Laurent Guyénot, returning from his thorough spanking on chronology-denial, is back; this time confronting a sect of denier. These deniers include Earl Doherty, no longer alive to continue his case; and Richard Carrier, much cited on this here blog lately. Did Jesus Exist? - asks M. Guyénot.
Guyénot may be loopy, but he does at least assemble facts - however he might sort them. He's amenable to the counter-denialism: against Pauline authorship of the mainline Epistles (you know the ones: the big four plus 1 Thess plus Philippians). Luckily he's not dying on that hill. He's steelmanning Carrier to allow that Paul did write those six, plus or minus certain couplets. Guyénot is showing more respect to Carrier than are Ehrman and O'Neill, which is already earning for him some points in my ledger.
If Jesus existed on Earth, the mythicists say; why does Paul, and we can throw in 1 Clement and Hebrews and even 1 Peter, say so little about Jesus on Earth. Guyénot counters that the past is another country. The "classical" - specifically Hellenistic - mind envisioned that several elden gods were human heroes who'd been raised to Divinity by their followers. Philosophers had already applied this theory to Dionysus and Zalmoxis by the reign of Augustus; Augustus himself was deifying his uncle Gaius Julius Caesar. Tiberius would, I think, do the same for Augustus. And these philosophers and emperors weren't ... wrong: it had been a tradition of the Hittites to say that their best kings had become gods in death. And what of Egypt?
Guyénot brings up Mark's Gospel, which a mythicist would agree was well-versed in the Pauline literature and likely 1 Peter too. It promotes a Christology: adoptionism. The Nativity is assumed - namely Paul's; Mark supplies the name of the woman from whom Jesus was born. So the mythicists claim. Guyénot thinks Mark might be relying on a side-tradition, also. Guyénot brings Charlemagne's vita, which is full of cods, allowing that Mark might also be full of cods, but nobody (except maybe Guyénot a decade ago... sorry) thinks Charlemagne didn't exist just because some goof wrote a bad bio of him. I could bring here John Malalas, the Historia Augusta, and Moses Khorenatsi, who also wrote terrible histories, but we don't deny the overall sweep of Late Antiquity for their sakes.
(Guyénot goes on to Atwill, which I'll ignore for this post, on account I haven't read him like I've read Carrier.)
Deification of mortals is, I think, a fair argument. Where it falters is that, for Charlemagne, and for that matter for all the Late Antique victims of Malalas and his ilk, we own side-sources. Charlemagne had contemporary attestation among the Popes in Italy, whom he didn't entirely approve, so must endure their more jaundiced view of his reign and adventures. I think some of the Anglo Saxons saw what he was about, as well; and the Byzantines, who were clambering out of their eighth-century slump at the time. Certainly Malalas can be checked against other Greek and Syriac chroniclers, and we've long recommended comparing the HA to John the Deacon's epitome of Victor, not to mention Herodian and Ammianus. Ubi sunt such side-evidence for Christ? - and don't tell Carrier "Tacitus and Pliny!"; he'll retort they're as late as the Gospels.
Anyway, overall, I'm glad Guyénot is making the effort. He might consider a stronger effort.
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