Britt and Wingo finish off their chapter on their results by discussing a few extra findings that came across. The first had to deal with the concept of a proto-Mark. The idea that there is a proto-Mark is a fringe idea. It’s one that has largely died out. Britt and Wingo bring it up quite a bit though throughout their book.
They never support the idea of a proto-Mark, they just claim there was one, and then started making claims about it. In this chapter of their book, they go as far as trying to reconstruct this proto-gospel.
We can largely ignore this section though. Why? Because the authors, after the publication of their book, backed away from the idea.
Specifically, Britt, responding to an Early Writings forum thread titled “A Wonderful Mythicist book: I am talking about ‘Christ before Jesus’ by M. Britt and J. Wingo,” stated:
“So something I want to say is that we realized after the book was written that there seems to be no stylometric evidence of proto-Mark. We were working on the assumption of Markan priority, but we are more agnostic on that question now. Yes, we reconstructed what proto-Mark might be, but after extensive testing we found no evidence of anything there. There might be some kind of layer deep inside, but it would be so heavily rewritten and a small portion with seemingly no logic as to what was added in a later redactional layer that we don’t feel comfortable with a proto-Mark anymore. But in terms of a timeline, that’s more or less where it is to the extent something might be there.”
Since they no longer take the idea seriously, there’s no reason for us to really tackle it.
Papias, Dionysius of Corinth, and Polycrates
There is nothing of consequence here. The results for Papias and Dionysius of Corinth were inconclusive. For Polycrates, they claim that they verified the one letter we have by him is authentic. Whether that’s true or not is really irrelevant here, so I won’t spend any more time on the topic.
Josephus
As with the above, their analysis of Josephus doesn’t add much to the conversation. They point out that their analysis shows that books 17-19 of Antiquities show up separately from the rest of Antiquities, and they suspect that they were heavily edited, but also list other options, which are more probable.
I will dive much deeper into Josephus later on, when we discuss their chapter on the Ancient Historians, but their analysis here doesn’t add anything to the discussion as a whole, so we will move on.
Pseudo-Ignatius and other texts
The next two sections that detail their other findings also add nothing relevant to the discussion. And as there is a major reason to doubt their stylometric analysis anyway, based on their flawed methodology, their misinterpretation of the data, and no actual graphs to speak of, we will skip these sections as well, and move on to the final discussion.
Hebrew Bible
On a number of occasions, Britt and Wingo have mentioned their intentions on writing follow-up books to “Christ Before Jesus,” that would deal with the Book of Mormon, and the Hebrew Bible through the use of stylometry.
One could then see this brief section as somewhat of an introduction to a possible full-length work. If it is a hint of what could become, I don’t hold out much hope unless they massively shift how they do their research.
For instance, their mention of the Elephantine Papyri, a very large collection of manuscripts found in Egypt, spanning around a century between the 5th and 4th centuries BC, ignores the fact that the Jewish population mentioned in these documents was a unique sect that had broken off, possibly centuries before.
Now, within this collection, it is true that we have a letter sent to the high priest in Jerusalem that requested help in rebuilding their own temple at Elephantine, but the authors’ conclusion that this meant that in Jerusalem, they also didn’t have the “Torah Law,” (which is a redundant phrase, as the Torah is known as the Law). But this isn’t necessarily so; it could just mean that they ignored this particular law.
The idea that some of the Torah would be ignored is not a radical claim. That’s one of the major issues mentioned throughout the Hebrew Bible. Nor does any of this suggest that there was no written Hebrew Scripture at the time.
Sure, the Hebrew Bible as a whole wasn’t developed, nor were all of the Biblical books written by this time, but that is a separate discussion from whether or not Hebrew Scripture existed, which would include the Torah. That one unique sect would not abide by such Hebrew scripture does not mean that Hebrew scripture didn’t exist.
They follow up their discussion of the Elephantine Papyri by jumping into the formation of the Hebrew canon; however, the creation of a canon does not dictate when a text was written. But even in this, they get the details incorrect.
For instance, they claim that Josephus, writing at the end of the first century AD, “only mentions a smaller number of books in his collection than what became canon later.” Josephus mentions 22 books though. This is two short from the 24 we see in the Tanakh, but there’s a caveat here.
The two books that he leaves out are Ruth, and Lamentation. However, it is likely that he combined Ruth with Judges, and Lamentations with Jeremiah.
None of this really matters though because any mention of a canon meant that the works which would be placed in said canon had already been written.
The bigger issue is that once again, Britt and Wingo attempt to use stylometry to date texts, which simply isn’t what stylometry is used for. There’s no reason to go into length on this part, as I’ve covered it in depth already. Suffice it to say that their entire argument then fails before it ever gets off the ground.
Now, to be fair, the dating of the Hebrew Bible, and the texts within, are often later than tradition tends to argue. That there are layers of redaction and editing is not a surprise either, as such is generally accepted in academia. There is also the matter of oral tradition having a hand in all of this, which plays a significant role as we are looking at an oral society.
What is most interesting here is that Britt and Wingo appear to be arguing against a more fundamental or traditional understanding of the Hebrew Bible. And when looking at “Christ Before Jesus,” as a whole, this same mentality seems to be at play. Honestly, it’s an easier approach than actually dealing with the scholarship on the subject.
A concept from Maurice Casey comes to mind. In his book, “Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths?,” he gets to the idea that many mythicists who come from evangelical or fundamentalist backgrounds, never leave behind the rationale. The means by which they research a topic, or think about a topic, never really changes. What changes is simply the focus.
To put it simply, the evangelical mindset never changes, they simply go from evangelical Christian to evangelical mythicist. The flawed reasoning that they once used to defend their Christian faith is the same flawed reasoning they now use to defend mysticism.
Casey makes a rather blunt conclusion over all this:
“We must conclude that one major element in the mythicist case is total contempt for sound historical method. Mythicists refuse to make any serious attempt to understand New Testament documents in their original cultural context. The most straightforward reason for this is that they begin with their conclusions, and fit the evidence into them.”
I think this fits with Britt and Wingo. What Casey states about other mythicists, I think, applies here as well, “they have had a conversion experience away from Christianity, and they are no more sympathetic to critical scholarship now than they were before.”
As we now jump back to the beginning of their book, I think we will see this ring true even more.