But he couldn’t even get the “lesser light” to work according to schedule.
Genesis 1:16
And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
I am seriously thinking of starting my own religion based round the mighty omniscient giant whelk of destiny…Widgey, he’s not omnipotent obviously due to to limitations of Whelk physiology…
The non-canonical Gospel of Thomas has Jesus saying “Split a piece of wood and you shall find me; lift up a stone, and I am there.” That’s omnipresence, which is one of the supposed characteristics of God you seldom hear the theologians talk about.
That’s because if God is truly everywhere at every moment, then He is in each atom, each star, and every individual body and soul.
And that is pantheism, and every single human can also say “I am God” just as JC supposedly did.
I strongly suspect that was the central message of most of the Gnostic Christian sects. The Holy Ghost is the aspect of God which is every human soul.
Of course, for all the extant varieties of Christianity I know of, the bald claim “I am God” is deepest and most blasphemous heresy. But I think the Christian religion makes more sense if that was the central message Jesus wanted to teach. (Rather, which the earliest Christians, Paul and his generation, wanted to teach. Like others here I am a mythicist, and I’m very sure there never was a flesh and blood Jesus.)
I have stated more than once on this site that a single flesh and blood Jesus never existed. No.more than Odysseus or Jason did. A myth no more no.less…That will ensure that the religious apologists will pile on with their usual pseudo historical balderdash…
I may have stated more than once that there were probably half a dozen flesh and blood Jesuses. Not that it really makes any difference.
Biblical references that could be interpreted as pantheism, could also be panentheism – where the god is immanent in the material world but also transcends it. That would certainly be true of the Gnostic stuff I’ve seen. In pantheism, the two are identical.
Half a dozen? That was probably just one hour in a scene, from Life of Brian. Still, the flimsy claims of a thousand silly whispers echoing through the near opaque veil of antiquity is no reason to state that Jesus was more than a myth…
Honestly I didn’t intend to start yet another skirmish in the mythical/historical battle, I just wanted to note the pantheistic implications of the statement Mo objects to. For many years I have identified myself as an atheist/pantheist, and in other venues (Internet Infidels discussion board, and the Secular Cafe) I have written quite a few thousand words on the subject.
I’ve noticed that some people use prayer to substitute for medical treatment. Strangely, no-one uses prayer to determine locations and directions instead of GPS. No-one uses prayer to change a tire, and that ought to be easier for an average deity than curing cancer.
When a surgery is successful, people thank a god instead of the surgeon. Does anyone ever thank a god when a car’s malfunctioning alternator is successfully replaced?
In the last world cup, I watched Messi cross himself and point to the sky after he’d scored a goal. When Argentina was defeated, he didn’t cross himself or point to the sky. Is there no gratitude when your opponent wins?
It’s not just that religion contradicts known facts. It also isn’t consistent. It isn’t just that people are flawed or imperfect. It’s built right into the texts. (Of all religions.)
I never blame god when the shirts get beaten, it’s all about VAR, Bent Refs and the.inability of certain useless naked apes to stick the ball in the onion bag…
“When a surgery is successful, people thank a god instead of the surgeon. Does anyone ever thank a god when a car’s malfunctioning alternator is successfully replaced?”
A couple of days ago my brother had surgery to replace a heart valve, Laripu. Happily it was entirely successful, and this morning he was moved from the ICU to a regular hospital room; his wife sent a group text to me and the rest of my family, with – you guessed it – effusive praise and thanks to God that he had survived the surgery.
Though I said nothing I considered remarking that God could have corrected my brother’s hereditary valve deformity when he was conceived, and avoided all that having his chest opened up like a cardboard box.
When he is further along the road to recovery I may ask her how often she prays for car repairs.
Jobar, I’m glad your brother came through the surgery well.
Here’s one odd custom I know of: when someone Jewish dies, religious family members often say “Baruch dayan hazmat” (ברוך דין האמת). That’s Hebrew, meaning “blessed be the judge of the truth”.
Essentially it’s praising a god for killing a loved one. I really dislike it and it makes me uncomfortable.
I posted a long comment with several links yesterday and it never showed, so I’m going to try a short post to see what happens. If it works I’ll try reposting my original comment.
I’m equally comfortable with the ideas that Jesus did or did not exist, but the consensus among scholars does seem to be that such a person did exist and had something to do with the founding of Christianity, and my default position when I am not well informed on a question is to defer to the scholarly consensus. For example, this Wikipedia article on the Historicity of Jesus states that:
“The idea that Jesus was a purely mythical figure has a fringe status in scholarly circles and has had no support in critical studies for more than a century, with most such theories going without recognition or serious engagement”.
Even in the article that Jobar linked to, the author, R. G. Price, acknowledges this consensus. Another Wikipedia article, which spends a fair amount of time going into Price’s views, also calls the Christ myth theory a “fringe view”. Some other articles I came up with that argue against mythicism can be found here and here. Note that both of these articles were written by nonbelievers.
The consensus view isn’t always correct of course, but it’s unreasonable to dismiss it just because you would be happier believing something else.
Good point. I do hate it when people argue that atheism is a religion. In my defense I’m not super attached to the idea that there were a half dozen of them, it’s more that I’m just open to the idea.
I.N.E.E. Invisible None Existant Entity….No solid Archeological Evidence that Jesus Existed…no solid Archeological evidence will be found for Harry potter in two thousand years either…
Again religion is given special dispensation to allow cognitive bias to postulate abd control the Narrative , Jesus was far more likely to be a made up entity than an actual single person. Stop pandering to the historical religious apologists coz its very very annoying…he’s not the Messiah…he’s just a wish thinking idea of a very Naughty boy…
It’s not like I have any money riding on the historical/mythical question. Nor am I a professional in any field of history, archeology, or ancient literature or languages, that might lend any weight to my opinion that the Jesus Christ described in the book of Mark (and all the subsequent writings about him, Biblical and non-Biblical) is fictional.
But I am still a lifelong student of the subject of religion in general, and of Christianity in particular.
I read the Bible cover to cover starting when I was 14 (and by the time I was 16 was calling myself an atheist.) Even as a teenager, I was quite puzzled by the differences between the Jesus described in the letters of Paul, and the Jesus of the 4 gospels.
As I was saying – I was rather confused by the muddled and contradictory writings about the most important man in all of human history (or so my parents, relatives, teachers, and most other adults assured me he was.) And even after I decided the whole vast edifice of Christianity was a con job, I was still fascinated by how such an ancient and ill-attested character came to hold such power over so many modern minds.
jb, I am very aware that most of the professional scholars who study this subject disagree with my opinion concerning it, just as Price is aware. But, I am old enough to remember grade-school science books saying that the theory of continental drift was disputed by the majority of geologists.
I urge you to read the introductory remarks from Price’s article again, concerning the institutional pressures which make it extremely difficult for professionals of Biblical scholarship to publicly deny the historical existence of Jesus Christ. And then look at the list of 16 questions at the end of that article.
Aye. Don’t buy into anything sold by those with all the dogs in the race and vested interests looking out of their wives blouses…Jesus a myth man isn’t important except for all the miseries his stupid followers have wreaked upon their fellow sapiens. I’d say that Darwin, Newton and Einstein are all far more impressive apes….
I should mention, jb, that I am familiar with the arguments presented by O’Neill and Ehrman in the links you gave. Though I’ve only read a small fraction of the huge library of works relevant to this topic, I consider myself widely read on it- and I have not limited my reading to only writers that agree with my own hypotheses and opinions. That way lies madness.
Trying to boil my reasons for preferring mythicism to historicism down to their essence, I might put it – how did a virtually unknown ancient preacher/teacher from Nazareth morph into the water-walking, death-defying, miracle-wreaking, humanity-saving aspect of God Himself? Over a time span less than a single human life? (If the James that Paul spoke to in Jerusalem was the actual brother of Christ, and was also the author of the NT book of James, then that transformation happened in the course of his life.)
This is strange and funny. In my post above the Hebrew word “ha-emet”, meaning “the truth” was autocorrected to read “hazmat”. As though truth is dangerous hazardous material.
And even more dangerous when legitimised by religious apologists who shut down any correct truth statements in case it upsets the religious knob heads…
Jobar — The consensus does indeed sometimes turn out to be wrong, but saying “they were wrong about continental drift so you have to take me seriously” isn’t much of an argument. If you’ve personally spent enough time studying an issue that you consider yourself some sort of an expert and you disagree with the consensus view then fine, I have no problem with that — as long as you don’t dismiss the consensus as obvious balderdash that no intelligent person could possibly believe (because, um, there are in fact intelligent people who actually do believe it, and more of them than you).
As someone who is no kind of expert in Biblical studies, I’m not terribly interested in engaging with most of Price’s arguments. Fringe scholars are good at coming up with arguments that sound persuasive to non-experts but not to those familiar with a field (“If humans evolved from monkeys then why are there still monkeys?”), and I just don’t care enough about the question of Jesus’s existence to put in the work.
There’s one question though, cutting across all fields, that fringe scholars who write for the general public need to address: “If your arguments are so good then why can’t you convince the other experts?” A common answer here involves social or institutional pressures, and such pressures do exist. Some issues — for example, anything involving race or gender — are so ideologically and morally charged that saying the wrong thing can get you fired or shunned or even physically attacked. But Price, for all his talk about Darwin, fails to convince me that Biblical scholars face anything like such pressures.
The thing is, while some Biblical scholars may work for Evangelical institutions and need to sign a Statement of Faith, many are atheists or agnostics who work in secular institutions, surrounded by friends and coworkers who have no strong feelings about the existence of Jesus. So where would all this pressure come from? Yes, there might be other scholars who would rag on them for taking a non-standard position, but in academia that’s just another Tuesday, and there are plenty of academics who are well positioned to stand their ground. I’ve seen tenured professors take far weirder positions than “Jesus never existed” without suffering much in the way of repercussions. (E.g., Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist at Harvard who keeps on insisting that extra-solar comets are really alien spacecraft). So I’m not convinced a Biblical scholar who doubted Jesus’s existence would have much to fear.
All of which is not to say that Price is wrong. I’m just saying he fails to say anything strong enough to make me reconsider my default position that the consensus view has a decent chance of being right.
Right. All religious apologists. Of whatever persuasion. Prove with solid Archelogical evidence and provide the D.N.A of the single human who was Jesus or shut your gobs, because like
Oh and that loonbomb who thinks that comets are disguised space vehicles, just wants clickbait to boost his bank balance…simples..our species should be renamed…homo cupiditas…
It seems to me if there were solid reasons to blow up the historical Jesus, there’d be people standing in line to publish it. Academia isn’t all that devout.
Wikipedia Historicity of Jesus says there are only two really thoroughly attested events – the baptism, and the crucifixion sentence.
Walking on water etc., I think we can just take a wild guess that it’s fantasy material that got folded in. However that happened, it doesn’t affect the question of whether that guy from Nazareth showed up for a baptism and got nailed with a crucifixion. Evidently he did; the rest is mostly myth. If that’s what “mythical Jesus” means, then sure, all us atheists are likely on board.
Unlike M27, I wouldn’t require clonable Jesus DNA (haploid, I presume) to be convinced that an actual human being is at the core of the thick coating of myth which has built up around the character. It’s certainly not that I think those who hold the prevailing view are Biblical literalists, or are foolish for thinking that.
Just, given the paucity of the existing textual evidence for a historical JC, and the fact that evidence has only come down to us through many centuries of Christian copyists, I find it simpler to think the whole tale is mythical to its core. We can see that the mechanisms of mythopoesis are capable of building such characters; William Tell, King Arthur, John Frum, on and on. A human Jesus actually complicates things, in my view.
Jobar — If you will agree that there is at least a “decent chance” — 20%, 10% — that the consensus is correct then I have no problem with your position. And keep in mind, the consensus is merely that a person by that name existed and had something to do with the foundation of Christianity. He might still have simply been an itinerant preacher whose story ended up being wildly distorted and embellished, a kernel around which Christianity formed. That possibility seems no more problematic to me than that his story was conjured entire from the mists of rumor and legend.
Goodness, you’re easy! I’d hold out for more than 20%. Non-Christian sources, man.
Though Tacitus only mentions “Christ”, so I’m still thinking about making my own stab at fame and fortune with a pop history that proves it’s all a conspiracy to pretend there was only one Jesus.
You can prove that the Earth is round with simple math derived from observation. Historical events can only be fully substansiated by archeological observation and simple math. All written and anecdotal evidence can be dismissed without a second thought because it has a high chance of being complete bollocks. Holts Razor states that the older the written/anecdotal source is the more likely it is fiction compared to archological evidence presented in a white paper….
Many psychological experiments have proved that eye-witness evidence is more likely to be wrong than correct. People who wrote about Jesus were not even eye witnesses and they had a lot invested in making up a lot of bollocks…
Hard to put a percentage on something like that, but I cheerfully admit I’m not 100% certain of the mythicist hypothesis – not being a professional Biblical-history wrangler. Or a Sith who deals in absolutes. 😉
And though I’d be willing to contend with Ehrman himself on the topic, purely because I find it fascinating, I’m not going to be posting novel-length comments in defense of mythicism.
One last thing which y’all may find interesting – one of my nephews is a professor at the Southern Baptist Seminary in New Orleans, and knows Ehrman personally. So it’s not impossible that one day I might actually get to meet the man, and discourse with him on the subject.
This has all the hallmarks of a how many angels can be sited on the sharp end of a needle hypothesis. The bible is bollocks and has no value in a mechanised ethos end of….
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
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In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
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J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
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Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
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Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
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includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
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...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
April 26, 2007
Implicitly!
But he couldn’t even get the “lesser light” to work according to schedule.
Genesis 1:16
And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
I am seriously thinking of starting my own religion based round the mighty omniscient giant whelk of destiny…Widgey, he’s not omnipotent obviously due to to limitations of Whelk physiology…
The non-canonical Gospel of Thomas has Jesus saying “Split a piece of wood and you shall find me; lift up a stone, and I am there.” That’s omnipresence, which is one of the supposed characteristics of God you seldom hear the theologians talk about.
That’s because if God is truly everywhere at every moment, then He is in each atom, each star, and every individual body and soul.
And that is pantheism, and every single human can also say “I am God” just as JC supposedly did.
I strongly suspect that was the central message of most of the Gnostic Christian sects. The Holy Ghost is the aspect of God which is every human soul.
Of course, for all the extant varieties of Christianity I know of, the bald claim “I am God” is deepest and most blasphemous heresy. But I think the Christian religion makes more sense if that was the central message Jesus wanted to teach. (Rather, which the earliest Christians, Paul and his generation, wanted to teach. Like others here I am a mythicist, and I’m very sure there never was a flesh and blood Jesus.)
Thank god for freethinkers.
I have stated more than once on this site that a single flesh and blood Jesus never existed. No.more than Odysseus or Jason did. A myth no more no.less…That will ensure that the religious apologists will pile on with their usual pseudo historical balderdash…
I may have stated more than once that there were probably half a dozen flesh and blood Jesuses. Not that it really makes any difference.
Biblical references that could be interpreted as pantheism, could also be panentheism – where the god is immanent in the material world but also transcends it. That would certainly be true of the Gnostic stuff I’ve seen. In pantheism, the two are identical.
Half a dozen? That was probably just one hour in a scene, from Life of Brian. Still, the flimsy claims of a thousand silly whispers echoing through the near opaque veil of antiquity is no reason to state that Jesus was more than a myth…
Since I’ve read pretty much all the comments for every published comic, I am aware of M27Holts’ stance on the mythical vs historical debate.
Here’s a really fine explication of the mythicist position, very concise and scholarly.
https://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_evidence.htm
R.G. Price is IMO one of the most effective defenders of mythicism in the world.
Honestly I didn’t intend to start yet another skirmish in the mythical/historical battle, I just wanted to note the pantheistic implications of the statement Mo objects to. For many years I have identified myself as an atheist/pantheist, and in other venues (Internet Infidels discussion board, and the Secular Cafe) I have written quite a few thousand words on the subject.
Luther found God in a cowpie.
I’ve noticed that some people use prayer to substitute for medical treatment. Strangely, no-one uses prayer to determine locations and directions instead of GPS. No-one uses prayer to change a tire, and that ought to be easier for an average deity than curing cancer.
When a surgery is successful, people thank a god instead of the surgeon. Does anyone ever thank a god when a car’s malfunctioning alternator is successfully replaced?
In the last world cup, I watched Messi cross himself and point to the sky after he’d scored a goal. When Argentina was defeated, he didn’t cross himself or point to the sky. Is there no gratitude when your opponent wins?
It’s not just that religion contradicts known facts. It also isn’t consistent. It isn’t just that people are flawed or imperfect. It’s built right into the texts. (Of all religions.)
I never blame god when the shirts get beaten, it’s all about VAR, Bent Refs and the.inability of certain useless naked apes to stick the ball in the onion bag…
“When a surgery is successful, people thank a god instead of the surgeon. Does anyone ever thank a god when a car’s malfunctioning alternator is successfully replaced?”
A couple of days ago my brother had surgery to replace a heart valve, Laripu. Happily it was entirely successful, and this morning he was moved from the ICU to a regular hospital room; his wife sent a group text to me and the rest of my family, with – you guessed it – effusive praise and thanks to God that he had survived the surgery.
Though I said nothing I considered remarking that God could have corrected my brother’s hereditary valve deformity when he was conceived, and avoided all that having his chest opened up like a cardboard box.
When he is further along the road to recovery I may ask her how often she prays for car repairs.
Jobar, I’m glad your brother came through the surgery well.
Here’s one odd custom I know of: when someone Jewish dies, religious family members often say “Baruch dayan hazmat” (ברוך דין האמת). That’s Hebrew, meaning “blessed be the judge of the truth”.
Essentially it’s praising a god for killing a loved one. I really dislike it and it makes me uncomfortable.
To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god. -Jorge Luis Borges, writer (24 Aug 1899-1986)
Aye. The religious brain flatulence that thanks I.N.E.E…is very irritating to this Sap…
What’s I.N.E.E. ?
Is it anything like I.N.R.I. ?
I posted a long comment with several links yesterday and it never showed, so I’m going to try a short post to see what happens. If it works I’ll try reposting my original comment.
Nope, still didn’t show up. Maybe too long? I’ll try splitting it into two parts.
I’m equally comfortable with the ideas that Jesus did or did not exist, but the consensus among scholars does seem to be that such a person did exist and had something to do with the founding of Christianity, and my default position when I am not well informed on a question is to defer to the scholarly consensus. For example, this Wikipedia article on the Historicity of Jesus states that:
“The idea that Jesus was a purely mythical figure has a fringe status in scholarly circles and has had no support in critical studies for more than a century, with most such theories going without recognition or serious engagement”.
Even in the article that Jobar linked to, the author, R. G. Price, acknowledges this consensus. Another Wikipedia article, which spends a fair amount of time going into Price’s views, also calls the Christ myth theory a “fringe view”. Some other articles I came up with that argue against mythicism can be found here and here. Note that both of these articles were written by nonbelievers.
The consensus view isn’t always correct of course, but it’s unreasonable to dismiss it just because you would be happier believing something else.
Huh, I guess that was it! Either that or too many links in one comment.
Good point. I do hate it when people argue that atheism is a religion. In my defense I’m not super attached to the idea that there were a half dozen of them, it’s more that I’m just open to the idea.
I.N.E.E. Invisible None Existant Entity….No solid Archeological Evidence that Jesus Existed…no solid Archeological evidence will be found for Harry potter in two thousand years either…
Again religion is given special dispensation to allow cognitive bias to postulate abd control the Narrative , Jesus was far more likely to be a made up entity than an actual single person. Stop pandering to the historical religious apologists coz its very very annoying…he’s not the Messiah…he’s just a wish thinking idea of a very Naughty boy…
Apply occams Razor you Numpties…
It’s not like I have any money riding on the historical/mythical question. Nor am I a professional in any field of history, archeology, or ancient literature or languages, that might lend any weight to my opinion that the Jesus Christ described in the book of Mark (and all the subsequent writings about him, Biblical and non-Biblical) is fictional.
But I am still a lifelong student of the subject of religion in general, and of Christianity in particular.
I read the Bible cover to cover starting when I was 14 (and by the time I was 16 was calling myself an atheist.) Even as a teenager, I was quite puzzled by the differences between the Jesus described in the letters of Paul, and the Jesus of the 4 gospels.
Oops, hit submit unintentionally.
As I was saying – I was rather confused by the muddled and contradictory writings about the most important man in all of human history (or so my parents, relatives, teachers, and most other adults assured me he was.) And even after I decided the whole vast edifice of Christianity was a con job, I was still fascinated by how such an ancient and ill-attested character came to hold such power over so many modern minds.
jb, I am very aware that most of the professional scholars who study this subject disagree with my opinion concerning it, just as Price is aware. But, I am old enough to remember grade-school science books saying that the theory of continental drift was disputed by the majority of geologists.
I urge you to read the introductory remarks from Price’s article again, concerning the institutional pressures which make it extremely difficult for professionals of Biblical scholarship to publicly deny the historical existence of Jesus Christ. And then look at the list of 16 questions at the end of that article.
Aye. Don’t buy into anything sold by those with all the dogs in the race and vested interests looking out of their wives blouses…Jesus a myth man isn’t important except for all the miseries his stupid followers have wreaked upon their fellow sapiens. I’d say that Darwin, Newton and Einstein are all far more impressive apes….
And they all existed of course…
I should mention, jb, that I am familiar with the arguments presented by O’Neill and Ehrman in the links you gave. Though I’ve only read a small fraction of the huge library of works relevant to this topic, I consider myself widely read on it- and I have not limited my reading to only writers that agree with my own hypotheses and opinions. That way lies madness.
Trying to boil my reasons for preferring mythicism to historicism down to their essence, I might put it – how did a virtually unknown ancient preacher/teacher from Nazareth morph into the water-walking, death-defying, miracle-wreaking, humanity-saving aspect of God Himself? Over a time span less than a single human life? (If the James that Paul spoke to in Jerusalem was the actual brother of Christ, and was also the author of the NT book of James, then that transformation happened in the course of his life.)
This is strange and funny. In my post above the Hebrew word “ha-emet”, meaning “the truth” was autocorrected to read “hazmat”. As though truth is dangerous hazardous material.
Truth is truly horrendously hazzardous when it is weaponised by pious religious maniacs…
And even more dangerous when legitimised by religious apologists who shut down any correct truth statements in case it upsets the religious knob heads…
Jobar — The consensus does indeed sometimes turn out to be wrong, but saying “they were wrong about continental drift so you have to take me seriously” isn’t much of an argument. If you’ve personally spent enough time studying an issue that you consider yourself some sort of an expert and you disagree with the consensus view then fine, I have no problem with that — as long as you don’t dismiss the consensus as obvious balderdash that no intelligent person could possibly believe (because, um, there are in fact intelligent people who actually do believe it, and more of them than you).
As someone who is no kind of expert in Biblical studies, I’m not terribly interested in engaging with most of Price’s arguments. Fringe scholars are good at coming up with arguments that sound persuasive to non-experts but not to those familiar with a field (“If humans evolved from monkeys then why are there still monkeys?”), and I just don’t care enough about the question of Jesus’s existence to put in the work.
There’s one question though, cutting across all fields, that fringe scholars who write for the general public need to address: “If your arguments are so good then why can’t you convince the other experts?” A common answer here involves social or institutional pressures, and such pressures do exist. Some issues — for example, anything involving race or gender — are so ideologically and morally charged that saying the wrong thing can get you fired or shunned or even physically attacked. But Price, for all his talk about Darwin, fails to convince me that Biblical scholars face anything like such pressures.
The thing is, while some Biblical scholars may work for Evangelical institutions and need to sign a Statement of Faith, many are atheists or agnostics who work in secular institutions, surrounded by friends and coworkers who have no strong feelings about the existence of Jesus. So where would all this pressure come from? Yes, there might be other scholars who would rag on them for taking a non-standard position, but in academia that’s just another Tuesday, and there are plenty of academics who are well positioned to stand their ground. I’ve seen tenured professors take far weirder positions than “Jesus never existed” without suffering much in the way of repercussions. (E.g., Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist at Harvard who keeps on insisting that extra-solar comets are really alien spacecraft). So I’m not convinced a Biblical scholar who doubted Jesus’s existence would have much to fear.
All of which is not to say that Price is wrong. I’m just saying he fails to say anything strong enough to make me reconsider my default position that the consensus view has a decent chance of being right.
Right. All religious apologists. Of whatever persuasion. Prove with solid Archelogical evidence and provide the D.N.A of the single human who was Jesus or shut your gobs, because like
String Theory it isn”t even wrong…
And as Hitchens stated..Anything that can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence…I rest my case m.lud…
Oh and that loonbomb who thinks that comets are disguised space vehicles, just wants clickbait to boost his bank balance…simples..our species should be renamed…homo cupiditas…
It seems to me if there were solid reasons to blow up the historical Jesus, there’d be people standing in line to publish it. Academia isn’t all that devout.
Wikipedia Historicity of Jesus says there are only two really thoroughly attested events – the baptism, and the crucifixion sentence.
Walking on water etc., I think we can just take a wild guess that it’s fantasy material that got folded in. However that happened, it doesn’t affect the question of whether that guy from Nazareth showed up for a baptism and got nailed with a crucifixion. Evidently he did; the rest is mostly myth. If that’s what “mythical Jesus” means, then sure, all us atheists are likely on board.
Unlike M27, I wouldn’t require clonable Jesus DNA (haploid, I presume) to be convinced that an actual human being is at the core of the thick coating of myth which has built up around the character. It’s certainly not that I think those who hold the prevailing view are Biblical literalists, or are foolish for thinking that.
Just, given the paucity of the existing textual evidence for a historical JC, and the fact that evidence has only come down to us through many centuries of Christian copyists, I find it simpler to think the whole tale is mythical to its core. We can see that the mechanisms of mythopoesis are capable of building such characters; William Tell, King Arthur, John Frum, on and on. A human Jesus actually complicates things, in my view.
Jobar — If you will agree that there is at least a “decent chance” — 20%, 10% — that the consensus is correct then I have no problem with your position. And keep in mind, the consensus is merely that a person by that name existed and had something to do with the foundation of Christianity. He might still have simply been an itinerant preacher whose story ended up being wildly distorted and embellished, a kernel around which Christianity formed. That possibility seems no more problematic to me than that his story was conjured entire from the mists of rumor and legend.
Goodness, you’re easy! I’d hold out for more than 20%. Non-Christian sources, man.
Though Tacitus only mentions “Christ”, so I’m still thinking about making my own stab at fame and fortune with a pop history that proves it’s all a conspiracy to pretend there was only one Jesus.
You can prove that the Earth is round with simple math derived from observation. Historical events can only be fully substansiated by archeological observation and simple math. All written and anecdotal evidence can be dismissed without a second thought because it has a high chance of being complete bollocks. Holts Razor states that the older the written/anecdotal source is the more likely it is fiction compared to archological evidence presented in a white paper….
Many psychological experiments have proved that eye-witness evidence is more likely to be wrong than correct. People who wrote about Jesus were not even eye witnesses and they had a lot invested in making up a lot of bollocks…
And…extraordinary hypotheses or claims require extraordinary evidence….
And Jesus, he wasn’t even “A very naughty boy”…
Hard to put a percentage on something like that, but I cheerfully admit I’m not 100% certain of the mythicist hypothesis – not being a professional Biblical-history wrangler. Or a Sith who deals in absolutes. 😉
And though I’d be willing to contend with Ehrman himself on the topic, purely because I find it fascinating, I’m not going to be posting novel-length comments in defense of mythicism.
One last thing which y’all may find interesting – one of my nephews is a professor at the Southern Baptist Seminary in New Orleans, and knows Ehrman personally. So it’s not impossible that one day I might actually get to meet the man, and discourse with him on the subject.
At least that will clear up the question of whether Ehrman is real or mythical.
This has all the hallmarks of a how many angels can be sited on the sharp end of a needle hypothesis. The bible is bollocks and has no value in a mechanised ethos end of….