Richard Carrier is a very smart man. He is also a good writer and speaker. Born in California in 1969, Carrier served with the Coast Guard, graduated from UC Berkley, and earned a PhD in ancient history from Columbia. His focus has been on ancient Greece and Rome and the origins of Christianity, and he is the author of numerous books and essays.

The topic Carrier is most associated with is also the reason you have probably never heard of him, since it is not academically “mainstream” to say the least. Carrier has come to believe that Jesus was not a historic person, and in his writings and talks he is an energetic advocate of that position. Even among critical scholars, that is not the way to win friends and influence people. His most recent academic book is The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus. More accessible to the general reader is his earlier book Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ.

That seemingly sarcastic second title actually points very well to Carrier’s primary contention. At the risk of gross over simplification, I’ll try to summarize it. For Carrier, the best evidence for a mythical Jesus is in the letters of Paul, the earliest texts about Jesus that we possess. For notable by its absence is any mention by Paul of an earthly historic Jesus. This has puzzled Bible scholars and countless ordinary readers for centuries. The “simple” explanation according to Carrier is that no such Jesus existed.

For Paul, Carrier says, Jesus existed entirely in the heavenly realms (which modern people now call “outer space”). Jesus descended from the highest heaven to a lower level and assumed human form to contend with Satan, be crucified, and then be raised back up to God, thus achieving the redemption of humanity. But in all this, no physical human being called Jesus of Nazareth ever walked the earth.

What I believe is Carrier’s most important accomplishment is to show that such a scenario is fully compatible with the beliefs and cultures of the ancient Western world. As you may know from Greek and Roman mythology, the heavens were multi-layered, well populated, and busy places. A lot went on there, including redemption dramas with dying and rising gods and other divine figures.

Stories revealing this heavenly realm are common in both testaments of the Bible. By-and-large, Bible readers were taught to treat them as curiosities of little importance. That was wrong, at least as far as the Bible’s writers were concerned, who thought they were very important. Otherwise, why would they have included them? In the ancient world, the heavens were as important a part of reality as we now treat the invisible realms of cellular biology or chemistry.

Paul says explicitly that he saw the risen Jesus in a vision and strongly implies that this is how the Jerusalem disciples also experienced the risen Lord. He writes in 2 Corinthians 12 of being “caught up” to “the third heaven” and another time to “paradise”, apparently different places. He also speaks of being told things by the Lord for the benefit of the community. Then there is the remarkable case of 1 Corinthians 11.

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was lifted up took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said….

If Paul anywhere seems to speak of an event from Jesus’ presumed earthly life, it is this recounting of the Last Supper. But notice those first six words: “For I received from the Lord….” Paul came to faith long after Jesus’ resurrection. So, for him to know about an event in Jesus’ life, presumably someone, like a disciple, would have to have told him about it. But here Paul says he learned of it, not from the disciples, but by revelation.

Okay, but it still could have actually happened, even if Paul learned of it in this dramatic way, right? If that’s the case, then why do the synoptic gospels all use Paul’s version almost verbatim to tell the story (while John ignores it all together)? If the institution of the Lord’s Supper was a historical event, surely the gospel writers would have had some version of it tracing back to the disciples who presumably were there. Instead, they seem to be taking it entirely from Paul, who never claims it was an earthly event but instead, in Carrier’s view, is relating a revealed episode of the passion drama which took place “in heaven.”

So, what about the gospels? Everyone agrees they were written decades after Paul—and that’s about the end of the scholarly agreement. We don’t know who wrote them, or when or where they were written, or how many there were. We know the four in the Bible are the result of years of additions, subtractions, and editing.

In the case of the synoptic gospels, it’s clear Matthew and Luke based their books on the earlier Mark. But their changes don’t seem to be correcting Mark as just wanting to tell their version of Jesus’ story differently. They don’t seem to be very concerned with how something happened or was said, or if it was at all. There are also scholars who now believe the writer of John also had one or more of the synoptics in front of him and clearly decided to write a gospel very different from any of them.

According to Carrier, what we are witnessing here is an instance of a mythical story being historicized. That is, what was originally believed to be a tale about events occurring in heaven, gradually came to be told as a story about human characters occurring here on earth. Again, Carrier says, examples of such developments are found in the ancient world outside Palestine. So, this wasn’t a one-off occurrence.

Is Carrier right? I don’t know, and it’s possible that we will never know. I do know that advocates of ideas like Carrier’s were usually laughed out of the room by academics before he came along. They’re not laughing now. However, scholars who have based their careers on the assumption of a historical Jesus will likely never change their minds about that.

As Carrier implies in the title of his newest book, what we may be witnessing is a paradigm shift. In the sciences (of which biblical studies is a type), history has shown that paradigms change, not by convincing existing scholars of the truth of the new paradigm, but by their gradually dying out and being replaced by younger ones who have been trained in the new paradigm, or way of thinking. Carrier’s new book provides evidence that that transition is underway.

Well, all that may be very interesting from an academic point of view, but what about the practical meaning of Carrier’s position? Does it matter whether Jesus was a historical person who walked this earth, or that he was a figure in an ancient mythical drama in heaven, believed and spread by a community of apocalyptic Jews? Living at the beginning of the third millennium CE, and with ancient traditional religions all in a tailspin, I would say, no, it probably doesn’t.

I should add here, that what Carrier is saying about Jesus has already been said about the great founding figures and stories of those religions, as well. Nearly all of the Old Testament has been moved from the history shelf to fiction. Like Adam and Eve and Noah before them, now Abraham and the patriarchs, Moses, David, Solomon, the prophets, and the tales that surround them, are all viewed as mythical characters in the legendary founding story of Israel. A similar transition has occurred for ancient figures like the Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Muhammed. And in all these cases, even where it is accepted that persons with such names existed, it is the stories and activities attributed to them that is doubted.

But back to Jesus. In the schema of traditional Christianity, a flesh-and-blood Jesus would seem to be essential for his role as universal savior. But it’s just that very Jesus who is rapidly losing people’s interest. Having our sins forgiven by trusting in the shed blood of Jesus doesn’t move people the way it did in the Middle Ages. For many today it’s frankly repulsive. Instead, it’s Jesus the teacher, story teller, and exemplar of compassion that holds people’s interest and generates commitment. Would that change if people began to doubt Jesus was a historical person?

What role do famous figures from that past play in our lives today? It seems to be a universal human trait to want heroes and to idealize people from the past, be they family member, political leaders, or spiritual sages and prophets. For centuries, Arthur was accepted as a real king from Britain’s early post-Roman past. Now, however, he’s a legend. Does that dimmish the tales surrounding him and his knights?

I don’t think so because I think time had already done that. A character from fifteen hundred years ago, however heroic, just doesn’t have the power to move us anymore. And that I think is what is happening to all the great figures of ancient religion. They all come to us from so long ago that their presence in our imagination is too weak to matter to us very much, however historical they might be. The world they come to us from is so strange it effectively is a fairy tale for us today.

The ancient characters that will remain important for us are those whose stories and teachings, whatever their actual origin, still speak to our lives now. Losing Buddha as a historical person wouldn’t matter to most Buddhists because his story and message are still relevant and valuable to them. The same is true for many or most Jews about the Bible’s characters. I just read this morning a piece by a “teacher of Jewish mysticism” who talked about “the biblical myth of the Exodus” as a lesson in letting go of the past and becoming free.

Many Christians and former Christians, of course, are already at this point with Jesus and the Bible. For them, a non-historical Jesus would be no big deal. The institutional church, however, is having much more trouble getting around that corner. And that is because it just can’t let go of Jesus as savior of the world, however antiquated and objectionable that idea is to so many. Personally, I am still surprised how often this notion seeps into the preaching and liturgies of so-called liberal and progressive churches.

Whatever the verdict on Jesus’ historicity, it won’t matter on his continuing as a significant part of our culture. That will be determined by whether or not our remembrance of him has a valuable and practical role in people’s lives. In recent times, Christianity has been fumbling at making that case pretty badly. If nothing else, perhaps Richard Carrier’s ideas can shake Christianity’s tree enough to make it aware that its ancient Jesus just isn’t cutting it in the world today.

If you appreciate these posts, remember to “Like”, share, and subscribe, if you haven’t done so already. In the mystical world of search algorithms, this all helps “spread the word.” And add a comment, if you’re so moved, to be part of the conversation. Finally, thank you for your financial support (see the “DONATE” box), which covers blog expenses and helps me to keep doing this!