Of course it matters. If it didn't matter to so many people we wouldn't discuss it so much.
The question is: how important is it? Many people, historicists and mythicists alike, Christians and atheists and others, seem to think that nothing could be more important: if it were ever proven that Jesus never existed, they seem to think, it would remake our world, from the ground up, in a flash.
These people who believe that the proof of Jesus' non-existence would be cataclysmic don't seem to me to have thought it through very far.
Let's look at the case of evolution. Since well before Charles Darwin's time, it has been plain that the nature and origin of life on Earth do not correspond at all to Biblical accounts. And yet, this has not led to an overthrow of Judaism and Christianity: on the contrary, fundamentalists still do not believe in evolution, and scientifically-literate practicing Jews and Christians have had remarkably little trouble in convincing themselves that the Bible never said what it clearly says, and that believers never took it as literally as they clearly all did until a few hundred years ago.
It's much harder to prove the absence of an historical person 2000 years ago than to prove his or her historical reality. Then again, never have so many people been so obsessed with one possibly-historical person as there are with Jesus. The amount of attention paid to him isn't comparable to that paid to anyone else. The usual standards of difficulty of proof or disproof may eventually be swamped by this tidal wave of attention. So let us say for the sake of argument that some day soon it will somehow be conclusively proven, as conclusively as it's been proven that Piltdown Man was a hoax, that Jesus of Nazareth was invented whole by Paul of Tarsus or created in hindsight out of unclear memories of John the Baptist or what have you, that the person himself is shown to be as legendary as his miracles and resurrection. What will happen?
Why should we believe that people will suddenly behave differently than they have in the past? The fundamentalists don't believe that evolution happens just because some biologists have explained that it does. Why on Earth would they be more receptive to historians showing that Jesus didn't exist?
And as for the moderate and the politically-progressive, academically-up-to-speed believers: they have quite calmly kept their beliefs in the face of evolutionary theory by maintaining that the stories in Genesis of the Creation and the Flood are metaphors, or camp-fire stories handed down from generation to generation and never taken all that seriously until all of a suddenly in 19th-century America the Biblical literalsts somehow very suddenly got it all wrong. Why should we expect a smaller amount of faith-saving mental acrobatics if and when Jesus is proven never to have existed? They will tell themselves and each other that Jesus was understood to be just a story all along -- or whatever else they have to tell themselves in order to be able to continue to believe whatever it is that they want to believe.
Although the progressive believers for the most part, and very, very nearly 100% of the academic Biblical scholars and Christian theologians, still firmly maintain that Jesus existed, even the ones who say that all the stories of miracles are legendary (and often have varying absurd positions about no-one ever having really believed those stories anyway -- until the 19th century in the US when millions of fundamentalists somehow managed to pull firm literalist beliefs out of their butts all at once), even the ones who don't believe in God -- although these latter ones have been much more reluctant to call themselves what they are -- atheists -- since Richard Dawkins started to behave like a jackass and put all this stink on the term "atheist" -- although even these Christians, or "2/3 Christians," as Nietzsche called them, still say that they are quite certain that Jesus existed, and tend to rather impolitely mock all doubts -- even they seem to be starting to hedge their bets a little, as more and more of the stories of the early Christians are proven to be legends, and are beginning to say that it doesn't MATTER whether Jesus existed or not, that what matters is the allegorical worth of the stories about him.
In short, although they still firmly maintain that there is no doubt that Jesus existed, they are already laying the ideological groundwork for the case that they may be proven wrong, by emphasizing more and more that "it doesn't matter" if he existed: what matters is the symbolic worth -- whatever that worth might be; it tends to vary quite a bit from progressive theologian to progressive theologian -- of the legendary stories about him. Christians suddenly switched from believing the stories in the Bible literally to maintaining that no-one ever believed them literally. If they could do that, why would it be at all difficult to suddenly switch from saying that it's certain that Jesus existed to saying everyone understood all along that he was a fictional character in those parables known as the Gospels, and that only those pesky fundamentalists, since just very recently, had ever believed in anything like "Gospel truth."
Monday: "Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and at peace with Eastasia." Tuesday: "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia and at peace with Eurasia." And only an occasional Winston Smith among the progressive faithful has any qualms or doubts that all is well. That sniveling creep and snitch George Orwell may have fooled millions of readers into thinking that his novels were realistic depictions of Communist regimes, but the Soviet Union actually never was much like that. The parallels between 1984 and Christianity, on the other hand, are many and striking, although, astonishingly, apparently quite unintentional on Orwell's part.
Many naive New Atheists seem to believe that if can be proven that Jesus never existed, superstition will shatter and crash to the ground and a Golden Age of Reason will begin, their descriptions of which sound very much like their families' descriptions of the Millennium. The New Atheist apple has often landed not nearly as far from the fundamentalist tree as it thinks.
I tend to agree, upon reflection, with those who say that it would make little change in the world, at least not right away. I just wish they wouldn't constantly interrupt discussions of Jesus' historicity to say that they don't care about it, because I do care -- not for the sake of huge sudden changes in the world which I don't see coming. I personally am interested in the question of the historical Jesus the same way that I would be interested in any other historical question. I'm interested in history, in trying to determine what happened at such and such a time in such and such a place, for its own sake, in somewhat the same way that theoretical mathematicians enjoy their equations and formulae for their own sake. I just find it interesting to attempt to learn what happened. And if possible to improve the historical record, to make it more accurate and/or more detailed. Some people like detective novels, some like comic books, some like quilts, some like boats. I like old manuscripts and inscriptions and mosaics and other ancient artifacts, and they happen to be what may possibly eventually clarify the historical Jesus question.
Showing posts with label mythicists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mythicists. Show all posts
Sunday, December 6, 2015
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Writing From Jesus' Time And Place? What Writing Would That Be, Exactly?
It seems that some people have a distorted notion about the amount of ancient writing which has survived down to our time. They sometimes seem to think that the amount of written material from ancient Jerusalem is comparable to that of a big city today. They seem to imagine historians poring through the stacks of Jerusalem newspapers and police records from April and May, AD 33, and the diaries of Romans and Greeks vacationing in the city...
Newspapers didn't begin to appear until the 17th century, and whatever written records may have been kept by the Roman authorities in 1st-century Jerusalem are gone. We have a handful of such written records of ancient legal proceedings from anywhere in the Roman Empire, mostly from a few sites near the Nile in Egypt. After the actions of the authorities were carried out, the writing involved was thrown away. It seems it didn't occur to people back then to preserve such things. And when papyrus was thrown away, for the most part it rotted away very quickly. Those few sites near the Nile are very dry, which is good for preserving papyrus, and so we have found all sort of written documents in garbage dumps, above all the garbage dumps of the Egyptian town Oxyrhynchus. The Dead Sea Scrolls and some other ancient papyri have survived because they were stored in jars.
Most of the ancient Latin writing we have today was written in or fairly near the city of Rome, which was the cultural center of the Empire at the time. But very much even of the writing of the most highly-renowned ancient Roman writers has disappeared over the millennia. The ancient Romans considered Livy their best historian; only about 1/4 of his work has survived. The 2nd-most revered historian in ancient Rome was Tacitus, and 1/2 or more of his work has vanished. And Livy and Tacitus aren't unusual in this regard. This is how much ancient writing has vanished. We have only a fraction of many of the most highly-regarded writers. For many others, we have even less: a sentence or two, or just a mention in someone else's writing, or they've been forgotten altogether. Many of the most highly-regarded ancient writers.
The situation is similar in the case of Athens and the other major cities of ancient Greece. And peoples such as the Jews were much less favored by the Romans than were the Greeks, with the result that more of their culture, including their writing, has disappeared. And the Jews were much better favored than many other ancient peoples, who we only know by their names, or who have been forgotten altogether.
Most ancient Romans didn't know or care much about Judea and Galilee, and in the 1st century, indifference turned to hostility. There are a few lines here and there in ancient Latin and Greek in recognition of the crushing of the Jewish revolt from AD 66-70, and otherwise little mention of the place, except for the work of the authors of the New Testament and a couple of other Jewish writers, Josephus and Philo. And Philo was writing from far away in Alexandria. Without them, the modern world would have completely forgotten about Pontius Pilate until the 20th century, when a stone with a few words about him was excavated in Israel in the 20th century. (And without the New Testament and Josephus and Philo, would anyone today have any idea to whom the stone referred? I'm not asking rhetorically, I don't know the answer.) I keep mentioning the Pilate Stone on this blog because, from the point of view of most Romans of the time, Pilate would have been one of the most important people in Judea or Galilee. And, again, because there is so very little writing which survives from that time and place.
Other than the Pilate Stone and some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, I don't know of ANY writing we have today made in Judea or Galilee during Jesus' lifetime. I would imagine that there are a few more Roman inscriptions, but I don't happen to know. (Words carved into stone are called inscriptions by historians of the ancient Mediterranean world.) There probably was a lot of writing of various kinds in the Temple in Jerusalem which the Romans destroyed in AD 70. Maybe some more writing will turn up eventually, but for the time being these people who say things like, "We go through all the writings of his contemporaries and there's no mention if him" are talking through their hats: there are no big piles of records to go through. For Jesus' time and place, there are the New Testament and Josephus, and that's pretty much it. Add to that a couple of lines in the works of Tacitus and Suetonius and the younger Pliny, and some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Pilate Stone, and whatever parts of the other papyri found since the late 19th century can be said to have an historical, and not merely an imaginative connection to 1st-century Judea and Galilee. (Remember, most of those papyri have been found in Egypt, near the Nile. Ancient papyrus in most places tends to have rotted away.)
Newspapers didn't begin to appear until the 17th century, and whatever written records may have been kept by the Roman authorities in 1st-century Jerusalem are gone. We have a handful of such written records of ancient legal proceedings from anywhere in the Roman Empire, mostly from a few sites near the Nile in Egypt. After the actions of the authorities were carried out, the writing involved was thrown away. It seems it didn't occur to people back then to preserve such things. And when papyrus was thrown away, for the most part it rotted away very quickly. Those few sites near the Nile are very dry, which is good for preserving papyrus, and so we have found all sort of written documents in garbage dumps, above all the garbage dumps of the Egyptian town Oxyrhynchus. The Dead Sea Scrolls and some other ancient papyri have survived because they were stored in jars.
Most of the ancient Latin writing we have today was written in or fairly near the city of Rome, which was the cultural center of the Empire at the time. But very much even of the writing of the most highly-renowned ancient Roman writers has disappeared over the millennia. The ancient Romans considered Livy their best historian; only about 1/4 of his work has survived. The 2nd-most revered historian in ancient Rome was Tacitus, and 1/2 or more of his work has vanished. And Livy and Tacitus aren't unusual in this regard. This is how much ancient writing has vanished. We have only a fraction of many of the most highly-regarded writers. For many others, we have even less: a sentence or two, or just a mention in someone else's writing, or they've been forgotten altogether. Many of the most highly-regarded ancient writers.
The situation is similar in the case of Athens and the other major cities of ancient Greece. And peoples such as the Jews were much less favored by the Romans than were the Greeks, with the result that more of their culture, including their writing, has disappeared. And the Jews were much better favored than many other ancient peoples, who we only know by their names, or who have been forgotten altogether.
Most ancient Romans didn't know or care much about Judea and Galilee, and in the 1st century, indifference turned to hostility. There are a few lines here and there in ancient Latin and Greek in recognition of the crushing of the Jewish revolt from AD 66-70, and otherwise little mention of the place, except for the work of the authors of the New Testament and a couple of other Jewish writers, Josephus and Philo. And Philo was writing from far away in Alexandria. Without them, the modern world would have completely forgotten about Pontius Pilate until the 20th century, when a stone with a few words about him was excavated in Israel in the 20th century. (And without the New Testament and Josephus and Philo, would anyone today have any idea to whom the stone referred? I'm not asking rhetorically, I don't know the answer.) I keep mentioning the Pilate Stone on this blog because, from the point of view of most Romans of the time, Pilate would have been one of the most important people in Judea or Galilee. And, again, because there is so very little writing which survives from that time and place.
Other than the Pilate Stone and some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, I don't know of ANY writing we have today made in Judea or Galilee during Jesus' lifetime. I would imagine that there are a few more Roman inscriptions, but I don't happen to know. (Words carved into stone are called inscriptions by historians of the ancient Mediterranean world.) There probably was a lot of writing of various kinds in the Temple in Jerusalem which the Romans destroyed in AD 70. Maybe some more writing will turn up eventually, but for the time being these people who say things like, "We go through all the writings of his contemporaries and there's no mention if him" are talking through their hats: there are no big piles of records to go through. For Jesus' time and place, there are the New Testament and Josephus, and that's pretty much it. Add to that a couple of lines in the works of Tacitus and Suetonius and the younger Pliny, and some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Pilate Stone, and whatever parts of the other papyri found since the late 19th century can be said to have an historical, and not merely an imaginative connection to 1st-century Judea and Galilee. (Remember, most of those papyri have been found in Egypt, near the Nile. Ancient papyrus in most places tends to have rotted away.)
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Suetonius And "Chrestus" And Jesus
As the ever-diligent Tim O'Neill helpfully pointed out, I erred in my post referring to Michael Paulkovich's 126 when I said that someone named Chrestus appears in Tacitus. O'Neill is correct: Chrestus appears in Suetonius, not in Tacitus. The beginning of chapter 25, part 4, of Suetonius' account of the Emperor Claudius begins:
Iudaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit.
(Because the Jews, led by Chrestus, were constantly making disturbances, he [Claudius] expelled them from Rome.)
Some mythicists point to this Chrestus and say that it shows that Jesus (Christ, Christus) never existed: it wasn't Christus, it was Chrestus, and he was never in Jerusalem, he was in Rome. Sez so right there in Suetonius. That's what some mythicists argue.
I just want to point out that I find it ironic that these particular individuals, who find reasons to doubt so many references to Jesus' existence in so many different texts, and to assume so many wholesale rewrites of the New Testament when we have so many NT manuscripts and there so little reason to doubt things, because we can see fairly clearly what changes were made and when by looking at all of these thousand of Biblical manuscripts, including some manuscripts as old as the 2nd century, perhaps as early in the 2nd century that they were made when Suetonius was still alive -- Ah say Ah say Ah say these non-historians, these non-experts calling themselves experts in the early history of Christianity have no problem whatsoever believing in the existence of a leader of the Jews in Rome in Claudius' reign called Chrestus, not Christus, rather then think that this may be a misspelling of Christus, in manuscripts of Suetonius of which the oldest are 9th century. And they are more ready to believe that the rather ambiguously-worded sentence clearly shows that this Chrestus was alive in Rome in Claudius' reign, rather than think that Suetonius does not mean to refer to a living leader present at the time, or, more likely in my opinion, that Suetonius simply didn't know much about the Christians, had heard some vague accounts of them linking them to someone named Chrestus, and made a mistake when he wrote about them. Or someone told Suetonius about Christus and he misheard it as Chrestus. Or Suetonius wrote "Christus," and some time between when he wrote in the 2nd century and when the oldest-known copies of his work were made in the 9th century, someone copied one letter wrong.
And these mythicists accuse others of bending the truth to suit their pre-conceived notions and grasping at straws.
SOME mythicists have done this with Suetonius' mention of "Chrestus." Not all of them -- or all of us if everyone not convinced that Jesus existed is a mythicist. I'm pretty sure Wells never has.
As I often point out, I am not a pro at this. I'm pointing it out once again in connection with some of the wackier mythicists because I want to make the point, again, that one by no means needs to be a pro or an expert in order to see that they are neither. (Wells is a pro. Probably the only living mythicist pro. Surely if there were another I would've come across him or her by now.)
Iudaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit.
(Because the Jews, led by Chrestus, were constantly making disturbances, he [Claudius] expelled them from Rome.)
Some mythicists point to this Chrestus and say that it shows that Jesus (Christ, Christus) never existed: it wasn't Christus, it was Chrestus, and he was never in Jerusalem, he was in Rome. Sez so right there in Suetonius. That's what some mythicists argue.
I just want to point out that I find it ironic that these particular individuals, who find reasons to doubt so many references to Jesus' existence in so many different texts, and to assume so many wholesale rewrites of the New Testament when we have so many NT manuscripts and there so little reason to doubt things, because we can see fairly clearly what changes were made and when by looking at all of these thousand of Biblical manuscripts, including some manuscripts as old as the 2nd century, perhaps as early in the 2nd century that they were made when Suetonius was still alive -- Ah say Ah say Ah say these non-historians, these non-experts calling themselves experts in the early history of Christianity have no problem whatsoever believing in the existence of a leader of the Jews in Rome in Claudius' reign called Chrestus, not Christus, rather then think that this may be a misspelling of Christus, in manuscripts of Suetonius of which the oldest are 9th century. And they are more ready to believe that the rather ambiguously-worded sentence clearly shows that this Chrestus was alive in Rome in Claudius' reign, rather than think that Suetonius does not mean to refer to a living leader present at the time, or, more likely in my opinion, that Suetonius simply didn't know much about the Christians, had heard some vague accounts of them linking them to someone named Chrestus, and made a mistake when he wrote about them. Or someone told Suetonius about Christus and he misheard it as Chrestus. Or Suetonius wrote "Christus," and some time between when he wrote in the 2nd century and when the oldest-known copies of his work were made in the 9th century, someone copied one letter wrong.
And these mythicists accuse others of bending the truth to suit their pre-conceived notions and grasping at straws.
SOME mythicists have done this with Suetonius' mention of "Chrestus." Not all of them -- or all of us if everyone not convinced that Jesus existed is a mythicist. I'm pretty sure Wells never has.
As I often point out, I am not a pro at this. I'm pointing it out once again in connection with some of the wackier mythicists because I want to make the point, again, that one by no means needs to be a pro or an expert in order to see that they are neither. (Wells is a pro. Probably the only living mythicist pro. Surely if there were another I would've come across him or her by now.)
Monday, September 29, 2014
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Historical Jesus Update (Sorry, Still Haven't Found Him)
This won't actually be much of an update for people actively following academic and extra-academic discussion of the Historical Jesus. So far as I can tell, there haven't been any bombshells on that front lately. (The Gospel of Jesus' Wife recently presented by Mary L King, prematurely rejected as a phony by the normally over-credulous public, is a bombshell, but, as Prof King pointed out to the mostly-not-listening public, it's a bombshell about a 2nd-century Christian sect and not about the HJ.)
The academic mainstream continues to convince me that most (not all!) mythicists are ill-informed amateurs at best. On the other hand, I continue not to be able to see their reasons for so confidently assuming that there was an Historical Jesus. Also on the other hand, surely there will eventually, finally, be significant numbers of academic specialists in the New Testament willing, eager, to discuss the question of Jesus' historicity, so that at last that discussion will take place among those best qualified to investigate it. Can't happen soon enough. (They, the mainstream, say it's already happened. They don't say when and where.)
Well, actually, it's worse than my not being able to see the academics' reasons for being certain that Jesus existed: I think those reason are becoming more and more clear to me, and they're flimsy.
For the moment let's take what appears to me to be an especially egregious example of flimsiness, which I will call the Unexpected Suffering Messiah Postulate: the academic mainstream, the historicists, say that the core story of the Gospels couldn't have been made up because the very idea of a suffering Messiah would have been very unexpected to 1st-century Jews.
If you just did a spit-take and shouted "WHAT?" at your computer screen: I'm right there with you. Either I'm a drooling pinhead, or mainstream New Testament Studies has taken the position that the unexpected, in myth, is somewhere between extremely improbable and impossible. I'm surprised that full-time mythicists don't call the tenured guys out more often and emphatically over this one. It's almost like saying that there's never been anything like originality in the history of the writing of myths, that only nonfiction is capable of surprising us. I'd say that nonfiction often surprises, and that myths do also, the originality and the ability to surprise, to come up with the unexpected, are in fact essential factors in almost all myths.
But hey, that's just me.
If unexpectedness were as rare as this historicist tentpole suggests, then the word "unexpected" would be fairly rare. I'd have to explain to you what it meant. but of course I don't, because we encounter the unexpected all the time, in myths among so many other places. If we don't encounter it in myths we tend to fall asleep. And not in a good way.
Christianity was full of the unexpected when it was new. If the only way you can explain that is by maintaining that it was full of truth, you can go play with Benny Hinn. Or James McGrath. I don't want to hang out with you. One of us is a drooling pinhead.
Attentive readers may have noticed that I haven't even gotten around to the point that some 1st-century Jews may indeed have expected a suffering Messiah.
New to me, although not necessarily to those interested in the inquiry into the Historical Jesus, is Dennis R McDonald's book The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark. MacDonald's thesis, somewhat startling in academia when this book was published in 2000, and perhaps somewhat less startling now, is that Mark borrows very heavily from the Iliad and the Odyssey. The parallels he points out are really quite striking, and number in the low three figures. MacDonald, who is currently John Wesley Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Claremont School of Theology and co-director of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity at the Claremont Graduate University, mentions in passing that he takes for granted that although Mark borrowed very extensively from Homer, Jesus actually existed. Disappointingly, he does not mention why he takes this for granted. He doesn't seem to feel the need to explain why he takes it for granted.
I've said it many times before: I, and many other people who strike me as being quite intelligent and reasonable, even if none of us holds an advanced degree in "one of the relevant fields," just want to see the topic being discussed. They, the mainstream, say it's been discussed and laid to rest. Where? When?
As I said at the beginning of this post: nothing new on this front.
The academic mainstream continues to convince me that most (not all!) mythicists are ill-informed amateurs at best. On the other hand, I continue not to be able to see their reasons for so confidently assuming that there was an Historical Jesus. Also on the other hand, surely there will eventually, finally, be significant numbers of academic specialists in the New Testament willing, eager, to discuss the question of Jesus' historicity, so that at last that discussion will take place among those best qualified to investigate it. Can't happen soon enough. (They, the mainstream, say it's already happened. They don't say when and where.)
Well, actually, it's worse than my not being able to see the academics' reasons for being certain that Jesus existed: I think those reason are becoming more and more clear to me, and they're flimsy.
For the moment let's take what appears to me to be an especially egregious example of flimsiness, which I will call the Unexpected Suffering Messiah Postulate: the academic mainstream, the historicists, say that the core story of the Gospels couldn't have been made up because the very idea of a suffering Messiah would have been very unexpected to 1st-century Jews.
If you just did a spit-take and shouted "WHAT?" at your computer screen: I'm right there with you. Either I'm a drooling pinhead, or mainstream New Testament Studies has taken the position that the unexpected, in myth, is somewhere between extremely improbable and impossible. I'm surprised that full-time mythicists don't call the tenured guys out more often and emphatically over this one. It's almost like saying that there's never been anything like originality in the history of the writing of myths, that only nonfiction is capable of surprising us. I'd say that nonfiction often surprises, and that myths do also, the originality and the ability to surprise, to come up with the unexpected, are in fact essential factors in almost all myths.
But hey, that's just me.
If unexpectedness were as rare as this historicist tentpole suggests, then the word "unexpected" would be fairly rare. I'd have to explain to you what it meant. but of course I don't, because we encounter the unexpected all the time, in myths among so many other places. If we don't encounter it in myths we tend to fall asleep. And not in a good way.
Christianity was full of the unexpected when it was new. If the only way you can explain that is by maintaining that it was full of truth, you can go play with Benny Hinn. Or James McGrath. I don't want to hang out with you. One of us is a drooling pinhead.
Attentive readers may have noticed that I haven't even gotten around to the point that some 1st-century Jews may indeed have expected a suffering Messiah.
New to me, although not necessarily to those interested in the inquiry into the Historical Jesus, is Dennis R McDonald's book The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark. MacDonald's thesis, somewhat startling in academia when this book was published in 2000, and perhaps somewhat less startling now, is that Mark borrows very heavily from the Iliad and the Odyssey. The parallels he points out are really quite striking, and number in the low three figures. MacDonald, who is currently John Wesley Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Claremont School of Theology and co-director of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity at the Claremont Graduate University, mentions in passing that he takes for granted that although Mark borrowed very extensively from Homer, Jesus actually existed. Disappointingly, he does not mention why he takes this for granted. He doesn't seem to feel the need to explain why he takes it for granted.
I've said it many times before: I, and many other people who strike me as being quite intelligent and reasonable, even if none of us holds an advanced degree in "one of the relevant fields," just want to see the topic being discussed. They, the mainstream, say it's been discussed and laid to rest. Where? When?
As I said at the beginning of this post: nothing new on this front.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
How To Diss Mythicists
On pages 5 and 6 of The Jesus Legend,
the mythicist G A Wells lists 11 "guidelines for hostile writing" to be used against mythicists such as himself: 1) Question the mythicists' qualifications. 2) Avoid rebutting their arguments, and instead condescendingly describe their positions as already discredited. 3) Affix distasteful labels to them, as the label "Hegelian" was attached to Strauss and Bauer. 4) Lump one writer together with discredited ones, and if he himself has criticized the others, don't mention it. 5) Represent minor slips as indications of total incompetence. 6) Make objections to the mythicists' cases as if they themselves had not addressed them. 7) Falsely claim that the mythicists rely on a priori dogmas. 8) Call a mythicist's failure to mention a certain work a "serious omission." 9) Instead of producing arguments, appeal to authorities; also, accuse the mythicists of appealing to outdated authorities. 10) Misrepresent their work, being careful to avoid lengthy quotations which might tend to give your readers an accurate impression of that which you are misrepresenting, and 11) Discuss propositions irrelevant to their work. Wells describes each of these tactics at greater length than I have here; then he goes on, on pages 6 through 9, to show how they all have been used against him.
All in a book Wells published in 1996. It is downright depressing to see how current Wells' list is, and how accurately it describes the average downright rude dismissal of mythicists by most academically-credentialed biblical scholars and theologians who mention them today. And not for the first time, let me object to the very term "mythicist," even though some writers attach it proudly to themselves. I object to the term because it implies people who are asserting, positively, than Jesus was a myth, not a real person, while it is applied to just about every one who is less than certain that Jesus was a real person, and just about everyone who wants to investigate the question of Jesus' existence as if it were not already closed.
Although not every attack upon mythicists -- although I object to the term, I'm not going to act as if it is not the term being used -- follows all 11 of Wells' guidelines, it is depressingly rare to find a description of them --of us. I would like to investigate the question as if it were not already closed -- by a Biblical scholar or a theologian with a PhD, let alone tenure, which does not follow any of them. The latest depressingly crude and insulting such attack of which I am aware, Joel L Watts' screed published in the Huffington Post yesterday, follows a few of them, and invents the new one of not mentioning one single mythicist by name, as if we were not important enough for Watts to name any of us, and as if we were all the same anyway. Watts' article is a beautiful example of 2) and 9) : there is nothing in it even remotely resembling the suggestion of an argument, neither a mythicist argument to be poo-pooed, nor an historicist argument of any kind whatsoever. Jesus was real and mythicists are as stubbornly irrational as young-earth creationists. That is all ye know, and all ye need know.
Well, there's actually one more thing ye might be interested to know. It's something I already assumed, but I don't assume that all of my readers follow such publishing-industry details as closely as I do. It's the reason that Joel Watts is bothering to publish such crude and egregious insults of us in places like the Huffington Post to begin with: because he has a new book out.
It's not just insults and intellectual dishonesty -- it's also advertising.
the mythicist G A Wells lists 11 "guidelines for hostile writing" to be used against mythicists such as himself: 1) Question the mythicists' qualifications. 2) Avoid rebutting their arguments, and instead condescendingly describe their positions as already discredited. 3) Affix distasteful labels to them, as the label "Hegelian" was attached to Strauss and Bauer. 4) Lump one writer together with discredited ones, and if he himself has criticized the others, don't mention it. 5) Represent minor slips as indications of total incompetence. 6) Make objections to the mythicists' cases as if they themselves had not addressed them. 7) Falsely claim that the mythicists rely on a priori dogmas. 8) Call a mythicist's failure to mention a certain work a "serious omission." 9) Instead of producing arguments, appeal to authorities; also, accuse the mythicists of appealing to outdated authorities. 10) Misrepresent their work, being careful to avoid lengthy quotations which might tend to give your readers an accurate impression of that which you are misrepresenting, and 11) Discuss propositions irrelevant to their work. Wells describes each of these tactics at greater length than I have here; then he goes on, on pages 6 through 9, to show how they all have been used against him.All in a book Wells published in 1996. It is downright depressing to see how current Wells' list is, and how accurately it describes the average downright rude dismissal of mythicists by most academically-credentialed biblical scholars and theologians who mention them today. And not for the first time, let me object to the very term "mythicist," even though some writers attach it proudly to themselves. I object to the term because it implies people who are asserting, positively, than Jesus was a myth, not a real person, while it is applied to just about every one who is less than certain that Jesus was a real person, and just about everyone who wants to investigate the question of Jesus' existence as if it were not already closed.
Although not every attack upon mythicists -- although I object to the term, I'm not going to act as if it is not the term being used -- follows all 11 of Wells' guidelines, it is depressingly rare to find a description of them --of us. I would like to investigate the question as if it were not already closed -- by a Biblical scholar or a theologian with a PhD, let alone tenure, which does not follow any of them. The latest depressingly crude and insulting such attack of which I am aware, Joel L Watts' screed published in the Huffington Post yesterday, follows a few of them, and invents the new one of not mentioning one single mythicist by name, as if we were not important enough for Watts to name any of us, and as if we were all the same anyway. Watts' article is a beautiful example of 2) and 9) : there is nothing in it even remotely resembling the suggestion of an argument, neither a mythicist argument to be poo-pooed, nor an historicist argument of any kind whatsoever. Jesus was real and mythicists are as stubbornly irrational as young-earth creationists. That is all ye know, and all ye need know.
Well, there's actually one more thing ye might be interested to know. It's something I already assumed, but I don't assume that all of my readers follow such publishing-industry details as closely as I do. It's the reason that Joel Watts is bothering to publish such crude and egregious insults of us in places like the Huffington Post to begin with: because he has a new book out.
It's not just insults and intellectual dishonesty -- it's also advertising.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Maybe the Last Post About Jesus For a Little While
I'm concerned that I may have been boring the Hell out of regular readers lately, hammering away at one particular topic. So one more remark for the time being, with the hope that it doesn't seem I'm merely repeating what I've already said repeatedly lately:
It seems to me that Biblical scholars usually assume that Jesus existed, and then interpret everything they study in that light. As opposed to considering whether or not Jesus existed in the light of everything they study. And no, I don't have a PhD in New Testament studies or in anything else. But I'd like to think that even if I were the chairperson of a prestigious faculty of Biblical studies, I would still avoid the pitfall of arguing from authority -- or credentialism, a cool word I learned today. People insisting that it's certain that Jesus existed keep referring to their own or other people's credentials, instead of discussing the question. (And then the experts wonder why so many people aren't inclined to listen to them.) An opinion makes the same amount of sense no matter how many or how few people hold it, or how many or how few credentials those people hold. 300 years ago the scholarly consensus in Western civilization was that anyone who professed atheism should be put to death for it. A consensus, in and of itself, is no reason to agree with the consensus. I'm sure all of you can think of many examples where great majorities of this group or that all agreed and all were horribly wrong.
What is particularly disturbing in this case is that the professors who seem so closed-minded to me on this one question seem so reasonable and intellectually curious in general. It's not as if it were just more of the same from some demagogues who spew nonsense nonstop. No, these are very bright and highly-educated, highly-civilized people. Worse, they're people who are experts in some areas of study which particularly fascinate me. People I could talk to at great length about old manuscripts and debate textual variants. People who are fascinated by things I love, too, although they would put 99.99% of you swiftly to sleep. Lately I've felt like Dustin Hoffman near the end of Lenny pleading with a judge to listen to the points he's trying to make, pleading to be heard and not treated like a random raving fool. Wondering whether anyone in the room even cares about what he's struggling so mightily to express as clearly as he can.
Well, that's a little over-dramatic on my part: I'm not that isolated and helpless, I'm not being hauled off to jail for the umpteenth time for saying what I feel is important.
(It would be nice, though, if some highly-respected professor or fourteen would join this chorus. All we're asking for is the beginning of a discussion.)
It seems to me that Biblical scholars usually assume that Jesus existed, and then interpret everything they study in that light. As opposed to considering whether or not Jesus existed in the light of everything they study. And no, I don't have a PhD in New Testament studies or in anything else. But I'd like to think that even if I were the chairperson of a prestigious faculty of Biblical studies, I would still avoid the pitfall of arguing from authority -- or credentialism, a cool word I learned today. People insisting that it's certain that Jesus existed keep referring to their own or other people's credentials, instead of discussing the question. (And then the experts wonder why so many people aren't inclined to listen to them.) An opinion makes the same amount of sense no matter how many or how few people hold it, or how many or how few credentials those people hold. 300 years ago the scholarly consensus in Western civilization was that anyone who professed atheism should be put to death for it. A consensus, in and of itself, is no reason to agree with the consensus. I'm sure all of you can think of many examples where great majorities of this group or that all agreed and all were horribly wrong.
What is particularly disturbing in this case is that the professors who seem so closed-minded to me on this one question seem so reasonable and intellectually curious in general. It's not as if it were just more of the same from some demagogues who spew nonsense nonstop. No, these are very bright and highly-educated, highly-civilized people. Worse, they're people who are experts in some areas of study which particularly fascinate me. People I could talk to at great length about old manuscripts and debate textual variants. People who are fascinated by things I love, too, although they would put 99.99% of you swiftly to sleep. Lately I've felt like Dustin Hoffman near the end of Lenny pleading with a judge to listen to the points he's trying to make, pleading to be heard and not treated like a random raving fool. Wondering whether anyone in the room even cares about what he's struggling so mightily to express as clearly as he can.
Well, that's a little over-dramatic on my part: I'm not that isolated and helpless, I'm not being hauled off to jail for the umpteenth time for saying what I feel is important.
(It would be nice, though, if some highly-respected professor or fourteen would join this chorus. All we're asking for is the beginning of a discussion.)
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
"Ve Haff Vays of Sreatening Your Tenure!"
John Dominic Crossan
has joined Bart Ehrman
in reminding us great unwashed types that the debate about Jesus' historical existence is over, and that the skeptics lost. In his latest screed for Huffington Post, Crossan refers in the first sentence to "the historical fact -- yes, fact -- that Pilate executed Jesus at Passover."
Are Ehrman and Crossan only talking to people like me who don't have PhD's, or are their pronouncements that this debate, which I can't find when it started within academia, although of course several prominent academics have been fired for trying to start it there -- Ah say Ah say are Ehrman and Crossan & Co only talking to us, or are their flat assertions that the debate is over thinly-veiled threats to their colleagues with PhD's and tenure or hopes of tenure, that trying to open the debate within mainstream academia will still, anno domini two thousand and frickin twelve, land the would-be opener quickly outside the mainstream where he or she will be ridiculed and compared to climate-change deniers? Richard Carrier thinks so. Carrier has a PhD, but he also has a big pair of brass balls, and if he cares about the tenure he's not going to get soon in a mainstream faculty, he hides it admirably well.
Not only do I not have a PhD, it's been at least fifteen years since I could remember what it had felt like to care about tenure, so Crossan and Ehrman aren't scaring me. I can very grudgingly understand that other people are cowardly pussies who always want to cover their asses. Hey, it's no secret. People are the way they are. But even cowards can gradually become embarrassed, and this shit is embarrassing. The claim that anybody who doesn't join in the chorus of "it's a fact, yes a fact that Jesus existed, there's no doubt among the educated and non-crazy" is like a climate-change denier is so desperately tired that people ought to be really embarrassed for not speaking up about it. Cowardliness vs this intense embarrassment. Eventually, surely, a few of the cowards will cease to be so cowardly. They'll trade job security for sleeping the sound sleep of the ballsy.
When meterologists and geologists are confronted by climate-change deniers, they don't refuse to discuss climate change, and they don't ask to see the deniers' credentials. They by Vishnu discuss climate change. They refer to data. Surely, by this year of two thousand and for crying out loud twelve, people like Ehrman and Crossan are beginning to make themselves irrelevant in intellectual debate, are beginning to more closely resemble televangelists in the public perception, by continuing to pretend that the question of Jesus' historical existence has been properly debated. Come out, all you people who know better! Trust me: having guts feels good. Point out that the emperors aren't wearing clothes.
has joined Bart Ehrmanin reminding us great unwashed types that the debate about Jesus' historical existence is over, and that the skeptics lost. In his latest screed for Huffington Post, Crossan refers in the first sentence to "the historical fact -- yes, fact -- that Pilate executed Jesus at Passover."Are Ehrman and Crossan only talking to people like me who don't have PhD's, or are their pronouncements that this debate, which I can't find when it started within academia, although of course several prominent academics have been fired for trying to start it there -- Ah say Ah say are Ehrman and Crossan & Co only talking to us, or are their flat assertions that the debate is over thinly-veiled threats to their colleagues with PhD's and tenure or hopes of tenure, that trying to open the debate within mainstream academia will still, anno domini two thousand and frickin twelve, land the would-be opener quickly outside the mainstream where he or she will be ridiculed and compared to climate-change deniers? Richard Carrier thinks so. Carrier has a PhD, but he also has a big pair of brass balls, and if he cares about the tenure he's not going to get soon in a mainstream faculty, he hides it admirably well.
Not only do I not have a PhD, it's been at least fifteen years since I could remember what it had felt like to care about tenure, so Crossan and Ehrman aren't scaring me. I can very grudgingly understand that other people are cowardly pussies who always want to cover their asses. Hey, it's no secret. People are the way they are. But even cowards can gradually become embarrassed, and this shit is embarrassing. The claim that anybody who doesn't join in the chorus of "it's a fact, yes a fact that Jesus existed, there's no doubt among the educated and non-crazy" is like a climate-change denier is so desperately tired that people ought to be really embarrassed for not speaking up about it. Cowardliness vs this intense embarrassment. Eventually, surely, a few of the cowards will cease to be so cowardly. They'll trade job security for sleeping the sound sleep of the ballsy.
When meterologists and geologists are confronted by climate-change deniers, they don't refuse to discuss climate change, and they don't ask to see the deniers' credentials. They by Vishnu discuss climate change. They refer to data. Surely, by this year of two thousand and for crying out loud twelve, people like Ehrman and Crossan are beginning to make themselves irrelevant in intellectual debate, are beginning to more closely resemble televangelists in the public perception, by continuing to pretend that the question of Jesus' historical existence has been properly debated. Come out, all you people who know better! Trust me: having guts feels good. Point out that the emperors aren't wearing clothes.
Friday, March 23, 2012
I Accuse You, You Cowardly Closeted Academic Mythicists!
After writing a post yesterday in this blog responding to Bart Ehrman's emphatic expression of his lack of any doubt that Jesus existed, delivered with a healthy portion of disdain for all who do entertain such doubts, stating that their number currently includes not a single legitimate professor in a relevant field in the Western world, I was made aware that Richard Carrier had also responded to Ehrman's article. Carrier's response to Ehrman is much longer, more authoritative and detailed than mine, but we share a dislike of the way Ehrman attempts to declare the question closed of whether or not Jesus existed, and to discourage, and disparage, any further discussion of it. We both call Ehrman out for closed-mindedness.
Near the beginning of his blog post, Carrier makes the following remarkable statement:
I personally know a few professors who [...] feel this way: they do not touch this topic with a ten foot pole, precisely because they fear the kind of thing Ehrman is doing and threatening. They do not want to lose their jobs or career prospects and opportunities. They do not want to be ridiculed or marginalized.
So, Ehrman and Carrier are asserting two very different things: Ehrman says that no credible scholar believes that doubts of Jesus' existence are serious enough to be worth discussing, while Carrier maintains that such a discussion would be serious, but is squelched by professors' fears that they would hurt their careers by opening it.
They fear to be honest, because it might hurt their careers. If this is true, then in my opinion it ought to make very many people very angry. Generally speaking, in academia free and open discussion is supposedly prized. If a meteorologist or a geologist deliberately falsified their findings, or deliberately hindered open debate in their fields, or twisted their interpretation of data to give the appearance that they believed things which they did not believe, one thinks, it would much more likely be cause of damage to their careers than advancement. (Unless, of course, they were to leave academia altogether and work as shills for the petrochemical industry.) If what Carrier is saying is accurate, that in the faculties of New Testament studies and Christian theology one of the central questions, perhaps the most central question, is being systematically repressed, and that people's careers often depend on their consciously-dishonest complicity in that repression, yes, I think that ought to make people very angry indeed. What struck me most about Carrier's statement about professors willingly engaging in duplicity to cover their asses is how similar it is to statements made by Rudolf Augstein, founder and publisher of Der Spiegel for over half a century and its editor for almost that long, in his book Jesus Menschensohn and in interviews about that book: theologians and Biblical scholars, quite prominent ones, had told Augstein privately, so he said, that the party line of there being no doubt that Jesus was a real historical figure, as real as Julius Caesar or Otto von Bismarck, did not convince them. That they had doubts. Private doubts. But they kept their doubts private, and so the party line thrived, and dissenters continued to be relegated to outsider status and routinely mocked by the mainstream.
Well, it's Anno Domini MMXII. It's high time to end such medieval, Inquisition-style crap. It's time for these cowards to be outed. We trust them with the education of our young men and women. They're supposed to be role models. They're supposed to have more integrity than shills for the petrochemical industry. Biblical studies and theology continue to claim that they are fully modern academic disciplines and not medieval warrens of deceit. Richard Carrier, will you out these worms? Augstein died a decade ago, he can't do it, not unless something is found among his papers...
Of course, you cowardly little worms, this would all be so much more dignified if you would out yourselves. Think of Bruno Bauer. Think of Friedrich Nietzsche. Think of Karlheinz Deschner. Look at your own damned selves in your mirrors, if you can. Think of your children. Man and woman up. It's 2012, God damn it.
Near the beginning of his blog post, Carrier makes the following remarkable statement:
I personally know a few professors who [...] feel this way: they do not touch this topic with a ten foot pole, precisely because they fear the kind of thing Ehrman is doing and threatening. They do not want to lose their jobs or career prospects and opportunities. They do not want to be ridiculed or marginalized.
So, Ehrman and Carrier are asserting two very different things: Ehrman says that no credible scholar believes that doubts of Jesus' existence are serious enough to be worth discussing, while Carrier maintains that such a discussion would be serious, but is squelched by professors' fears that they would hurt their careers by opening it.
They fear to be honest, because it might hurt their careers. If this is true, then in my opinion it ought to make very many people very angry. Generally speaking, in academia free and open discussion is supposedly prized. If a meteorologist or a geologist deliberately falsified their findings, or deliberately hindered open debate in their fields, or twisted their interpretation of data to give the appearance that they believed things which they did not believe, one thinks, it would much more likely be cause of damage to their careers than advancement. (Unless, of course, they were to leave academia altogether and work as shills for the petrochemical industry.) If what Carrier is saying is accurate, that in the faculties of New Testament studies and Christian theology one of the central questions, perhaps the most central question, is being systematically repressed, and that people's careers often depend on their consciously-dishonest complicity in that repression, yes, I think that ought to make people very angry indeed. What struck me most about Carrier's statement about professors willingly engaging in duplicity to cover their asses is how similar it is to statements made by Rudolf Augstein, founder and publisher of Der Spiegel for over half a century and its editor for almost that long, in his book Jesus Menschensohn and in interviews about that book: theologians and Biblical scholars, quite prominent ones, had told Augstein privately, so he said, that the party line of there being no doubt that Jesus was a real historical figure, as real as Julius Caesar or Otto von Bismarck, did not convince them. That they had doubts. Private doubts. But they kept their doubts private, and so the party line thrived, and dissenters continued to be relegated to outsider status and routinely mocked by the mainstream.
Well, it's Anno Domini MMXII. It's high time to end such medieval, Inquisition-style crap. It's time for these cowards to be outed. We trust them with the education of our young men and women. They're supposed to be role models. They're supposed to have more integrity than shills for the petrochemical industry. Biblical studies and theology continue to claim that they are fully modern academic disciplines and not medieval warrens of deceit. Richard Carrier, will you out these worms? Augstein died a decade ago, he can't do it, not unless something is found among his papers...
Of course, you cowardly little worms, this would all be so much more dignified if you would out yourselves. Think of Bruno Bauer. Think of Friedrich Nietzsche. Think of Karlheinz Deschner. Look at your own damned selves in your mirrors, if you can. Think of your children. Man and woman up. It's 2012, God damn it.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
It's Settled! (Not!)
Bart Ehrman, James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has for a few years been very popular among atheists interested in the early history of Christianity, having written a few books for popular audiences on New Testament textual criticism, New Testament apocrypha and the rise of Christianity. He's been popular with the atheists in part because he's more open about his agnosticism than many other agnostic and atheist Biblical scholars and theologians, in part because of his talent for finding cameras making TV shows and documentaries and placing himself in front of them, and partly because he's generally an affable, likeable guy. But it appears that he just went and ticked off a large part of his audience, the part who didn't realize that he was firmly of the opinion that Jesus existed. The firmness of that opinion could be said to be the subject of Ehrman's newest book, Did Jesus Exist? I was never a big fan of Ehrman's, it always seemed to me that many atheists overestimated the distance between him and the theological-Biblical-historical mainstream and overlooked the sensationalism inherent in much of his work -- for example, the way he suggested to unwary lay readers in his book Lost Scriptures that New Testament apocrypha represented an entire alternate history of early Christianity, while greatly underplaying the dates of these apocryphal books from the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and even 6th centuries. By the 6th century it's beginning to be a stretch to talk about "early" Christianity, whether established or alternative. Ehrman hyped this non-existent alternate universe much like History Channel likes to do.
Back to Ehrman's latest book, about the historical Jesus. Ehrman is firmly convinced that Jesus was a real man and not a fictional character. This is not a change for Ehrman, he's held that opinion all along, but it appears that many of his atheist fans who are not of the same opinion were not yet aware of this. Indications of shock and disappointment are widespread. But it's more than just Ehrman making his opinion on this matter book-length clear. What stings even more for those who so long ago were his adoring atheist fans is that Ehrman doesn't state it as an opinion but as a fact: "Jesus certainly existed."
I was surprised by this too. If Ehrman had merely said that he was firmly convinced, implying that reasonable people may hold different opinions on the matter but that it seemed clear to him, that would have been one thing. But in the manner of traditional Christian theology and New Testament scholarship, Ehrman states that there is no controversy, no uncertainty.
But it's not merely that Ehrman declares the discussion to be over: he states as well, on no firm basis whatsoever if you ask me, that no accredited professor in the Western World "who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics" disagrees with him. That already puts Ehrman into no-true-Scotsman territory. But he doesn't stop there. He compares those who disagree with him and the theological mainstream with Holocaust deniers and birthers.
Ehrman is quite simply wrong when he states that it's certain that Jesus existed. That's the part that hurts his admirers so. But in the larger context the more serious problem is that Ehrman is right when he states that the vast majority of his academic discipline agrees with him. He's wrong when he claims that this virtual unanimity extends to all academics with any competence in any fields related to ancient history. Flat wrong. But when it comes to Christian theology and New Testament studies, he's right that they're almost all on his side. And they almost all state their opinion not as an opinion but as a certainty. and many of them, perhaps not all, also verbally abuse anyone with the temerity to actually want to discuss the matter as if it were not settled.
170 years ago the Prussian government withdrew Bruno Bauer's permission to teach in their universities because he published works stating his opinion that Jesus may have been every bit as much a mythical construct as Abraham. In those 170 years much has changed for the better in freedom of expression. But Bart Ehrman has made it very clear how far theology and Biblical studies continue, not only to lag behind that progress, but to stifle it. Academics in those fields are not inclined to discuss the historicity of Jesus, and many of them are perfectly willing to behave with crude, medieval contempt toward anyone who does.
Back to Ehrman's latest book, about the historical Jesus. Ehrman is firmly convinced that Jesus was a real man and not a fictional character. This is not a change for Ehrman, he's held that opinion all along, but it appears that many of his atheist fans who are not of the same opinion were not yet aware of this. Indications of shock and disappointment are widespread. But it's more than just Ehrman making his opinion on this matter book-length clear. What stings even more for those who so long ago were his adoring atheist fans is that Ehrman doesn't state it as an opinion but as a fact: "Jesus certainly existed."
I was surprised by this too. If Ehrman had merely said that he was firmly convinced, implying that reasonable people may hold different opinions on the matter but that it seemed clear to him, that would have been one thing. But in the manner of traditional Christian theology and New Testament scholarship, Ehrman states that there is no controversy, no uncertainty.
But it's not merely that Ehrman declares the discussion to be over: he states as well, on no firm basis whatsoever if you ask me, that no accredited professor in the Western World "who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics" disagrees with him. That already puts Ehrman into no-true-Scotsman territory. But he doesn't stop there. He compares those who disagree with him and the theological mainstream with Holocaust deniers and birthers.
Ehrman is quite simply wrong when he states that it's certain that Jesus existed. That's the part that hurts his admirers so. But in the larger context the more serious problem is that Ehrman is right when he states that the vast majority of his academic discipline agrees with him. He's wrong when he claims that this virtual unanimity extends to all academics with any competence in any fields related to ancient history. Flat wrong. But when it comes to Christian theology and New Testament studies, he's right that they're almost all on his side. And they almost all state their opinion not as an opinion but as a certainty. and many of them, perhaps not all, also verbally abuse anyone with the temerity to actually want to discuss the matter as if it were not settled.
170 years ago the Prussian government withdrew Bruno Bauer's permission to teach in their universities because he published works stating his opinion that Jesus may have been every bit as much a mythical construct as Abraham. In those 170 years much has changed for the better in freedom of expression. But Bart Ehrman has made it very clear how far theology and Biblical studies continue, not only to lag behind that progress, but to stifle it. Academics in those fields are not inclined to discuss the historicity of Jesus, and many of them are perfectly willing to behave with crude, medieval contempt toward anyone who does.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Proof
The atheist community has grown much more visible and audible in the past few years. I don't know whether it would be accurate to say that it has actually grown considerably. Over and over one hears from people who had been atheist for a long time, but never spoke up about it, and felt alone. Then came Richard Dawkins.
I know that it's customary to mention a couple of other famous authors along with Dawkins, but I don't feel like it. I think those other guys are a bit silly, especially the younger one with his warmed-over Utilitarianism
and his spirituality, and I also think that the other guys are basically riding in Dawkins' wake, that Dawkins is still the only "new" atheist who is both an intellectual heavyweight, and popular. [PS, 29. November 2015: Unfortunately, I had not read any of Dawkins' atheistic writing before I wrote this, and I simply assumed, based on having read some of his work on biology, that his writing on religion would be just as good. In the meantime I've read some of his writing on religion, and there's nothing remotely heavyweight about any of it. Sorry.]
As with any group with mass visibility, there are some dopes among the suddenly-visible large mass of atheists. These include a few popular authors and many simple-minded people repeating memes such as that the Old Testament was written by illiterate Bronze Age shepherds [PS, 13. December 2016: When I first posted this, in 2010, I didn't realize that it was Dawkins himself who had started the "Bronze Age Goat herders" meme. (I don't know whether Dawkins has ever actually asserted that the Bible was written by illiterates.)], (This meme is morphing from Broze Age to Neolithic and even Paeleolithic.) and, for example, the certainty that Jesus never existed. That last meme even has a couple of very popular websites all to itself.
People on all sides -- not all of them, just the dumb ones, but Lord there are a lot of dumb ones on all sides -- seem to come to conclusions about ancient history based on metaphysical preconceptions. They believe in God, they were raised Christian, and so they believe that Jesus existed. Or they don't believe in God, they were raised atheist, or, very often, they had unhappy Christian childhoods, and so they believe Jesus never existed. Each side repeats its talking points ad nauseum and does not investigate the matter, and also does not examine the soundness of its talking points. I often quarrel with the other atheists just because I feel a sort of duty to try to clean up our side of the street. What's the point of rejecting all that traditional religious dogma only to embrace a whole cartload of equally-unsound, equally-unexamined atheist myth? "If Jesus existed, why didn't any ancient authors write about him?" Well, Sparky, some ancient authors did write about him. The writings of some of them are referred to as the New Testament, those of some others are called New Testament apochrypha. "Okay, but they were all believers. Why don't we have any eyewitness accounts of him from non-Christian authors?" Do you think there were several daily newspapers in Jerusalem back then, and that every day's news is preserved on microfilm? so that we can go through all the records of the crucifixions and palm-frond-covered donkey parades? There was next to no non-Christian historical record of Pontius Pilate, the governor of the whole province, until an inscription was unearthed a few decades ago which makes it seem like that, yeah, Pilate did exist. That's the governor of the whole province. If you think that it's somehow suspicious that there's no surviving official record of the arrest, trial or execution of a convicted traitor who had all of twelve, count 'em twelve followers, you don't know much about the state of our knowledge of things in Judea 2,000 years ago.
"Well, the existence or non-existence of Jesus can never be proven anyway, so why bother to even look into such ancient matters?" Let me take the second part first. Why? Because milk has no bones. That's why. And as to the first part, to assert that it could never be proven that a Jesus of Nazareth was a wandering preacher who was executed for treason on Pilate's orders reveals ignorance of how much our knowledge of the ancient world around the Mediterranean, and east of there, is increasing. I mentioned that inscription they found a few decades ago mentioning Pilate. One example of a huge amount of finds since the late 19th century which continue to expand our knowledge. There are the Dead Sea Scrolls.
There is the Nag Hammadi library.
There are the Oxyrhynchus Papyri,
about 100 volumes of them published so far and still going. [CORRECTION, 18. July 2015: 80 volumes and counting, as of 2014, containing 5253 papyri] Not to mention Menander,
the ancient Greek author of comic plays, of whose work before the 20th century we possessed only fragments, brief quotations in the work of other authors, and now, BOOM! chaka-laka-laka we've got several nearly-complete plays. Just a few of the highlights from the list of manymany ancient things archaeologists keep digging up and deciphering between Morocco and Afghanistan. It's not impossible that proof of Jesus' existence could be found. Yes, many phony non-proofs have been foisted, the most recent being the notorious "James ossuary" publicized by that awful man who's not really an archaeologist but makes a jackass of himself on TV. But the fakes are no indication that real proof could never be found.
What would be real proof? Well, for example, a letter by Pilate to a friend could do the trick. "I had a strange day today. The Sanhedrin brought me a man, Jesus, from Nazareth, a village to the north of here in Herod's territory, who seemed as harmless as a newborn puppy, but they insisted that he was very dangerous. I spoke to him personally because I gathered that, although from a family of commoners, he was fluent in several languages, an unusual combination in these parts. I greeted him in my rusty Aramaic, he responded in very polished Greek and Latin and offered to converse with me in whatever language I wished. And so we conversed in Greek. As gentle as a lamb, and he spoke no overt treason, just religious tales of symbolic dreams and a world other than the Earth. I was charmed by him and gave him several opportunities to contest the charges against him, of blasphemy against his own people and treason against ours, and yet he refused to say the few words which would have released him from suspicion. I truly think he wanted to be executed, the poor strange fool. To be some sort of sacrifice to atone for the sins of mankind. I gave him one more chance: one of the local people's holy days is approaching. Four criminals, including this Jesus, were awaiting execution. I called for the city's people to gather before the prison, had the four condemned men led before them and said that in honor of the upcoming holy day, one of these men, whomever they chose, would be pardoned and freed. The rabble chose a murderer and screamed for the blood of this Jesus. Strange. And so Jesus was nailed to a cross. I gather he's dead already, after just a few hours. Usually men last a day or longer on the cross. A strange and melancholy day."
I have no doubt that some such letters have already been faked. That doesn't mean that a real one will never be found. And of course it wouldn't have to include all the details of my imaginary letter. One fraction of all of that would suffice to turn ancient history all topsy-turvy, if found in a letter proven to be genuine.
And to me such a thing would be great, not because I tie metaphysical preconceptions to ideas of history, but because I don't. And also because the Jesus-never-existed crowd really annoys me. Such a find would please me greatly out of sheer spite for them. My esprit de corps with other atheists does not outweigh my dislike of stupidity. On the contrary, my atheism is but a subset of my disdain for stupidity. My atheism isn't so fragile that such a thing as a genuine letter from Pilate confirming Jesus' existence would ruffle it in the least.
I know that it's customary to mention a couple of other famous authors along with Dawkins, but I don't feel like it. I think those other guys are a bit silly, especially the younger one with his warmed-over Utilitarianismand his spirituality, and I also think that the other guys are basically riding in Dawkins' wake, that Dawkins is still the only "new" atheist who is both an intellectual heavyweight, and popular. [PS, 29. November 2015: Unfortunately, I had not read any of Dawkins' atheistic writing before I wrote this, and I simply assumed, based on having read some of his work on biology, that his writing on religion would be just as good. In the meantime I've read some of his writing on religion, and there's nothing remotely heavyweight about any of it. Sorry.]As with any group with mass visibility, there are some dopes among the suddenly-visible large mass of atheists. These include a few popular authors and many simple-minded people repeating memes such as that the Old Testament was written by illiterate Bronze Age shepherds [PS, 13. December 2016: When I first posted this, in 2010, I didn't realize that it was Dawkins himself who had started the "Bronze Age Goat herders" meme. (I don't know whether Dawkins has ever actually asserted that the Bible was written by illiterates.)], (This meme is morphing from Broze Age to Neolithic and even Paeleolithic.) and, for example, the certainty that Jesus never existed. That last meme even has a couple of very popular websites all to itself.
People on all sides -- not all of them, just the dumb ones, but Lord there are a lot of dumb ones on all sides -- seem to come to conclusions about ancient history based on metaphysical preconceptions. They believe in God, they were raised Christian, and so they believe that Jesus existed. Or they don't believe in God, they were raised atheist, or, very often, they had unhappy Christian childhoods, and so they believe Jesus never existed. Each side repeats its talking points ad nauseum and does not investigate the matter, and also does not examine the soundness of its talking points. I often quarrel with the other atheists just because I feel a sort of duty to try to clean up our side of the street. What's the point of rejecting all that traditional religious dogma only to embrace a whole cartload of equally-unsound, equally-unexamined atheist myth? "If Jesus existed, why didn't any ancient authors write about him?" Well, Sparky, some ancient authors did write about him. The writings of some of them are referred to as the New Testament, those of some others are called New Testament apochrypha. "Okay, but they were all believers. Why don't we have any eyewitness accounts of him from non-Christian authors?" Do you think there were several daily newspapers in Jerusalem back then, and that every day's news is preserved on microfilm? so that we can go through all the records of the crucifixions and palm-frond-covered donkey parades? There was next to no non-Christian historical record of Pontius Pilate, the governor of the whole province, until an inscription was unearthed a few decades ago which makes it seem like that, yeah, Pilate did exist. That's the governor of the whole province. If you think that it's somehow suspicious that there's no surviving official record of the arrest, trial or execution of a convicted traitor who had all of twelve, count 'em twelve followers, you don't know much about the state of our knowledge of things in Judea 2,000 years ago.
"Well, the existence or non-existence of Jesus can never be proven anyway, so why bother to even look into such ancient matters?" Let me take the second part first. Why? Because milk has no bones. That's why. And as to the first part, to assert that it could never be proven that a Jesus of Nazareth was a wandering preacher who was executed for treason on Pilate's orders reveals ignorance of how much our knowledge of the ancient world around the Mediterranean, and east of there, is increasing. I mentioned that inscription they found a few decades ago mentioning Pilate. One example of a huge amount of finds since the late 19th century which continue to expand our knowledge. There are the Dead Sea Scrolls.
There is the Nag Hammadi library.There are the Oxyrhynchus Papyri,about 100 volumes of them published so far and still going. [CORRECTION, 18. July 2015: 80 volumes and counting, as of 2014, containing 5253 papyri] Not to mention Menander,the ancient Greek author of comic plays, of whose work before the 20th century we possessed only fragments, brief quotations in the work of other authors, and now, BOOM! chaka-laka-laka we've got several nearly-complete plays. Just a few of the highlights from the list of manymany ancient things archaeologists keep digging up and deciphering between Morocco and Afghanistan. It's not impossible that proof of Jesus' existence could be found. Yes, many phony non-proofs have been foisted, the most recent being the notorious "James ossuary" publicized by that awful man who's not really an archaeologist but makes a jackass of himself on TV. But the fakes are no indication that real proof could never be found. What would be real proof? Well, for example, a letter by Pilate to a friend could do the trick. "I had a strange day today. The Sanhedrin brought me a man, Jesus, from Nazareth, a village to the north of here in Herod's territory, who seemed as harmless as a newborn puppy, but they insisted that he was very dangerous. I spoke to him personally because I gathered that, although from a family of commoners, he was fluent in several languages, an unusual combination in these parts. I greeted him in my rusty Aramaic, he responded in very polished Greek and Latin and offered to converse with me in whatever language I wished. And so we conversed in Greek. As gentle as a lamb, and he spoke no overt treason, just religious tales of symbolic dreams and a world other than the Earth. I was charmed by him and gave him several opportunities to contest the charges against him, of blasphemy against his own people and treason against ours, and yet he refused to say the few words which would have released him from suspicion. I truly think he wanted to be executed, the poor strange fool. To be some sort of sacrifice to atone for the sins of mankind. I gave him one more chance: one of the local people's holy days is approaching. Four criminals, including this Jesus, were awaiting execution. I called for the city's people to gather before the prison, had the four condemned men led before them and said that in honor of the upcoming holy day, one of these men, whomever they chose, would be pardoned and freed. The rabble chose a murderer and screamed for the blood of this Jesus. Strange. And so Jesus was nailed to a cross. I gather he's dead already, after just a few hours. Usually men last a day or longer on the cross. A strange and melancholy day."
I have no doubt that some such letters have already been faked. That doesn't mean that a real one will never be found. And of course it wouldn't have to include all the details of my imaginary letter. One fraction of all of that would suffice to turn ancient history all topsy-turvy, if found in a letter proven to be genuine.
And to me such a thing would be great, not because I tie metaphysical preconceptions to ideas of history, but because I don't. And also because the Jesus-never-existed crowd really annoys me. Such a find would please me greatly out of sheer spite for them. My esprit de corps with other atheists does not outweigh my dislike of stupidity. On the contrary, my atheism is but a subset of my disdain for stupidity. My atheism isn't so fragile that such a thing as a genuine letter from Pilate confirming Jesus' existence would ruffle it in the least.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
No History Here, Just Wild Speculation. Plus My Own Thoughts
Over and over again in the writings of modern and contemporary theologians and Biblical scholars, one reads the assertions that neither Jesus nor his disciples could read or write any Greek, that maybe some of them could read some Hebrew, but that most likely the only language they were really fluent in was Aramaic.
You get this even from the most supposedly enlightened people in these specialties. The ones who freely admit that the chronology of the Gospels is very suspect and that there was no census bringing Joseph and his pregnant bride Mary to Bethlehem, and no Slaughter of the Innocents, that the story of the Slaughter of the Innocents is clearly borrowed from the equally-fictitious story from the infancy of Moses, who himself may never existed. These scholars do not believe in any miracles, neither walking on water nor Resurrection nor healing by laying on of hands, and they will tell you that Jesus probably never said most of the things the New Testament says he said, and even that some of the 12 Apostles may be fictitious. But it's certain, they say, that Jesus existed, and also certain that he couldn't read or speak Greek.
Finally, finally, these days you can be a Christian theologian or a New Testament scholar and say publicly that you're actually not certain that Jesus existed and still keep your job. And so some people in those fields are saying it, more than the few who said it before and were fired, and then, as if that weren't bad enough, ridiculed in unison by their former colleagues. The ridicule is still par for the course. But listen closely to the average theologian or Biblical scholar scornfully dismissing a black sheep who says it's not certain that Jesus existed, and see if the reaction extends beyond dismissal to any actual explanation of why doubt is ridiculous on this point. All I ever see is the peremptory dismissal.
Even from the ones who cast doubt on almost everything the Gospels say, one encounters this certainty that Jesus' existence is well-established historical fact. Uh, excuse me, established how exactly? What sources do we have besides those accounts you just finished trashing when it comes to their historical reliability? That's right -- none. But they -- the current academic mainstream -- don't stop at being certain he existed, they're currently also certain that he was preaching political revolution and socialism, and that he like his father was more of a day laborer than an actual skilled carpenter, and that the whole family was veryvery poor, and that Jesus neither wrote nor spoke Greek, and maybe not even Hebrew either.
Where did they get all this? Mostly from our increasing knowledge of what a typical 1st-century Jewish peasant living in a small town near Jerusalem was like. They've decided to agree that Jesus was a typical peasant. There's no logical reason to make these positive assumptions. There are only contemporary theological reasons. In short: they pulled all of that right out of their butts.
I say: we don't know. We don't know whether Jesus existed, and if he did, we don't know how much of the information in the Gospels is true, much less things not mentioned in the Gospels such as whether or not he could read and speak Greek.
If Jesus existed, then, it seems to me, contemporary theology is wrong. If he existed, then most likely the last thing he was was typical.
There is the story of Jesus' family coming to Jerusalem when he was 12, and Jesus going to the Temple and amazing the elders with his learning. There is no mention in the Gospels of what Jesus did between the ages of 12 and 30. There are mentions of a wealthy friend of his, Joseph of Arimathea. Maybe Jesus could read Hebrew quite well by age 12, and could talk about the Bible like a scholar. That's the sort of thing which would have amazed elders at the Temple. Maybe a rich man, such as Joseph of Aremathea, took an interest in this bright young lad and offered to educate him. That's the sort of thing which has happened to a few lucky bright poor children since long before Jesus' time. Maybe Jesus spent 18 years at Joseph's house, happily burrowing through mountains of codices and scrolls, learning Greeka and Latin as well as Hebrew.
I've often wondered about that conversation between Jesus and Pilate. Did they communicate through an interpreter? Or did Pilate know some Hebrew or Aramaic? Or did Jesus know some Greek or Hebrew?
Only lately I've begun to wonder whether people such as Pilate or Herod would have condescended to speak to a typical peasant or day-laborer at all. It's embarrassing that it took me so long to wonder about that. But if Jesus was not just a typical peon, but a highly-educated young man who for the last few years had returned to the milieu of his early childhood, an articulate fellow who spoke good Greek, and possibly even good Latin, in addition to his native Aramaic -- well, that sort of person would be much more likely to pique the interest of the governor of the entire province, and cause him to take a few minutes out of his busy day of plotting against other politicians and playing in his harem, wouldn't he?
What's that? You say that I'm speculating very freely here, extrapolating from very, very little concrete evidence? Why thank you, that would put me on a par with the leading Jesus scholars of our day. Except that I freely acknowledge that the picture I've just spun is only one of many possible versions of the beginning of Christianity, including the distinct possibility that Jesus never existed at all.
You get this even from the most supposedly enlightened people in these specialties. The ones who freely admit that the chronology of the Gospels is very suspect and that there was no census bringing Joseph and his pregnant bride Mary to Bethlehem, and no Slaughter of the Innocents, that the story of the Slaughter of the Innocents is clearly borrowed from the equally-fictitious story from the infancy of Moses, who himself may never existed. These scholars do not believe in any miracles, neither walking on water nor Resurrection nor healing by laying on of hands, and they will tell you that Jesus probably never said most of the things the New Testament says he said, and even that some of the 12 Apostles may be fictitious. But it's certain, they say, that Jesus existed, and also certain that he couldn't read or speak Greek.
Finally, finally, these days you can be a Christian theologian or a New Testament scholar and say publicly that you're actually not certain that Jesus existed and still keep your job. And so some people in those fields are saying it, more than the few who said it before and were fired, and then, as if that weren't bad enough, ridiculed in unison by their former colleagues. The ridicule is still par for the course. But listen closely to the average theologian or Biblical scholar scornfully dismissing a black sheep who says it's not certain that Jesus existed, and see if the reaction extends beyond dismissal to any actual explanation of why doubt is ridiculous on this point. All I ever see is the peremptory dismissal.
Even from the ones who cast doubt on almost everything the Gospels say, one encounters this certainty that Jesus' existence is well-established historical fact. Uh, excuse me, established how exactly? What sources do we have besides those accounts you just finished trashing when it comes to their historical reliability? That's right -- none. But they -- the current academic mainstream -- don't stop at being certain he existed, they're currently also certain that he was preaching political revolution and socialism, and that he like his father was more of a day laborer than an actual skilled carpenter, and that the whole family was veryvery poor, and that Jesus neither wrote nor spoke Greek, and maybe not even Hebrew either.
Where did they get all this? Mostly from our increasing knowledge of what a typical 1st-century Jewish peasant living in a small town near Jerusalem was like. They've decided to agree that Jesus was a typical peasant. There's no logical reason to make these positive assumptions. There are only contemporary theological reasons. In short: they pulled all of that right out of their butts.
I say: we don't know. We don't know whether Jesus existed, and if he did, we don't know how much of the information in the Gospels is true, much less things not mentioned in the Gospels such as whether or not he could read and speak Greek.
If Jesus existed, then, it seems to me, contemporary theology is wrong. If he existed, then most likely the last thing he was was typical.
There is the story of Jesus' family coming to Jerusalem when he was 12, and Jesus going to the Temple and amazing the elders with his learning. There is no mention in the Gospels of what Jesus did between the ages of 12 and 30. There are mentions of a wealthy friend of his, Joseph of Arimathea. Maybe Jesus could read Hebrew quite well by age 12, and could talk about the Bible like a scholar. That's the sort of thing which would have amazed elders at the Temple. Maybe a rich man, such as Joseph of Aremathea, took an interest in this bright young lad and offered to educate him. That's the sort of thing which has happened to a few lucky bright poor children since long before Jesus' time. Maybe Jesus spent 18 years at Joseph's house, happily burrowing through mountains of codices and scrolls, learning Greeka and Latin as well as Hebrew.
I've often wondered about that conversation between Jesus and Pilate. Did they communicate through an interpreter? Or did Pilate know some Hebrew or Aramaic? Or did Jesus know some Greek or Hebrew?
Only lately I've begun to wonder whether people such as Pilate or Herod would have condescended to speak to a typical peasant or day-laborer at all. It's embarrassing that it took me so long to wonder about that. But if Jesus was not just a typical peon, but a highly-educated young man who for the last few years had returned to the milieu of his early childhood, an articulate fellow who spoke good Greek, and possibly even good Latin, in addition to his native Aramaic -- well, that sort of person would be much more likely to pique the interest of the governor of the entire province, and cause him to take a few minutes out of his busy day of plotting against other politicians and playing in his harem, wouldn't he?
What's that? You say that I'm speculating very freely here, extrapolating from very, very little concrete evidence? Why thank you, that would put me on a par with the leading Jesus scholars of our day. Except that I freely acknowledge that the picture I've just spun is only one of many possible versions of the beginning of Christianity, including the distinct possibility that Jesus never existed at all.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Being an Atheist Doesn't Mean You Don't Have to KEEP Thinking Rationally
So you've figured out that God is a fairy tale and that Jesus didn't walk on water. Congratulations. But that was a pretty low hurdle you just cleared, Sparky. Also, the rise of "new" atheist authors like Dawkins and Hitchens and Harris, their spending more and more time on the bestseller lists and TV, makes it less and less likely that you cleared it on your own. In short, as the public presence of atheism spreads, so does the visible presence of dumb atheists.
They state flatly that Jesus never existed. Now, I'd be with them if they'd said that the stories of Jesus multiplying loaves and fishes and walking on water were just as fictitious as stories of Harry Potter flying and casting spells. But that's not what they're saying. They're saying that Jesus is as fictitious as Harry Potter, not allowing for the possibility that someone named Jesus really did preach, for example, the collection of bad advice and farfetched promises which has come to be known as the Sermon on the Mount, and really was crucified in Jerusalem on Pontius Pilate's watch. I don't know if there was such a man. I certainly don't know that there wasn't.
They say that the earliest records of His life appear 70 years after His alleged death. No. The Gospels, according to most experts, date from AD 70 and later, which would be 70 years after Jesus's alleged BIRTH, Sparky, which would be 35-40 years afters His alleged death. And they forget, or more likely didn't know, that the writings of St Paul are the earliest known writings about Jesus, pre-dating the Gospels, beginning to appear within 20 or 25 years of His alleged death.
But some of these atheists are even dumber, and insist that the Bible was written around AD 400 at the Council of Nicea under Constantine's supervision, ignorant of the facts that 1) the Council of Nicea took place in AD 325, not in 400, 2) Constantine had been dead for 63 years in AD 400, 3) Constantine didn't care much what was in the Bible, he just wanted the bishops to stop squabbling among themselves and for a unity of the Church to mirror the unity of the Empire, 4) that manuscript fragments of the New Testament pre-dating Nicea by over a century have been found -- just generally really spectacularly ignorant.
"Gnostic" has become a buzzword. Today's atheists have learned that Gnostics were opposed by early Christians, and apparently that's enough for their approval -- the enemy of their enemy is their friend. These atheists have not gone to the trouble of finding out anything about the Gnostics, or Arians, or other dualists, whose teachings, in fact, were even crazier than those of conventional Christians, and who were often viciously antisemetic, claiming that the Old Testament represented the imperfect, evil world of the Demiurge which was to be wiped away by the new and perfect spiritual world of Jesus -- see Steven Runciman's book The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy.
One self-satisfied atheist bonehead I've run across recently points out triumphantly that the lack of video and photography in Jesus' time, and the practice of reading intestines and tarot cards, are relevant to the quality of historical statements about the period and that therefore the Magi are fictitious. (I couldn't make this up. Well -- I wouldn't. I didn't.) Neither video nor still photography existed in the time of George Washington or Christopher Columbus. Does this guy think that therefore nothing can be said about Washington or Columbus? (He might. I wouldn't be surprised.) Intestines were read in the Roman Senate -- does he think therefore that Julius Caesar is a fictitious character? Does he think tarot cards were read in the time of Caesar and Jesus? If so, he's off by over 1200 years. I mention this atheist not because he is a rare bird, but because, on the contrary, he does NOT stand out from the mass. He's TYPICAL.
It would be nice if we could transition from an age of discourse among believers to an age of reason. But I think we may be overly-optimistic if we believe that this is already occurring. All too often conventional religion is being traded for beliefs which are equally unsound, resting in an equally uncritical way upon equally unsound authority. I'm not saying there are no bright atheists who think critically and do serious research into historical subjects before pontificating upon them. I just wonder whether there are very many of them, or if typically second-hand reliance on one set of authority has merely been exchanged for equally unthinking acceptance of other authorities.
They state flatly that Jesus never existed. Now, I'd be with them if they'd said that the stories of Jesus multiplying loaves and fishes and walking on water were just as fictitious as stories of Harry Potter flying and casting spells. But that's not what they're saying. They're saying that Jesus is as fictitious as Harry Potter, not allowing for the possibility that someone named Jesus really did preach, for example, the collection of bad advice and farfetched promises which has come to be known as the Sermon on the Mount, and really was crucified in Jerusalem on Pontius Pilate's watch. I don't know if there was such a man. I certainly don't know that there wasn't.
They say that the earliest records of His life appear 70 years after His alleged death. No. The Gospels, according to most experts, date from AD 70 and later, which would be 70 years after Jesus's alleged BIRTH, Sparky, which would be 35-40 years afters His alleged death. And they forget, or more likely didn't know, that the writings of St Paul are the earliest known writings about Jesus, pre-dating the Gospels, beginning to appear within 20 or 25 years of His alleged death.
But some of these atheists are even dumber, and insist that the Bible was written around AD 400 at the Council of Nicea under Constantine's supervision, ignorant of the facts that 1) the Council of Nicea took place in AD 325, not in 400, 2) Constantine had been dead for 63 years in AD 400, 3) Constantine didn't care much what was in the Bible, he just wanted the bishops to stop squabbling among themselves and for a unity of the Church to mirror the unity of the Empire, 4) that manuscript fragments of the New Testament pre-dating Nicea by over a century have been found -- just generally really spectacularly ignorant.
"Gnostic" has become a buzzword. Today's atheists have learned that Gnostics were opposed by early Christians, and apparently that's enough for their approval -- the enemy of their enemy is their friend. These atheists have not gone to the trouble of finding out anything about the Gnostics, or Arians, or other dualists, whose teachings, in fact, were even crazier than those of conventional Christians, and who were often viciously antisemetic, claiming that the Old Testament represented the imperfect, evil world of the Demiurge which was to be wiped away by the new and perfect spiritual world of Jesus -- see Steven Runciman's book The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy.
One self-satisfied atheist bonehead I've run across recently points out triumphantly that the lack of video and photography in Jesus' time, and the practice of reading intestines and tarot cards, are relevant to the quality of historical statements about the period and that therefore the Magi are fictitious. (I couldn't make this up. Well -- I wouldn't. I didn't.) Neither video nor still photography existed in the time of George Washington or Christopher Columbus. Does this guy think that therefore nothing can be said about Washington or Columbus? (He might. I wouldn't be surprised.) Intestines were read in the Roman Senate -- does he think therefore that Julius Caesar is a fictitious character? Does he think tarot cards were read in the time of Caesar and Jesus? If so, he's off by over 1200 years. I mention this atheist not because he is a rare bird, but because, on the contrary, he does NOT stand out from the mass. He's TYPICAL.
It would be nice if we could transition from an age of discourse among believers to an age of reason. But I think we may be overly-optimistic if we believe that this is already occurring. All too often conventional religion is being traded for beliefs which are equally unsound, resting in an equally uncritical way upon equally unsound authority. I'm not saying there are no bright atheists who think critically and do serious research into historical subjects before pontificating upon them. I just wonder whether there are very many of them, or if typically second-hand reliance on one set of authority has merely been exchanged for equally unthinking acceptance of other authorities.
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