Up until about three weeks ago, I really hadn’t paid much attention to Richard Carrier and the “mythicist movement.” I knew a little bit about his claims, but simply didn’t feel it was worth the hassle. And then (as I mentioned in the first post of this series) I got into a rather silly and humorous Twitter battle with Carrier and some of his followers.
And hey, my interest was piqued.
Three weeks later, I’ve watched four of his online lectures and actually read through his 700+ page book (honestly, though, there were a number of chapters I simply skimmed). The result has been these four posts that simply skim the surface of the bizarre and, quite frankly, laughable claims that Carrier makes in his attempt to show that Jesus wasn’t a historical figure, and that Hellenistic Jews like Paul essentially made up Christianity by (A) borrowing from pagan myths, (B) latching onto Philo’s idea of an archangel named Jesus, and thus (C) claiming Paul’s Jesus was just a celestial deity who revealed himself in visions and whose incarnation, crucifixion, and burial happened in outer space.
To get to that conclusion, Carrier dismisses the Gospels outright, completely ignores the exegetical context of Paul’s letters, utterly butchers every single biblical passage he explains, and instead appeals to later Gnostic texts and Pseudepigraphal apocalyptic texts.
The result is claims of outer-space aliens with death rays, zombie hoards, magic sky trees, gay lovers and cosmic sperm banks, and much more outlandish nonsense.
Mythical Carriers and Ark Encounters
Beyond the obvious nonsense of the claims of the “mythicist movement,” the major thing that struck me—in the Twitter conversations, video lectures, and book itself—was how much, at a fundamental level, Carrier and the “mythicist movement” was like Ken Ham and the YECist movement. Obviously, the similarities aren’t in the specific claims themselves. Rather, the similarities between the two groups can be seen in their tendencies, mindset, and approach to both scholarship and biblical interpretation.
And so, in this final post, I want to highlight, in no particular order, what I feel are the very real similarities between Ken Ham’s YECism and Richard Carrier’s mythicism. Allow me to make a list.
- I Have a PhD! Richard Carrier goes to great lengths, both on his blog, in his Twitter conversations, and in his book, to tout his PhD credentials. At the beginning of his book he even describes himself as “an expert” in the origins of Christianity. Similarly, Ken Ham never hesitates to point out that his organization Answers in Genesis (AiG) has a number of PhD scientists on its staff.
Great, but simply having a PhD doesn’t validate your claims.
- Did I mention I’m Peer-Reviewed? Similar to #1, both Carrier and Ham go out of their way to claim that their work is “peer-reviewed.” In the Twitter battle I had with Carrier, he mentioned he was peer-reviewed in virtually every tweet—I distinctly remember he mentioned it THREE TIMES in one tweet alone. Likewise, Ham is constantly claiming the AiG scientists have articles published in “peer-reviewed” journals…namely AiG’s own Answers Magazine.
Yes, technically, the scientists at AiG have written stuff that has been “reviewed” by their fellow YECists, but that hardly what being “peer-reviewed” means. Similarly, yes, Carrier’s book has been published and “peer-reviewed,” but the scholars who have reviewed it and support him are his fellow mythicists. And even though it is true (as he stated numerous times on Twitter) that eight whole scholars agree with him, the simple fact is that his book isn’t taken seriously at all in the scholarly community. Ultimately, being “peer-reviewed” by a handful of like-minded people doesn’t mean much.
- Complaining about not being taken seriously by mainstream scholarship. This similarity stems from the previous similarity. The cold, hard fact—both with YECists and mythicists—is that mainstream scholarship in both scientific and biblical fields simply do not bother with their claims.
The claims of YECists and mythicists are so far out there that serious scientists and biblical scholars simply have better things to do than to write scholarly rebuttals to claims like Noah had access to advanced technology or that the Gospels speak of zombies and outer space aliens.
- Claims that scholars (both biblical and scientific) are afraid to admit they (YECists or mythicists) are right for fear of losing their jobs and academic credibility. Here is where we are getting into flat-out conspiracy theory territory. Carrier, in fact, completely dismisses any biblical scholar who works at a Christian-affiliated university, because oftentimes they are required to sign a “statement of faith,” stating, “Scholars who do that—we can’t count their opinion anymore.” Of course, they wouldn’t agree with Carrier, Carrier claims, because if they did, they’d lose their jobs! They are no longer objective scholars! Likewise, Ken Ham also claims that “secular scientists” refuse to acknowledge the truth of YECism because they would lose their jobs as well. Interestingly enough, Ham also criticizes biblical scholars and scientists at Christian universities who disagree with him of essentially being dishonest when they sign the statement of faith at their schools and encourages those schools to crack down and fire those scholars.
This is clearly conspiratorial thinking. Maybe, just maybe, biblical scholars can sign a statement of faith because they really are convinced that it’s true. And maybe scientists really are convinced that the evidence shows the universe billions of years old. When experts in their respective fields disagree with your claims…maybe it’s because they know you are wrong.
- Name-calling…I know from personal experience the name-calling tactics of many YECists. As soon as they know you do not agree with them on any one point, their suspicions are aroused and pretty soon they will start lobbing “secularist,” “liberal,” or “compromised Christian” your way. Likewise, when it comes to the mythicist camp (and many more militant atheists as well), their favorite labels are either “fundamentalist” or “apologist.”
The absurdity here obscene. According to Carrier, a “fundamentalist” is apparently any Christian who doesn’t agree with him. That is of course ridiculous. No one in their right mind would consider scholars like NT Wright, Craig Evans, Gordon Fee, or Larry Hurtado to be “fundamentalists.” Similarly, no one in their right mind would consider NT Wright, Bruce Waltke, or John Walton to be “secularists.” But such labels make perfect sense for people who are out of touch with reality.
- Wooden literalism and ignoring context. This is easily demonstrated on
virtually every page of Carrier’s book and every publication by AiG. It is wooden literalism that causes Carrier to conclude that Matthew 27:52-53 is describing zombies, or that the writer of Hebrews is talking about a “space alien temple” with a “space-priest.” It is wooden literalism that causes Ham to claim that Isaiah 40:22 (“He sits upon the circle of the earth”) is a scientific claim that the earth is spherical, or that Genesis 1 is making the scientific claim that there was a giant water mass in outer space before God began to create the earth and that God made the sun, moon, and stars after he made the earth…just the next day.
Such wooden literalism is the symptom of biblical ignorance. And the reason why the likes of Carrier and Ham can get away with absolutely butchering the biblical text is because, sadly, by and large people—both Christians and non-Christians alike—are largely biblically illiterate. When you are biblically illiterate, it is very easy for someone to play to your own presuppositions and biases and get you to read into the text things that aren’t there.
- Culture Wars! And this leads to the seventh similarity between YECists and mythicists. In their own ways, both YECists and mythicists (as well as the more militant atheists) are really fighting their own version of the culture wars.
Ken Ham’s real narrative is that Christianity is under attack, Christians are losing the culture war, and the only way to bring back Christian morality is to convince people that Genesis 1-11 is historically true and scientifically accurate. Similarly, start debating an atheist who insists that Jesus was a myth, and pretty soon they will start bringing up the Inquisition, the Crusades, and how Christianity has sought to silence atheists, squelch science, and promote slavery. In both cases—be it evolution/creation or mythic Jesus—the real concern isn’t actually questions of science or history. The real agenda is stems from a victim mentality in a perceived culture war.
- Peddling easy answers. Finally, there is the offering of easy, ready-made
answers. AiG peddles its “apologetics curriculum,” and has a whole line of “Answers” books in which they provide ready-made answers so that their followers can refute any questions that “secularists” (or compromised Christians) throw at them. Similarly, Richard Carrier peddles an $8.00 app named CHRESTUS—an acronym that stands for Christ’s Historicity Rebuttal and Explanation System: Tools, Utilities, and Services—that promises to provide on tap the mythicist answers to every argument that Jesus was a historical figure.
In both cases, answers come pre-packaged like a McDonald’s happy meal. Neither group really encourages critical thought or questioning. They have the answers ready for you—just buy them so you can fight your enemy in the culture war.
Conclusion: Closed-Minded Ultra-Fundamentalism Comes in All Forms
Much like YECism, the “mythicist movement” will never be taken seriously, either by scholars or rational, thinking people in general. Both will always be fringe, almost cult-like movements. At the same time, though, they will remain very dangerous and damaging movements for the people who get sucked into them.
I’ll tell some Christians who are “iffy” about evolution and who might be tempted to buy into AiG’s propaganda, “Hey, if you don’t believe evolution happened—fine. And if you think there was a historical Adam and Eve—fine. But Ken Ham claims Noah had power tools and advanced technology and dinosaurs lived 4,000 years ago; he claims God created time zones in space and that the speed of light and speed up or slow down at random. That is insane—don’t get duped by that.”
Similarly, I’ll tell atheists right now, if you don’t believe God exists—okay. If you don’t believe Jesus did miracles or rose from the dead—fine. I’m not going to try to convince you. I understand some things really are hard to get one’s head around. But come on, are you really going to believe a guy who makes the sort of bizarre claims that Richard Carrier makes? Please, there is a reason why 99% of scholars don’t even give him the time of day. When it gets right down to it—let me be perfectly blunt—if you really believe the Bible talks about space aliens and zombies, then you’re just as stupid as someone believes that Adam and Eve had a pet velociraptor.
But in Case You’re Still on the Fence about Carrier…
But if you still think Carrier is credible, I just have to give three more quick examples from his stuff:
First, in one of his lectures Carrier claims that Paul’s version of Christianity was “way more marketable” among Gentiles and that “his version was very popular and he was raking in the dough.” Carrier even went so far to say that Paul was able to make so much money that he went to Jerusalem to show the Jewish-Christian leaders there how much he was making, and so they said, “Okay, keep doing what you’re doing, just keep giving us the money.”
The collection he is referring to is mentioned in a number of places like Romans 15:26. To the point, Paul was collecting money for famine relief. This isn’t even up for debate. For Carrier to characterize famine relief in the way he does is purposely and intentionally deceptive.
Second, Carrier claims the origin of Christianity happened this way: the Jews had a problem because, “they wanted God to destroy this world and resurrect them already, but the reason he wasn’t doing it was because there was too much sin. So some clever Jew said, ‘Well, you know what? What if we invent a super-powerful sacrifice that cleanses all sins? Well then God will have no excuse not to bring on the apocalypse!’ And that’s what they did.”
That, point blank, is a completely asinine, sophomoric and completely baseless claim with absolutely zero evidence to back it up. If you believe that, you are not a rational person.
Finally, in one of his lectures, Carrier talked about the following passages and made the following claims:
- The Wisdom of Solomon 2, 5 talks about a “dying and rising Son of God who judges the wicked in heaven.” No it does not claim that…AT ALL.
- Daniel 9, 12 talks about a “dying messiah, conjoined with a final atonement for everyone’s sins that heralds the apocalypse.”
Go ahead, read it—see if you can find it there. Yes, Daniel 9:24-27 does mention “atonement,” but the “anointed prince” of 9:25 is a reference to Cyrus and he decree that the Jews could come out of the exile and rebuild the temple—it’s not a reference to the Messiah. And the “anointed one” in 9:26 is a reference to the high priest of the temple during the time of Antiochus Epiphanes IV who was deposed. The events in 9:24-27 are about the Maccabean Revolt. - Zechariah 3, 6 talks about a “Rising Jesus who atones for all sins in a single day and is crowned in heaven before God.”
Again, no—Zechariah 3, 6 is talking about the high priest JOSHUA, who, along with Zerubbabel, was part of the returning exiles. Zechariah 3, 6 is about how these two men would rebuild the temple. The prophecies of Zechariah are even DATED between 520-518 BC, and the temple WAS REBUILT by 516 BC. There is NOTHING about a “rising Jesus.”
The only thing I can conclude is that either Carrier is just incredibly clueless and ignorant, or else he is being purposely deceptive. No scholar with one iota of sense or ability to read in context would ever make the claims that Carrier makes.
Choose to believe him and you’ll be in the same boat as the devotees of Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis. You can call it the Mythical Carrier or the Ark Encounter—call it whatever you like. Either way, you’ll be on the intellectual equivalent of the Titanic…and it has already hit the iceberg and is going down.
“Have a PhD”
From what I’ve heard, pseudoscientists/historians with academic credentials will tell you about them whenever they can. Real scholars let the strength of their arguments and the breadth and depth of their knowledge speak for themselves; pseudo-scholars want to bludgeon you into intellectual submission before they begin because critical thinking would make the whole enterprise fall apart.