The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

[Minimalist]

The Gospels generally afford us no evidence whatever for discerning a
historical Jesus. Because of their extensive use of fabrication and literary
invention and their placing of other goals far ahead of what we regard as
'historical truth', we cannot know if anything in them has any historical
basis-except what we can verify externally, which for Jesus is next to
nothing. They are simply myths about Jesus and the gospel. They are not
seriously researched biographies or historical accounts-and are certainly
not eyewitness testimonies or even collected hearsay. Their literary art and
structure are simply too sophisticated for that. This is equally expected on
both minimal historicity and minimal mythicism, however, and therefore
(apart from what we've already accounted for in determing the prior probabi-
lity in Chapter 6) the Gospels have no effect on the probability that Jesus
existed, neither to raise or lower it.


Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus,  pgs 508-09