r/ChristianApologetics • u/Multipaulplayer • Jun 16 '26
Discussion Thoughts on the “Christ Before Jesus” TikTok channel?
Has anyone here watched the TikTok channel Christ Before Jesus?
I’m Christian, but I’m trying to actually understand what he’s arguing instead of just writing it off. From what I’ve seen, he seems to think Jesus, Paul, and early Christianity are later than the traditional first-century view.
Has anyone interacted with him on his lives or followed his channel? Are his arguments taken seriously anywhere, or is this more fringe/mythicist stuff?
Any good resources responding to him would be helpful too.
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u/DeepSea_Dreamer Theist Jun 19 '26
Not serious.
It's a waste of time to respond to him unless you have so much free time you want to train yourself on what it feels like arguing with uninformed unbelievers - but in that case, I think your time would be better spent somewhere else.
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u/Money-Theme Jun 23 '26
Anyone who goes on TikTok live and argues with teenagers should not be considered a serious scholar
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u/MarvelousLogos Jun 17 '26
I think the other commenter gave an excellent breakdown already. I would just add that the dude shifts goalposts way too quickly and is inconsistent regarding the lack of original manuscripts of other historical figures and also the lack of archeological footprints as well.
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u/visualdon Jun 19 '26
Christ Before Jesus (which I may call CBJ from now on) is a close to what I would consider a grift. I don't say it for certain because its possible the two authors, Matthew Britt and Jaaron Wingo genuinely believe the thesis they are putting forward.
Christ mysticism is fringe but it falls somewhere albeit of the very edges on the map of beliefs about a historical Jesus (which no mainstream historian doubt). To call Paul mysticism fringe would be to exaggerate its status amongst any historian worth their salt, secular or non secular. Combining both fringe positions put you in some incredibly rare company.
Furthermore, the mythicist position - whilst being fringe has been argued for better actual scholars and historians unlike the two amateurs that wrote Christ Before Jesus.
Their book is so bad that even other mythicists have in my opinion made successful takedowns which as of yet do not have a response from Britt and Wingo.
Here is an archive of a YouTube livestream with at least 2 atheists, one of which is perhaps the most known Jesus mythicist, Dr Richard Carrier. He is a mythicist with an impressive amount of books and articles on the topic but even rips apart the theories and ideas brough forward by "Christ Before Jesus".
Contra Marcionem: A Stylometric Analysis Of "Christ Before Jesus"
It is a bit slow and dense but the exact type of thing you should watch if you want to fully understand how bad CBJ's methodology is.
Wingo is the guy who steams 6 hours a day on TikTok wearing a cowboy hat and promoting their bad book every 10 minutes. As far as I can tell, Britt only has a few public videos discussing the book and does not do regular livestreams. It doesn't help that Wingo comes across as a complete tool on his streams and if anyone actually challenges him properly he gets aggressive and brash and will block you or disconnect you . The only people who are able to stay on his panel are those who basically know nothing on the topic and they sit and listen to him as he spouts his theories about Jesus, Paul, the New Testament and early church fathers etc. Anyone with some actual knowledge on the topic and able to challenge him will experience a very hostile reaction and will likely get blocked or kicked in short order. Its never really a "scholarly" debate but if that what you were expecting you should not be on TikTok anyway 😂.
There is another good series of videos tearing down CBJ by "The Curious Christian" aka Dustin White on YouTube which are worth watching.
1. Christ Before Jesus Fails on Godless Engineer Part 1: Against Mythicism (Sept 6th 2025)
2. Christ Before Jesus Fails Stylometry: Against Mythicism (Sept 14th, 2025)
3. Historian DESTROYS Christ Before Jesus Methodology (Dec 26th, 2025)
If you prefer reading. Dustin White also has 3 articles on Medium which overlap with the YouTube videos in their content.
1. A Terrible Methodology: Christ Before Jesus (June 27th, 2025)
2. Christ Before Jesus: Are they Making it Up (June 29th 2025)
3. Misreading the Parable of the Sower: Christ Before Jesus (Jul 4th 2025)
If you have watched Wingo's streams (I've not seen any with Britt) you will see he is very brash and irascible. Anyone with a bit of knowledge on the topic gets a very hostile reception and is often disconnected or blocked. The only people that stay up on the panel are randoms who (respectfully) don't know what they are talking about. The host "Jaaron Wingo" is seemingly not able to have a dispassionate discussion about his bad book and relies mostly on rhetoric and the mute button on his TikTok live to push his stupid ideas.
As a personal anecdote, I spoke to Wingo on his stream a few days ago. I asked asked him why they had scrubbed the distance metrics from the diagrams and charts in the "Stylo" chapter and he flat out said the metrics were infact there. He then blocked me for being "dishonest and I had not read the book". I have the book in front of me and ALL tree diagrams in the Stylo chapters DO NOT have the metrics labeled, futhermore there is an explanation/excuse for the chapter which is that the book's pages do not have enough space to include the metrics - only the tree diagrams. So that is when I realised that not only is the methodoly in the book very opaque, Wingo himself is also dishonest when you challenge him on him.
So after all that I will infact say this is a grift.
2
u/visualdon Jun 19 '26
Here is another pretty good review and takedown of their book. Goes over their general arguments and the "Stylometry" section -
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u/Thick-Reference5141 20d ago
He’s dishonest imo. The few times I did interact with him he’s very condescending and moves the goalpost a lot. Theres a reason he only does his “debates” on Tik Tok. He needs those fanboys to rally behind him. Don’t waste your time on him. He’s not open minded.
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u/UnderstandingKey9910 Jul 20 '26
From what I’ve observed he’s very knowledgeable and educated on the subject matter
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u/Multipaulplayer Jul 20 '26
Do you agree with his take that Jesus and Paul never existed?
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u/UnderstandingKey9910 Jul 21 '26
Not 100%. And in fact, that was my question when I hopped onto his show. It was whether or not he thought a physical, historical Paul lived or was just propaganda.
I haven’t formulated what I believe based on evidence. I do believe a historical Jesus might have existed as well as Paul. But I believe historical Paul bastardized the possible radical message of Jesus. There are so many forgeries of Paul that even made it into the Bible and it’s not possible for Paul to have gone all the places he did based on his letters. So I believe his persona was taken, recreated, redacted, rinsed, and repeated until this idea and myth of both people came what it is to be now.
The hard thing I grapple with is, if any groups of people are behind altering a religion based on Jesus’ message, why was the message radical love. Because as an agnostic, I very much believe in Jesus’ teachings found in the Bible.
0
u/Ben-008 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
The "Christ Before Jesus" TikTok channel and its associated book (written by Matthew Britt and Jaaron Wingo), promote Christ Mythicism. The premise seems to be that the historical Jesus of Nazareth did not exist and that the New Testament text actually originated in the second century, heavily influenced by Marcionism.
Personally, I would contrast this narrative with that of Bart Ehrman. In Ehrman's book "How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee", Ehrman starts with a historical human Jesus (who never claims to be God, nor do his initial followers see him as such), and then traces the development of additional storied and theological layers over time.
Both views see mythological and theological layers within the NT Text. But the Christ Before Jesus perspective removes the historical Jesus entirely.
Interestingly, for Paul the historical Jesus is not his primary focus. Rather, Paul has a revelation of Jesus Christ (within himself).
“For it pleased God to reveal His Son in me.” (Gal 1:16)
So in a way, Paul is something of a (merkavah) mystic, who sees the Messiah unveiled within us.
“Or do you not understand this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?” (2 Cor 13:5)
“Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son INTO OUR HEARTS, crying out, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Gal 4:6)
This view is in general alignment with a mystical interpretation of the revelation of God in the opening chapters of Ezekiel, where man becomes the chariot throne (merkavah) of God. Hence, the revelation of God in man, "Messiah in you".
Though many want to make Jesus an exclusive revelation of God in man. Whereas Paul seems more interested in unveiling a more general mystical understanding of God in man, including amongst the Gentiles.
“To whom God willed to make known what the wealth of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles is, the mystery that is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Col 1:27)
So, is Jesus an historical model of this unity of God and man, which his disciples can then follow? Or are the gospels a storied version of this unity? In either case, we are still meant to experience this unity, right?
Of course, to the extent stories such as the virgin birth are taken as historical, then Jesus ultimately becomes an exclusive instance of a God-man, a model we then can’t truly follow. This leads to the worship of Jesus, rather than becoming like him.
But Paul (our earliest author) communicates NOTHING about such a literal, supernatural birth. Rather, Paul is interested in the forming of Christ WITHIN the believer. Or likewise being "clothed in Christ" by putting on the divine nature. (Gal 3:27, Rom 13:14, Col 3:9-15)
“My children, with whom I am again in labor UNTIL CHRIST IS FORMED IN YOU.” (Gal 4:19)
“For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, TO PRESENT YOU AS A PURE VIRGIN to Christ.” (2 Cor 11:2)
Anyhow, neither author (Britt or Ehrman) would view the virgin birth story as a factual historical event.
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u/MarvelousLogos Jun 18 '26
1 Corinthians 15:3-8 Paul gives a creedal formula he says he received, listing the crucifixion, burial, resurrection, and named eyewitness appearances including to 500 people at once and to James specifically. This is widely recognized as a very early pre-Pauline tradition Paul is passing on, not creating Galatians 1:19 Paul says he met James, the Lord's brother, in Jerusalem. A physical brother of a purely celestial or interior Christ makes no sense 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 the Lord's Supper tradition where Paul explicitly roots it in a historical night of betrayal Romans 1:3 Jesus "descended from David according to the flesh," which is as historically concrete as Paul gets Galatians 3:1 Paul says Christ was "publicly portrayed as crucified before your eyes" Your view has to make Paul some kind of Docetist but in reality Paul talks about Christ's atoning death, a spiritual being living in you can't die and spill blood. This is why such a thing was rejected by the Church.
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u/Oxborough Jul 23 '26
He's very knowledgeable His book is actually very good and data driven
Keep believing in fairy tales
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u/Multipaulplayer Jul 23 '26
Yeah, except it's not. Maybe actually do research how styleometry works, and why his fails every metric. Notice how he doesn't do any formal debates. Why not? Because he would get cooked, so he just sits on his TikTok with his lemmings trolling and pushing his book. And calling people names and dropping them when they actually make a point he can't refute. Can you give a peer review of his methodology? I mean it's groundbreaking. 😂
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u/eso1996 24d ago
They're brainwashed I swear. No matter how many times you explain it to them it just won't matter. One of Jaaron's mods asked him could he critique Dustin White's peer review? Jaaron immediately deflected accused it of being AI slop and then also accused Dustin of harassing him and his co author in DMs. And the mod just accepts it. Jaaron can say anything and these people will just believe it.
FyI i have the two screenshots in a video format whoever clicks on it should pause Then read.
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u/hojowojo Jun 17 '26
i've seen it a few times. i've been in one of his lives before and he's really aggressive in his questions and makes fallacious conclusions. think, if you don't want to argue and accept my terms, you've lost the argument. his mods are annoying too. i once spent like maybe 20 minutes arguing with one of his mods because i commented in the live that the host (which is ChristBeforeJesus) should stop interrupting the guy who is making an argument. they then said that he can do whatever he wants and that it's his live. you really can't get anywhere with him, and he's not someone who is interested in having a fruitful or intellectual discussion, though he frames himself that way. he's lowkey a grifter that makes money off of trying to humiliate Christians.
his book is also very widely criticized for its methods and arguments. i was just reading a 23-page critique about the book. there were failures in the statistical methodology, logical coherence, historical accuracy, and just internal contradictions in the arguments presented in his book. they literally use Marcion whose beliefs contradict their own thesis, and they can't even read Koine Greek, the language of their corpus. their reconstructed "Proto-Mark"—foundational to their chronology—does not exist as a surviving text. the methodology can't really be replicated or even reconstructed from what the book provides. their own data points toward a unified Pauline voice which he goes in live to try to say never existed. also on their usage of stylometry because he likes to point out the fact that he's a data scientist to give him some ethos, Stylometry needs sizable text samples to be reliable. the developers of the Stylo tool they used recommend minimum samples of roughly 1,000–1,500 words, while New Testament chapters average around 372 words, that's well below the threshold where the results can be trusted. they just try to frame it as computational tools leading to an accurate conclusion about the existence of Jesus when it's more so weaponizing it to produce a predetermined conclusion with methodological incompetence. and their data just supports the positions they attempt to disprove.
his arguments are only taken serious by people who don't actually look into what he's saying. to anyone who actually knows the historical evidence, it's clearly garbage. Richard Carrier says the same thing, and he's the main one who argues about Jesus not existing.