The first thread filled up quicker than sacramental wine being chugged down by Jesus' apostles (
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1153107,1153107#msg-1153107 ), so let's pick up where we left off:
Again, let's start by acknowledging that there are those who, in the name of history, claim that Jesus was, in fact, a real person. For instance, pro-Christian apologist and author, Ian Wilson, claims in his book, "Jesus: The Evidence," that “had Jesus been a mere fabrication by early Christians, we should surely expect those Jews hostile to Christianity to have produced a malicious rumor to this effect. From the fact that they concentrated instead on smearing his legitimacy, we may deduce that they had no grounds whatever for doubting his historical evidence.”
Wilson further argues that, based on accounts from other early Jewish sources (including the historian Josephus), “Jesus did indeed exist.” (Wilson, pp. 62, 64-65)
Unfortunately, the evidences contradicting Wilson's assertions are many and compelling.
PROBLEMS WITH CLAIMS FOR JESUS’ HISTORICITY
Even Wilson admits that “it has to be acknowledged that hard facts concerning Jesus and his life are remarkably hard to come by.”
He concedes, for instance, that:
--the Apostle Paul, by his own admission, never knew the person Jesus but, instead, based his entire faith on a vision he claimed came to him about Jesus’ resurrection;
--the Gospels do not provide any physical description of Jesus;
--the year of Jesus’ birth is unknown and, based on available evidence, indeterminable;
--there is no historical validation of King Herod’s supposed slaughter of Jewish children at the time of Jesus’s alleged birth;
--Jesus’ ancestry is illogically tied back to King David through Jesus’ father Joseph;
--the author of Matthew was clearly not Jewish, as evidenced by his mistranslation of Isaiah’s prophecy of the Messiah’s virgin birth;
--the overall credibility of the Matthew and Luke nativity stories are seriously in doubt;
--there is no reliable evidence for the alleged crucifixion of Jesus;
--the writings of Roman historian Tacitus concerning the alleged historicity of Jesus are neither clear or specific;
--the observations of the Roman governor of Bithynia, Pliny the Younger, do not provide reliable evidence of Jesus’ actual existence; and even
--the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus on the allegedly historic Jesus have undeniably been adulterated by others with a pro-Christian spin. (Wilson, pp. 51, 54-56, 58-60)
On the question of whether Jesus really existed, the record offers an array of formidable realities. Below is an examination of some of the basic evidence against the claim that the man-god of the New Testament known as Jesus actually ever lived.
THE “HISTORICAL” JESUS: A CREATION OF LATE-COMING CHRISTIAN WRITERS
Former evangelical minister Dan Barker points out in his book, "Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist": “[T]here is not a single contemporary historical mention of Jesus, not by Romans or by Jews, not by believers or by unbelievers, not during his entire lifetime. This does not disprove his existence, but it certainly casts great doubt on the historicity of a man who was supposedly widely known to have made a great impact on the world. Someone should have noticed.” (Barker, p. 360)
Noted religious historian and professor of German at Birkbeck College in London, G. A. Wells, observes in his book, "The Historical Evidence of Jesus," that if one places early Christian documents in chronological order, it becomes evident that “only from approximately 90 did Christians regard Jesus as a teacher, miracle-worker and a near contemporary, crucified under Pilate.”
These documents, Wells declares, are striking in their lack of detail, indicating that the claims of their authors were most likely influenced “by the Jewish wisdom literature they knew well and by traditions they must have known concerning actual crucifixions of living men in Palestine one and two centuries before their time.” (Wells, pp. 216-217)
Wells concludes that “the Jesus of the earliest documents . . . [was] someone about whose life nothing was known, who had certainly not been a contemporary or near-contemporary of Paul, but who was later regarded as having lived about A.D. 30 and has having preached in Galilee before his death in Jerusalem, perhaps because he was identified with an obscure Galilean preacher of the same name (which after all was a common one).” (Wells, p. 216)
A blow-by-blow summary of the evidence against historicity claims for Jesus is offered by Canadian historian and classical scholar Earl Doherty in his work, "Why I Am Not A Christian":
“1. Jesus of Nazareth and the Gospel story cannot be found in Christian writings earlier than the Gospels, the first of which (Mark) was composed only in the late first century.
2. There is no non-Christian record of Jesus before the second century. References in Flavius Josephus (end of the first century) can be dismissed as later Christian insertions.
3. The early apostles, such as Paul and Hebrews, speak of their Christ Jesus as a spiritual, heavenly being revealed by God through scripture, and do not equate him with a recent historical man. Paul is part of a new ‘salvation’ movement acting on revelation from the Spirit.
4. Paul and other early writers place the death and resurrection of their Christ in the supernatural/mythical world, and derive their information about these events, as well as other features of their heavenly Christ, from scripture.
5. The ancients viewed the universe as multi-layered: matter below, spirit above. The higher world was regarded as the superior, genuine reality, containing spiritual processes and heavenly counterparts to earthly things. Paul’s Christ operates within this system.
6. The pagan ‘mystery cults’ of the period worshiped savior deities who had performed salvific acts which took place in the supernatural/mythical world, not
on earth or in history. Paul’s Christ shares many features with these deities.
7. The prominent philosophical-religious concept of the age was the intermediary Son, a spiritual channel between the ultimate transcendent God and humanity. Such intermediary concepts as the Greek Logos and Jewish Wisdom were models for Paul’s heavenly Christ.
8. All the Gospels derive their basic story of Jesus of Nazareth from one source: whoever wrote the Gospel of Mark. The Acts of the Apostles, as an account of the beginnings of the Christian apostolic movement, is a second century piece of myth-making.
9. The Gospels are not historical events, but constructed through a process of ‘midrash,’ a Jewish method of reworking old biblical passages and tales to reflect new beliefs. The story of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion is a pastiche of verses from scripture.
10. ‘Q,’ a lost sayings collection extracted from Matthew and Luke, made no reference to a death and resurrection and can be shown to have had no Jesus at its roots: roots which were ultimately non-Jewish. The Q community preached the kingdom of God, and its traditions were eventually assigned to an invented founder who was linked to the heavenly Jesus of Paul in the Gospel of Mark.
11. The initial variety of sects and beliefs about a spiritual Christ shows that the movement began as a multiplicity of largely independent and spontaneous developments based on the religious trends and philosophy of the time, not as a response to a single individual.
12. Well into the second century, many Christian documents lack or reject the notion of a human man as an element of their faith. Only gradually did the Jesus of Nazareth portrayed in the Gospels come to be accepted as historical.” (Doherty, pp. vii-viii)
LACK OF HISTORICAL EVIDENCE ABOUT JESUS’ LIFE IN EARLY CHRISTIAN WRITINGS
Early Christian writings are noticeably vague about the details of Jesus’ life. Wells quotes Gager’s observation: ”We know virtually nothing of [Jesus’] parents, siblings, early years (childhood, adolescence, early adulthood), friends, education, religious training, profession, or contacts with the broader Graeco-Roman world. We know neither the date of his birth, not the lengthy of his public ministry (the modern consensus of two or three years is an educated guess based largely on the Gospel of John), nor his age at death (Luke 3:23 states that he was ‘about thirty when he began’). Thus even an optimistic view of the quest (of the historical Jesus) can envisage no more than a collection of ‘authentic’ sayings and motifs devoid of context.” (Wells, p. 217)
Similarly, former evangelical minister-turned-non-Christian Charles Templeton points to the paucity of evidence concerning Jesus’ life. In his book, "Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith," Templeton writes:
“It may come as something as a surprise to the reader to learn that we know remarkably little about Jesus of Nazareth. . . .
"We don’t know the date of his birth--it was certainly not December 25 in the Year One. Nor do we know for certain where he was born, although it was in all likelihood in the city of his childhood, Nazareth--certainly not in a Bethlehem stable. Nor do we know the exact date of his death, although it would seem to have been around the year 30 A.D. The great secular historians of that time (Tacitus, Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, and others) mention Jesus only briefly, making passing reference to the fact that he preached in occupied Palestine and was crucified by the Roman government.” (Templeton, p. 85)
THE HISTORICAL UNRELIABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN GOSPELS
As Wells notes, “The Gospels are widely agreed to have been written between forty and eighty years after his [Jesus’] supposed lifetime by unknown authors who were not personally acquainted with him. And their miracle stories are nearly all couched in general terms, with no indication of time or place or details concerning the person or persons who benefited.” (Wells, p. 206)
Raising further questions about their credibility, many of Paul’s letters are obvious “fusions” that were “not written as they now stand.” (Wells, pp. 8-9)
Not only are Paul's epistles composite stories, they are notoriously non-factual. Historian Will Durant observes: “Paul created a theology about the man Jesus, a man that he did not even know, 50 or more years after the death of Jesus, with complete disregard and neglect for even the sayings that are attributed to Jesus in the synoptic Gospels. The simple teachings attributed to Jesus become lost in the metaphysical fog of Paul’s theology.” (cited in William Edelen, "Toward the Mystery" [Boise, Idaho: Josylyn & Morris, Inc.], p. 76)
As to the origination period of the New Testament itself, its 27 books have defied repeated attempts at reliable, universal dating. Those portions which can be most firmly dated are, as has been noted, the letters of Paul, which have been determined to have been penned by 60 A.D. (Wells, p. 10)
In addition, none of the four Gospels represent the “original” texts. As Templeton writes, “The earliest Christian records extant are the Pauline epistles, and they were written around 50 A.D. It was another ten years or so before the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were completed. But the names attached to the gospels are pseudonyms--none of the authors were among Jesus’ apostles and it is likely that none of them so much as saw or heard him.”
Moreover, Templeton notes that these accounts “are mutually contradictory, lack authenticity, and are in large part of the nature of legends. The stories of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, his cleansing of the Temple, and his arrest, trial, and crucifixion have about them an aura of reality but, beyond that, the various accounts differ so radically and at so many points that, with all the good will in the world, they cannot be reconciled.” (Templeton, pp. 85-86)
In terms of which Gospel begat which Gospel, that of Mark appears to have been the source for those of Matthew and Luke, based on the virtual identicalness of many passages. Thus, the latter two gospels “are not acceptable as independent testimony.” The Gospel of John gives indications of reliance on phraseology from the other three Gospels. (Wells, p. 11)
Not only are the names attached to the synoptic Gospels pseudo in nature, the authors of the four Gospels remain, as Wells notes, virtually anonymous, with the books offering no proof within their texts of who actually wrote them. Adding to the confusion, present claims to their authorship were not part of the original documents. (Wells, p. 11)
The legitimacy of statements in the Gospels attributed to Jesus are also suspect. For example, teachings supposedly given by Jesus on the subject of women of Palestine divorcing their husbands lack historical veracity, since only men were allowed to divorce. (Wells, p. 13)
The Gospel accounts of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion are also replete with significant historical difficulties. Luke’s account of the trial is an obvious summary of Mark’s. Mark’s, in turn, is full of imaginary dialogue and scenes concocted by Christian writers who, believing in the Messianic mission of Jesus, invented trial scenes and dialogue in which the Jews condemned Jesus for his status as the Christ. (Wells, pp. 14-15).
Keith M. Parsons, in his "Why I Am Not a Christian," summarizes the case against the reliability of the canonical Gospels as follows:
1. The Gospels were written by unknown persons.
“Not only did Jesus himself write nothing, but the attribution of the gospels to his disciples did not occur until the late first century at the earliest. . . .
‘Matthew: Written by an unknown Jewish Christian of the second generation, probably a resident of Antioch in Syria.
‘Mark: [There is] confusion in the traditional identification of the author . . .
‘Luke: Possibly written by a resident of Antioch and an occasional companion of the apostle Paul.
‘John: Composed and edited in stages by unknown followers of the apostle John, probably residents of Ephesus.’ “(cited by Kingsbury, J.D., “Matthew, The Gospel According to,” in Metzger and Coogan, eds., The Oxford Companion to the Bible [Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1993], pp. 502-506
2. The dates of the Gospels preclude them having been written by eyewitnesses.
“. . . New Testament scholars agree fairly closely on a rather late date for the writing of the gospels . . . Generations of New Testament scholarship have produced a very broad consensus that the gospels from around 70 to as late as the early second century.”
3. The Gospels are rooted in unreliable oral traditions.
“Written records of Jesus’s words or ministry were simply not needed or wanted until the end of the apostolic age with the martyrdom of Peter and Paul in 64. The writing of [the] Gospels was a task for second-generation Christians. . . .
“[T]he word-for-word similarities of the synoptic Gospels are very unlikely to be due to the verbatim recollection of the original eyewitness. Oral traditions simply do not form that way. Rather, those precise parallels are much more likely due to common use of written sources. Hence, the synoptic Gospels are not independent eyewitness accounts but textually interdependent syntheses of earlier oral traditions.”
4. The Gospels are theologically biased with an apologetic agenda.
“'[The Gospels] . . . can no longer be read as direct accounts of what happened, but rather as vehicles for proclamation. Such was their original intention.’" (cited in Reginald H. Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives [New York, New York: The Macmillan Company,1971] p. 172)
5. The Gospels contain fictional forms.
“The gospels are clearly not biography in the modern sense . . .
‘Christians have never been reluctant to write fiction about Jesus, and we must remember that our four canonical Gospels are only the cream of a larger and varied literature.’" (cited in Helms, R., Gospel Fictions [Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1988], pp. 11-12)
6. The Gospels are inconsistent with each other.
“A careful study of the four Gospels in comparison with each other will show that there is little agreement among the Gospel writers as to the order in which Jesus said and did what is reported of him. . . .
“A striking discrepancy concerns the accounts in the synoptics of Jesus’s resurrection appearances to his disciples. . . .
“[There is] inconsistency between Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies [of Jesus].”
7. The Gospels are inconsistent with known facts.
“Luke’s nativity story [is] demonstrably false . . .
‘. . . [T]he Roman census would not have affected Nazareth in any case, as Galilee was not under Roman rule but had its own ruler, the ‘tetrach’ Herod Antipas, son of King Herod.’" (cited in Arnheim, M., Is Christianity True? [Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1984], pp. 10-11)
8. There is no independent support of Gospel claims.
‘ . . . [P]agan sources do not confirm the resurrection. . . . [T]here is good reason to suppose that [a well-known passage from Tacitus] was written nearly ninety years after the alleged death of Jesus and was based not on historical research but on information provided by Christians of the second century. . . .
‘Other pagan writers such as Suetonius and Pliny the Younger provide no support for the Resurrection of Jesus since they make no mention of it. . . . Thallus, in a work now lost but referred to by Africanus in the third century, is alleged to have said that Jesus' death was accompanied by an earthquake and an unusual darkness that he, Thallus, according to Africanus, wrongly attributed to an eclipse of the sun. However . . . it is unclear when Thallus wrote his history or how reliable Africanus’s account of Thallus is. Some scholars believe that Thallus wrote as late as the second century and consequently could have obtained his ideas from Christian opinion of his time.’" (cited in Martin, M., The Case Against Christianity [Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press, 1991], p. 86)
“’Non-Christian evidence is too late to give any independent support to the gospels. . . .
“’Rabbinic references to Jesus are entirely dependent on Christian claims, as both Christian and Jewish scholars have conceded.’" (cited in Wells, G.A., Who Was Jesus? [La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1989], pl. 20)
9. The Gospels testify to matters beyond belief.
“The Gospels are full of miraculous tales that, in any other context, would be taken to completely destroy the author’s credibility. What would we think of an alleged witness who swears that he saw Ms. Smith commit the murder and then abscond quickly on her broomstick? Why not regard reports of walking on water or raising the dead in the same light? Religious people often employ a curious doublethink here that permits them to treat reverently stories that, encountered anywhere else, would get very short shrift.” (Parsons, pp. 43-70)
FURTHER LACK OF PAGAN EVIDENCES FOR THE HISTORICITY OF JESUS
A favorite pagan source cited by Christian believers verifying the life of a “real” Jesus is that of the Roman historian Tacitus, who wrote that “Christians derive their name and origin from Christ, who was executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius.”
Ample evidence exists, however, to show that Tacitus was simply repeating what he had been told by Christian informants.
First, as Wells demonstrates, Tacitus identified Pilate by the rank of procurator, which title was a Roman administrative office from the second half of the first century.
Next, Tacitus failed to identify Jesus by name, but merely referred to a person put to death who went by the title of Christ.
Finally, Tacitus was an opponent of Christianity and therefore would have been inclined to repeat the Christian view of the day that Christianity was of recent vintage, given that the Roman government countenanced only ancient cults. (Wells, pp. 16-17)
Barker observes that even if other pagan writers had made reliable reference to Christianity, they did so too late in the game to be considered first-century witnesses. These include the writings in of Suetonius in his Twelve Caesars, as well as the record in 112 A.D. by Pliny the Younger--both of which fail to mention Jesus by name.
Barker notes that also failing to specifically mention Jesus was a second-century Roman satirist name Lucian who wrote of a “man crucified in Palestine,” whose death provided the foundation for the Christian faith. However, Lucian was simply repeating the beliefs of Christians and not presenting compelling historical evidence.
Barker further mentions the Christian believer's penchant for invoking an undated fragment from a personal letter written by a Syrian named Mara Serapion to his imprisoned son, in which the father mentions that the Jews had killed their “wise king.” This purported evidence, nonetheless, contradicts the New Testament version of Jesus’ death, in which, of course, the Romans are blamed for his crucifixion. Even if it is an authentic letter, Barker argues that it most likely refers to someone else, since the Jews had, in fact, killed other religions leaders, including the Essene Teacher of Righteousness. (Barker, pp. 364-366)
ALLEGED HISTORICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE MAN JESUS IN THE WRITINGS OF JOSEPHUS
In his work (circa 90 A.D.), "The Antiquities of the Jews," Flavious Josephus, a messianic Jew and respected Roman historian, supposedly wrote:
“Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works--a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Hews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that love him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive against the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him, and the tribe of Christians, so named from him are not extinct at this day.”
Barker dispenses with the claim that this is the authentic Josephus with the following observations:
1. This paragraph about Jesus did not appear until the advent of the fourth century.
The disputed writing surfaced during the time that Bishop Eusebius, a close ally of the Roman emperor Constantine, was helping to fashion what would eventually become the orthodox version of Christianity. Barker notes that it was Eusebius who had argued it was justifiable for Christians to, in effect, “lie for the Lord” and that it was he who was the first person known to have cited this alleged Josephus account. As Barker notes, many Bible experts have concluded, in fact, that Eusebius forged the paragraph in question and then attributed it to Josephus.
2. The paragraph in doubt appears completely out of context.
It is dropped into Josephus’ writings after the historian gives an account of Roman taxation, various Jewish religious sects, Herod’s municipal building projects, the comings and goings of priests and procurators, the planning of seditious plots against Pilate, and Pilate’s construction of Jerusalem’s water supply using religious monies, which led to a Jewish protest, followed by Pilate’s bloody suppression of it. The questionable paragraph then follows, after which Josephus goes on to speak of “another terrible misfortune [that] confounded the Jews . . .” As Barker notes, only a Christian would have regarded this as a misfortune for Jews. Josephus himself was an orthodox Jew and would not have so described it.
3. Not being a believer in Christianity, Josephus would also not have used the language of a Christian convert in referring to Jesus as “the Christ.”
4. Josephus would also not have used the term “tribe of Christians,” since Christianity did not achieve organizational status until the second century.
5. Josephus’ alleged paragraph on Jesus portrays Josephus as having no other familiarity with the alleged Christian Messiah.
Barker observes that the Roman historian thus simply repeats what Christians would have already known, while adding virtually nothing to the Gospel accounts. In fact, Josephus’ supposed brief mention of Jesus is the only reference in all of his expansive writings to Christianity.
6. The paragraph does not reflect the careful wording of a responsible historian.
Rather, says Barker, it is written in the fervent language of a believing Christian and, further, is given with no citation of predictions from Hebrew prophets who supposedly foretold Jesus’ advent. (Barker, pp. 362-363)
Other weaknesses in the Gospel tales which undermine claims to their accounts of an historical Jesus include the following:
NO HISTORICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE VIRGIN BIRTH
Templeton points out that the accounts of Matthew and Luke differ on fundamental points regarding the birth of Jesus. For example, at the time Luke says Jesus was being circumcised and Mary was being purified in Jerusalem, Matthew claims Joseph, Mary and Jesus were in hiding in Egypt, waiting for Herod to die.
Additionally, there is nothing in the historical record that mentions the supposed Herod-ordered slaughter of every male child in Bethlehem. Concludes Templeton, “It seems likely that the birth in Bethlehem was inserted into the story at a later date to validate the clams made by Jesus’ followers that, through Joseph, he stood in a direct line of descent from King David, whose roots were in Bethlehem.” (Templeton, p. 91)
As to the Christian claim that Jesus was God, born of an unwed Jewish virgin who conceived through the power of the Holy Ghost, Templeton bluntly concludes, “If one approaches the New Testament account with an open mind and unflinching realism, the evidence clearly indicates that Jesus was an illegitimate child who, when he came to maturity, resented it and was alienated from his parents and siblings.” (Templeton, p. 93)
NO HISTORICAL EVIDENCE FOR JESUS' RESURRECTION
Except for the claims made by anonymous Gospel writers, no evidence exists that Jesus ever rose from the dead. In fact, Gospel accounts of the alleged resurrection are, from a realistic point of view, completely implausible.
If, as Templeton observes, Jesus’ resurrection was accompanied by a extraordinary earthquake, the wholesale rending of the Temple veil and a large-group resurrection of the dead witnessed by many, why do these phenomenal events merit but a single sentence in Matthew--and virtually no mention in the other Gospels or in contemporary historical accounts?
Writes an understandably skeptical Templeton: “Let the reader imagine the scene: The astonished spectators, the gathering crowd, the family members and friends, weeping and delirious with excitement. Surely someone would have plied them with questions: ‘What happened as you died?’ ‘Did you see God?’ ‘What is Heaven like?’ ‘Were you reunited with our parents and other members of your family?’ Surely the answers to these and other questions like them would have flashed across Palestine within hours and been recorded somewhere. But there is not one word of it in history. The entire resurrection story is not credible.”
Add to this the fact that the four Gospel accounts of the resurrection not only differ from one another on many major points but are irreconcilably at odds with Paul’s account in I Corinthians on who Jesus supposedly appeared to after rising from the dead. (Templeton, pp. 120-122)
NO HISTORICAL EVIDENCE OF JESUS PERFORMING MIRACLES
Templeton persuasively explains the afflictions suffered by those in the Gospel accounts, which were supposedly healed by Jesus’ miraculous powers:
“Most of the illnesses that afflict humans were beyond the comprehension of the men and women of that day and, of course, beyond Jesus’ comprehension, too. No one at that point in history had even a rudimentary understanding of the causes of physiological or psychological illnesses or of the various other afflictions to which humankind is subject. Most thought of them as punishments from God or the machinations of Satan or other evil spirits.
“When, for instance, epilepsy brought on a seizure that caused the victim to collapse and writhe on the ground as though struggling with an internal enemy, when food poisoning produced a paroxysm of vomiting, when a raging fever led to intense shivering and delirium, or when a migraine attack produced visual aberrations and excruciating pain, it seemed reasonable in that pre-scientific time to interpret such phenomena as the work of an evil spirit. And, when the affliction passed, it was equally reasonable to interpret it as the triumph of a benign spirit over a malign.
“Many illnesses, then as now, were psychosomatic and could be ‘cured’ when the sufferer’s perception changed. Just as today a placebo prescribed by a physician in whom the patient has faith can effect an apparent cure, so, in earlier time, faith in the healer could banish adverse symptoms. With each success the healer’s reputation would grow and his powers would, as a consequence, become more efficacious.
“It would appear evident that this is what happened with Jesus . . .
“It is clear in the text that Jesus was seen by the general populace as a wonder-worker. The stories of his exploits were before him--by word of mouth, of course, and thus subject to embellishing--and when he entered a town the state of heightened expectation would often be close to mass hysteria. As a consequence, the apparently miraculous would happen.” (Templeton, pp. 111-112)
Finally, as Barker points outs, a miracle cannot be considered historical if it is “defined as some kind of violation, suspension, overriding, or punctuation of natural law. . . . In order for history to have any strength at all, it must adhere to a very strict assumption: that natural law is regular over time.
“Without the assumption of natural regularity, no history can be done. There would be no criteria for discarding fantastic stories. Everything that has ever been recorded would have to be taken as literal truth.
“Therefore, if a miracle did happen, it would pull the rug out from history. The very basis of the historical method would have to be discarded. You can have miracles, or you can have history, but you can’t have both.” (Barker, p. 377)
POSSIBLE ORIGINS OF THE JESUS MYTH
Various propositions have been advanced to account for the rise of the Jesus myth. Barker lists the following as possibilities:
1. It was “patterned from a story in the Jewish Talmudic literature about the illegitimate son of a woman named Miriam (Mary) and a Roman soldier named Pandera, sometimes called Joseph Pandera.”
2. It “grew out of a pre-Christian cult of Joshua,” originating in tensions between two different Joshua factions.
Interesting in this regard is the fact that “Jesus” is the Greek word for “Joshua." As Barker notes, in Mark 9:38, “the disciples of Jesus saw another man who was casting out devils in the name of Jesus (Joshua).”
3. It was “simply a fanciful patchwork of pieces borrowed from other religions.”
Pagan myths are peppered with their own pre-Jesus accounts of Last Suppers, passion play-outs, crucifixions of sun gods, virgin births and latter-day climatic battles between the forces of good and evil.
4. It followed from “a pre-Christian Jesus cult of gnosticism,” based on since-discovered ancient writings which declare, “I adjure thee by the God of the Hebrews, Jesus.”
5. It could have arisen “as the personification of Old Testament ‘wisdom,'" which did not rely on any historical basis for claims of a pre-existent, literal redeemer.
6. It may have resulted from so-called “self-reflective fiction,” wherein “literary parallels [are drawn] between Old and New Testament stories” through the use of “skeletal templates into which the Jews placed [them].”
In such cases, the tales are similar in not only content, but in structure, as with stories from the Old and New Testaments involving storms, the raising of widows’ sons from the dead, and miraculous episodes of so-called “food multiplication.”
7. It could have found origin in an earlier account of the crucifixion of a Messiah and Lawgiver figure known as the Essene Teacher of Righteousness, who was put to death in 88 B.C.
8. It could have been based on a naturalistic explanation that the resurrection story was essentially historically reliable, “but that Jesus merely fainted, and was presumed to be dead, coming back to consciousness later.” (Barker, pp. 372-376)
_____
Bibliography
Barker, Dan, "Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist" [Madison, Wisconsin: Freedom from Religion Foundation, 1992)
Doherty, Earl, "The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ?" (Ottawa, Canada: Canadian Humanist Publications, 1999)
Edelen, William, "Toward the Mystery" (Boise, Idaho: Joslyn & Morris, Inc., no publication date)
Parsons, Keith M., "Why I Am Not A Christian" [Atlanta, Georgia: Freethought Press, 2000]
Templeton, Charles, "Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith" [Toronto, Ontario, Canada: McClelland & Stewart, Inc., 1996)
Wells, G.A., "The Historical Evidence for Jesus" (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1988)
Wilson, Ian, "Jesus: The Evidence" [San Francisco, California: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1984)
WAIT, THERE'S MORE: DEBUNKING THE "HISTORICAL" JESUS MYTH BY A FORMER CHRISTIAN-TURNED-THINKER
A former Christian and now-notable critic of the “historical” Jesus fable is Robert M. Price, a U.S theologian and author who teaches philosophy and religion at Johnnie Coleman Theological Seminary. He is also a professor of biblical criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute, was a fellow in the Jesus Seminar and has published such books as "Deconstructing Jesus' and "The Case Against the Case for Christ." Price's biography in more detail:
("rmp Biography, at:
http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/bio.htm)
Price’s case against the supposedly historicity of Jesus, takes the form of an analysis he titles, “O’Jesus Factor”:
“ . . . [T]the more distance I get from having any sort of ‘faith’ in Jesus, and the more perspective I get on Jesus, it seems obvious to me the disconnect between the worshipped deity called Jesus and any historical personage who may ever have lived on this earth. . . .
“Oh, I know full well that Christian apologists have arguments at the ready to ’prove’ that the gospel character Jesus really lived on earth in a datable past, but really, they might as well argue that Achilles, no, Superman, really existed. The only reason they cannot see the enormity of what they are trying to do is that they are so inextricably attached to the God named Jesus. And this makes it all the more absurd that they spend so much effort defending the very opposite: that he was a real human being. They wouldn’t even be interested in him if that’s what he was, any more than they are curious about the Buddha or Apollonius of Tyana. Jesus the ostensible man is not the Jesus deity that motivates their self-contradictory quest. . . .
“I wrote [a] review . . . of Bill O’Reilly’s best seller ‘Killing Jesus: A History.’ His ‘co-author’ (i.e., ghost writer), Martin Dugard, deserves much or most of the blame for it. . . . I [soon] realized I could do a whole book on ‘Killing Jesus’ . . . . My book is tentatively called ‘Killing History: Jesus in the No-Spin Zone.’ The book is by no means a history, more of a ‘historical novel’ or docudrama, merely paraphrasing and harmonizing the gospels. There are whole chapters of (novelized) historical background data. Far more than one needs in order to understand the gospel texts or the ostensible events in the life of Jesus.
"So. why is it there? Mainly as an attempt to knit the mythical Super-Jesus into the history of the New Testament era, something the gospels themselves do not do a very good job at. The point is to historicize the myths. The authors should have done a bit of homework like reading R.G. Collingwood’s ‘The Idea of History.’ But, then, if they had, they couldn’t have written ‘Killing Jesus.’ As it is, it is O’Reilly and Dugard that have killed any historical Jesus, replacing him with their Sunday School version . . .
“It can be no accident that so many ivory-tower academics produce ‘historical Jesuses’ in their own images. . . . He [Jesus] is . . . their ‘personal savior,’ a ventriloquist dummy to mouth their own views and to lend them divine authority. . . . I am sorry I have, in good conscience, to excoriate Bill O’Reilly on his ‘Killing Jesus,’ the number-one source of misinformation about Jesus in the world today. But if one were to replace this book with others by Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, Richard Horsley, or John Dominic Crossan, one would not be much better off.”
(“The O’Jesus Factor,” by Robert M. Price, at: 10 November 2013, at:
http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/zblog/)
Price goes further in caustically crucifying the myth of an “historical” Jesus in his article, “The Quest of the Mythical Jesus”:
“When, long ago, I first learned that some theorized that Jesus had never existed as an historical figure, I dismissed the notion as mere crankism, as most still do. . . . [However], I eventually found myself gravitating to that crazy view: that Jesus hadn’t existed, that he was mythic all the way down, like Hercules. I do not hold it as a dogma. I do not prefer that it be true. It is just that the evidence now seems to me to point that way. The burden of proof would seem to belong with those who believe there was an historical man named Jesus. . . .
“
I remember first encountering the notion that the Jesus saga was formally similar to the Mediterranean dying and rising god myths of saviors including Attis, Adonis, Tammuz/Dumuzi, Dionysus, Osiris, and Baal. . . . [I]t did not take long to discover the spurious nature of . . . apologetical special pleading. There was ample and early pre-Christian evidence for the dying and rising gods. The parallels were very close. And it was simply not true that no one ever held that, like Jesus, these saviors had been historical figures. And if the ancient apologists had not known that the pagan parallels were pre-Christian, why on earth would they have mounted a suicidal argument that Satan counterfeited the real dying and rising god ahead of time? . . .
“If you recognize the recurrence of the pagan savior myth in the Christian proclamation, then no need remains to suggest an initial ‘Big Bang’ (Burton L. Mack) of an Easter Morning Experience of the First Disciples.
G.A. Wells, like his predecessors advocating the Christ Myth theory, discounted the gospel story of an historical Jesus, an itinerant teacher and miracle worker, on the grounds of its seeming absence from the Epistle literature, earlier than the gospels, implying that there was no Jesus tradition floating around in either oral or written form at the time Paul and Peter were writing letters. All they referred to was a supernatural Son of God who descended from heaven to vanquish the evil angels ruling the world, then returned heavenward to reign in divine glory till his second advent.
“Had Paul known of the teaching of Jesus, why did he not quote it when it would have settled this and that controversial question (e.g., paying Roman taxes, celibacy for the Kingdom, congregational discipline)? Why does he seem to refer to occasional ‘commands of the Lord’ in a manner so vague as to suggest charismatic revelations to himself? Why does he never mention Jesus having healed the sick or done miracles? How can he say the Roman Empire never punishes the righteous, only the wicked?
“This is a weighty argument, but another makes it almost superfluous. Take the gospel Jesus story as a whole, whether earlier or later than the Jesus story of the Epistles; it is part and parcel of the Mythic Hero Archetype shared by cultures and religions worldwide and throughout history (Lord Raglan and then, later, Alan Dundes showed this in great detail.).
“[Even if you' [l]eave the gospel story on the table, . . . [y]ou still do not have any truly historical data. There is no ‘secular’ biographical information about Jesus. Even the seeming ‘facts’ irrelevant to faith dissolve upon scrutiny. Did he live in Nazareth? Or was that a tendentious reinterpretation of the earlier notion he had been thought a member of the Nazorean sect? Did he work some years as a carpenter? Or does that story not rather reflect the crowd’s pegging him as an expert in scripture, a la the Rabbinic proverb, ‘Not even a carpenter, or a carpenter’s son could solve this one!’? Was his father named Joseph, or is that an historicization of his earlier designation as the Galilean Messiah, Messiah ben Joseph?
“On and on it goes, and when we are done, there is nothing left of Jesus that does not appear to serve all too clearly the interests of faith, the faith even of rival, hence contradictory, factions among the early Christians.
“
I admit that a historical hero might attract to himself the standard flattering legends and myths to the extent that the original lines of the figure could no longer be discerned. He may have lived nonetheless. Can we tell the difference between such cases and others where we can still discern at least some historical core? Apollonius of Tyana, itinerant Neo-Pythagorean contemporary of Jesus (with whom the ancients often compare him) is one such. He, too, seems entirely cut from the cloth of the fabulous. His story, too, conforms exactly to the Mythic Hero Archetype. To a lesser extent, so does Caesar Augustus, of whom miracles were told.
“The difference is that Jesus has left no footprint on profane history as these others managed to do. The famous texts of Josephus and Tacitus, even if genuine, amount merely to references to the preaching of contemporary Christians, not reporting about Jesus as a contemporary. We still have documentation from people who claimed to have met Apollonius, Peregrinus, and, of course, Augustus.
“It might be that Jesus was just as historical as these other remarkable individuals, and that it was mere chance that no contemporary documentation referring to him survives. But we cannot assume the truth of that for which we have no evidence. . . .
"[T]he central axiom of form criticism [is] that nothing would have been passed down in the tradition unless it was useful to prove some point, to provide some precedent. I am sorry to say that this axiom cancels out another, the Criterion of Dissimilarity: the closer a Jesus-saying seems to match the practice or teaching of the early Church, the greater likelihood that it stems from the latter and has been placed fictively into the speech or life of Jesus merely to secure its authority. Put the two principles together and observe how one consumes the other without remainder: all pericopae of the Jesus tradition owe their survival to the fact that they were useful.
“On the assumption that Christians saw some usefulness to them, we can posit a Sitz-im-Leben Kirche for each one. And that means it is redundant to posit a pre-Christian Sitz-im-Leben Jesu context. None of it need go back to Jesus.
“Additionally, we can demonstrate that every hortatory saying is so closely paralleled in contemporary Rabbinic or Hellenistic lore that there is no particular reason to be sure this or that saying originated with Jesus. Such words commonly passed from one famous name to another, especially in Jewish circles, as Jacob Neusner has shown. Jesus might have said it, sure, but then he was just one more voice in the general choir.
“Is that what we want to know about him? And, as Bultmann observed, who remembers the great man quoting somebody else?
Another shocker: [I]t hit me like a ton of bricks when I realized, after studying much previous research on the question, that virtually every story in the gospels and Acts can be shown to be very likely a Christian rewrite of material from the Septuagint, Homer, Euripides’ Bacchae and Josephus. One need not be David Hume to see that, if a story tells us a man multiplied food to feed a multitude, it is inherently much more likely that the story is a rewrite of an older miracle tale (starring Elisha) than that it is a report of a real event. A literary origin is always to be preferred to an historical one in such a case.
"And that is the choice we have to make in virtually every case of New Testament narrative. I refer the interested reader to my essay ‘New Testament Narrative as Old Testament Midrash,’ in Jacob Neusner and Alan Avery-Peck, eds., 'Encyclopedia of Midrash.' Of course, I am dependent here upon many fine works by Randel Helms, Thomas L. Brodie, John Dominic Crossan, and others. None of them went as far as I am going.
“It is just that as I counted up the gospel stories I felt each scholar had convincingly traced back to a previous literary prototype, it dawned on me that there was virtually nothing left. None tried to argue for the fictive character of the whole tradition, and each offered some cases I found arbitrary and implausible.
“Still, their work, when combined, militated toward a wholly fictive Jesus story.
It is not as if I believe there is no strong argument for an historical Jesus. There is one: one can very plausibly read certain texts in Acts, Mark and Galatians as fossils preserving the memory of a succession struggle following the death of Jesus, who, therefore, must have existed. Who should follow Jesus as his vicar on earth? His disciples (analogous to the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad, who provided the first three caliphs)? Or should it be the Pillars, his own relatives (the Shi’ite Muslims called Muhammad’s kinsmen the Pillars, too, and supported their dynastic claims). One can trace the same struggles in the Baha’i Faith after the death of the Bab (Mirza Ali Muhammad): who should rule, his brother Subh-i-Azal, or his disciple Hussein Ali, Baha’Ullah?
“Who should follow the Prophet Joseph Smith? His disciples, or his son, Joseph, Jr.?
“When the Honorable Elijah Muhammad died, Black Muslims split and followed either his son and heir Wareeth Deen Muhammad or his former lieutenant Louis Farrakhan. In the New Testament, as Harnack and Stauffer argued, we seem to see the remains of a Caliphate of James. And that implies (though it does not prove) an historical Jesus.
And it implies an historical Jesus of a particular type. It implies a Jesus who was a latter-day Judah Maccabee, with a group of brothers who could take up the banner when their eldest brother, killed in battle, perforce let it fall. S.G.F. Brandon made a very compelling case for the original revolutionary character of Jesus, subsequently sanitized and made politically harmless by Mark the evangelist. Judging by the skirt-clutching outrage of subsequent scholars, Mark’s apologetical efforts to depoliticize the Jesus story have their own successors. Brandon’s work is a genuine piece of the classic Higher Criticism of the gospels, with the same depth of reason and argumentation.
"If there was an historical Jesus, my vote is for Brandon’s version.
But I must point out that there is another way to read the evidence for the Zealot Jesus hypothesis. As Burton Mack has suggested, the political element in the Passion seems likely to represent an anachronistic confusion by Mark with the events leading to the fall of Jerusalem. When the Olivet Discourse warns its readers not to take any of a number of false messiahs and Zealot agitators for their own Jesus, does this not imply Christians were receiving the news of Theudas or Jesus ben Ananias or John of Gischala as news of Jesus’ return? You don’t tell people not to do what they’re already not doing. If they were making such confusions, it would be inevitable that the events attached to them would find their way back into the telling of the Jesus story. It looks like this very thing happened. One notices how closely the interrogation and flogging of Jesus ben-Ananias, in trouble for predicting the destruction of the temple, parallels that of Jesus, ostensibly 40 years previously. We notice how Simon bar Gioras was welcomed into the temple with palm branches to cleanse the sacred precinct from the ‘thieves’ who infested it, Zealots under John of Gischala. Uh-oh. Suppose these signs of historical-political verisimilitude are interlopers in the gospels from the following generation. The evidence for the Zealot Jesus evaporates.
“I have not tried to amass every argument I could think of to destroy the historicity of Jesus. Rather, I have summarized the series of realizations about methodology and evidence that eventually led me to embrace the Christ Myth Theory. There may once have been an historical Jesus, but for us there is one no longer. If he existed, he is forever lost behind the stained glass curtain of holy myth. At least that’s the current state of the evidence as I see it.
”
(“The Quest of the Mythical Jesus,” by Robert M. Price, at:
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_005.htm; see also Price’s book, “Jesus is Dead” [Parisippnany, New Jersey: American Atheist Press, 2007]; for Price's reason-and-evidence-based refutation of the non-historical nonsense purporting to prove that Jesus actually existed, wherein he explains the nature of establishing historical fact as it applies to the Jesus myth:, listen to the audio, "Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot," at:
http://ia700209.us.archive.org/6/items/ConversationsFromThePaleBlueDot034-RobertPrice/034-RobertPrice.mp3)
If pushing through Price is a bit too plodding for some, then consider the video by David Fitzgerald, author of "Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed," in which he offers a point-by-historical point dismantling of the Jesus-was-historical myth:
("David Fitzgerald Debunks Historical Jesus at Skepticon 3," video, at:
http://www.holyblasphemy.net/david-fitzgerald-debunks-historical-jesus-at-skepticon-3/christmyththeory)
_____
BARTING UP THE WRONG TREE: EHRMAN'S EFFORT TO BREATHE LIFE INTO A DEAD JESUS
Finally, in defense of the questionable history supposedly proving an “historical” Jesus, one RfM poster asserts:
“There is plenty of evidence that Jesus was a real person. Even those like Bart Ehrman (who is not friendly to Christianity) defends that Jesus was a historical person. The question is whether you believe that he was divine. That's a matter of faith.
(“Re: Did Jesus Actually Exist?": No Compelling Evidence Has Been Resurrected,” posted by “jstojc,” on “Recovery from Mormonism” discussion board, 30 January 2014, at:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1153107,1153268#msg-1153268)
Actually, there is not “plenty of evidence that Jesus was a real person," so not so fast in pitching the claims of Ehrman in his e-book, “Did Jesus Exist?” Below is a detailed dissection of Ehrman's less-than-rock-solid premise that Jesus actually was a living human being:
“When asked in a recent interview ('The Infidel Guy Show') about the evidence for the historical Jesus, Bart Ehrman threw out the tired line, 'No Serious/No Reputable Scholar doubts that a historical Jesus existed.' Ehrman’s support of the historical Jesus is used by apologists to show how even extremely liberal theologians like Bart cannot bring themselves to doubt a historical Jesus (the title of one blog post is 'Atheist Stumped by Overwhelming Evidence for Jesus’ Existence…From an AGNOSTIC LIBERAL').
"The interviewer points out that 'Jesus Christ' may have referred to any communities’ version/chosen representative claiming the title of Christ (there were dozens), but Ehrman rebuts by arguing for one, specific historical personality which was then recorded differently by the various gospel writers – who each present unique versions of the literary character. This is to be expected – as perhaps a handful of Obama biographers may paint a different narrative of the life of our current president.
"Countering the 'argument from silence' (that there is no evidence for Jesus Christ), Ehrman pulls out the worn staple of Christian apologetics, 'wWell, what evidence is there for Julius Caesar?' (i.e., what evidence is there for anyone in history/what constitutes 'evidence'). Ehrman continues:
“'You need to consider historical evidence, and to say that historical evidence doesn’t count, I mean, why not just deny the Holocaust. Why not deny that Abraham Lincoln existed. You have to look at the evidence… There is very hard evidence. For example, we have the letters of Paul – Paul knew Jesus’ family and relatives and made “off the cuff comments” about “James the brother of the Lord.' As a historian, there is no doubt that Paul wrote Galatians . . . This is what I do for a living, I’ve been doing this for 30 years, everybody who’s looked at this thing seriously, there’s nobody who doubts this. Name ONE New Testament scholar who doubts that Paul wrote Galatians.'
"Ehrman’s hard evidence is this: Paul met with James. James is the 'brother of the Lord.' THEREFORE Jesus existed.
"Ehrman is] [a]sking the wrong questions.
"Focusing on whether of not Jesus existed is entirely the wrong question because, as we’ve seen, the impenetrable army of New Testament Scholars will destroy anybody who claims that he doesn’t (much like focusing on the question of whether God exists clouds much more important issues of social justice and ethics, for example). There is no evidence that Jesus didn’t exist, and a lack of evidence in the historical Jesus cannot prove he didn’t exist. I’ll have to concede with Bart that, taking biblical evidence, there is no indication that there was not a historical Jesus.
"HOWEVER, when viewing the literature/story of Jesus Christ as written in the gospels, complete with supernatural events and claims, the Bible overlaps with previous literary traditions to such a degree that it is impossible for any of those claims/stories to have begun with a historical Jesus Christ. So what Bart is saying (and what, if pushed to 'follow the evidence' as he himself mandates, he would have to agree to) is that there was a historical figure of Jesus but all of the fantastical elements of the story that are prefigured by earlier literary traditions did not originate with him.
"So the 'historical Jesus' of Ehrman and New Testament scholars was not born of a virgin, did not say most of the things ascribed to him (at least not all the stuff that is so familiar to Philo, Stoicism, the Essenes or the Pharisees), was not the 'Logos/Son of God,' and did not resurrect.
"For me, what is profoundly important is to show that the New Testament descriptions of Jesus Christ are literature based on compound mythology, resulting in the final claim (which is NOT revolutionary but rather was the decision of nearly a century of Bible scholars in the early days of historical criticism) that the Jesus of History is virtually unknowable and the Jesus of the gospels is mythology.
"Yet Bart Ehrman is very, very careful to continue preaching that Jesus was historical (even while publishing books that undermine Christianity). Interestingly, in the interview Robert M. Price comes up – he’s a Biblical/New Testament scholar who has publicly argued in favor of a mythical Christ, and Ehrman is adamant, totally assured, that Price doesn’t currently hold a teaching position (this is unfortunately a vicious circle: As Ehrman has pointed out, ALL New Testament scholars unanimously agree that Jesus existed – those, like Price – who dare to disagree, cannot possibly hope to find a teaching position anywhere; leading to the continuation and preservation of a body of biblical scholars who unanimously agree that Jesus was historical).
"Meanwhile, Christians use Ehrman and the other New Testament scholars’ assertion in the historical Jesus to bolster their faith, when neither Ehrman, any biblical scholar, nor any Christian apologist can explain the deeply troubling parallels between Christian literature and pagan mythology. (Christians argue that it doesn’t exist or it is natural that 'Pagan-Christs' prefigured the Real Truth; while biblical scholars say “well sure all that stuff was taken from pagan mythology, but that all came later, it has nothing to do with the real Jesus.”)
"But what if it didn’t come later? It can be proven, citing biblical passages, that the physical body of Jesus Christ was doubted even before Paul, in the very earliest days of Christianity; groups were already claiming Jesus did not come in the flesh, but in some kind of spiritual body.
"'Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God.' (1 John 4: 1-3)
"Is the existence of a Jesus Christ with only a non-physical, ghostly body the same as the one Ehrman believes in? Is there any way at all to account for these early Christian groups who denied that Jesus came in the flesh?
"Ehrman keeps pointing out 'the evidence;' but is the small amount of evidence leading us to a historical Jesus enough to counteract the massive amounts of evidence that seem to question whether Jesus actually lived, breathed, ate, died or resurrected (rather than merely 'in semblance')?
"At the very least, I find it to be an extremely fascinating and worthwhile question. Unfortunately, very few researchers are interested in that question, and we are immediately rebuked/dismissed by Ehrman and his cronies because we are not 'Serious New Testament Scholars' (my PhD is merely in comparative literature/ancient Greek, so obviously I don’t know what I’m talking about).
"P.S.--Ehrman is an excellent researcher and his books are well worth reading; although I was a little disappointed by some of the rhetoric/logical gaps in this interview, as well as his out of hand dismissal of the larger issues at question (which, to be fair, were the interviewer’s responsibility), I appreciate and enjoy most of Ehrman’s work."
("Bart Ehrman: Did Jesus Exist? Is There Evidence for a Historical Jesus?,” by Derek Murphy, on “Holy Blaspheum: Hereitical Muisings on Culture, Literature and Religion,” at:
http://www.holyblasphemy.net/bart-ehrman-did-jesus-exist-is-there-evidence-for-a-historical-jesus/, original emphasis)
Saint Ehrman is not God; Jesus wasn't, either; and Ehrman's errors are proof that Bart is as human as Jesus was--with the notable difference being that Ehrman is an historical person and Jesus wasn't. If you don't believe that, I've got an empty tomb in Jerusalem to sell you--one, by the way, that has never been filled (except by tourists, myself included).
Edited 9 time(s). Last edit at 01/31/2014 08:22AM by steve benson.