I don’t have time to debate you point by point on this. I’ll just make a few points.
If Osiris wasn’t resurrected, how did he and Isis conceive their son Set? And if he wasn’t resurrected, why did pharaohs and later ordinary Egyptians want to identify themselves with that god to facilitate their life after death? As for whether his resurrection was physical, see the myriad quotations I supply in one of my other articles on the Christ myth theory (second link below). And if his rebirth wasn’t physical, why the Egyptian obsession with preserving the corpse as a mummy?
Assmann quotes liberally from the primary Egyptian sources. He’s an expert on Egyptian religion, whereas I’m certainly not. And Assmann says in The Mind of Egypt, “Each phase in the circuit of the sun is characterized by different constellations: birth by the mother, rearing by divine nurses, ascent of the throne by acclimatory worshippers, confrontation with the enemy by adjuvant gods, sunset as return to the womb. The model for correct dying leads to regeneration by way of a netherworldly union with Osiris, with a consequent rebirth in the morning from the primal waters that itself repeats the initial cosmogonic ignition.”
So the idea of Egyptian resurrection was baked into their worship of the sun and into their understanding of the solar cycle (the patterns of day and night). I explain all of this in my article on Osiris, which relies on Assmann rather than Plutarch.
You’re strawmanning Carrier. He’s another expert in the field, and I’ve seen him obliterate historicists on these questions, including Ehrman. I wouldn’t say Carrier is infallible, but I don’t see how he could be considered a “fraud.” His writing can get personal, especially on his blog. And the tone of his main book on the Christ myth is too chatty for my taste, with far too many parentheses. But he has academic degrees in the relevant subjects, his work is peer reviewed, and he tests his hypotheses against critics in countless public debates. He’s the leading proponent of the Christ myth theory. Also, far from laughing his way to the bank, as you say, he lost out on a more secure academic job because his views aren’t mainstream. So financial reward is hardly his incentive.
I don’t see the point of your quibbles about the empty tomb story and the timing of Jesus’s death. I believe the Jesus Seminar addressed the changing times in the gospels. It has to do with a difference in theological emphasis (whether Jesus was the new paschal lamb). Your explanation—which is akin to The Passover Plot—takes the narrative too literally, in my view. The simpler explanation by far is that Mark made it up to stage the resurrection scene. There would have been no private tomb, so his body couldn’t have been stolen in that way.
The empty tomb story was a case of wish fulfillment that sustained Christians’ theological propaganda, and that’s so even if Jesus was a historical figure. The gospels are much more theological than historical. But again, I credit your explanation with being naturalistic, so it’s more plausible than the traditional Christian one.
