Yes. Mythicism Is Still A Joke

[JimL]

It's a difference of:
- "Historical Jesus": There really existed a person named Jesus who formed a cult and taught some stuff, possibly vaguely along the lines of some parts of the gospels, whos followers (maybe at the time, maybe decades or centuries later) eventually came to believe was actually a god.
- "Jesus mythicism": The first Christian had spiritual visions / dreams / hallucinations which they interpreted as revealing to them a mystical figure they called "Jesus". From these spiritual visions they got teachings and stories, and the gospels are compilations of those. The gospel accounts are not based on any literal living breathing human person who taught things, gathered disciples, or founded Christianity.

The traditional secular/liberal position for the last couple of hundred years has been the former - that there was a dude named Jesus who was a self-appointed wandering religious teacher in the 1st century Judea, who founded the Christian movement, and who's followers subsequently came to believe all sorts of silly supernatural things about him (see Sathya Sai Baba for a modern parallel).

But more recently, people who have been following anthropological research into religious visionary experiences, have suggested that you need to give much more credence to the possibility that it wasn't Jesus who founded the early Christians and instead it was the early Christians who invented Jesus via their religious visions which they seem to have been quite keen on. So in this reconstruction the start of the book of Acts where it portrays a bunch of cultists having the "Holy Spirit" descend on them and all starting to talk in tongues and have visions etc is where historical Christianity begins and those crazy cultists subsequently then went on to invent the contents of the gospels based on their visions including inventing Jesus.

It's a case of did a person named Jesus found Christianity, or did the early Christians invent a fiction spiritual figure named Jesus?

Right, I understand that star, I just don't think it makes a lot of difference concerning whether or not the biblical story of Jesus itself is a myth or not. There were a whole lot of Jesus like prophets, any one of whom the biblical myth could have been based upon. The story itself is a myth whether or not there existed an actual historical preacher named Jesus.

[psstein]

But more recently, people who have been following anthropological research into religious visionary experiences, have suggested that you need to give much more credence to the possibility that it wasn't Jesus who founded the early Christians and instead it was the early Christians who invented Jesus via their religious visions which they seem to have been quite keen on. So in this reconstruction the start of the book of Acts where it portrays a bunch of cultists having the "Holy Spirit" descend on them and all starting to talk in tongues and have visions etc is where historical Christianity begins and those crazy cultists subsequently then went on to invent the contents of the gospels based on their visions including inventing Jesus.

It's a case of did a person named Jesus found Christianity, or did the early Christians invent a fiction spiritual figure named Jesus?

The only people who've proposed it as a theory of Christian origins are Earl Doherty and Richard Carrier. Neither of them have made any impact on the field and are regarded as cranks.

On the other hand, it's not controversial that the early Christians did attach importance to mystical experiences.