Motes and Beams: HJA (25)

I find it interesting how mythicists and historicists sometimes make the exact same criticisms of each other.

Jesus scholars continue multiplying contradictory pictures of Jesus, rather than narrowing them down and increasing their clarity--or at least reaching a consensus on the scale or scope of our uncertainty or ignorance.  More importantly, the many contradictory versions of Jesus now confidently touted by different Jesus scholars are all so very plausible--yet not all can be true.

  Richard Carrier, Proving History p.12.

The very fact that some mythicists have been able to claim that the New Testament is entirely based on pagan myths, while others have been able to claim that it is entirely based on stories in Jewish Scripture, shows that people who want to find precursors will do so, and will find diverse and even mutually exclusive ones.

James McGrath, Exploring Our Matrix.

The difference is that Carrier only infers that there is something wrong with the methods of historicists while McGrath thinks that he has put "a nail in the coffin of Jesus mythicism."