Why the Gospels are Myth | Richard Carrier

[Applause] Thanks. Hi. So, an 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 return 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 allergies. 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 the drugs. Anyway, so here I'm gonna talk about why the Gospels are fiction. Now, in informal 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—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: 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." I'll give you 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 in 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 of 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 are 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 historians 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—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 West Side 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 occasional 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 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—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, 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 improbabilities 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 a 5-minute conversation he says, "Follow me; I'll make you fishers of men," and immediately they abandon 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—a basket—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 offense, 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—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 Shepherds—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—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 bearing figs out of season—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 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 improbabilities are 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—have—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—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—their exorcism—there's a pair of exorcisms in the Gospels; Jesus exorcises a Gentile man—the Gerasene demoniac—that's—that's the one where the pigs died—and then he exorcises 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—stilling 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 exorcising a Gentile man, exorcising 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 nonstop 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—Jairus's daughter—and curing a blind man with spit. So now we have curing a deaf man with spit—clear—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 Gerasene 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—fell 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 gotta 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—Jairus's daughter—the younger woman—Jesus takes 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' 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 do this," 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 obey 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 two 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 to open the story. It happened after this in Luke; that's in 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 widow's son was dead." In Luke, "this widow's 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 Kings, 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 sat 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." That same exact phrase in both—that's a dead giveaway of borrowing. And then in the Kings 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. There are various—a variety of different types of ring structure: chiasmus, inclusio, and so on. But it's basically 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. Toni Morrison 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 used for real histories is that, of course, history doesn't work out that conveniently; only myths do that, which is, you know, surprising, why we think these are myths. Okay, that seems to be all right.

So here's an example. Mark sandwiches—remember 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, as 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 wither 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 a mainstream view, the entire story is an allegory for God's abandonment of the temple. The fig tree represents the temple cult. The ancient Jewish religion was fundamentally based on Temple Atonement rituals. Every year you 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 are 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, 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 the Romans 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 withering 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 fig tree 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, "May it 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 fig tree is withered, 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. In the John story, an allusion is made to Elijah. In the crucifixion story, an 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—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 rendered 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 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 miracles 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 exorcisms. 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 and 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 stuff 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; it's happening in three days; it'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 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, B, A. So you have A, B, C, D, C, B, A. So you have one sequence of 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 arrive and the birth of Jesus. In the end, you have Mary and an angel arrive on the resurrection of Jesus. Then you have gifts of wealth at his birth and an 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 woe 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 the 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 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 Emmanuel covertly at the end of the gospel. So those things match up and explain what kinds of things you're told he's going to 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 crucifixion—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 for 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, 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, a Nazarite vow is made. On the corresponding, a Nazarite vow is fulfilled. And then you have removal to Golgotha in 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 mockery that goes on the other side. You have Jesus asks God not to be released from his fate, and then Pilate does not release Jesus. You have Judas betrays Jesus, and then 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 now—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 is—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 scene where Jesus is 12, goes in the temple and wows everybody with his knowledge? That whole story emulates the Emmaus narrative in Luke. The Emmaus narrative, when Jesus dies, his disciples are like sad, and they're going to the nearest town, Emmaus, 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 that Jesus isn't with them. And the—the people who—the couple that are going to Emmaus 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—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 absent—Jesus absent. In the Emmaus 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're starting with, "It's necessary for me to be among my father's things," 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 at Cana, 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 descent to 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' 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 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 going to 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—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—John 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 moved 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 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, 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 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 big-eye 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 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, a PhD in 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 at 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 the response is like, no [___] you—you—you had all the prophets, you had all the opportunities, you now you're getting what you 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 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 in 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 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 in 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 represented as history, folded out of things from before that weren't 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 gainsays 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 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—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 are 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, 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 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 CHREST—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—*Proving 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—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 Stores. So my—I have a Twitter account, I have a Facebook account that's 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 RichardCarrier.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 the 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—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—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 Creeds 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 anymore 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—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 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—asmic structure—that ring 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 less 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? No, if you know the Gospels, it has Jesus interacting with the Jewish elite—the scribes, the Pharisees, and the priests repeatedly—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 they 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, not a Nazarene. 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 2 mass 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's 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 presuppositionalists—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 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 R-E-P-P-E-R-T—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 presuppositional-ist, 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 Atwill—yeah—continue as a syncretic religion invented by the Romans at the end of the first century to pacify Judea—yeah—also 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 Atwill 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—RichardCarrier.info—in the search field type Joseph Atwill—that's T-W-I-L-L—and you'll find my article—Atwill'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 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 or 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 Q—a lot of you might not know the QED hypothesis. So Matthew copies Mark verbatim and then adds stuff, and Luke copies Mark 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 Q—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 embedded 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 Atwill 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 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 mythos-ist 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 atheists 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 in 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 1 in 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 atheists don't do that; they do it the other way, and that angers other atheists. So that's why a lot of atheists 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 inherent in human minds, and you all have human minds, 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 atheists; it's 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 has 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 we're 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]