‘Deciphering the Gospels’, by R. G. Price, argues the case for Jesus mythicism, which is the view that Jesus never existed on earth in any real form but was an entirely mythical figure in the same way as Hercules or Dionysus. (The author is not the same person as Robert Price, also a Jesus mythicist author.) I’m an atheist who holds the opposing (and mainstream) view that Christianity started with a human Jesus. In other words, the Jesus referred to as the founder of Christianity was originally a 1st-century human being, about whom a later mythology grew up, whose followers became the original group that would mutate over time into Christianity. I’m therefore reviewing Price’s book to discuss his arguments and my reasons for disagreeing.

The first post in this book review is here. Links to the posts on all subsequent chapters can be found at the end of that post.

 

Hoo boy, nearly at the end… I’m going to try to finish off this chapter in this post, then use three posts to cover the final list of questions.

Content warning for ablism regarding mental illness.

Paul

We can see that the vast majority of teachings Christians have attributed to Jesus actually come from Paul, not Jesus.

While I will certainly buy that some such teachings did, if Price wants to claim ‘vast majority’ he needs to break it down and show his workings here.

Who was Paul? Nothing is known about him other than what is recorded in his writings, but
any objective assessment of his writings reveals Paul to have essentially been a raving lunatic.

(facepalm)

‘Raving lunatic’ is what’s known as an ablist insult; in this case, one using stereotypes and prejudice about mental illness. Ablist insults don’t work well for anything, but they certainly don’t work as a substitute for knowing what you’re talking about.

OK, I’m going to try to break it down… ‘Raving lunatic’ is a term used to dismiss someone by evoking the false stereotype that people with any form of mental illness and/or psychotic experience can’t possibly be a reliable witness on any other subject. Oh, and mixed in there we frequently get a huge dollop of assumption that beliefs based on religious or cultural differences can be taken as a sign of mental illness, which they can’t.

Meanwhile, these stereotypes can be deeply harmful to people who do have some type of mental illness and as a result can’t get taken seriously in other areas of life. Price, if you take nothing else away from this entire critique – which I’m suspecting will be the case – please, please, in future, think twice about this careless use of terms like ‘raving lunatic’ to dismiss those with whom you disagree.

As for Paul, an ‘objective assessment of his writings’ actually shows him to have been a man who could write articulately and fluently, and teach a rather complex theology which he seems to have also worked out himself. So, no, dismissing him as a ‘raving lunatic’ is not only offensive, it’s inaccurate. And, yes, you can take that as my medical opinion as a qualified and experienced GP.

Ablism aside, how much weight should we give to Paul’s writings as any sort of evidence about Jesus? Well, I do think it’s fair to say that on the subject of Jesus he is not particularly reliable; he didn’t know Jesus, he’s tried to minimise his contacts with people who did know Jesus, and he’s driven by the theology he’s worked out around who he thinks Jesus is. So, although Paul did in fact clearly believe Jesus had lived a human life on earth, I don’t think that’s particularly good evidence for whether Jesus did have a human life on earth. However, when it comes to more basic prosaic stuff such as whether he met such-and-such a person or whether he knew of particular people within the church, I do think he was perfectly capable of commenting on what happened. So, his two comments about brothers of Jesus are in fact strong evidence for the existence of people referred to as Jesus’s brothers.

 

Other Abrahamic religions (alternative subheading: ‘Seriously, WTF, Price’?)

The legitimacy of Islam is every bit as dependent on the historical existence of Jesus as Christianity is. Likewise, it is reasonable to conclude that Judaism itself would either no longer exist today or would have a significantly diminished status and following if not for the rise of Christianity. The preservation of Jewish works and culture occurred to a large degree because of the relationship between Judaism and the dominant religions of Christianity and Islam, despite paradoxical hostility toward the ancestral religion by its descendants.

Hoo boy.

I can’t speak for Islam, although I very much doubt that ‘every bit as dependent’ claim; I’m guessing that ‘we’re wrong about the existence of somebody else’s prophet’ would blow at least somewhat less of a hole through a religion than ‘we’re wrong about the existence of our own leader and founder whose willing death was supposedly absolutely necessary for erasing our sins’. However, as far as Judaism’s concerned, Price seems to be overlooking the very obvious fact that Jews have done a good job of preserving Jewish works and culture over the centuries, and have been far more motivated to do so than Christians, who’ve tended to be somewhat more interested in retconning Jewish history and a lot more interested in changing Jewish future by converting and/or persecuting Jews.

So, excuse me, but I am absolutely not giving the credit for preservation of those works to the very group who’ve done so much to destroy Judaism. As someone who’s ethnically part Jewish and still cares deeply about it from the cultural point of view, I can tell you that this had a very uncomfortable white saviour vibe to it (in this case, Gentile saviour). Don’t do that, Price.

 

Conclusion (Price’s)

Price has a couple more paragraphs at this point to wrap up. He tells us that the ‘Jesus of Christianity’ was just a hallucination of Paul’s, which is… actually not too far off correct, since the concept of Jesus as a deliberate sin sacrifice certainly seems to have been an invention of Paul’s. However, that still leaves us with the question of who Jesus was before Paul retconned him this way. Despite Price’s exhortations in the final paragraph that we ‘have to’ recognise that Jesus never existed, Price has still failed to give us any convincing evidence that Jesus was originally an imagined divine being rather than a human preacher who founded the group that became Christianity.

 

Conclusion (mine)

Well… looks like I made it through Price’s argument. Which, as far as I can see, breaks down to the following claims:

• All of gMark was derived from other sources (which doesn’t stand up to examination)
• The other gospels must have also been made up because they were based on an invented source (which falls down because Price’s argument that gMark was entirely invented hasn’t worked, and also doesn’t explain all the other parts of the gospels and really doesn’t explain why they would have been written in the first place if gMark was entirely fictional)
• Docetists believed that Jesus had never lived on earth (unfortunately, Price is wrong about this)
• Paul believed that Jesus had never lived on earth (also incorrect)
• No historical sources of Jesus’s lifetime mention him (which is exactly what we’d expect of a historical Jesus, so also doesn’t help Price)
• Christians made stuff up all the time anyway so they probably just made this up as well (poor argument and doesn’t really stand up to the ‘why would they do that?’ question)

And I think that’s it. Did I miss any? As far as I can see, those are all the arguments Price has made that are actually pro-mythicism rather than rearguard attempts to explain away the various bits of evidence for historicity. And, on going through them, none of them have stood up to examination. Deciphering the gospels hasn’t come out with the answer Price wanted, and deciphering Price’s work has left us with no valid arguments for his case.

 

Well, that was the end of the last chapter! As I’ve said, this leaves us with a list of twelve questions for mythicists which Price has included as a sort of epilogue. I plan to split those up into three groups of four, just to manage post length. I’ve also taken the opportunity to come up with my own list of questions for Price and other mythicists that haven’t been answered properly (or, in most cases, at all) through this debate, so I’ll include those as well. And then – after a mere seven years – we will finally be done with the book! See you guys soon.