Did Paul Even Exist? Scholar DESTROYS the Mythicist Argument | Dr. Mark Goodacre

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:11][music] [music] [music] >> Professor Goodacre, Francis Hill >> [laughter] >> Francis Hill Fox, Professor of Religious Studies. I apologize. I don't know why I always get goofed up there. Um, did Paul exist? I know this is this is something that you're like, what in the world?

[00:00:46]There are people out there who legitimately think that Paul's letters are completely epistolary fiction, including the seven authentic, um, for their own I think there's some some reasons behind there's probably biases is why let's divorce him historical verisimilitude here or something. Uh, did he exist? What are Give us a few points of why.

[00:01:08]>> the it's it's it's always a difficult one, isn't it? It's a little bit like conspiracy theories about the moon landing that that, you know, you say, well, you know, did the moon landing actually happen? The number of people who would have had to have been involved in that conspiracy about the moon landing is is so many and the number of people who would have had to have lied all of these years, um, it's absolutely flabbergasting that no one would have broken that kind of lie and someone says, all right, fair enough, we did it in a warehouse out in Texas somewhere, you know.

[00:01:35]And it's a little bit like that with with the idea that Paul didn't exist.

[00:01:39]The The It is actually far simpler to believe that a real human being named Paul who came from Silesia actually wrote those letters. I mean, if you think about the logistics of of trying to do that kind of fiction, you are not just you're not just writing those letters as pieces of fiction. You are recreating a story. You're creating a story in the background that that then this fictional writer is having to respond to.

[00:02:11]You So so there there are there are cycles within cycles that you have to get to to do this. And then you have to bear in mind that there are all sorts of other people mentioned in the letters who are historical characters. It's a little bit like when you do the kind of did Jesus exist thing, that if you say Jesus didn't exist, you then have to still have to ask the question of what about Kephas?

[00:02:36]Did did this guy exist? And and if he didn't, who did the who did the fictionalizing and when, you know? So I am a great believer in Occam's razor.

[00:02:48]Occam's razor Sometimes people misrepresent it as the simplest hypothesis is the best. That's stupid.

[00:02:54]Not true. The simple is better than, you know, complex. History is complex.

[00:02:59]Sometimes, you know, there are layers and layers and layers.

[00:03:02]But Occam's razor is that you don't multiply entities unnecessarily, right?

[00:03:08]And I think when you get into the idea that Paul didn't exist or that Jesus didn't exist, what tends to happen is you are multiplying entities like crazy to try and explain the extant literature.

[00:03:24]The simpler hypothesis here is that there was a human being named Paul. And and and it it's such a it it's such a gritty and an earthy story as well. Not that that I mean, you can write fantastic earthy gritty fiction, obviously. But there is a very similitude in Paul's letters that is not born of fictionalizing. It's born of of history, it seems to me. I totally agree with you. You you up Jesus. I was hoping to ask a separate, but it's important [laughter] because this is this one I think you would agree to this the reason why this can become a more difficult question and I'm with you on Occam's. In fact, I I apply the same thing and that's what's made me a historicist and lean that way. I entertain I I listen to mythicist. I you know, I consider what they say, but at the same time like I have really basic I know someone go that's not evidence. Mhm.

[00:04:20]Guys were crucified. Mhm. Like you don't have to say he's in heaven being crucified by demons. Right. Elaine Pagels book on the origin of Satan, she points out like every time you see Satan or demons and stuff, there's always humans involved especially within the context. There's always a human. They're either working for the devil or Satan entered him or get behind me Satan all these contexts. So, there's reasons behind why it seems most possible for sure Paul, but Jesus is shrouded in this thing where most people go using historical method, right? I I love your thing on the empty tomb, but we're not going to go there cuz I think it's like you don't even have to say that there is an absolute miracle here to still say something could be going on here. And I say that to say like you might draw a different conclusion, but walking on water, these type of things, right? They'll go all of these added things and elements using historical method, you can't prove that. And in fact, they'll say this is elements of myth. This is elements of potential fluff if you will.

[00:05:19]It takes him away from history. It takes him away from reality and therefore they go there's so much myth. There's not a guy. But then people like Dr. Ehrman go, come on guys. Like you're doing yourself a disservice. So, what evidences make it pretty clear on like a common sense approach without ad hoc propositions why there was a historical Jesus? Well, I think the one of the ways I'll put it is that you have to ask what kind of evidence would you expect for somebody like Jesus? In In other words, why do we think Pontius Pilate is a real person in history and not someone made up in the literary sources? Because we've got coins that say Pilate on it.

[00:06:01]Because we've got a dirty great step which somebody found at Caesarea that's got Pilate written on it. So, we know that he's a historical figure.

[00:06:11]But, of course he was a political figure. The kind of person that didn't mint coins and that did have his name written on big steps.

[00:06:20]Jesus isn't like that. Jesus isn't minting any coins. He's not leaving behind any clay tablets or He may not have had his name written >> written on it.

[00:06:30]>> Right. Right. John 8.

[00:06:32]>> He Yeah, he writes on the ground in John 8, but that's that's it. Yeah.

[00:06:34][laughter] Um he I mean, in Luke 4, he seems to be able to find his way to Isaiah 61, which is quite quite amazing there that So, he might be able to read. least. I mean, Luke thought he could. Um it's interesting that in Mark's gospel, you don't have Jesus, you know, reading out loud from anything. So, it may well be that Mark is depicting Jesus as at least less literate, if not illiterate, because he does have these characters the scribes.

[00:07:02]>> There's a great book by my friend at Chris Keith, Professor Chris Keith.

[00:07:06]And it's called Jesus and the scribal elite. And it looks at the way in which the gospels actually contrast uh Jesus with these characters that I keep saying scribes all the time.

[00:07:17]Anyway, what I was going to say is that Jesus is not the kind of person who you would expect to leave behind actual artifacts that we can then say, "Ah, here's the here's you know, here's the So, the only way that somebody like Jesus lives on is in people's memories, in the traditions that they're sharing with one another, and in writings.

[00:07:44]So, if we ask the question, have we got that kind of evidence? Yeah, we have.

[00:07:47]That's what Paul's letters are, that's what the Gospels are, and so on. That's what you would expect to have.

[00:07:53]It isn't It isn't, I don't think, a rational position to say, "Well, I I doubt the existence of this person because we don't have any of that kind of material that we have when it comes to Pontius Pilate." And let's face it, there are all sorts of other characters that we don't have that kind of evidence for as well. What about John the Baptist? Mhm. You know, I mean, John the Baptist didn't mint any coins. He gets a reference in Josephus.

[00:08:17]>> Right, he gets a reference in Josephus.

[00:08:19]So, but maybe Josephus was making that up. I mean, he wasn't. I mean, you know, he wasn't. But, you know, you you can always be You can always do that, you know? So, what about Theudas?

[00:08:30]What about The Egyptian? These other people that that Josephus mentions, did they really exist? I mean, I think they did. I think they they they certainly did. But, did they leave behind any any Did they mint any coins? Did they have that You know, do we find a big statue of them? Of course not, cuz it's not the kind of evidence you would have. So, a lot of the time you have to say, "What does it mean to do ancient history?" And when you're doing ancient history, what you're doing a lot of the time is you are dealing with your lack of evidence.

[00:08:57]Every day when you're doing ancient history, you wake up and you say, "There is so much I don't know. There is far more I don't know than than I do."

[00:09:06]And And the thing that's valuable about mythicist scholarship is it does put you in touch with the crisis of being an ancient historian, which is you have to keep saying, "I don't know." I mean, one of the things when I do my historical Jesus course is I have to really underline for students and and and and have this conversation with them about how little we know about all sorts of things. So, for example, who was Jesus's biggest influence when he was growing up? We have no idea whatsoever. We can guess that it was maybe Mary or or Joseph or you know or maybe you know when he started following John the Baptist maybe it was him but we don't know. I mean maybe there was you know it was it was Rabbi Nathaniel you know at the at the at the Nazareth synagogue. We just don't know. We have no clue. Not the faintest idea you know.

[00:09:57]And that's just to take one thing. We could go on like that all day. I mean everybody thinks with great confidence Jesus was a carpenter. Well, how do we know that? One offhand remark in Mark chapter 6 which says is this not the workman? Is is this not the craftsman?

[00:10:09]Something like that. And then for centuries we have Jesus is the carpenter you know. Even things we think we know we're not quite sure exactly you know how how precise you know they are. Maybe they were being sarcastic. We don't we just we just don't know you know so I think the value of of of some mythicist scholarship is it reminds us of how little we know. It reminds us of the nature of the sources. And I always like to contrast ancient history with modern history. If you're writing a biography of Donald Trump not something I would enjoy doing but if you if you wanted to write a biography of Donald Trump your problem would be too many sources.

[00:10:50]You have got so much material. You have got how many videos to plow through and tweets living living relatives people that know you would never get through even a tiny amount of the material that you would need to get through to write that biography. That's the problem of being a modern historian. Problem of being an ancient historian is the exact opposite. It's that our sources are so limited and so few. And that means that sometimes the accidental nature of remains of historical remains distorts our vision because something's just survived because of happy accident you know.

[00:11:29]And so we can then start thinking that that is representative.

[00:11:34]And it is is is like when we were talking about Paul.

[00:11:37]The fact that Paul wrote letters means that his legacy survives. And the fact Luke loved him and he writes all that stuff in Acts of the Apostles.

[00:11:48]Apollos we might never have known about if it wasn't for the fact that Paul mentions him in 1 Corinthians and Luke mentions him in Acts.

[00:11:56]Just a couple of mentions. We don't know much about him at all.

[00:11:59]How many other people are like that in early Christian Christian history that people just forgot to mention?

[00:12:03]>> And they may have been very influential.

[00:12:04]>> Right. Highly influential people. Yeah, exactly. It's why I actually quite enjoy counterfactual history sometimes. I've written an article about Mark's Gospel which is which tries to imagine a world without Mark. What what would have happened if Mark's Gospel had never been written, you know?

[00:12:22]And the reason why it's worth doing that is that sometimes when we approach history, we do it in this we kind of assume that there's an inevitability about about history that there's a sort of fixed side to it. We get quite fatalistic about it. And sometimes you have to remember it's so contingent. What if the guy that grew up to become the author of Mark's Gospel had actually died when he was a teenager?

[00:12:45]You know, what if he wrote the Gospel and very quickly it got lost, you know?

[00:12:50]I mean, it's good to ask the what if questions, I think, you know, cuz it it stops us from thinking that the history that we've got is the only possible history cuz it's not.

[00:12:59]It is amazing I and I think there's a whole another world that and I'm going to speak for the like skeptics myself.

[00:13:06]Um I've caught myself doing this is I feel like sometimes we don't give maybe we mistreat the text like we wouldn't have treat we wouldn't treat another document because it might be a chip or it's a religious document and it's like we deal with fundamentalist or Christians who want to who proselytize us in a it's not like someone who's just a man of faith or something, but like they have a agenda and a mission and it's annoying and they're like aggravated, so they take it out on the book or the text. And And so what happens often, I I think, is sometimes we're too skeptical with the very book that we're trying to figure stuff out.

[00:13:42]Don't get me wrong, maybe being cautious is important. I feel the same thing with the groups that try to identify that these are Israelites throughout the entire New Testament that are getting salvation.

[00:13:51]>> Yeah. Cornelius was an Israelite. Mhm.

[00:13:54]You didn't [clears throat] know that, but only Israel gets salvation. And therefore, it's all these ethne or Gentiles must be Israelites. And they go to Revelation 7:1 144,000.

[00:14:06]They equate that group with the same group after. They say they're the same group. The great multitude, every nation, tribe, kindred, and tongue. They say they're the same.

[00:14:14]Therefore, they're all 12 tribes. That's it. Like and they do that and it makes me really want to probe into the history. Mhm. They divorce history. They don't really go and say, "Let's look at history." They say it's fictitious like the epistolary fictions of the of the of Paul and all that. But it drives me to want to know more. And so I'm thankful for them. And when I was a mythicist, >> Mhm. I hear interpolation, this interpolation. In fact, earlier when you mentioned in our other recording, you mentioned Paul says that the judgment on the Jews will come.

[00:14:43]>> Right. Well, that to me, immediately coming from full preterism, which is a whole thing we don't even have to talk about, but also as a mythicist, I said, "That's the Jerusalem destruction, duh.

[00:14:51]That's 70 AD cuz they got the wrath of God."

[00:14:54]>> How's that not in my mind? And it could be, don't get me wrong, but do we have to draw that conclusion? And why am I drawing those conclusions? I don't have certainty on that. I just have to make a an assumption. Some groups, for example, go to 2 Peter 3 when he says the elements shall melt with fervent heat. Well, when the temple got burnt and the elements of the religious practice of Judaism were burning, do you see how far they go?

[00:15:17]That's not actually cosmic, it's just the temple being destroyed. And um I just like I'm with you on this.

[00:15:24]>> Well, on the issue of skepticism, the difficulty is that for every historian, you have to have a healthy dose of skepticism and bring it with you to the text because that's just how the historian naturally will work. I mean, if if you think of the the opposite thing, that you you you went with credulity to everything, you're not really doing history then.

[00:15:50]All all you're doing is is is some form of fundamentalism. So, every historian has to have in their armor that that that bit of skepticism.

[00:15:59]And when I say skepticism, I mean in the broadest sense of taking an inquiring critical mind and asking questions like why do I think that's the that's the case. What we know, what makes me think that that's the case, you know? Beginning from this thing again of I am confused. Sometimes just say say this I mean, the reason why I basically questioned the existence of the Q document was wasn't because I was on like some sort of mission to, you know, kind of, you know, take take this beloved text out of the scholar's armor. It's just that I kept kept looking at the the arguments around it. I think I just I just doesn't make sense to me, you know? I mean, I just thought, "No, I just just doesn't see you know, they say well, Luke could I mean, cuz the obvious thing is Luke looks a lot like Matthew." I think, "Well, surely, you know, this guy copy this guy." No, no, no, he can't have done because of and then the reason would be something like because you nobody would have destroyed the Sermon on the Mount.

[00:16:51]You think, "Well, every person that's ever interpreted it in throughout history has done something with the Sermon on the Mount like rewritten it a little bit or changed it a bit." Why wouldn't wouldn't the first interpreters have done that when it wasn't even that, you know, Augustus in a text. So, I think this is this is really where, you know, I have some sympathy with the mythicist position because I think what you do when you're when you're a when you're an ancient historian is you you actually do have to keep saying "Why do I assume that this is the case?

[00:17:24]Is this the case?" Ask those kind of the those difficult questions because sometimes you'll actually discover that received opinion is wrong, you know. So, I love that. You just said a gold mine of of something and I want to speak on the other half because I was a mythicist. Mhm. Um I understand why they're mythicist and totally respect it. I also want to say I'd like to see more um less derogatory >> Yeah. view from both historicists, especially the the consensus um on mythicist. However, the mythicist I would be speaking to here saying "Please guys, don't be dogmatic. Don't >> Yeah. Don't be so certain he didn't exist.

[00:18:06]>> Right. Stop like, 'Oh, that's not evidence.' What if it is? Mhm.

[00:18:10]>> You might be throwing out something that could be. Be more flexible. Right. Do you know what? I I I can I'll tell this story against myself.

[00:18:20]Many years ago I was teaching a historical Jesus class and I would hardly give any time at all to the mythicist position and I said >> [laughter] >> and I said in passing at one stage, I said, "Well, you know, it why would you invent something like Jesus coming from Nazareth, you know?

[00:18:36]Who's ever heard of Nazareth, you know?

[00:18:38]That that looks like a kind of historical detail." And one of the students in the class said, "Yeah, but what about Robin Hood coming from Sherwood Forest? Who Who's ever heard of Sherwood Forest?" Well, I have because I'm from you know, my I support Nottingham Forest football team and you know, that that's related, you know, but but not many people have heard of Sherwood Forest, right? Except in connection with Robin Hood. And this student said, "What happens quite often with a mythical figure with a legendary figure is they are associated with some unusual, never heard of before place."

[00:19:09]It goes back to this whole thing of of kind of having some degree of kind of mystery and and secrecy about about the figure that then is is is is is unveiled. So, I stopped saying stupid things like nobody would have made that up because it's quite clear that you often have legends and myths where and I don't know, to be clear, I don't think it was made up.

[00:19:30]>> Right. I think Jesus was associated with Nazareth.

[00:19:34]And I think the fact that Mark calls him Jesus the Nazarene in spite of the fact that Jesus seems to live in Capernaum in the Mark's gospel. It's like, what's going on there? Kind of thing. But so, I do think there was a historical place Nazareth and that Jesus, you know, was was probably brought up there. I think that's the best explanation of the data. But I don't any longer use that as an argument for his existence, as it were, you know. I like that. You could see growth and development.

[00:20:03]>> You should I mean, it's it's one of the things that it's one of the things that I think is really really helpful as a scholar, as a student, is constantly to challenge yourself and and to ask why why do I think I know this, right? And I I agree. I think a lot of my colleagues and especially those that are, you know, got nice kind of tenured jobs will be very disparaging about the mythicist position rather than engaging it. Um I um we were talking off camera earlier on, but I've got an article coming out soon called how empty was the tomb.

[00:20:37]And and the very first footnote in that article is to Richard Carrier. So, you know, and I'm certainly not afraid to to um allude to the work of people like Richard if if, you know, he's got something uh good to say, which in this context he has, you know, so Wow. You know, I I you know, I and I think that that is a healthy attitude for anyone.

[00:21:00]Wow. Thank you.