Schweitzer on Mythicism

Again via James McGrath, Cryptotheology presents this quotation from Quest of the Historical Jesus:

To be in any way scientific, the mythical theory must not only explain his origin, which is difficult enough, but also show how this fictitious non-Jewish figure was introduced into the Judaism of the early Roman Empire – a hopeless undertaking. Why make him a preacher of the coming of the Kingdom of God, moving entirely within the circle of Jewish thought, and secretly holding himself to be the future Messiah? Why attribute to him unfulfilled predictions of impending persecutions and his own immediate coming as Son of Man upon the clouds of heaven? (xiii)

  McGrath seems to agree with the critique, as he says "Much time has passed, but mythicists are doing no better at addressing his concern..."  Since I'm dithering with my brief for the Hannibal v. Jesus proceedings, I'll take a swipe at this thoroughly antiquated view.

Hannibal v. Jesus, Part 1

  The first thing to note about the argument presented below is the implicit and false equivalence drawn between the nature of the historical record as regards Jesus on one hand, known entirely from anonymous and highly mythologized ancient literary sources, and Hannibal on the other, attested in ancient historiographical texts by authors who are themselves known to history and who followed the accepted practices of ancient historiography. The question we must ask in assessing the differences is: Do we know of the bare existence of the Carthaginian general known by the name of Hannibal entirely from literary sources?

A dissenting opinion in the case of Hannibal v. Jesus

Below the fold is an example of a common counter-argument to the mythical Jesus hypothesis, framed as a reductio ad absurdum. It appears here and it was linked to on Exploring our Matrix, the blog of Butler University professor James McGrath, one of the Web's prominent "Bibliobloggers" and a tireless (not to say tiresome) opponent of the idea that Jesus of Nazareth is a literary fiction.