Ask A Historian

[Mudhammam]

You're assuming that it happened in one fell swoop.  Like everything else, it evolved.  I suggest Richard Carrier's On The Historicity of Jesus.  I have an electronic version if you PM an email address I'll send it to you.  After that, compare the reasons for believing the Historical Jesus routine with it. 

Thanks but I'll probably buy a copy of his book next year when I do a survey on the origins of the main religions. Perhaps you can clue me in on his take of this point; the crucial issue for that particular argument is dating the NT, especially given the characters that play such a dominant role in the story (the Herods, Pilate, etc.), and at least a handful of them seem (even by Carrier's standards as far as I know) to be reliably placed in the middle to late first-century. The earliest of their respective genres, and their nearly unanimously agreed upon dates of composition, say Galatians (49-52 CE), Mark (65-75), and Hebrews (60s), all seem to contain the notion of a Jew who died by crucifixion. Of course the myths evolved, though naturally one would expect them to move upwards towards the incredible and not the other way around. Even if he wants to argue that something like Euhemerism occurred, and I'm not sure that's really a great comparison, it seems like the earliest texts in the ballpark of what can be described as a distinctly Christian mythology or essential tenet of the faith contradicts that assumption.