do the math you end up with the reversing it from a low prior odds to a high posterior odds so that's how it's represented in the model Bayes theorem and if you want to know more about that it's discussed in both of my books that deal with this subject several ideas that you mentioned over the course of your address this evening you described as mainstream and peer-reviewed is there any connection between biblical scholars and biblical well yes of course so david Fitzgerald wrote a book a series of books of following a three-volume set called missing in action and in one of them I think Volume one he actually shows a study he got a team of people together and actually went around to like a thousand universities and asked do you have a faith requirement to be a professor there so in other words do you have to like swear to a Creed and then if you if you violate if you if you disagree with it that Creed and the Creed's are often detailed and has specific things like the Bible is literally true and inerrant and they have to actually sign I'm waiting blood to the devil I guess to never go against that statement or else to get fired so they went around and said like how many schools have this and they found some schools without right admit yes we have it some schools were shady and said we didn't and then they found out that actually did and so they even know that this shady to have it so they're trying to lie about it good Christians that they are and then they actually got a ratio they figured out how many biblical studies departments have these faith requirements in them which actually means if you can assign a faith requirement you are no longer an objective scholar you are writing yourself out of being counted among the consensus of experts because you're basically saying I will never ever under any circumstances agree to any evidence that contradicts this view so you're actually are signing away your academic freedom so people who do that scholars who do that we can't count their opinion any more because their jobs depend on holding a position on this issue that may be counter the facts or the truth so that's that's the side of that now they're also some there are secular scholars there are scholars are not under those faith restrictions there are liberal Christian scholars even conservative Christian scholars that are not under those faith restrictions so is it's difficult also to figure out what consensus you should look at but when we say mainstream consensus we mean not fundamentalist so anyone who is basically acting like or actually has sworn to treat the Bible as inerrant and and literally literally true or anything close to that we're excluding them because they're they're actually not actually objective speakers on this subject so you look at the red who's left and you say those experts and say what's what's the consensus among them or what's passing peer-review from them in the mainstream literature which is again not the fundamentalist literature but the actual academic literature that's highly respected and so that's what we mean by the mainstream scholar consensus versus these you know Bible practitioners who are also pretending to be Bible scholars I mean there are Bible scholars but they're sold their soul to being a Bible / ticket practitioner first yeah actually the Greek of all the Gospels even mark who's writing in a low dialect very similar in the way Mark Twain did all the Gospels are written in such an expert Greek there is no way that people who wrote it were not highly educated in Greek schools which is very peculiar because Greek schools have a particular cultural package that is very distinct from Jewish schools so the authors of the Gospels are already they're not Judeans they're they're actually diaspora Jews who have been assimilated into Greek in Hellenistic culture and are highly educated that means they're members of the elite probably they might be low-level members of the elite but these are people who have money or families with money and have been trained up to do this in the elegant a loose loosened style so they're actually taking stories from the Septuagint the the Greek version of the of the Old Testament stories about Moses and Elijah and they're updating it they're borrowing phrases they're doing that complex key asmik structure that rings structure I pointed out to you that doing all of this immensely complicated highly advanced literary material and writing only only upper level scholars could actually do that so these are not fishermen writing the Gospels these are not lowbrow people these are people who have been highly trained in it and not only highly trained but we know from that we know the actual standard textbooks that they would have been reading and taught in schools and how they were taught to compose which is exactly how the Gospels are often composed but they would have actually read a lot of these historians because that was part of the cultural package of what you studied when you learned Greek to that level so they are fully aware of how history actually looks and and we can be certain of that based on the quality of their their own compositions highly improbable that disciples would simply abandon their jobs and follow strangers the question is does that not still happen today no you never have someone walk up and say abandon your job and family and follow me and then they immediately do it before they even learn the guy's name you know it's just like one sentence or a couple sentences spoken no that doesn't happen you you have to actually convince people over a period of time to actually give up things and and actually do that so it that's a process it's a psychological process that takes time we know this from studies of religious cults that try to recruit people and and many other examples in the social sciences so yeah it's that's definitely highly improbable given what we know about human nature and the way social systems work and I heard Thomas Amber's but even someone dumb as hammers wouldn't do that they wouldn't even know what he was talking about much let's have a reason to follow there was no internet nor were there any pictures in the post office there wasn't a post office so why wouldn't they need somebody wouldn't they need a person to point about know if you know the Gospels has Jesus interacting with the Jewish elite the scribes the Pharisees and the priests repeatedly and and of course he doesn't massively public things so no actually you wouldn't need video or pictures there'd be tons of these the members of the Sanhedrin or people whom the said hundred can go to who are not the disciples of Jesus tons of people knew what he looked like and were actually siding with the elite on this that all the people that Jesus argues with like the Pharisees so we had ton they had tons of access to people who could personally identify Jesus and of course Jesus was actually preaching publicly repeatedly in multiple places which is where you would seize him you're not going to like wait for the most inopportune time and try to figure out like where is he hiding right now no they would have gotten him at some other point there are some people who try to argue it didn't the evidence is ambiguous I don't think we can establish that it didn't exist and we have some evidence that confirms that it did so so my view is that it probably did exist but Jesus wasn't born there that that was actually Jesus was originally called an Azorian which does not mean someone from Nazareth that means something else and actually there were Christians of the second century speculated on what it really meant but it looks like what Matthew did is found a town that Matthew knew that sounded similar tunas Orion and then their ever used that and put it in the story and oh he's from Nazareth and then a lot of the there's a lot of other dickering with later Gospels and later gospel texts and manuscripts to try and get those words to line up but originally Jesus was Anna's Orion now not a Nazareth in' so so I don't think the existence of Nazareth matters I don't think it matters even if he did exist because that could have happened him again being assigned a town that really existed but he never came from for 2mass scripture that could have been just as Matthew says by the matthew says it comes from scripture that could have happened even if Jesus existed so I don't think the existence of Nazareth supports the historicity of Jesus or the non-existence of Nazareth I don't think it contradicts the historicity of Jesus either so I think it's a useless argument to deal with in terms of whether we're going to figure out whether Jesus existed or not that's going to be completely unconnected to whether nasara existed or not thank you take two separate questions there's Jesus the Divine Son of God and then there's as written in the gospel yeah then there's in principle Jesus of Nazareth or not as a historical figure without the divine element just as Julius Caesar you mentioned Shakespeare early Julius Caesar was definitely a historical figure but we shouldn't look at Julius Caesar Shakespeare's play yeah has a documented history so if so what about the claim that Jesus was a human historical figure a real historic yeah you're - the claims of divinity yeah that's a plausible and that's really the apart from the theory that I think is more likely true I think there's two explanations that are plausible that's one of them so yes certainly the gospel Jesus the amazing super famous miracle working Jesus who does weird things that Jesus didn't exist we could I mean all mainstream scholars will agree that that Jesus didn't exist but the mainstream consensus still so far is with just a few exceptions there's about seven of us who they're doubtful of it but the mainstream consensus still is that well but he was still it was that he was not famous he was not a miracle he's not genuinely miracle working like all these stories a lot of them are made up there was but there was some dude like he was just an ordinary guy that got all this legendary stuff piled on top of him and I think that's a plausible theory and in fact in my book on the history of Jesus I only take that theory seriously I only compare that theory the mundane Jesus theory with the alternative origins of Christianity theory without a Jesus and I compare and contrast those two I do not try to even argue that because the amazing gospel Jesus didn't exist therefore he didn't exist at all I don't think that's a valid way to argue so in the book I just dismissed the the amazing gospel Jesus as not a relevant comparison we're trying to look for what is a mundane secular believable credible historical Jesus and and can we hold that up the evidence support that and that's the that's what that's actually the the debate we should be having and that's the debate that I organize in my book arguments against presuppositional ISM and I'm going to ask although that's not written here that for others in the audience who may be like me could you please start your answer by defining yeah it's not related to today's talk but presupposes that presuppositionalist s-- argue these are Christians they argue that you cannot argue God does not exist without presupposing God exists you know how do you get there well okay because to argue God doesn't exist you have to use logic and logic is mental and therefore there's only one place logic could come from and therefore you have to assume that God exists otherwise logic wouldn't be true therefore you can't use logic therefore God exists this is wackadoodle there's a lot wrong with it I could do a whole lecture just on that so I won't the the basic argument is that you you can explain why logic works and why it's a valid way to or a valid method to use without positing a God so you do not need to presume God and I talked about this extensively I have an article let's see if you go to my blog or if you just google it just my name and Victor Reppert - that's our EPP ERT my name and Victor Reppert you should find the one that's the link on my website we're not my website on the secular web secular a secular web infidels org where I have a detailed analysis of both possible and implausible versions that there's presuppositional ism is loosely linked with another thing called the argument from Reason which is not presuppositionalist but it still does argue that it argues inductively that even though reason could exist without God that God is a better explanation for why we can reason and why logic works I take on that argument you can see how that argument falls apart and if that argument falls apart the much more extreme ridiculous view goes with it so for those who are interested in that that's the place to look at well Joseph at will yeah continue as a syncretic religion invented by the Romans at the end of the first century to pacify Judea yeah also a wackadoodle so the idea that Jesus didn't exist has been argued for a long time especially on the internet by a bunch of amateurs who have these ridiculous conspiracy theory versions of why it's the case and they have all their facts wrong now all their facts but a lot of their facts are wrong they argue logically and so on there's a lot of bad arguments for the non-existence of Jesus I wrote this book on the history of city of Jesus specifically to see what would pass through peer review so all that other stuff would get we could get rid of it and just focus on what actually meets the standards of the field and isn't like tinfoil hat so Joseph at will is one of these people where he has a lot of money and he really pushes this crazy theory that Christianity is a conspiracy invented by the Romans to pacify the Jews and all of the entire New Testament was forged by Josephus at the behest of the emperor Titus this is wildly implausible for those who want to know why it's wildly implausible you can go to my blog Richard carrier info in the search field type Joseph at will that's a Twi ll and you'll find my article at Will's cranked up Jesus and I go through in detail like why this is not a plausible theory and he's not being reasonable about it and he doesn't have the expertise even to have supported it even if it were a true theory the book of Revelation I assume is the reference there yeah yeah yeah also wackadoodle both both revelation is wackadoodle but also the assumption that it has anything to do with current events today is wackadoodle revelation is actually a certainly it wasn't really a revelation because it's a an elaborate long literary treatise and that's you don't have you know drop acid and have a look at the elaborate long literary treatise with complex allegories about your current political reality the book of Revelation appears to have been written in the roughly the 80s or 90s AD as a commentary on corruption in the Roman Empire and you can see all the allegories in it for what they expect to happen any minute now so they're actually talking about their own time so any matches it has with future times is just tea leaf reading where you're just you you're retrofitting you're basically looking at stuff that was written for events then and trying to find anything that will match it which of course you can do because you can make any any kind of crazy long bizarre box of bizarre weirdo clowns you like you find in Revelation all the little tons of weird stuff in the in Revelation you can find anything that will match up something in there as long as you get to ignore certain things or pick anything you want so you can get things to match revelation you can get things to match any similar crazy thing you could find like you know the writings of David Koresh or anything like that and you could find parallels that match because they're writing off so much crazy stuff and there's so many things that you could find to pick it up yes like Nostradamus yes exactly it's a good example right so to clarify one part of that the Sermon on the Mount isn't from the Septuagint it uses the Septuagint as its base text so when it's actually alluding to or quoting the Old Testament that's clue alluding to our quoting the version that's in the Greek and not the version that's in the Hebrew so it's based on the Septuagint text it's actually a new text so I repeat the question again the last line right oh the other thing is they mentioned QED a lot of you might not know the QED hypothesis so Mathew copies mark verbatim and then adds stuff and Luke copies marked verbatim and adds stuff but there's also stuff verbatim between Matthew and Luke they're not in Mark and so the assumption that came to be and is still commonly believed you know though the evidence for it is not anywhere near as good as they claimed that there was some other gospel other than Mark that we've lost and so Matthew and Lara and Luke are copying verbatim those two Gospels and they're picking in true which pieces to copy from each of those Gospels and this other lost gospel of course being a lost gospel and we have no evidence for it existing they had to invent a name for it so they invented the word queue or the letter Q which is for the German kwela which just means source so this is generic source they just call it source and so that so this hypothesis I think is false there's I discuss it and cite all the scholarship pro and con in on the history of Jesus I think the con argument more than wins the day the alternative is that mark copied or sorry Matthew copied mark and embellished then Luke copied mark and Matthew and embellished so really there's just Luke riffing off of Matthew riffing off of mark there is no other missing gospel and I don't think in the Gospels we cannot tie any of the other material to any other Christian document so we can tie mark Matthew to mark we can tie Luke to mark week and I don't even think we can tie Luke to Matthew I think there's distinct features that you can do that with you can tie John to Luke for example like I showed that the Lazarus story so you can show that they're riffing off of each other and aware of each other there's no other Christian document that we can find behind them other than for example pieces of stories or are pieces of sayings so we have examples of like the letter of one Clement quotes scriptures that we don't have some sort of lost scriptures and says that as the scriptures say it'll be some line in there that ends up being the exact same thing that Jesus says in the Gospels right off of his lips so some of the stuff that's being put in the mouth of Jesus is stuff from these lost scriptures but they're Jewish scriptures are not Christian scriptures and also like Paul and some of the other letter writers also say things in their own voices that their own ideas and they get imported into suddenly now Jesus is advocating them so there's some sort of sources like that but they aren't real sources about Jesus their sources about other things that are now being attributed to Jesus and so that's as far as we can get there may be stuff there might be sources behind the Gospels other than that we just have no evidence of it being the case besides the kinds of things that I just mentioned and I talked about all of that in on the historicity of Jesus for those who want to like explore what we know about the Gospels and where they come from why do you think this is embed rap among many atheists um two reasons one is most atheists just like most biblical scholars only know about the wackadoodle mythos ism that I was talking about like Joseph at will and stuff like that and so they immediately dismiss my work as almost just be more of the same even though this is the only one that's actually passed peer review at a major biblical studies press so really this is the one they should look at so part of it is that the ignorance the assumption of their reacting to the crappy mythos ism as I once did I was one of those people I thought mythos ism was ridiculous because all I knew were the crazy arguments and then I did research I started to realize that was less the case and I thought but so what was the question again that in the last part the second reason yeah okay so the second reason is and this is so there are a lot of atheists who use the myth assist argument as a cudgel to argue that Christians are wrong about things so what they'll do is they'll say oh your religion is false Jesus didn't even exist and that kind of rankles a lot of other Athey to say no that's a terrible argument because it's it's it's so off the mainstream that the Christians can immediately dismiss you and say oh you're just being ridiculous the mainstream consensus even says that Jesus existed and that ends the argument and in fact I think the non-existence of Jesus has only at best odds or yeah it has like it has odds between you know 0 and 1 and 3 but so I come to the conclusion there's at least a 1 in 3 chance or up to a 1 in 3 chance that Jesus existed that's a pretty respectable chance it's still most likely he didn't exist but still in 1 and 3 that's not bad so this is actually a terrible argument you shouldn't argue that Christianity is false because Jesus didn't exist because we're so uncertain whether Jesus existed even my book does not come to certainty about Jesus existing or not existing it says 1 in 3 which is a high level of uncertainty in terms of whether he existed so I don't think you should use that argument the existence of Jesus and stuff is interesting from a historical perspective because it teaches us things about how Christianity developed and originated and I think it's important to understand the realities of history and actually challenge consensus views when we have evidence to challenge it with so I think it's an interesting question it's valuable and there's a lot of other stuff you can learn from studying this that you can use in traditional counter apologetics but it this is really the debate over whether Jesus existed or not should only be a debate among atheists Christians should be left out of it because they again they have this a tremendous bias they can never admit Jesus did not exist without rejecting their faith so you might as well get them out of their faith first and then you say oh by the way let's talk about this Jesus guy I don't think he existed that would be a better way to argue it and so on the other side of that if you're gonna argue with Christians you said yeah let's just grant Jesus existed the gospel Jesus didn't and that mainstream consensus agrees he didn't and since you were by the way you're just citing the mainstream consensus to support as historicity you can't go back on that now so now you have to agree the gospel Jesus didn't exist it's some sort of Monday and other Jesus that's a much more effective way to argue because now you have the mainstream consensus on your view and now you have a highly probable fact that the gospel Jesus didn't exist is not the probability that the gospel Jesus existed is not 1 in 3 it's billions to 1 against so you have a far stronger argument if you argue from that position so if you're gonna argue with Christians you should always assume historicity you can it mention like I also doubt he existed but I'll assume for four years sake and for this argument that he existed but then let's talk about whether your religion is still true because even if he did exist your religion is still bogus and so that's the way you should argue with Christians and a lot of a theists don't do that they do it the other way and that angers other atheist so that's why a lot of atheists have get angry about promoting mythos ism because they feel like it's promoting this bad argument but it's not it's just discussing the facts of the case so no God that you could give a whole lecture on cognitive science about how that is believers aren't the only ones that do that every oh we all do that we know we have if you go to Wikipedia and type in list of cognitive biases and see the page that comes up you'll weep because it's hundreds of cognitive biases and these are an inherent in human minds and you all have human mind so you have you are susceptible to every single one of those cognitive biases and when a lot of those biases operate in conjunction they can make you very resistant to changing your beliefs even in the face of compelling evidence that you should and that's true for believers that's true for atheist is true for everybody so the the answer just in general is the brain was badly designed it wasn't intelligently designed it's a sort of cobbled together it's only marginally better at doing what we need to do to survive and so we actually have to kind of like run software patches to fix all the [ __ ] bad programming in our brain and that requires studying critical thinking and requires like constant commitment to actually challenging your own views and things like that and most people aren't taught to do that most people aren't taught how to do that even if they are taught to do that and then people who are taught to do that often don't engage in the continual habit of really forcing themselves to always do that and so that's the reason it's not unique to Christian believers or anything like that it's it's problem pervasively well of course I think that's the strongest argument for the non-existence of Jesus now Paul actually did believe Jesus existed he thought he existed the same way Gabriel Michael and Satan existed as an archangel he thought he was an actual Archangel who actually was incarnated and actually was killed but he thought or at least according to the alternative theory for the origins of Christianity Paul thought that this all occurred in another realm it did not occur on Galilee did not occur on earth and we was only known about it through secret messages sent by God through scriptures and through direct visions from Jesus that's the alternative theory when you read the epistles of Paul it is weird that Paul does not know about a ministry for Christ does not know about him being a miracle worker does not know about him being an exorcist does not know anything about parables being a method of teaching never quotes the Gospels never quotes Jesus except when he's quoting personal revelations that were given to him even by the way relates a two-way conversation he had with Jesus a space Jesus literally space Jesus because he's up on Mars or Venus or wherever the third heaven which is literally another planet talking to Jesus but anyway them that's in there so we have him talking to space Jesus but we doesn't never have Paul talking about anyone ever having met or seen Jesus in life the first time Paul ever mentions anyone seeing Jesus is after his death and I talked about all of this in on the history of city of Jesus chapter 11 the epistles of Paul are really the strongest argument for the non-existence of Jesus because here we have documents written about 20,000 words written within two decades of the origin of the religion and they're so bizarre from the assumption that Jesus was such a charismatic man that he caused this following you just don't see that in there you see what you see is a celestial angel revealing himself to people in dreams and hallucinations so just to explore that further you'd have to go to the book and read the literature that's in there and everything okay could we just do one more and then we'll do some book sales okay yeah because we're already at 8:41 and I'm sure people are antsy ah yes so this gets to the flipside of it the best argument there is for historicity also comes from the epistles because there are there are a couple passages where Paul refers ambiguously to what might be the family of Jesus and if it wasn't ambiguous if it was very clearly Paul was talking about the family of Jesus would resolve the argument and we'd say Jesus probably existed and I would have written the book would have a different conclusion but Paul is super vague in both of those places whether he's talking about actual family or not and in the case of the brothers actually all early first century literature the earliest first century literature never has any idea of any of the Brothers of Jesus being in the church or leaders in the church and Paul's only reference to only time he ever talks about their being brothers of Jesus and talks about what he means by that he says all baptized Christians are adopted by God and therefore we're all the sons of God therefore were all the brothers of Jesus are the brothers of the Lord says you know Jesus is the firstborn of many brethren so when he says brother of the Lord that could just mean baptized Christian and not an actual family person then so at best it's ambiguous I think it's even worse than ambiguous but that's you have to look read the book in the chapter 11 on the historicity of Jesus to really understand that so yeah thanks so much [Applause]

Channel: SFS York

Views: 1,315,450

Keywords: Richard Carrier, Atheism, Christianity, Centre For Inquiry, CFI, SSFS, Jesus

Id: bQmMFQzrEsc

Length: 88min 26sec (5306 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 27 2017