More Paulkovich Yet Again

Michael Paulkovich has published a new edition of his book No Meek Messiah. Actually, it appears that the new edition came out some time ago, and I didn't notice, in part because the new edition or editions -- I'm not sure how many editions there have been altogether -- has or have a completely different title: Beyond the Crusades. According to the publisher of the new version, American Atheist Press,

"It includes an exhaustively researched 19-page appendix that provides
citations for the controversial 126 'Silent Historians' of Chapter 49
and serves to rebut critics who erroneously claimed that some of the
writers on the list were not applicable or even pre-Jesus."

Well. I guess that shuts me up, once and for all. Seriously, though, I'm torn between a morbid curiosity on the one hand about just how Paulkovich has doubled down here, and on the other hand, profound, cringing embarrassment for him.

Does the change in title make sense? I have no way of knowing: I haven't read the book in any of its editions. I haven't read the article which was excerpted from it in Skeptical Inquiry either. Paulkovich has accused me of not reading that article, and he may have accused me of not having read his book either. In either case he would be correct. All I have addressed is Paulkovich's list of 126 names of people he calls "the silent historians," 126 people who, he claims, should have been expected to have mentioned Jesus if He had existed.

There are very many good books in the world, far more than any one person could ever hope to read. I have to have some incentive to read any particular book. Sometimes a page is enough to convince me that a certain book is not for me. In the case of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, one sentence was enough. In the case of No Meek Messiah and/or Beyond the Crusades, those 126 names were much more than enough. And I have tried to make the case that they ought to be enough to convince any reasonable person that Paulkovich is talking -- through his hat, as people used to say in quainter times. I have tried, and I have been very disappointed to have to come to the conclusion that most people who care a bit one way about Paulkovich either already knew what I was talking about -- just a few cases, these. Academics in one of the "relevant fields," mostly -- or they wouldn't really investigate the list of 126 names at all, trying to find out who, Paulkovich or I or perhaps neither, knew what he was talking about when referring to those 126 people, but were quite content to assume that Paulkovich was full of it if they were convinced that Jesus existed, or that I was full of it if they had their doubts that Jesus ever existed.

More nuanced positions, such as having doubts that Jesus existed but still thinking that Paulkovich was full of it, or being certain that Jesus existed but still thinking that I am full of it, seem to be represented by as few as 1 1/2 people: I am not certain Jesus existed, and Tim O'Neill may or may not think I am full of it. I don't want to speak for Tim on this point. See his comments under the very earliest article in the first link in this post.

There is one thing I find quite remarkable about the new edition or editions of Paulkovich's book, the edition or editions entitled Beyond the Crusades: Robert M Price, one of the most famous of all contemporary mythicists, who probably served as a college professor "in the relevant fields" longer than any other mythicist in the US if not the world -- Ah say Ah Say Robert M Price has written a Foreword for the new edition or editions. Whether this is a new low for Price, or just more of the same, I am not familiar enough with his work to say. Or maybe my wondering about that merely shows that I am terribly naive to assume that professors who write Forewords for books tend to read those books first.

Michael Paulkovich Has Dedicated A Page Of A Website To Me

Here it is.

I couldn't be more pleased. When people think of Michael Paulkovich, they should think of me. Oh, there are so many people to thank, and the orchestra's playing me off already... Thanks, Mom! I love you!

PS: Toward the bottom of Paulkovich's Bollinger-page:

I don't know why he is so desperate for a mythical figure to have actually existed, and all the sources Bollinger used to "prove" Jesus are poor - either known forgeries, or simply moot (too late to be even remotely compelling to prove a historicity).

He took the trouble to dedicate this entire long page to me, and he still hasn't noticed that I'm a mythicist, not sure whether Jesus existed or not.

Why Am I So Angry At Michael Paulkovich?

That's what some people want to know. I'll keep trying to explain. (Some people have urged me to just let it all go. Hahaha. Haha. Hahahaha. No, I won't be doing that.)

I suppose it can't hurt to keep repeating, near the beginning of each of these rants, what many people seem to keep overlooking: not only am I an atheist, I'm far from certain that Jesus ever existed. I'm not criticizing Paulkovich for saying that Jesus never existed, I'm criticizing him for not knowing his ass from a hole in the ground about ancient Judea and Galilee and the question of Jesus' historicity, while trying to pass himself off as some sort of expert.

Actually, I'm angrier at the people who publish Free Inquiry than I am at Paullkovich. Someone described Paulkovich's article about "the 126 silent historians" as a striking example of sloppy thinking and sloppy research. But I don't think that what Paulkovich did here was research at all. Him posing as a researcher, and Free Inquiry and the Council for Secular Humanism continuing to stand behind him, is an insult to all actual researchers in ancient Greek and Latin, including the sloppy amateur ones like me. Sloppy research would have been if he had actually studied the writing of some ancient writers, and then drawn some dubious conclusions from that study. Mis-translated a few Greek and Latin words, not understood some obvious issues of context, things like that. In the case of 40-some of his 126, it's obvious that he didn't study their writing because there is no writing left to be studied. If he had actually read the Latin version of the story of Jason and the Argonauts, or another writer's book on architecture, or the Satyricon, the only surviving work of Petronius -- the same Satyricon upon which Fellini based his movie of the same name -- or the half-dozen verses of love poetry which are all that remain of the work of another writer on his list of 126, etc, etc, he would have known that there was no reason to expect to find Jesus mentioned in those works, and furthermore, he would've realized that anyone who was actually familiar with those writers would know that it was ridiculous to look for mentions of Jesus in their work. He would've realized that he'd be exposing himself as a charlatan posing as someone who'd done some research.



If he had taken the trouble to actually do some research into the extent of all the surviving work of ancient Greek and Latin authors, he would've realized that there are barely 126 historians among them, let alone 126 who mentioned Judea or Galilee, let alone 126 who would've mentioned a wandering preacher with all of 12 followers, who was one of the many people Pontius Pilate had crucified. He would've learned that apart from the Bible and some of the Old and New Testament Apocrypha and the Dead Sea Scrolls and Josephus, there's very little surviving ancient writing of any kind from that time and place, and that it's very big news among actual contemporary historians whenever any little scrap of more is found.

I'd really like to know just exactly how Paulkovich came up with that list, and where he got the notion that it was a list of 126 HISTORIANS. I'm picturing him gathering information from sources like jesusneverexisted dot com and the blogs and books of some of the wackier mythicists. There's simply no way he could've come near anything resembling a reliable reference work, or conferred with anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Roman Empire and its literature, and still come up with that list. Perhaps he thinks that most people familiar with ancient Greek or Latin are a part of the Plot. I'm just speculating here. It's actually very difficult for me to imagine just how that list of 126 names came to be, and just exactly how Paulkovich came to believe that historical writing from all 126 of them had survived.

And yes, there is also the little detail that it is extremely well-known, even among mythicists, that 4 of the people on his list, Josphus, Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny the Younger, actually do mention Jesus and/or Christians.

And that the first 3 of those 4 actually are historians, quite unlike most of the 126, showing that the rate of "silence" of ancient historians about Jesus is actually rather low.

And yes, there is also the little detail about how Paulkovich bases his assumptions about what would have had to have been written about Jesus if he'd existed, on the Bible's claims about Jesus. That is to say, if Jesus had really healed all of those people and risen from the dead and so forth, more people would've noticed. Either Paulkovich is being inconsistent here in looking for evidence of a supernatural Jesus, or I have been wrong in assuming that Paulkovich is an atheist who doesn't believe in the supernatural. Whatever. At this point of silliness I don't much care anymore. But to some people, this assumed inconsistency apparently is a big deal.

And of course all of this still leaves the question untouched of how those responsible for the publication of Free Inquiry managed to miss all of this.

Well, at least Paulkovich didn't claim that there were newspapers in ancient Jerusalem, and that big stacks of them are still lying around, along with detailed records of every criminal case which came before Pilate -- all very suspiciously free of any mention of Jesus. There actually are some people, aside from the religious believers in Jesus' miracles and resurrection, who are running around making claims about Jesus and the historical record which are even more ridiculous than Paulkovich's. (Unless I'm giving him too much credit, and he actually does make such claims in his book. I haven't read his book.)

There's nothing particularly unusual about Paulkovich. There are very many people talking and writing about the historicity or lack of historicity of Jesus without having more of a clue on the subject than he does. It's mysterious to me that so much energy is expended flapping their gums about it, and such a tiny fraction of that much energy learning about what they're constantly yapping about. It's mysterious, and it makes me angry. And it makes me that much more angry when we're talking about people who claim to value rationality and free inquiry and knowledge and solid research so highly.

More On Mythicism And My "Open Letter"

I'm a mythicist: I'm not at all sure whether or not Jesus ever existed.

It has occurred to me that maybe I should've said that at the very beginning of the one post on this blog which has garnered more attention, positive and negative and not a lot in between, than any other: An Open Letter To Michael Paulkovich And Free Inquiry. Maybe I'll edit that post and say it at the beginning, why not. Because many if not most of the people who've responded to that post, in comments on this blog and elsewhere, seem to assume that I take the more popular historicist position: that there certainly was a man named Jesus who came from Nazareth and was crucified by Pilate and inspired the stories in the Gospels.

Why would they assume this? Because I didn't mention my position on Jesus' historicity -- unsure: and anything less than sure he existed is classified as mythicist -- until the very end of the post. And, okay, people don't read everything all the way to the end. An author who puts great care into every word he writes would like to believe that readers hang on every one of those words, but obviously, it ain't always so. That's life in the big city.

Another reason that readers would begin to read that post of mine, which is harshly, sarcastically, angrily, entirely unfairly hostile to a recent publication of the mythicist Michael Paulkovich, and immediately assume they were reading the work of an historicist, is that there is a prominent and active group of mythicists, most of whom do not criticize one another's work. At all. I was by no means the only one who published a strongly negative review of Paulkovich's article, but I may well have been the one and only mythicist who did so. One of the reasons I feel no solidarity with this group is this remarkable lack of criticism of each other.

Another reason is that a lot of their work very badly needs criticism. Paulkovich's article is a particularly extreme example of poorly-done mythicist work. So poor that it angered me, and continues to anger me, that Free Inquiry published it, and that they haven't yet apologized for having published it.

Just today I saw that one of the better-known mythicists -- I don't feel like naming him or linking his blog. -- linked An Open Letter To Michael Paulkovich And Free Inquiry in a blog post of his giving a comprehensive list of mythicists. My name does not appear in that blog post, just the cryptic note at the end of an entry on Paulkovich: "see also Open Letter," with a link.

I don't know whether that mythicist knows that I'm a mythicist. He mentions me from time to time in a manner suggesting either that he does not know it, or that despite knowing it, he feels that I am the enemy because I've been critical of mythicists. Jesus Lord from Above -- as a boss of mine once startlingly shouted, during one of the very few times that very mild-mannered fellow lost his patience -- how is any field of inquiry supposed to progress if the work done in that field is never criticized?! What on Earth is free about that sort of inquiry?!

There's an entirely unrelated post on my blog from some time ago entitled "An Open Letter To Amanda Guterman," in which I plead against further PC restrictions on speech, which has been getting a lot of pageviews lately, and I'm pretty sure that's because people have been searching for "open letter" and found it when they were looking for the Paulkovich letter instead. I feel that the open letter is only my 2nd-best post about Paulkovich's article, after the much more in-depth 126 Writers Who, According To Michael Paulkovich, Should Have Mentioned Jesus If Jesus Existed, but that, too, is life in the big city.

Someone Asked Me What "New Atheists" Are, And How They're Different From "Old Atheists"

Dawkins, Harris, PZ Myers and their fans are New Atheists. Hitchens and Victor Stenger were New Atheists. They combine a cluelessness about history and religion and the humanities with a propensity for making sweeping inaccurate statements about them, and don't seem interested in ideas concerning religion which are more complicated than sound bites. Some prominent examples:

Dawkins started the "Bronze Age goat herders" meme. (Coincidentally, he also coined the term "meme" in his book The Selfish Gene, back when he was doing something he did exceptionally well: writing about biology.) Point out to a typical New Atheist that the oldest parts of the Bible were written in the Iron Age, by town-dwellers, and that the Israelites' primary livestock animal was sheep, not goats, and the typical response is "So what?" So why do you keep repeating Dawkins' meme, that's what.

On p 1 of The Selfish Gene Dawkins approvingly quoted GG Simpson's pronouncement that we should completely forget about all attempts made before 1859 to answer the question, "What is man?" That should have warned me that neither Simpson nor Dawkins knew very much at all about things written up to 1859, and led me to expect things like Dawkins' activity since 2004, when he's published very little work in biology.

More recently Dawkins tweeted the fact that there were more Nobel prize winners from Trinity College than from "the entire Muslim world." Immediately I and a whole bunch of other people pointed out cultural bias, duh! in the awarding of Nobels. Last I heard Dawkins hasn't felt the need to reply to any of us about that. It's getting more and more difficult to take him seriously except in a very negative way.

Hitchens created a very popular meme in the subtitle of his book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.



But of course it doesn't poison EVERYthing. Life's much more complicated than that, billions of people's lives over the course of tens of thousands of years, and yes, I'm saying that if you want to say something deep about religion, you have to have at least an inkling of all of those billions of people's lives, or at the very best you're only going to say something deep every now and then, completely by accident.

Michael Paulkovich is a New Atheist, and the editors of Free Inquiry demonstrated quintessential New Atheist behavior when they published an article because they liked the sound bite: "126 ancient authors who should've mentioned Jesus but didn't," without seeming to care at all about checking into whether or not Paulkovich is making any sense. He's not.



Sam Harris is a peculiarly mid-19th-century sort of New Atheist: his moral philosophy is utilitarian, like that of John Suart Mill, as if he hadn't heard of how Mill had been thoroughly dismantled by the late 19th century by people like Nietzsche.



Dawkins has a lot of credibility in the filed of biology, richly deserved, but he's helped to give an undeserved credibility to New Atheism. It's very bad luck that these people are currently the public face of atheism, but we atheists who actually know something about history, philosophy, the arts and religion -- about the humanities -- just have to speak up louder and more persistently. That's the only way that an intelligent and informed public discussion of religion will get underway.

Here's Some REAL Info About Ancient Historians

Michael Paulkovich will no doubt have many objections to the following. Besides it being obvious that I am a part of The Plot, I am referring to a book of history which is several decades out date; even Cambridge agreed that it was, and so published a completely overhauled edition



between 1970 and 2005. The first edition was published between 1924 and 1939, and I'm referring to vol X of that edition, first published in 1934: The Augustan Empire, 44BC -- AD70, pages 866 through 876, the section entitled Appendix: The Literary Authorities For Roman History. My copy is from the 4th corrected printing, from 1966. The thing is, although this volume is out of date, all 126 of Paulkovich's authors were well-known to historians in 1934, and the texts by those authors recovered since the 1930's might add up altogether to a page or so of fine print. Maybe. (A page of fine print suspiciously lacking any mention of Jesus.)

A more detailed list of sources, both ancient and modern, including things like inscriptions and coins, is provided on pages 893 through 993. What we've got on pages 866-876 is a discussion of the ancient Latin and Greek writers who could reasonably be called historians, plus a few others who help to round out our picture, who wrote about the Roman Empire between 44BC, when Julius Caesar was killed, to AD70, when the Jewish Rebellion was crushed and the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.

This Appendix, unlike Paulkovich's attempt to cover some similar ground, is very helpfully divided into non-existent sources and existing sources. Whoever wrote the Appendix, S A Cook, F E Adcock, M P Charlesworth or some combination of the three (they edited vol X), gives an account of how much influence each non-existent source -- each source which we know was written, but which has disappeared sometime during the past 2000 years so that we can't read it today -- may be expected to have had upon the existing sources, the stuff we can read (cause it exists).

For example, it is noted that the now-vanished History of Asinius Polllio was a major source for Appian's work.

For example, books 116-142 of Livy's history, which cover the period 44-9BC, are gone, but there are several condensed versions of those books made by others which are available to us. Condensed to around 1/100 of the length of the original, for example, in the case of the



periochae. Note also, that Livy is of course an existing source in that a great deal of his work survives, but a non-existent source for the period 44BC -- 70AD.

For example, the author or authors of the Appendix give the opinion that we cannot know much more for certain about the historians Aufidius Bassius and M Servilius Nonianus than their names and that they wrote histories covering parts of the period.

So: the non-existent historians writing in Latin listed here for the history of the Roman Empire from 44BC -- 70AD, mentioned because of their possible, likely or certain influence on the existing sources, are, in Latin, Asinius Polllio, Livy, Aufidius Bassius, M Servilius Nonianus, A Cremutius Cordus, Cluvius Rufus, Fabius Rusticus, Pliny the Elder, Bruttedius Niger, Cn Cornelius Lentulus Gaetulicus, Seneca the Elder, Julius Secundus, Pompeius Planta and Tib Claudius Balbillus. Then there are listed some non-historians who may have contributed to the works of historians existent or non-. Then come three historians writing about the period in Greek whose work is missing, Nicolaus, Timagenes and Phlegon.

On to those who wrote about the period whose work we can read: in Latin, Cicero, Augustus, Velleius Paterculus, Valerius Maximus, Tacitus, Suetonius; then some who condensed the work of others centuries later: Florus, Eutropius, Aurelius Victor and Orosius. Then technical works by Vitruvius (a delightful writer)



on architecture, by Frontinus on aequaducts and military strategy and by Vegetius (4th century) on military matters in general.

There remains in the Appendix a discussion of 5 illustrious Greek authors whose work has to do with the Empire from 44BC -- AD 70, Strabo, Philo, Josephus, Plutarch and Dio Cassius, plus a few more who lived and wrote between the 6th and 11th centuries.

No doubt some of you have been snorting contemptuously for some time now and saying, "You think yr so damn smart?! All you did was summarize a dozen pages from a dang book!"

Yr darn tootin that's all I did! And the reason why that's all I did was to give you an idea of how easy it is, if you know where to look, to get a general idea of the written sources available to us -- before we get to things like the New Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls and Oxyrhynchus and Fayim and Nag Hammadi and inscriptions (words carved into stone) and coins and so forth -- which cover the history of the Roman Empire from 44BC -- AD70. That's the entire Empire over the course of 114 years, an era which is covered much more minutely by surviving sources than many another ancient epoch before and after. 114 years for an area reaching from England to the Red Sea, not just 33 years in an area about 1/10th the size of Wyoming, an area which interested most of the writers mentioned above about as much as Wyoming interests most of the writers on the east and west coasts today.

Free Inquiry Has Reached The Level Of Journalistic Seriousness Of The National Enquirer

That's the real story I've been covering in several of my recent posts about Michael Paulkovich and his 126. (I've been picturing mash-ups of Paulkovich's thesis and the movie 300:



A reader commented on the first of my posts about Paulkovich, asking how a recent article in World News Daily Report would fit into this discussion. I replied that it would fit about as well as an article in the National Enquirer entitled "I Had Bigfoot's Baby!"

Immediately after I had made this reply, I realized that the article in World News Daily Report actually fits in perfectly well in the story I'm covering. The reader's comment helped to crystalize, in my mind, what the real story is here. This really isn't so much about Paulkovich. There's nothing unusual about people asserting absurd things having to do with Jesus and claiming to be serious scholars. That sort of thing has been going on for about about as long as there have been Christians, and the Internet is chock-full of both claims by believers that they've found rock-solid evidence that Jesus existed, and claims by others that they've found rock-solid evidence that he didn't. Myriad self-published books by both categories of numbskulls can be found on Amazon.

The real story here, the thing that should be upsetting more of my fellow atheists than it seems to have upset so far, is that, by publishing Paulkovich, Free Inquiry has attained the level of journalistic seriousness, responsibility and reliability of entities such as World New Daily Report and the National Enquirer. (If, that is, they hadn't reached that level some time ago.)

I know I've said the following repeatedly over the course of the past week and a half, and it must be getting monotonous to those who've been carefully following everything I've written, but it's clear that many people have only been skimming my stuff -- and there's nothing wrong with that! It's a great big world and there's too much good stuff for anybody to read it all -- and some people assume that it's mostly Christians, maybe even mostly fundies, who have problems with Paulkovich. I've said the following repeatedly lately, but I'm repeating it now because it underscores the point I'm trying to get across about Paulkovich and Free Inquiry:

Not only am I not a Christian, I'm an atheist. Many of the mainstream academics in Biblical studies and related fields are also atheists. Almost all of those academics, atheist or not, believe that Jesus existed. (A non-supernatural Jesus in the case of the atheists, of course, to whose biography they believe the supernatural stories were added, the way that the story about the cherry tree was added to George Washington's biography.) Most of those academics tend to regard people who have doubts about Jesus' existed as hopelessly ignorant. I HAVE DOUBTS ABOUT JESUS' EXISTENCE and therefore am subject to a fair share of scorn from the academics, many of whom, because of those doubts, would put me into the same category as Paulkovich. My issue with Paulkovich is NOT that he does not believe Jesus existed. It's also not that he suspects that there is something fishy about the mainstream academic position of Jesus' existence. It's that he makes ridiculous claims about ancient authors who, he says, should've mentioned Jesus if he'd existed, but didn't. His list of 126 names includes many people who have had no writing survive, so Paulkovich didn't study it. Most of the rest wrote things which had nothing to do with Judea or Galilee, which makes it seem like Paulkovich didn't study their work either. A couple of the people on his list died before 1 AD, so... There are people on Paulkovich's list who wrote only about medicine, or historical subjects centuries before Jesus' time, or they wrote fiction, etc, etc, so... There are maybe a dozen who could conceivably had reason to mention Jesus or Christians but didn't, but it's not actually surprising to me that none of them did. AND UNLIKE SOME PEOPLE I'VE ACTUALLY READ A LOT OF THIS STUFF. Oh, and lest I forget: 4 of Paulkovich's 126 actually did mention Christians. As, of course, did a whole lot of others who are not on his list.

My issue with Paulkovich is that he writes sheer absurdity that would've gotten a F on any good history exam, and calls it historical research, and my issue with Free Inquiry is that they published some of it, and, unlike World News Daily Report, they don't have a disclaimer explaining that they are a fake news publication offering satires of news.

Historians And Scientists Shouldn't Be In Conflict

Some languages don't even make a distinction between the two. In German, for example, history is one of the Wissenschaften, one of the sciences. But back here in the English-speaking world, there is this tension between the sciences and the humanities. I don't know whether this tension flares up and then cools down again from time to time, or whether I've just been more aware of it at some times than at others.

The tension which is making me tense at the moment is between some New Atheists who are also scientists on the one hand, and anyone with a passing familiarity with ancient history on the other. The main bone of contention is Jesus and his historicity, and a prime example of the problem has popped up in the work of Michael Paulkovich, which I have discussed in 2 previous blog posts, here and here. Paulkovich is presenting a thesis which wouldn't get a passing grade from any competent high-school history teacher: that 126 ancient writers, who should've been expected to mention Jesus if he existed, do not mention him. More than 1/3 of those 126 people actually left no writing behind. Although Aulus Gellius and Dio Cassius are often very useful to historians in that they quote or mention so many other writers whose works have vanished, if a chapter in Gellius quotes 10 writers, a serious writer counts that as the writing of 1 writer, Gellius, not 11, 10 plus Gellius.



And I'm giving Paulkovich the benefit of the doubt in assuming he knows Gellius or Dio from a hole in the ground, because, although more than a few of the 126 names are known to us today only via those two authors, most of the 126 who are known to us as authors would've had no reason whatsoever to mention Jesus: they're physicians or geographers or poets whose subject matter happened centuries BC or epigrammatists or grammarians, or what remains of their writing is a few lines with no connection to anything east of Athens... In short, the list of 126 names is a really spectacular mess, and you don't have to be an expert in ancient history to suspect that it is.

If the 126 names were in a random reader's comment on the Internet, it'd be bad enough, but too common to warrant my going on about it for several blog posts. But Paulkovich published this mess in Free Inquiry, where prominent scientists like Richard Dawkins -- who's absolutely brilliant when the subject is biology, in case you hadn't heard -- have been published lately, but not, one suspects, respectable historians. "Free" here apparently means "free from fact-checking" on historical subjects, although the New Atheists are always, quite rightly, pointing out the benefits of things like peer review in the natural sciences.

Are they aware that peer review is also in place in disciplines such as history, even when the historical subject is Jeebus? If they're aware that such historiographical peer-review exists, they're sure not acting like it. They're definitely not interested in benefiting from it.

They don't want to learn about ancient history. And yet they feel perfectly well-qualified to discuss it. And so we get things like this list of 126 names, and Dawkins' description of the authors of the Old Testament as "Bronze-age goat herders" (they're referred to as "goatherds," Richard, you simp), and Dawkins making all sorts of ignorant statements about 1 billion Muslims as if all 1 billion were the same in any way, without having felt any need to have read the Koran first, and apparently without feeling any embarrassment over saying publicly that he has no plans either to read the Koran or to stop making blanket condemnations of billions of individuals.

I don't know how widespread this gulf of historical ignorance is. I can only hope that the ignorance on historical topics of New Atheists like these is so obvious that most of the general public who hear Dawkins & Co shooting their mouths off will be able to spot it without my help, and draw appropriate conclusions about New Atheism, and rags like Free Inquiry..

If they're not able, well then, that's what I'm here for. And you, too, if you've been able to follow me this far.

126 Writers Who, According To Michael Paulkovich, Should Have Mentioned Jesus If Jesus Existed

[PS, 21. November 2016: I'm a mythicist. I'm not sure whether Jesus ever existed. I mention this because some people seem to assume that my issue with Paulkovich is that I believe Jesus existed. No, my issue is that I don't think Paulkovich has proven anything about Jesus. At all.]



Here we go, here's Paulkovich's list, reproduced as he gave it, complete with quirky renderings such as "Cassius Deo" rather than the more familiar "Deo Cassius," and "Halicarnassensis Dionysus II" rather than "Dionysus of Halicarnassus."

Aelius Theon, Albinus, Alcinous, Ammonius of Athens, Alexander of Aegae, Antipater of Thessalonica, Antonius Polemo, Apollonius Dyscolus, Apollonius of Tyana, Appian, Archigenes, Aretaeus, Arrian, Asclepiades of Prusa, Asconius, Aspasius, Atilicinus, Attalus, Bassus of Corinth, C Cassius Longinus, Calvisius Taurus of Berytus, Cassius Deo, Chaeremon of Alexandria, Claudius Agathemerus, Claudius Ptolomaeus, Cleopatra the Physician, Cluvius Rufus, Cn Cornelius Lentulus Gaetulicus, Cornelius Celsus, Columella, Cornutus, D Haterius Agrippa, D Valerius Asiaticus, Damis, Demetrius, Demonox, Demosthenes Philalethes, Dion of Prusa, Domitius Afer, Epictetus, Erotianus, Euphrates of Tyre, Fabius Rusticus, Favorinus, Flaccus, Florus, Fronto, Gellius, Gordius of Tyana, Gnaeus Domitius, Halicarnassensis Dionysus II, Heron of Alexandria, Josephus, Justus of Tiberius, Juvenal, Lesbonax of Mytilene, Lucanus, Lucian, Lysimachus, M Antonius Pallas, M Vinicius, Macro, Mam Aemilius Scaurus, Marcellus Sidetes, Martial, Maximus Tyrius, Moderatus of Gades, Musonius, Nicarchus, Nicomachus Gerasenus, Onasandros, P Clodius Thrasea Paetus, Palaemon, Pamphila, Pausanius, Pedacus Dioscorides, Persius/Perseus, Petronius, Phaedrus, Phillipus of Theesalonica, Philo of Alexandria, Phlegon of Tralles, Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger, Plotinus, Plutarch, Pompeius Saturninus, Pomponius Mela, Pomponius Secundus, Potamon of Mytilene, Ptolomy of Mauretania, Q Curtius Rufus, Quintilian, Rubellius Plautus, Rufus the Ephesian, Saleius Bassus, Scopelian the Sophist, Scribonius, Seneca the Elder, Seneca the Younger, Sex Afranius Burrus, Sex Julius Frontinus, Servilius Damocratus, Silius Italicus, Soranus, Soterides of Epidaurus, Sotian, Statius the Elder, Statius the Younger, Suetonius, Sulpicia, T Aristo, T Statilius Crito, Tacitus, Thallus, Theon of Smyrna, Thrasyllus of Mendes, Ti Claudius Pasion, Ti Julius alexander, Tiberius, Valerius Flaccus, Valerius Maximus, Vardanes I, Vellius Paterculus, Verginius Flavius and Vindex.

Okay. Let's start with those on the list who, contrary to Paulkovich's assertions, actually do mention Jesus or Christians: Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius and Tacitus. There is of course a passage in the manuscripts of Josephus, which praises Jesus to the point of calling him god-like, which is now generally agreed to be an interpolation. Some scholars, apologists, mostly, agree that it is an interpolation but insist -- unconvincingly, in my opinion -- that the original narrative still mentioned Jesus at that point. Be that as it may, Jesus is mentioned in another passage in Josephus having to do with his brother James. Some say that the passage in Tacitus describing Nero's cruel treatment of Christians actually has to do with followers of Chrestus, not Christus. I maintain that "Chrestus" is simply a misspelling. [PS, 6. November 2014: the spelling "Chrestus" occurs in Suetonius (Divus Claudius 25,4), not Tacitus. Thanks to Tim O'Neill for bringing this error to my attention.] 4 who mention Jesus or Christians, that leaves 122 names on Paulkovich's list.

Next are the 47 people whose writings Paulkovich cannot have studied, as he claimed, because none of their writings survive: Albinus (assuming Paulkovich is referring to the Albinus who was procurator of Judea in Nero's reign), Ammonius, Alexander of Aegae, Apollonius of Tyana, Attalus, Bassus of Corinth, Chaeremon of Alexandria, Claudius Agathemerus, Cleopatra the Physician, Cluvius Rufus, Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Gaetulicus, Didius Haterius Agrippa, Damis, Demetrius the Cynic, Demosthenes Philalethes, Domitius Afer, Epictetus, Fabius Rusticus, Favorinus, Gnaeus Domitius Afer, Justus of Tiberias, Pallas, Marcus Vinicius, Mamercus Aemilius Scaurus, Moderatus of Gades, Thrasea, Palaemon, Pamphile of Epidaurus, Pompeius Saturninus, Pomponius Secundus, Rubellius Plautus, Saleius Bassus, Scopelian, Scribonius, Sextus Afranius Burrus, Servilius Damocrates, Soteridas, Sotion, Statius the Elder, Aristo, Crito, Thrasyllus of Mendes, Tiberius Claudius Pasion, Tiberius Julius Alexander, Tiberius, Vardanes I, Lucius Verginius Rufus and Vindex. That leaves 74.

Aelius Theon is known only as the author of exercises for orators. Alcinous wrote a manuel of Platonic philosophy for teachers. Lesbonax died before Jesus, if he lived, was full grown. All of the several Lysimachus' died before Jesus would've been born, as did both Scribonius', father and son. Silius Italicus is known for a poem about the 2nd Punic war, Valerius Flaccus for Jason and the Argonauts. Flaccus is Valerius Flaccus. From Sulpicia, 2 lines of erotic verse survive. Soranus was a gynacologist. Archigenes, Arataeus, Pedanius, Celsus and Rufus were also physicians. Frontinus wrote one famous book about aqueducts and another about military strategy. Florus wrote an epitome of Livy. We're down to 57 names on Paulkovich's list. Only 2 funeral orations survive from Polemon. 4 books by Apollonius Dyscolus survive, 1 each on syntax, adjectives, conjunctions and pronouns.
55.

Ptolomy is that extremely famous mathematician and astronomer whose authority on one point Copernicus overturned. Why does Paulkovich consider him to have been an historian? Your guess is as good as mine. Columella wrote on agriculture, Cornutus on Greek mythology, D Valerius Asiaticus wrote a letter to the police about a stolen pig, Erotianus wrote a book which leaves it unclear whether he was a physician who loved polished grammar or a grammarian who greatly admired Hippocrates. 50. That leaves 4 epigrammatists, 4 mathematicians, 2 more geographers, 9 people I've never heard of (Typos by Paulkovich?), and 31 more people who might have written a total of 5 pages between them about the entire history of Judea and Galilee, 5 pages which very suspiciously contain no mention of Jesus!

And many non-Christian writers before AD 300, Paulkovich's cut-off point, who do mention Jesus or Christians, who are not on his list.

As an atheist, I long for a much better class of atheists, atheists writing about history who are not historically illiterate.

An Open Letter To Michael Paulkovich And Free Inquiry

[PS, 31. December 2014: I'm a mythicist: I'm not at all sure whether or not Jesus existed. I mentioned that at the end of this post. I'm saying it again here because people don't always read other people's blog posts all the way to the end, and because it's the reason I wrote this: I wrote it because I'd like to see quality research being done on the question of Jesus' existence. It's not being done, because the experts, the academics, aren't doing it.]



It seems that your article in Free Inquiry is open to subscribers only. [PS, 31. December 2014: It's been moved to the public part of Free Inquiry's website. ] But I can see the header on the Free Inquiry website:

If the story of Jesus were true, ancient writers should have commented on it—yet 126 (and counting) who might have done so, did not.

And I would just love to see a list of those 126 (or more) writers. You see, I've been studying ancient history and literature for a long, long time, and had been under the impression that the number was more like 0. You obviously have a huge brain and know many things which I do not. I've found some of the 126 on a website which quotes you as having said "in a recent interview,"

"Emperor Titus, Cassius Dio, Maximus, Moeragenes, Lucian, Soterichus Oasites, Euphrates, Marcus Aurelius, or Damis of Hierapolis. It seems none of these writers from first to third century ever heard of Jesus, global miracles and alleged worldwide fame be damned"

Great, I finally found the names of some of the 126 (or more) writers whose failure to mention Jesus is downright strange. Okay then, let's take a look at those 9:

Titus. Okay, good: Titus was actually in Judea, he led Roman troops against the Jewish uprising, which he successfully crushed in AD 70. Is it strange that we kind find no mention of Jesus in his writings? Well, no. Because, you see, none of Titus' writings are known to us. Which means that what's strange here -- in my humble opinion -- is that you're talking about examining his writings. Very strange. The primary sources of information about Titus are Josephus (who mentions Jesus), Tacitus (who mentions Christians), Suetonius (ditto), and the 2nd name someone claims you listed off in an interview,

Cassius Dio. Actually, I've more often heard him referred to as Dio Cassius, but why rag on that and imply that you got all this off the back of some cereal box? Let's just call him Dio for the sake of brevity. (And so that people who are familiar with his work, if any such are reading along, will know what we're talking about.) Dio writes a couple of lines about Titus and the Jewish War, in which he makes no mentions of any Jews alive at that time, let alone decades before during the supposed time of Jesus, or Pontius Pilate either. In fact the only near-contemporary mentions of Pilate known before the 20th century, when an inscription was found which seems to have been made by him, are in the New Testament, and the Jewish authors Josephus (mentions Jesus) and Philo, and Tacitus (mentions Christians). But yeah, it's strange that Dio doesn't mention this one particular Jewish preacher who had 12 whole followers.

Maximus. There's a 2nd-century Athenian philosopher named Maximus. Show me he had ever heard of Judea or Galilee, and then we can talk about why it would be strange for him not to have written about Jesus. The other people I've heard about named Maximus are even more ridiculous in this discussion. (Do you mean the general and gladiator Maximus, who killed Commodus? You know that Maximus is entirely fictional, right?)

Moeragenes. Never heard of him.

Lucian. Now here we have an ancient author from whom an unusually-large volume of work has survived. The closest any of his works come to Jerusalem or Nazareth is that Adversus Indoctum mocks a Syrian book-collector. What the fuck, Michael? (What the fuck, Free Inquiry? You don't have any fact-checkers?)

Soterichus Oasites. A Soterichus who lived around AD 300 wrote poems about Alexander the Great and Dionysus. Hm, yeah, very strange that he didn't toss any mention of Jesus into those.

Euphrates. That's a river, not a writer.

Marcus Aurelius. He was relatively friendly toward Jews. This may be the strongest straw you have to grasp at. (Why should the religious be the only ones who can grasp at straws and take rhetorical short-cuts?)

Damis of Hierapolis. A Damis was a pupil of Apollonius of Tyana. None of this Damis' work has survived, and none of this Apollonius' either, but Apollonius has sometimes been compared to Jesus so I can see how you got confused.

I'm not a Christian, I'm not picking on you for theological reasons. I'm an atheist, and I'm far from certain that Jesus existed, and I think it's shameful the way that the vast majority of mainstream Biblical scholars avoid any suggestion that there could ever be any reasonable doubt that Jesus existed, and I'm picking on you because I take history seriously, and I've read some ancient literature untranslated, and I don't go around talking out of my ass like you do, and it's embarrassing that some people think of me in the same breath as clowns like you, because of my doubts about whether Jesus existed and the way the academics treat the subject and therefore frame the discussion.

PS, 29. September, 3:50 PM: I found the list! Of all 126, or is it more by now? 3/4 of the way to the bottom of the linked page: The Silent Historians, he calls them. Stayed tuned, readers. This is gonna be fun.