closest devotees) claimed this [celestial deity] "Jesus" had at last revealed that he had tricked the Devil by becoming incarnate and being crucified by the Devil (in the region of the heavens ruled by Devil), thereby atoning for all of Israel's sins... It would be several decades later when subsequent members of this cult, after the world had not yet ended as claimed, started allegorizing the gospel of this angelic being. By placing him in earth history as a divine man, as a commentary on the gospel and its relation to society and the Christian mission. Reception and criticism On the Historicity of Jesus was positively reviewed by collaborator and fellow mythicist Raphael Lataster in the Journal of Religious History, who concurs that according to the gospels, "Jesus fits almost perfectly" the Rank-Raglan mythotype, and claims that there is "not a single confirmed historical figure" that conforms to the mythotype. However, most contemporary scholarship has been critical of Carrier's methodology and conclusions. According to James F. McGrath, Carrier misuses Rank and Raglan and stretches their scales to make Jesus appear to score high on mythotype. According to Christopher Hansen, Carrier misuses and manipulates Raglan's scale to make Jesus appear more aligned with a mythotype by scoring him high, thus more mythical, when other scholars have scored Jesus as low, thus more historical. He argues that other scholars have assessed Jesus to be low on Raglan's scale and when Hansen looks at multiple other examples of historical figures he notes that "Historical figures regularly become Raglan heroes. They often score twelve or more points on the Raglan archetype" which casts doubts on the usefulness of the Raglan scale for historicity. Both classicists and biblical scholars agree that there is a historical basis for a person called Jesus of Nazareth. Writing in 2004, Michael Grant stated, "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary." More recently, Patrick Gray posited, "That Jesus did in fact walk the face of the earth in the first century is no longer seriously doubted even by those who believe that very little about his life or death can be known with any certainty." For this reason, the views of Carrier and other proponents of the belief that