Sometimes real life is stranger than fiction.
This is a reality trip with Ben Fama junior.
>> FAMA: Hello everybody this is Ben Fama junior
thank you for joining me today
We're going to ask some big questions today
I'm really excited about our show because
we're going to take the topic and question
of Christianity and the story
of Jesus and ask
was this a mythology and not only was it
a mythology but why did it come into
being the way that it did how did this
story become so popular
and what is it about the story
that people identify with.
My next guest is Dr. Richard Carrier.
~ah~ Richard Carrier is an author,
he is a speaker, he is a historian,
he is known for his books such as;
"On the Historicity of Jesus", "Proving History",
"Sense and Goodness Without God"
and his newest book
"Science Education in the Early Roman Empire"
So I would like to welcome to the show
Dr. Richard Carrier.
Dr. Richard Carrier thank you so much
for joining me today how are you ?
>> CARRIER: I am doing well, so glad to be here.
>> FAMA: Alright so I want to talk a little bit
about Christianity I want to talk a
little bit about this story obviously
this story has been important to a lot of
people for many years but I don't think
a lot of people genuinely understand
really its roots where it's come from
and the importance of it as a mythology
and how its developed to what it is today
but before we kind of get into that.
I want to talk a little bit about you
~um what's~ briefly ~what's your~
what's your background,
what got you into this field of study ?
>> CARRIER:  Well ~I~ a couple things actually, it was like ~two~ two tracks of my life one was ~ah~ there was
a point my life when I was getting more
involved in the atheism movement this was
back in the 90s and ~seeing a lot~
reading a lot of Christian apologetics
~and~ and you know interacting with Christians
and debating with them and so on
at the same time ~I~ I was falling in
love with history as a college subject
and decided to pick that as my major and
the field ~that~ that the area that most
interested me the most, caught my passion
was the period of the Roman Empire and
I thought, well you know, so I'm really
fascinated by this culture this great
civilization that existed ~um~ if I study that
I will enjoy it because I like ~the~ the
subject in the field but also I will learn the
languages and the context and everything
where I can apply that to counter apologetics, you know, ~um~ when I'm pointing out when Christians are not
telling the truth about what the ancient
context was or what a word meant and so on
and so both of those things converged
and it seemed like you know, two birds with one stone
so I actually went into that I got my
history degree with a minor in classical
civilizations from Berkeley and then
went on to get my M. Phil. and Ph.D. at
Columbia University in ancient history
and specialized at the time on ancient
science but in particular not just
ancient science but also ancient science
on the context of modern Christian
apologetics so I had that context as
well and I studied the origins of religion
and the religious context of the time
historiography, the nature of the way
history was written at the time ~um~
and so I had got all of those skills in that
background and then started writing books.
>> FAMA: And were you yourself ever a believer ?
I know as an atheist I used to
be a believer many many many years ago
I am no longer a believer either. But were you ever
a believer of Christianity ?
>> CARRIER: Not ~really um~ my really ~ my only true faith religion that
I ever had was Taoism I had a religious
experience that convinced me it was the one
true religion ~um~ I discovered that was not
the case years later but ~ah~ that's the only
religion I really had faith in ~ah~ before
that my family was you know first
Methodist it was a super liberal Church
we weren't really  required to believe
particular things ~tha~ it's interesting that the
way mythology was taught in Sunday
school there was they would teach you
know Greek myths and Bible myths
side-by-side and and say its, you know, its the
moral of a story that matters ~its~ but
whether it's literally true is irrelevant ~um~ and it's
funny like you know 20 years later
30 years later I discovered ~that~ that's
probably how the earliest Christians
were actually writing their literature
they're writing it to be not taken literally
or at least not taken literally by insiders.
People in the know they're supposed to
understand it allegorically, it's supposed to be symbolic
it was the moral of the story that mattered
not the literal truth of it.
>> FAMA: Yeah and ~that~ that brings up the point of why I'm even bringing this up because
~I~ I think that's such a fascinating subject
it's easiest, you know,  as atheist we're like
Oh yeah, well we don't believe this shit.
That's crazy ~that's this~ But what I think is
fascinating about the whole thing is
human beings and their ability to tell
stories and why they do and I think it's
still important for us to really kind of
dig down and figure out how did these
stories develop why were these stories
important to these types of people so
even if you don't believe or you do believe
i think there's an interesting thing
there to explore.
>> CARRIER: ~ah~ That's so true, yeah and in fact
~um~ what happened, ~when~
what got me into this specific subject
the historicity of Jesus is ~um~ I got my Ph.D.
in 2008 and that's right when the
economy collapsed and so there was
freezes on hires for humanities
~ah~ professorships and stuff so that career was kind of dead at that point so I went
to my ~ I already had a fan-base of readers
and ~uh~ I went to my fans and said well okay,
if I can raise enough money to kill off my
student debt I'll apply my Ph.D. to any
subject you want and I raised $20,000.
This is like just before Kickstarter
existed as a thing so it's kind of like a proto
Kickstarter effort ~um~ I raised 20 grand got my
student debt canceled and I took that
seriously as a research grant ~like~ like
they're paying me to apply my Ph.D. to a
serious Postdoc research program on this
and unanimously everybody who was donating said,
historicity of Jesus, apply your
ancient history Ph.D. to that.
Is that plausible or is it ridiculous? and so
I spent six years on that project ~that~ it ended
up being three books two or three
research articles in peer-reviewed
journals and ~um~ that's where I am now and
that led to "On the Historicity of Jesus"
which is the last of the books in that
series ~and~ and that's that, you know covers all that stuff ~um~ but that's what got me into this this.
But what resulted in that was ~
so I took it seriously did real way more
research in the subject than I had even
been exposed to before ~ah~ as a counter
apologetics expert and realize I started
actually to be more fascinated by the
Gospels more impressed with the
brilliance of their writers when
I didn't take it literally ~when I~
when I didn't see it ~as ah~ as literal truth.
Now I think some of them are a bit sleazy
in the way they try to deceive the public
in other ways ~but~ but the genius of it the
genius of writing these stories
that they symbolically represent deeper
truths that they wanted to communicate
~ahem was~ was way more fascinating and the beauty of the language ~with~ with which they
did it was also a quite fascinating so I
actually ended up appreciating the
literature of the Bible more by studying
it and discovering that isn't literally
true then if I had taken as literally
true and let me give an example of this
You'd mentioned ~ah~ atheists often just say, ~that's you know~ that's ridiculous ~and~ and
make fun of the Bible right ~um well~ an example of this is ~that God hates ah~ or
that Jesus hates figs ~ah~
a story you know ~that~
You might see people sometimes wearing
a shirt that says God hates figs
to make fun of another bigoted
slogan that comes from certain
Christians but the story is in the
Gospel of Mark that Jesus is walking along
and you see he's hungry,
so the author of Mark says he's hungry
and so he sees this fig
tree off in the distance but it ~
the author Mark specifically says,
"But it was not the season for figs" ~so~
so he's saying Jesus had no reason to believe
or expect that there'd be figs on this tree but Jesus walks up to the tree anyway and he sees
that there are no figs there and he gets
angry and he says may you never bear fruit
again and then they come back the next day
and the tree has been withered to it's very roots.
Now people who take this story literally
of course it as ridiculous
~this~ this is a story, not only is it absurd,
it has him having magical
powers that he can wither trees
but it has him doing the most ridiculous
thing of all, which is like, even if you
have the the magical power of withering trees
why would you in anger wither a tree for
not bearing figs out-of-season, I mean
the story as written even as the author
intended it seems to make Jesus look
like he's crazy, right? The story doesn't
make any sense even in the context of
the supernatural world view ~but~
that it appears to be written in.
But the thing is, that is not what the author intended, now the author may have intended certain
outsiders to mistake it as literal and therefore
scoff and laugh ~and~ and not get it ~um~
there's a chapter in Mark 4 where he
has Jesus explain this. Where the
stories are meant this way to trip up
outsiders that they'll laugh and scoff and
not believe you have to become an
Insider to understand the real meaning
of these stories and so ~ah~ then I looked at
the literature of the scholarship on this
particular passage and found that in the
peer-reviewed literature already
scholars have pointed out that there is
actually symbolic meaning to ~this~ this
story of withering the fig tree is
wrapped around another much more famous
story that most people know about which
is the clearing of the temple.
Where Jesus gets in, gets angry and knocks over the money changer's tables and all of
that stuff ~and~ and when we see that in
literature in general, in ancient literature
but also in the gospels specifically
when you see one story wrapped around another
where the story begins and gets
interrupted by this other story and ends
ends on the other side of it ~that's~
they're saying that those two stories
are talking about each other that those
~store~ two stories and ~you~ you interpret
them in light of each other so the
withering of the fig tree story is actually
about the temple in fact
it's about the temple cult and
~what he~ what this story is saying ~ that
what Mark is saying, is that he's explaining
something that was extremely difficult
to explain at the time which is why God
allowed heathens to come in and destroy
his own temple ~and~ and end the temple
cult which was the center of ~Judea~
Jewish religion, the center ~of~ of Jewish
salvation theology ~um~ one of the most precious
and fundamental things of their religion.
Why would God allow that to happen ~and~
and Mark's explanation is that well it's ~
God decided that the temple was no
longer needed Jesus replaces the temple
~ah~ and so ~that~ that's his message and
so he's saying that God decided that it was
no longer time for ~that~ that
tree to bear fruit ~that it was~
so he's going to wither it's very roots
meaning he's gonna let the Roman soldiers
come in and destroy it
and end the cult forever and so it's
actually this symbolic story that
explains why God abandoned ~that~ that
temple and that temple cult and
how Christianity replaces it because ~it~
Jesus goes on to explain now it's all
about prayer, it's all about faith, ~um~ you
gain salvation through me and so when
you look at it in that sense an
allegorical sense it's really brilliant
literature and really cleverly done and
very much reflects like even modern
cinema today where you'll have like a
literal narrative and a story but it
really is some sort of allegory for
something deeper about society ~or~ or
human nature or something like that
this is what the gospel authors were
doing and they did intend the insiders
certain insiders, you know, who were given
the secret knowledge to understand that
that's what these things were but
outsiders were supposed to be tripped up
by the literal meaning of the story so when
atheists come along and like make fun of this as
Oh that's a ridiculous story if taken literally.
In a sense they're making
fun of Christians who take it literally
but they should actually stop and say
well actually yeah it's ridiculous to take it
literally but they knew that when
they wrote it ~ah~ so it wasn't that ~ah that they~
that Mark believed the story that someone told
told him that story, that someone remembered Jesus did this is, and he's like wow that's amazing and wrote it down.
No! No! Mark constructed this story
to actually symbolize what he wanted to say
~um~ and ~that's~ that's actually much more profoundly interesting for literary analysis and for understanding the Gospels
>> FAMA: ~And~ And it really is you know
I'm a filmmaker myself and when
I went to film school that when they
tell us the structure of storytelling and
how powerful storytelling is to human
beings for us to not look at it even
throughout time not just Christianity
but just stories mythologies throughout
time and what it says about us and
ourselves I think if we're going to
be honest with ourselves to look at and
figure out what we're trying to say that
is a fascinating thing ~and I~ and I
really want to dig into that and
figuring out what stories and maybe ~you~
we could figure out where
you know the jumping-off point is for this.
First off what stories were important to
people at that time in that region and
what were the seeds that kind of started
bringing Christianity into being
can you put us in the mindset of people
back then and what the
stories they were telling.
>> CARRIER: Those are two very different questions ~um there there~
This was a time of competing cultures, right,
~this was~ this was an empire
that stretched three continents ~um~ was trying
to ~be~ unify all of these diverse cultures
~um~ with their own traditions and their
own languagesand so on and so ~ah~ the
most widespread cultural influence was
the Greek ~even~ even the Romans
were heavily influenced by Greek culture ~um~
they had Virgil, they had the Aeneid but
the Greeks really produced Homer and Homer
became kind of like the Bible ~of~ of the
ancient world very widespread it was
used for moral stories
it was used for teaching ~um~ it was
kind of like that equivalent of that ~
~~~~~~~~
>> FAMA: Sorry! I didn't mean to interrupt you
~which~ which time period
so people know just in case people
aren't really familiar, which time period
talking about when this is happening.
>> CARRIER: Well ~it's~ we're talking the 1st century AD but
it had already been happening for
centuries before that, right, ~um it was~
it had developed through ~ I mean first
Homer was written in the ninth century ~um~
became sort of like ~the~ the capstone
book, the sort of guide to life, or in a
sense or ~the~ the collection of stories
about which you could tell and explain
things about the nature of the world for
Greek civilization which expanded around
the 5th, 6th century BC, then Alexander the
Great came along in the fourth century
BC and spread Greek culture even further
pretty much everywhere ~um~
and Greek colonists spread it West as well
so it got as far as Spain and North Africa
and so on ~um~ and that's how it got
into Judea as well ~ is that~
that the Greek conquerors came along
and conquered Judea
and also there were, you know,
traders going to Judea and so on
so there's a lot of influence is going on
and that's how Homer spread everywhere
but see the Jews ~ah~ their particular culture
was highly resistant to just adopting a
foreign culture like this so they had
their book which was well the Bible, the
Old Testament, they didn't have it in the
form that we have it today ~they didn't really~
didn't have a canon, they didn't
have one book that you could grab that would
have all these things it, they had a collection
of body of literature ~um~ but they still
regarded that and there was the Greek
version of the Septuagint ~uh~ that they
translated ~to so even Greek~ even Jews
who only spoke Greek because they were
in the Diaspora they were,you know,
thousands of miles away in Greek colonies
elsewhere, ~um~ a lot of them like
forgot or didn't speak Hebrew very well
and so ~they~ they had ~this~ this you know
popular language version of the
Septuagint as a thing and the Septuagint
became super popular all throughout the
Roman Empire around the same time so you
have these two books with very competing
messages and very competing values ~um~ and
~this~ this subculture, ~the~ the Jewish
culture kind of trying to resist the
influence of the Homeric culture ~um~ with
their own sort of anti-Homer ~their~
their particular scriptures but the Christians ~are ah~ they are a Jewish sect they began as a
sect of Jews. Now the Jews were very
divided at this time there are many
Jewish sects ~that~ we've counted between 10
and 30 different Jewish sects, they are very
fragmented ~um~ and there were many fringe
~anti~ counter-cultural sects
many Jewish sects that were breaking away from the mainstream ~and~ and ~ah~denigrating the
mainstream as being, you know, corrupt and
destroying the world and stuff and it's
all because of you that all these things
have gone wrong and so they want to
~train~ They want to change society, they want to reform society, they think there's something
wrong with the way the system works now
and they want to reform it
and revolutionize it. But ~they~ they have to
do this in a way ~that~ that resonates with
the assumption that God had always meant
them to do that they can't just come along
and say God changed his mind they have
to say that God always meant this and so
~they're already~ they were  looking for secret codes and we have this example in the
"Dead Sea Scrolls" we see before
Christianity there were these fringe
counter-cultural Jewish sects of which
Christianity eventually would be one
they were already looking in ~these~ these
scriptures the Septuagint and these other
scriptures the Hebrew scriptures as well.
Looking for hidden messages from God
they were they were looking for ways
that maybe God hid ~these~ these things in
there that explain how he wanted things
to change and we have many texts
from the "Dead Sea Scrolls" that show
~how they were~ the different ways that ~these~
these fringe sects were trying to rewrite the
Bible, re-understand the Bible with ~this~ this thing
and one of the ways to do that is the what's ~
and this is called Pesher to take
a ~ look for disparate passages in the
Bible and find a new hidden meaning in them
~ahem~ and you can actually see
Christianity evolve out of a Pesher
~there~ it's clear that you look at the
letters of Paul and then you look at
later doctrines of Christians that
Christianity someone looked at the Bible
found these passages found these hidden
messages and created their own Pesher
that became sort of the guide to ~their~ their
particular sect on the way they thought
things should change the way we should
reform society and eventually when
people started writing these things down
or when they wanted to to spread these
things they wanted them to compete with
this sort of evangelizing right they had
this idea they're evangelizing across
three continents right they' re competing
against the Septuagint they're competing
against Homer that people can hold up
this book and say hey we've got this
book is going great stories in its
ancient ~why~ why replace it with yours and you
don't even have one and ~so~ so Christians
started writing one decades later this
is after the decades after Christianity
~started~ started writing their own Bibles
in a sense, they started writing their own stories
and saying hey we've got a better story
we've got a hero, this Jesus hero and look
he's better ~ah~ than Odysseus, he's better
than Achilles, and here's the way he's better,
he's better even than Elijah and Elisha,
better even than Moses and
here are the reasons and the ways
he's better and the message that this
entails about how we should change
society and so that what they're doing
is they're trying to create their own
new scriptures that are built out of
the old ones ~they~ they're using Homer
and they're using the Septuagint to
construct stories about Jesus so that
when people read them ~they they'll~ they'll recognize
they'll resonate, they'll recognize
the Homeric elements and
the Septuagintal elements
they'll  recognize, Oh ~I~ I see you're reflecting on Moses here or I see you're reflecting on this
particular Greek ideal and the way they
changed the story the thing that they
alter in the way that they've rewritten it,
that is the message, they're saying our values
are better than those values because
look in that story they go off and do
this but in this story are hero goes off and
does this other thing
or says this different thing
this is what makes our values better
than their values and this is the way
they would communicate their
messages through storytelling
~ah~ and ~ah this~ this whole
theory that I've just explained to you
is actually been fully articulated by
other scholars in the peer-reviewed literature ~ahem~ Dennis MacDonald most famously,
Thomas Brodie as well ~ahem~ and I find it very convincing it really explains a lot ~of~ of
the oddities of the evidence.
>> FAMA: So ~what~ what was our
mindset for these specific types of
stories why were these stories important
to them and what was that saying
about us as humans at that time.
>> CARRIER: Yeah it's, you know,
hard to ~an~ answer
that without picking specific ones and
they're all different right so the
stories that end up in the gospels serve
many different functions ~um~ there are ~3~ ~3~
roughly three different kinds of
functions one is which is very common
throughout mythologies in human history
are what's called etiological myths
which are myths that explain the origin
and purpose of a ritual ~ah~ and you know
we have Baptism, you have the Eucharist and you have Martyrdom and so this is the story of
Jesus’ baptism is meant ~to~ to really model ~tha~
that story is supposed to model
and represent what baptism meant for a
Christian who becomes baptized right so
you are basically putting yourself in
the place of Jesus and undergoing the
same ritual the message there, you're
telling the story of Jesus to sort of
explain what a baptism is and what it means
theological and so on but another thing
they do is they take like sayings of
Jesus or saying that they got from the
bible that they interpret as coming from
Jesus and the sayings from Jesus, often we
know came from revelations, came from
dreams people would have a vision or
dream of Jesus and believe it was really
him and say hey Jesus said this thing
and that would get promulgated and so
they would take these sayings and then
say and then build a narrative out of the
saying ~like~ like turn it into something
Jesus did, not just something he said and
we know that was a common way of writing
literature of the time because there are
many biographies of philosophers and
poets in the Greek literature where they
did the same thing they took ~ah~ a line
from a poet's play and then invented a story
about the poet's life ~um~ and out of it
right, sort of communicate the idea
behind the saying but then attributing it
to something that actually happened but
they're making it up right, so that's
another thing that they're doing is
turning sayings into narratives to
sort of further reify and symbolize it and
another function is as guides to
missionary life so there's a lot of
things in the Gospels that are
very convenient for missionaries ~ah~ to
respond to their audience, one is, for example
when he experiences  ~ when people keep
calling Jesus crazy and has this pithy
answer to that. Well the Evangelists had the
same problem, like people were calling them crazy
as they go around, so they needed a pity
answer to that, but now they don't just
have a pithy answer to that they have
the story they can tell right ~that~ that
pulls people back in ~and then~ and now
we're talking about the gospel again
right so ~its this~ it serves this function
this sort of guide for missionaries
to use these stories to sort of turn the
conversation back around to the gospel
message that they want to spread even
when they're being attacked or
criticized so the Gospels were ~ the
stories were created for ~the~ these
different functions so there's different
stories that serve different functions and
and the difference is which one you pick in
terms of what role it served for its
audience why it was written and how it
was used. But ~ah~ there are many that are very
interesting ~that~ I told you about the
the fig tree story ~that's~ that's one ~
so well, why, if your god is so great why did
he allow the Romans to come and destroy
this temple well then they tell the fig
tree story and that clearing of Temple
story and they got that answered right
another one is ~ahem the ah~ so  even
before, right, before all of this ~the~ the idea
in Judaism was that you would be saved
through the "Yom Kippur" ceremony every year
what this means is in the temple they
would go through this ritual
where you would pick these two goats ~ah~ they had to be identical and one of them you would
lay hands on and say cast all the sins
of Israel on to this one and chase it
out into the wilderness ~and~ and you know
legend had it, they push it off a cliff
and it would die and the other one you
would take to the altar and you would
shed its blood and it's blood would fall on
the altar and that would atone for
all the sins of Israel and now everybody's sins
would be wiped clean but this ritual
this is the magic, the "Mojo" of ~this this~ this ritual spell as you might might call it
only lasted a year so it had to be repeated every year and so the ~Chris~
This is one of the reasons why the temple cult was so central to Jewish life
and why became the center of political
violence, why it became ~this~ the center of
of corruption and so on because it was
necessary so much money and resources
had to go into this temple and it
wasn't just the annual ~ah~ sin sacrifice
there were all these little minor sacrifices
it does and so on that you could pay the
temple priests to perform for you to keep
your sins ~off~ wiped off as, you know, the
year went through and so there's a lot of
money coming into the temple through this
and so a lot of corruption, a lot
~of~ of focus for violence and so on and
so the Christian sect ~this~ this is one of
these anti-temple sects and we know there
are several of these Jewish anti-temple
sects that they denounced
the temple, said that it was a false
temple, the cult is corrupt and so on
what the Christians do  ~ are doing and
saying you know what if we just if we
have this sacrifice that is way more
powerful than this goat it could last
forever ~it would~ you wouldn't even have to
repeat it every year and if that happened if we
have one sacrifice that lasts forever
then we won't need a temple cult
anymore, right, that it ~ it's done you
just attach yourself to this one
particular faith system that gives you
~this~ this permanent ~ah~ atonement
sacrifice and so they invented the best
thing you can have which is a human
sacrifice but a god-man sacrifice
the son of God himself
you can't get more powerful, that's the
biggest "Mojo" ever and this by the way
I'm not making this up, this is ~
I'm just describing to you
Hebrews 9 ~ah~ this is the ~ Hebrews 9 goes through explaining this is exactly what
~ah~ the purpose of the Christian teaching
was, this is why Jesus died he's
replacing the temple cult, the temple cult
~has~ it only lasts a year, this last forever
this is way better in the book of Hebrews
they hadn't ~ah~ the temple hadn't been
destroyed yet so they were still trying
to argue for Jews
to join them and trying to explain why they should while the temple cult still stood.
But when Mark is writing, the temple cult is gone,
so he writes this story that's sort of
explaining, you know, using this as an
example to explain why their system is
better ~ one being, that you know, that the temple cult is gone ~ah~ but ~the~ the other being is
that this is a much more powerful
sacrifice that makes much more sense to
join us and they did this in the Barabbas
narrative ~ah~ you might ~ some people
might know this from the Gospel of Mark,
Mark 15 where ~ah~ when Jesus is taken to Pilate
and Pilate doesn't find anything wrong
with him, wants to get rid of him
~ah he he~ it says then there was a
ceremony every year where they would
release one prisoner ~ah~ there was no such ceremony
~this is~ this is false, ~ah~ it's a myth
and Pilate goes to them and says, "Who do you want me to release?" and they all scream for
Barabbas we want Barabbas and so
Barabbas is set free and Jesus is crucified
now the thing that most people don't
realize, if you don't know the languages
Barabbas means son of the father ~ah~ so
here we have two sons of the father we have
two identical people one carries the
sins of Israel it says Barabbas is
a murderer and a rebel
so he carries, you know, ~ah~ murder and
rebellion, these are like the fundamental sins of
mankind,  the fundamental sins that destroyed the temple cult, the fundamental
sins regarded as leading to corruption in
Judea and all this stuff so they're saying
when the Jews picked Barabbas they picked the wrong goat they picked the one that
bore their sins they didn't pick the one
that actually atones for their sacrifices
don't repeat that mistake pick the right
one and that's the whole point of
the story is to pick Jesus because Jesus
is the one who is going to save you
~ah~ we've already seen what happens when
you pick Barabbas the temple cult got
destroyed and we had the Jewish war and the whole thing so ~this~ this whole story
which is clearly false there was no such
ritual ~ah~ Barabbas is clearly a fake name
~ahem~ even in some manuscripts by the way
and that probably in the original manuscripts
it actually said Jesus Barabbas, so it was Jesus
and Jesus Barabbas we even ~ they even have
the same name and so the symbolism in
there is very clear and we have even
in Origen, the third century Christian
theologian, he totally saw this
and articulates it in his literature so ~that~
that's the point of the story and that
that's kind of ~ it's a powerful way to
communicate ~you~ you really need to get
with Jesus look at what the Jews are
doing they have no cult, they have no way
of salvation we do, they're picking the
wrong guy, ~ah pick~ they're picking the
wrong horse you might say, pick the
analogy, pick our horse, it's a better
horse and so that's one example of how
they were using these stories to sort of
for the storytelling to sort of resonate
with people and communicate values and
ideas and get people to join up
essentially.
>> FAMA: ~Which is~ Which is a great
point and then I think that that the
whole point of the the story aspect in
for us to figure out how do we
understand the world how do we
understand problems like obviously they
were dealing with conflicts of you know
themselves politics the world dying
suffering ~I~ I think ~that~ that's a
point that a lot of people miss even
believers is that a lot of stories were
our way to understanding these things
and so I also like to explore a little
bit more even about that earlier we were
talking about like how film filmmakers
you know they'll create you know stories
will create these characters and you
know just like Star Wars it's not about
like oh there was a "Lightsaber", there
really was a "Death Star", you know, but
it's about you know what was the
character going through what was the
struggles that what that these people
were going through and that's what we
identify and stories so can you get into
a little bit about what stories are
similar to Christianity where the seeds
were some of the things that
Christianity had taken from that led to
this specific type of story.
>> CARRIER: Yeah ahem,
in terms of stories, you see,
the Christians when they're writing
the literature, when they're
writing the stories down they were
actually in many ways reifying philosophy
~there~ there's been a lot of literature
written on how there's cynic
philosophy gets translated into stories
within Christianity Jesus says things
and does things ~that~ that really reify
realize ~ah~ the life of a cynic philosopher
and I think that was somewhat
influential possibly not directly it
doesn't necessarily mean that Christians
saw cynic  philosophy and decided
to attribute it to Jesus ~ah~ cynic philosophy had already ~ah~ infiltrated into Jewish thinking
that Jews had already adopted a lot of
it so a lot of this cynic influences the
cynic philosophical concepts were already
in Judaism and so the Christians when
they're reifying this they thought they
were reifying this sort of this pure
sort of counter-cultural Judaism not
knowing, that you know, the centuries long
history of where those ideas actually
came from and ~so ahem~ so ~I~ I don't ~ca~
It's hard to find specific stories that do
that ~ahem~ other than stories that they were
changing and so to give you an example
of that and I talk about this in my book
"On the Historicity of Jesus", I talk about
the Barabbas thing to, I cite all the
scholarship and all of that, for people
who are interested in ~full~ the full details
on this but the way they changed
Elijah there are a lot of stories a lot
of the gospel stories written
about Jesus are actually stories told about
Elijah in the Old Testament or what we
now call the Old Testament that have
been rewritten they've been relocated
in time and relocated culturally to the
current context and then Jesus is cast as
the main character and so on, so it has
been changed and ~we~ I show evidence
~in~ in "On the Historicity of Jesus" that
many myths did this outside Judaism within
Judaism where they would take an old
myth update the time-line put it in
different places and different characters and tell the same story and of course we still do that today right
"West Side Story" is "Romeo and Juliet"
but it's set in a completely different
historical period, everybody's got different
names, they're using different tools and the
story is somewhat different but they're
really the same story and that's what
they were doing to they were taking ~
they're basically making a "West Side Story"
to "Romeo and Juliet" where Elijah is
"Romeo and Juliet" and Jesus is the
"West Side Story" and so they change these
things ~and~ and they'll take these stories
there's many of the them where Jesus heals
~ah~ there's a story where Jesus is walking
along and there's this dead boy
~ah~that people are carrying on a bier and Jesus
goes up and says, No he's not dead, he's sleeping
and raises him and so on there's many of these kinds of resurrection tales, there's one where he resurrects a girl
in the Gospel of Mark were it's very similar,
you know, she's not dead she's sleeping
and then there's this whole sequence
where people beg Jesus to come and
resurrect her and so on and when you
compare the story of Jesus
and ~the kind~ the story of Elijah that they emulate,
Elijah does the same things ~ahem~ to put
it bluntly Elijah is kind of a dick when
you look at the Elijah stories he's very
dismissive and judgmental, the way that
Elijah handles this story is that ~people~
if people have died or suffered, they
deserved it, they did something
wrong and they're being punished for
their sins that wasn't the message that the
Christians wanted they they said well
actually sin is in the world because
Satan has deceived people it's not
really your fault if you get with Jesus
and then reform your life you can
actually get away from that and you won't
be punished anymore for the ~ for your sins
and so they didn't want Jesus to go
around condemning people for ~ah~ Oh you
deserve that because you must be must be
an awful person but no Jesus says
~ac~Jesus is going around affecting
resurrections affecting salvation
forgiving people of sins and just saying
you know actually just go
and sin no more and you're fine
for example, it's like these kinds of
stories they're telling, they're making
Jesus a better hero than Elijah ~with~ with
these sort of modern values this idea
~that that~ that people who suffer deserve
it because they must have done something
bad that's the old view that they find
being toxic and destroying their society
they want to revise it and say,
No actually, it's not your fault
~ah~ there is another way that you can
actually escape these ills and doesn't
require blaming yourself or whatever and
so they rewrote these stories and having
Jesus not be such a dick as Elijah was
and actually represent this new version
~and~ and that was the real problem
of course is ~they~ they couldn't just rewrite
the Elijah story because that would be obvious
that they're rewriting the Elijah story so what they
did is they wrote a Jesus story based on
the Elijah story that changes things up so
that people could compare and contrast
and say you know what Jesus is
better than this old Jewish religion
Jesus actually has better values that
what you're teaching I really get that
~I'm~ I'm gonna join you guys because I think you
guys have the right way of looking at
things and that's what they were doing
with these stories is sort of changing
up old stories and fixing them in a way.
>> FAMA: And obviously the archetype in fact let's ~
we'll get into this actual archetype of
Jesus himself in fact what I'm really
trying to explore right here is
there's an importance that people
identify with the story of Jesus, there's
something about his journey, his story
what it is. Not that many people realize
that this is not a unique story in fact
there's other stories throughout time
and even in that region or that, you know,
~ah~ through human history that ~we~ where we
see different pieces of this archetype of
Jesus, can we go into a little bit about that
~and~ and what you know.
>> CARRIER: Well there are actually a variety of archetypes that they mask Jesus into
~um~ I show in, "On the Historicity of Jesus"
~ah~ chapter 5 actually
~ahem~ he's really closely matched up with the Socrates, Aesop storyline ~ahem~ so there's
these certain values of these counter-cultural witty heroes who ~ah~ condemn the temple elite
for their hypocrisy and so on and then
end up being killed for unjust reasons
~ahem tha~ that kind of storyline ~was~ was
already resonating with people ~this~ this idea
of the misunderstood counter-cultural
hero who talks back ~ah~ to the powers
that be, the corrupt powers that be and then
~ah~ people are supposed to feel bad like how
dare they kill that person for the wrong
reason ~its~ it kind of evokes an
emotional response that aligns you with
the political values of the text and so
~the~ the Gospels are doing that
they're using this model that was done
for the way the story of Socrates was told and
the way the story of the life of Aesop was told
to do the same thing, another model they
fit Jesus to ~ahem~ is the ~ah~ is the ~ran~
what's called the "Rank-Raglan" hero
it's the hero king narrative
~ah~ where it's ~similar~ similar storyline
where ~the~ the there ~ this king goes through
all these struggles and trials
and evolves ~ah~ in their thinking
and eventually ends up being killed but
then resurrected and then coming
back and explaining the truth of what
all just happened and so ~they~ they
fit him to that ~ah~ because that's a storyline
that resonated with people all over the place
~ah~ they got it!  That was a story
people would accept and say,
Yes yeah, you know what, that story makes sense
because I see that story a lot ~ah~ but another one
is that the whole ~the the~ the nexus of
those two things was the mystery cult
~ah~ concept of the dying-and-rising-god
or just the suffering-god they're both kind
of the same model ~ah an an~ they're all
suffering gods ~ahem~ they all undergo a
passion by the way the exact same Greek
word ~
so there's a passion of the Christ, but there's also a passion of Mithras, there's a
passion of Osiris ~and~ and so on ~ah~
all these god's underwent some sort of
suffering some sort of great suffering
on behalf of humanity through which they
gain victory over death and therefore
could give salvation to the people who
share that with them and so when the
Christians were building their story in
the beginning ~they~ they really adopted a
lot of elements of this dying and rising
god, this suffering god and there are many dying versions of this to
Mithras is not a dying and rising god, but ~ahem~ Osiris is. Osiris is a classic example ~ah~
the goddess Ishtar or Inanna is probably the
oldest that we know ~of~ of this dying and
rising god, that eventually a mystery
called evolved around and all these
mystery cults gave you this ~ if you were
inducted into the mysteries you would be
baptized, you would share a communal meal
with people that were now your fictive
family so you would use fictive kinship
language you would call them your brother
and your sister and so on and you would
gain individual salvation in the
after-life through this and they also had
moral codes as well so Christianity is
really a Jewish version of ~this~ this fad
for ~these~ these things and so when they built
out the story of Jesus they're very much
building out this story of the the same
sort of suffering god narrative the
dying god narrative that was taking off
like wildfire people were really
responding to this all over and so to
really market their gospel ~ah~ they adopted this same idea ~ah~ they might have done
it unconsciously, they might not have
deliberately created the narrative
because it would be popular. ~ah if~ They
created a narrative because it was
popular and therefore had this
resonating effect on ~th~ their mind and
the way they were conceiving how God
must have organized society ~ah~ and
organized his theology and therefore what
message must have been in the Bible
secretly hidden there for them to find
so they were influenced by culture
subconsciously, I suspect, ~ah~ to come
up with this model but that's how these
archetypes were used because ~these~ these sort of hero narratives ~ah~ were very familiar
and had this sort of this political
function that was a safe political
function you weren't just condemning the
authorities to their face you're telling
this story where it's not immediately
obvious like you went ~ if you were
brought up on trial you couldn't
immediately show that their story is
criticizing the Roman Emperor or that
their story is criticizing the structure
of the Roman ~govern~ government or
their tax system or whatever
~ah~ it required interpretation ~if understand~
you had to understand the meaning of the
story to get the meaning ~
like to understand ~the~ the political ~
the politics of it and so that's why these
stories got written that way ~it was~
it was a safe way to do this and this is a
way that really powerfully affected
the emotional centers
~of~ of people's thinking.
>> FAMA: So ~in in~  you know, in other words ~I~ when I look at these stories especially within that region that time
or just stories in general ~ah~ when it
comes to someone that's suffering, I often
wondered the psychological reasons why
these stories meant something for
somebody at that time ~I'm~ I'm currently
working on a documentary called
"A Reason to Believe" it has Michael Shermer and Peter Boghossian in it and one of the things I'm
trying to actually explore on why people
believe what they believe is that when
we have fear we have anxiety and and we
lack control in our lives a lot of times
we will turn to systems to alleviate
that fear to alleviate that anxiety and
I find that a lot of these stories
whether it's religion, mythology
they're a way for us to in an
uncertain world for us to understand
the world ~and~ and how we deal with it even
though we don't have any control ~what~
what was going on ~at~ at that
time, especially when Christianity
started coming in ~ that people said,
OK, this story right here is something ~
~why~ why did that story  ~ I mean because, I think, I saw a lecture were you're talking about like in the
East they have a different type of
mythology, a different type of story.
What do you think was generating in that
era, in that time, for that story to develop.
>> CARRIER: Yeah ~that I mean~ there are
a ~lot of~ lot of tangents you can go on that
the one that comes to mind though
I don't know if it was where you're
going with this but ~its~ it's one that
I think about people overlook they don't
realize that Christianity originated in
a radically different culture ~ah~ than we
have today ~ah~ and it was the way people
understood the organization of the
universe and you're talking about like this idea
of feeling helpless in the face of this
just disordered chaos that could just
ruin your life suddenly and ~you're~ you're wondering like why ?
~why~ why do you hate me God, you know,
~why are these~ why are all these wars, why is there all this corruption that no one does
anything about, why is all this
widespread disease, why is it so horrible,
why do like half of all babies born die before their first year
like ~what if~ what is going on ? ~ahem~
and so the way they ~ you know today we answer that largely ~ we answer that with science.
We say well, here's the scientific
reasons why all this happens and let's rally
as humans and figure out a technology and
~a~ a human system that can defeat it or make it better
~ahem~ that's the secular way of attacking
problems so ~that~ that ~ and they were using
that in antiquity as well but ~ah~ it wasn't as popular, people weren't as confident
in that method of solving problems then
and people had this whole view of the
world that was this sort of the way the
cosmos was organized was you had this sort
of corrupt world order below and you had
progressively more perfect heavenly
spheres above and God and his angels all
live above and ~this~ this corrupt sphere
below which is everything below the
orbit of the moon was controlled by
Satan and these demons, ~so~ so demons explained everything and was
~this~ this, you know,  this rebel angel has run amok ~he's~  he's  taken over, he's deceiving
people, he's influencing people, he's
ruining everything
and so what we have to do is, we have to solve this, we have to get rid of these demons
and so at the same time you have ~ at the same time Christianity, you have a lot of
these traveling sorcerers who were doing the same thing, where they were saying,
You know what, yeah, all your problems are caused by these really problematic demons
I've got these spells I'll sell you
~ah that to~ to get rid of these demons
that will heal you or get rid of your
troubles or fix your bad fortune
or whatever it is ~ahem and~ and so there are these  Sorcerer's doing this and the Christians are
kind of competing on the sorcerer market ~ah~ by selling the same product ~ah~ but
they were selling it not for money they
weren't going out and saying, We'll solve your
problems for money, they're going out and
saying we'll solve your problems if you
join us and so they're actually selling
~the~ the movement in a sense
and therefore growing their movement and therefore getting the money anyway because then
people join the movement, they love the community and then they start donating and some money
starts rolling in so it was actually a
better racket even if, you know, whether
they were aware that it was a racket or
not ~ah~ it worked ~ah it worked feh~
you know, worked fairly well and there are a lot of other religions doing the same thing.
But the Christians are really selling this
idea that, you know, demons have run amok
this explains why every-thing's screwed up
~ahem~ we've got this powerful god Jesus that
actually ~his~ just the speaking of his
name cast out demons like it's this
isn't you know that it's a cure-all it's
a snake  ~ the ultimate snake oil
and ~ah~ so you have to  understand
that the people they're going to
you know, some of them if they're the ultra elite
or super educated would say, Oh demons that's
ridiculous but most people of the time are
super superstitious like they thought
this was real like yeah there really are
demons what are you talking about and
they thought it was ~ they actually had
anger towards the elite who were skeptics of
the demons and the supernatural nature
of the world, disdained them for
disliking this stuff because it ~ because
obviously it's all this magic and
superstition ~ supernatural powers
everywhere and it's chaos we need some
sort of supernatural solution and so yes
the Christian system was a very
attractive way to understand why people
were suffering and gave them the
illusion of thinking that they could
control this and even and even when it
failed like you know if you get for
example this is an example the guides to
missionary life in Mark, where Jesus can't
heal some people in his hometown and he
says well you know a prophet ~is~ is honored everywhere except his hometown ~or~
and the ultimate point of the story, Jesus says, well you don't have enough faith, right, so they
had an excuse even when you know
~their~ their demon cures didn't work
well you don't have enough faith you just
need more faith and then if that didn't
work they said well okay yeah you're your
faith might not be strong enough but
just wait God's gonna come and destroy everything he's going to melt the entire universe and
set everything right then everything
will be good don't worry just stick
around stay in because ~you~ you don't wanna ~ah~ you don't wanna fold your cards ~
you don't  want to fold your hand too early, stay in the pot because Gods coming and then you'll win the pot
and everything will be good and so
~ah~ that was the way the Christians
convinced people not only to join up but
also to sort of feel comforted that they
understood the nature of reality and
that there was something there was a
good result that they were going to get,
they just had to follow these procedures and it
would all work out for them and so
that's a very comforting thing to feel
and ~that~ that's what made
these things very appealing.
>> FAMA: So then ~what it~ where was the cause then at that point I mean if there's all these competing stories and
that one seemed to take off what lead it
from being just a story of a cult of,
you know, a few people maybe a city,
a town, whatever to being one of the
most predominant religions in the world
what was it about that story that shot
into what it is now because obviously
for millions of people this is an important story
that people kill over, I mean it. So what
lead it to ~ briefly like, you know, to what it is now.
>> CARRIER: Yeah it's funny, aesthetically it's not
even the best story that was on the market but
it actually it's all politics and
historical contingency it actually has
nothing to do with ~the~ these particular
unique power of the story itself when
you look at the the history of Christianity
in terms of its development
and I talk about this in chapter 18 of
"Not the Impossible Faith", I recite the
literature there, but scholarship on this
~ah~ Rodney Stark for example has run
sociological models and we have other
evidence that shows that Christianity
was not super successful for like a
hundred years ~ah~ a hundred years of evangelism
~ah~ they were barely known, there was just ~
you know, set up shop ~maybe~ maybe 70
cities in the whole of Europe, North Africa,
and the Middle East which
altogether 70 cities is not a lot ~ahem~ and it might of been relatively small communities
they weren't widely known ~ahem~ and ~ah~ it gradually they became more and more
~ah~ more and more visible because they became larger and larger but when you look at the
data in terms of the rate of growth it's
exactly the same as the Mormon church ~ah~ so
you see the Mormon church's growth and
so there's nothing particularly amazing
or resonating about the Mormon church's
story what they're doing is they're
they're feeding on a common effect where
you're always going to find like a small
percentage of any fixed population who
are dissatisfied with the stories they
have they're dissatisfied with the
system that they're they're stuck with
might for example be Christianity the prior
version of Christianity that they believe in
in fact most cases that's what the
Mormons are doing is converting
Christians to Mormonism which is just a
sect of Christianity but they come along
and they look for, they have that sort of
system where they search out and find
these people who were already dissatisfied
with what they've got and give them
something new ~ah that~ that sounds snazzy and cool and of course they present it as
look it changed my life it's so awesome look at all these other awesome Mormons who are so
happy, look they're all happy,
your not, you should join us,
clearly our system works and so that's
how the story is spread ~ah~ its through this
sort of statistical effect it's not
because the Mormon story is better than
the Baptist story or the Catholic story
or whatever it's because they're
actually it's a new story and that
will always appeal to people who are
being dissatisfied with being ~un~
inadequately served by the community or
story that they're dealing with that
they've accepted or been given already and
so that's how Christianity grew. Now it
would have just been that,  it would ~
Christianity would have remained just
one sect among hundreds of
different religions ~ahem~ it would not have been a world dominant religion had it
not been for the singular decision of
Emperor Constantine to favor it and
this is something to explain that it was
already beginning in the in the third
century a hundred years before
Constantine there was an increasing
trend of emperors who were ~ the empire
was starting to fall apart and one of
the things one of the many solutions
they tried was to try and unify the
empire under a single religion so there
were all these attempts to sort of
create the sort of central religion that
it would be the organizing principle of
the empire and those all failed ~tha~ they failed because the Emperor backing them
died, got assassinated and replaced with a
new emperor so they never had a chance to
even succeed so this kept being tried
tried tried and finally Constantine does
it and the one thing that happens now is
that Constantine doesn't get assassinated,
right, by historical contingency he
sticks around for decades and so is able
to actually consolidate the power and
actually realize this plan of unifying
the empire under this one religion and he
actually he looted the pagan temples
took all the money out and gave it to Christian churches ~um~ he set up a system
where Christianity was super favored and
became sort of the imperial religion ~ah~ and
within about 6 years after him his
successor you know what up from the
Constantine's ~succe~ succeeding after
him
Theodosius went ahead and just made it the law that you had to be a Christian
all other religions are now forbidden ~ahem~
everybody has to be a Christian and
that was 395 AD. So by that time 395 AD, it was now illegal to not be a Christian ~ah~ there
are some exceptions made like Jews had
certain protections and then the law
couldn't be enforced everywhere so
there still were a lot of pagans who could
get away with it because ~they~ the government couldn't marshal enough
force to to compel them but the result
is ultimately they were a lot of these
riots ~ahem~ Christians getting angry at these pagans for thwarting the law and so you
have riots against the pagans ultimately paganism gets filtered down
to well actually it's funny to the
pagoi which is the the villages,
the rural districts, that's why they're called
pagans ~ahem~  so ~ah~ and ~when~ when you get in the middle-ages
you start hearing about ~ Christianity
is everywhere but then they're
all these witches that they're hunting
or their these sort of warlocks or
~these~ these rural people who are casting
spells and things
like that, well you know what that really is
~that~ that's the survival of paganism it
went underground it became sort of the
rural thing, and so it took time, hundreds of years
for Christians to finally ~ the Christian
government, I should say, to finally get
out there to wipe these things out ~um~
and part of how they did it was violently
going and killing people ~ah~ part of it was
bribing people to just, you know, ~ah~
finding ways to make it more attractive
to be a Christian then the not, but another
way was that they adopted a lot of the
pagan rituals and things so that
paganism no longer was attractive,
right, like why be a pagan to go to the
solstice ceremony when the Christians
have this Christmas ceremony that's just
as good ~and~ and supported by the government, right, so they were doing that, they were
borrowing a lot of these ideas from
pagans to make Christianity the sort of
~ah~ you know transformer religion this
sort of ultimate everything religion
the "Mary Sue" [see.70s.Star.Trek ] of religions if you will
~ah~ and ~ah~  so that ~ to make paganism more and
more irrelevant and try to attract people in
~ah~ so this took, you know, this occured
through the Middle Ages ~ah~ took centuries to do, eventually it succeeded ~ahem~ and became
that's how I became the world dominant
religion it took hundreds of years it
took all of these processes and these
processes were all political ~ah they~ they didn't
really have anything to do with the the
unique power of the Christian story itself.
>> FAMA: So I can hear people that usually
I debate and talk to say okay well then
Richard that's great maybe these are all
allegories maybe these are stories maybe
it was political but I have a personal
relationship with Jesus Christ and he
died he you know he was risen
what is the problem with the actual
story of Jesus because you have an
actual great theory on the possibility
that Jesus probably never existed and I
know that you've been fighting really
hard for this one
explain your theory and why that's
important.
>> CARRIER:  Well important is probably the
wrong word I mean ultimately as a
historian I think it's an interesting question in history
I don't think we can know the answer to
it with enough certainty for it to be
important as a social tool ~ahem~ so for
example I think it's much more important
the argument from evil is a much more
important argument as a social tool for
getting people to finally admit that ~ah~
your supernatural world view is actually
toxic ~and~ and harmful to society ~ah~ it's not solving problems we need to get back ~ we need to get behind secularism
because it's the only thing that's been working the only thing that cured Polio was science
it was not prayer, it was not the story of
Jesus for example you could pick item
after item after item ~its~ it's always
been ~ah~ human effort that has done it ~even~ even
when you say like churches create
community isn't that great
that's a human construct, humans did that,
that's something we did, we could do
that without the religion so I think the
argument from evil and certainly the
arguments were the evidence is overwhelming ~ah~ that the Christian system doesn't make any sense
that's a more useful social tool for
getting people to realize we need to we
need to find a humanistic way a different kind of secular morality ~ah~
~to~ to solve our problems in our world ~and~ and not run to the superstition the historicity
of Jesus most of the evidence has been
destroyed ~so~ so we really can't know
for sure whether Jesus existed or not, or in
what way he existed, or who he really was
or any of that stuff so ~aah~ to me it's an
interesting historical question ~ahem and~ and
were it any other religion, if it were Mithraism, ~or oor~ you know, Romulus cult or Osiris cult.
No one would have any issue
with me arguing that he
didn't exist, that you can look, you can
see that his existence was created over
time as a social tool in fact to
influence people because it's much
easier to believe the authority of an
actual historical person then some sort of
sort of abstract ~ah~ visionary being from
heaven and also it's easier to nail down
the authority and stop usurpers from
pretending that they had visions of the
same god and so on so there's ways
you can control doctrine there's ways
where reifying the myth is more
powerful and potent for people and so on
~ah~ there's a lot of ~use~ useful ways to use the historicity of Jesus and that's how it
became ~ how it replaced the original version of the sect ~ahem~ but we can't prove it decisively
I think the evidence ~ there's
enough evidence there to suspect to a
significant probability that. That is
what happened ~ah~ but it's not a slam dunk
~ah~ we know since ~ because like I said most of the evidence has been destroyed
but ~I~ I talk about all of this and the
difficulties with the evidence in my
book, "On the Historicity of Jesus" ~um~ and ~I~ I don't describe ~ I wouldn't describe it as
something that's useful ~ahem~
~ah~ so much as interesting and ~
except in the sense that it's useful to
better understand how the religion began
and the context in which it began and
how that relates to how humans become
attached to stories to begin with
and are willing to fight
and die for them ~ah~ even
when they're false or even toxic.
>> FAMA:  ~And~  And I think the reason why I bring it up to, because I know
there's a lot of debate and I know you debate
a lot of people about it, about you know,
the validity of it and I feel like you're up against
a lot of people maybe
you can describe a little bit about what
religious scholars and other people
debate why are they insistent that there
probably was a Jesus and why is
that you know in relation to you saying that
there probably isn't what's what's challenge there.
>>CARRIER: Yeah it's the difference ~is~
is like I said, if this is any other religion
I wouldn't have this problem but the thing
is Christianity is so entrenched in our
culture ~ahem~ that it's dangerous ~ it's
still dangerous ~to go~ to go this far against it
~ahem~ certainly like a third of biblical
scholars at least somewhere around a
third of biblical scholars are actually
employed by institutions that
contractually obligate them to believe
in historicity, if they were even to
suggest that it was possible that Jesus
didn't exist they could get fired
~ahem~ we actually have evidence ~of~ of
scholars denying the historicity of much less
relevant important things in the Jesus
story getting fired so if you were to go
all the way to Jesus, then that would just doom
you and we have examples of Thomas Brodie
for example was essentially quietly
shuffled off to retirement ~ah~ for declaring
that Jesus didn't exist ~ah so~ so there's
intense pressure to ~not ah~ not admit ~and~
and certain ~ not even, not only admit that it's
possible Jesus didn't exist, but to not
even admit that ~it~ it's a plausible theory
~because~ because if you could do that, it does
to much damage to the religion and to much
offends their employers and to much offends
their funding sources and so on. Then you
have the secular scholars you have some
of the more liberal Christian scholars
who wouldn't care so much and I've even
talked to some of them, some of them who
won't go public with their own
agnosticism when they're actually
agnostic about the historicity of Jesus
but won't say so in public, for a lot of the same reasons where ~they~ they fear
the backlash, they fear that they're
gonna be ridiculed, they fear that they're
gonna lose grant money, they fear that it
might affect their department even if
you're a secular scholar at a secular
school
oftentimes a lot of the money that comes
into that is still coming from religious
people either religious institutions
religious donors ~ahem~ who are supporting
biblical studies because they want to
learn stuff about the religion, they want
to further their religion, ~ahem~ they're not
supporting it because they're atheists
right there's not a lot of atheists
money in biblical studies ~ah~ so even
secular scholars have this tremendous
pressure to convince the public or even
themselves ~that that~ that we really need to
marginalize the idea that Jesus didn't
exist because this is a threat to our
incomes as a threat to ~our~ our way of
life essentially ~ahem that~ On top of that I
think there's institutional inertia I
think there's this tendency to assume
that what they've been taught has to be
true and everything else is ridiculous
~and~ and they only allow like small changes
around the corners of this ~ahem~ and even then
they argue intensely about them but
really fundamental change that's, that's
really dangerous ~and~ and very much opposed and the classic example of this is that
outside historicity which is ~the~ the
so-called Q hypothesis, ~ah~ the Q
hypothesis was formed in the early 20th
century to explain ~how ah~ how it was
that ~ah~ we know Matthew and Luke copied Mark so we know that because they copy passages
verbatim from Mark but there are also
passages in Luke and Matthew that aren't
Mark that are identical between Luke and
Matthew so how do you explain that well
the obvious explanation would be that
Luke is copying them from Matthew ~ah~ but
someone came up with another explanation
which is there's this Q ~this~ this
hypothetical document that this other
gospel that's been lost and that's what ~
just like Mark but they were using that
~there~ Luke and Matthew were
independently using ~that ah~ that document
and they call it Q it's for "Quelle" which
is German for source so it's just the
generic term the source document the
source whatever it was and so this Q
hypothesis was very popular for a while
until certain scholars started to go
wait a minute this actually doesn't make
a lot of sense and they started pointing out a lot of evidence that goes against the Q
hypothesis and pointing out that all the
evidence for the Q hypothesis
is invalid it's logically invalid ~ah~ and their
arguments are really really freaking good
~ahem~ if you look at ~ well Mark Goodacre is the most popular ~ah~ defender of this now ~ah~
there have been many others, you know, Goulder and various other scholars have written on this
~and~ and when you look at ~their~ their arguments, it's like why is this not the mainstream view
it doesn't make any sense that they're
clearly right but there's this
institutional inertia pushing against it
that Q hypothesis has been so popular
and it's so entrenched ~in the in the~ in
the field and a lot of scholars have
built their careers out of hypotheses
that assume the existence of Q so
they're actually dependent on the
existence of Q so there's this
tremendous resistance to even the idea
~ that's like, Oh that there's no Q is
ridiculous we can't accept that
possibility. ~ahem~ Now that's starting to change it's
been decades of pressure finally I think
as younger scholars enter the field they
start to realize, Aw this Q hypothesis
is ridiculous I'm not buying it and so then
you have more and more people at least
being Q agnostics and more people
just rejecting Q altogether ~ah~ but it's
probably going to be decades more before it
really takes over the field as a
mainstream view there's ~this~ this kind
of intense resistance and the same thing
happened with the "Patriarchs" ~ah~ in
the 70s ~ahem~ when Thomas Thompson started pointing out evidence ~that the~
that Moses and Abraham and stuff were all
fictional that they were ~ these are
myths, that they could not possibly have existed ~ahem~ there was intense resistance like to the
point of even trying to get him fired,
trying to prevent him from ever getting
a job, getting him kicked out of conferences
~ahem~ it's actually an infamous story
within the field of biblical studies
to a lot of people's shame
and embarrassment, ~now~ of course now it's the mainstream view ~ the mainstream view,
certainly among non fundamentalist
scholars is that yeah Thomas Thompson
was right Moses and Abraham and so on
that's all mythology it didn't actually
happen but it took decades to convince
people even though the evidence was
pretty clear it took decades to push
against institutional inertia long
enough for things to change and that
maybe ~with with jes~ with historicity of
Jesus ~um~ my book which came out in 2014 is
the first time anyone has published a
book defending the non-existence of
Jesus that has passed mainstream peer
review within the field so it's the
first peer-reviewed literature to argue
this and so really it sets the clock now
like 2014 we could be decades from now
before that really starts to impact
people before that people were
dismissing all arguments for the
non-existence of Jesus as being outside
the field as being fringe amateur and so
on even though it wasn't often it was
nonetheless not meeting their peer reviewed standard so they had to sort of excuse to not
even review it and to dismiss it very
lightly.
Now they can only dismiss it in a very
illogical way they basically have to say
that I'm going to refuse to read the
peer-reviewed literature of my own field
and insist that this possibly has to be
with has to be ridiculous can't possibly
be true even though I've not read it, even
though I've not written a critique of it and
that you see again and again and again
that happened with me
and the Craig Evans debate recently, I blogged about this,
people can check the blog on that
at richardcarrier.info
and ~ah~ the Craig Evans debate was a classic example of it
~that~ that the book has been out for two years ~ahem~ and he had a copy of the book, I made sure he
had a copy the book many months before the debate and we got up there to do the
debate and It was very clear throughout the
debate that he had never even read my
book he was completely unprepared for my
presentation he had no idea what my
theory was or what my evidence was for
it and ~ah~ this astonishes me and it
really represents what I'm talking about
this institutional inertia there's this
intense desire to not even entertain the
possibility that it could be true and to
sort of convince themselves that they
can rationally deny it from the armchair
without even looking at the evidence
without even considering it and I think
that's a fundamental problem in the
field and it might take decades to get past it.
>> FAMA: You know and I think that
what's important about this as much as
I'm curious and I love trying to
understand you know history and why
people believe what they believe it's
also for me a value proposition in saying
that you know we've advanced ourselves
through science and education and we
have to be revolutionary in are thinking and
to challenge these ideas because
sometimes unfortunately these ideas get
in the way of our actual knowledge of
the world and understanding we see it all
the time with creationist you know with
telling you ~ saying the world is 6,000
years and old anti-vaxxers. I mean it's not
just even religion just people and their
ideas and how they stop the progress of
actual science education the importance
of our understanding and I think when
somebody's like well Ben are you just trying
to strip religion from everybody ? no
not necessarily I'm trying to get people
to understand also that we need to start
asking these questions this is how we have
advanced ourselves and by us being
afraid, living in old outdated ways of
thinking we're not going to progress and
look at we could be we might even been
farther than we are now if we asked
if we were allowed to ask more questions so
~maybe maybe~ this can maybe segue-way
little bit into your book you have a new
book called,
"Science Education in the Early Roman Empire"
~what~ what was this book and why
did you decide to write it
>> CARRIER: ~ahem~ Well Chris ~I ~ like I mentioned before in 2008 I got my Ph.D. ~ahem~ needed a job, so I went to
my fans and so they gave me the project
of the historicity of Jesus and that
occupied me for six years ~ahem~  so that
brought me to 2014 ~ahem~ then I had other
books to do and so I started working on
~ I pulled my dissertation out blew the
dust off of it and decided to start
turning into books and my dissertation
was on the natural philosopher or the
scientists in the early Roman Empire and
it's you know a big treatise and I had a lot
of material that I didn't put in it
that I could have so I had a lot of stuff to
turn into books so one of the things I'm
organizing this, it was too big a book to
publish so I pulled out the education
section to simplify it so I can just
refer back and so I took all the
education material and put it in there
and what that was was when I was doing my dissertation on ~
"Attitudes toward the Natural Philosopher in the Early Roman Empire"
this was my dissertation and I was
studying how did people in that time
think about scientists ~ah~ what did they
think they did, did they like them, did
they hate them,
~ah~ did they even know that they existed,
you know, ~what~
what kind  ~ were people supporting them,
what kinds of things
how did people think about them ~what~ what was the position of them in society and ~ah~ so
I did that but one of the things I had to
do is the science in the education
system, right, and I realize, I started to
read all the education literature, I studied,
I took courses at Columbia
from Raffaella Cribiore
who was ~ah~ one of the leading experts on ancient education
~ahem~ and I ~ so I read everything and so on ~and~
and no one covered it and there would be be
so frustrating I would read a book about
the education system and there'd be like one paragraph where they'd say well and science
education is a little bit different
than this but that's beyond the scope of
this book so we're going to move on and
like that's the stuff I wanted so no one
had done it and so I realized, I guess, I
have to do it so I actually became the
first scholar to actually comprehensive
analyze ~ comprehensively analyze the
science content of ancient education ~ah~ the education of specifics ~ of
scientists in general ~ahem~ and I went ~ I brought ~ I went all the way out to popular
culture so I was even looking for how ~ because  a lot of
education that people get about science is
through popular culture, right, ~you~ you see it in a
movie or something like that ~ahem~
antiquity had popular culture to they
had stories, they had orators, they had
libraries, public libraries and so on
~ah~ they had juries, I talk about how science knowledge filtered to the public through
the legal system ~ahem~ so there's a lot of
popular culture education element as
well but I also cover the whole
education system itself and in doing
that I had to describe the whole system
to begin with so ~if you~ if you get this
book it's not just about science content
it's actually gives you the full survey
of what the education system was like in
antiquity ~ah~ who learned what ~at~
and what were the stages of it like and so on.
But I do focus on the science content at
every stage so it thoroughly covers what
kinds of science at what levels ~of~ of
education did people get exposed to it ~ahem~
and ~all~ all of that so ~its~ it's really
a thorough book on ancient education with
that science emphasis and does show like
a significant difference of how things
have changed between now and then.
>> FAMA: And you know there's never enough
time to talk about this kind of stuff and it
drives me ape-shit so if people want to
find out more about like you and your
books and what it is you do. ~How~ How can people
find out more about you and what you're doing
>> CARRIER: Everything you can find through
richardcarrier.info that's, "I N F O",
~ah~ that's my website ~ah~ from there
you can find my Twitter account, my Facebook
account, ~ahem~I don't have FriendSpace ~ahem~
but you can follow me on Facebook , you can follow
my Twitter ~ah~ whenever I blog on my website it gets announced on Twitter and
Facebook ~ahem~ the best place to find it and you can find all my books I've written many
through that website as well yeah that's
that's the place to go.
>> FAMA: Awesome and all these will be in the links in the show notes, the notes below
so if you're on the website, on my
youtube I have everything here that he
said on the show and that way you guys
can check it out and go check it out
because this is a lot of fascinating
stuff and he goes into real depth about
this stuff and really has a great
understanding of it and I'm just glad
that you're here so Richard thank you so
much for joining me I really do
appreciate it.
>> CARRIER: Yeah this is great.
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