Dave Fitzgerald

Flame War On! A Response to Cameron English

2012-01-21T19:55:00.000-08:00

My Christian friend and fellow writer Cameron English is living proof that believers and nonbelievers can disagree with one another on fundamental worldviews and still argue our beliefs without being shrill douchebags about it. So I was very happy when he offered to read and review my book Nailed, and was interested in starting an online dialogue about his take on the book - which he has, here. I can't guarantee how long or how often we'll be able to maintain this conversation, but in any case it should be interesting. So, game on!

To begin, I should note that Cameron does make some positive comments about Nailed, and even recommends the book (sort of), which is nice to hear. Especially since for a Christian, there’s not a great deal one can say about the thesis that their personal Lord and Savior never actually existed.

Before getting to specifics, I have to call him on one problem with his critique: the repeated assurances that, although he can’t provide the refutation just now, all my arguments have been disproven - elsewhere... for example:

“What follows isn't a comprehensive refutation of all Fitzgerald's arguments. That's been done elsewhere, and it seems that doing so would be redundant and even unhelpful at this point.”

“Bart Ehrman, who Fitzgerald cites many times throughout the book, has taken a few swings at the mythicists for their special pleading...”

“... both Phillip Jenkins and Ben Witherington III destroyed Fitzgerald's arguments years before he decided to start making them.”

Actually, it would be helpful for Cameron to provide them - any of them. But let’s start with what he does have to say.

Bucking the Consensus

Cameron rightly notes that skeptics like me freely attack creationists for denying scientific consensus. But when it comes to the Christ myth, he declares “snubbing the consensus is problematic,” and feels it’s blatantly hypocritical:

“They don't hesitate to throw around the consensus argument in that context. But when it comes to biblical history, tossing aside the consensus point of view is acceptable, because (conveniently) the evidence is on their side.”

But Cameron has just answered his own dilemma: it’s precisely because Mythicists have evidence that we challenge the current majority opinion - just as the evidence for natural selection challenged the dominant paradigm in Darwin’s time. Creationism isn’t wrong simply because it’s in the minority, and Evolution isn’t true just because the overwhelming majority of scientists say so; it’s true because it’s multiply attested by strong and compelling lines of evidence and has withstood, and continues to withstand, all rival theories. By contrast, there is nothing in Biblical studies that stands confirmed on anywhere near the level of certainty we get in any other branch of science.

Repudiated?

Cameron says:

“Even if we were to throw out the work of evangelical scholars, the experts without a religious ax to grind, including those openly hostile to Christianity, have repudiated the Christ myth. For example, Bart Ehrman, who Fitzgerald cites many times throughout the book, has taken a few swings at the mythicists for their special pleading and suggestions that the early church would invent such an unpalatable messiah like Jesus.”

First of all, I don’t “toss out” anyone’s work because they’re evangelical, or any other religious persuasion. In fact, as I mention in the book, I rely on the work of historians from all across the theological spectrum. For example, Bruce Metzger has done brilliant work on the formation of the New Testament canon, which I cite frequently (see ch. 7 of Nailed) - even against some of his own conclusions.

Secondly, no one has “repudiated” the Myth Theory arguments, least of all Bart Ehrman. For such a staunch non-Mythicist, few historians have done as much to point out the flaws in majority biblical opinion as Ehrman. That’s why I continue to recommend his books, and am even looking forward to his next one that will present his case for why he thinks there was an actual historical Jesus - albeit one who was only a failed apocalyptic prophet. And as for the idea that the early church would never invent such an unlikely messiah as Jesus, our mutual friend Richard Carrier has more than debunked that notion in his book Not The Impossible Faith by demonstrating that there were first century Jews who expected precisely such a messiah.

Jesus Inconsistant? So What?

Cameron’s reaction to the chapter asking "Is the Image of Jesus Consistent?" is:

"So what?

It's undeniable that the evangelists give diverging accounts of the life of Jesus. Most apologists will grant this, too. But this same "problem" affects a lot of history. In fact, if you were to read four different accounts of any historical figure, chances are that they'd contradict each other in similar ways the Gospels contradict each other.

No rational individual would conclude, then, that those biographies are worthless, or that their subject never actually existed. Why reach such a conclusion when we're talking about the Gospels?”

This is why: because the ways our four canonical Gospels contradict each other are not at all typical of other historical figures. To begin with, these are not independent accounts; all are based off of Mark, who is a neither an eyewitness nor claims to be, writing a generation or more after the events he describes, descriptions that are completely uncorroborated historically, filled with unhistorical mistakes and inadvertent anachronisms, and which by every indication appears to be written not as a biography at all but as an allegory for a Jewish version of the pagan mystery faiths.

What’s worse, the later gospel writers who reworked Mark added information of their own without regard for if it contradicted their original source or each other (and in the case of the second century writings of Luke and John, any of the myriad other non-canonical Gospels that were also written around that time). And if that weren’t already enough, for the first 300 years of Christianity we have abundant evidence that rival Christian factions had no compunctions to routinely alter scripture and did so. For the first 150 - 200 years we have nothing but tiny scraps and much later, partial chapters of NT manuscripts, and therefore no way to verify how much our texts matched the originals. And for the entire first century, we have no manuscript evidence whatsoever.

So there is no “biography” to reconstruct from the Gospels in the first place, and any reconstruction we attempt to make from them - and there have been dozens - would be completely disconnected to anyone who lived at all. As Rbt. Price has pointed out, even if there had been a real Jesus at the core of Christianity, there isn’t one any more.

Christianity or Christianities?

My friend Cameron also says the best I can do is point to the diversity among early Christians as proof that the religion didn't start with Jesus, but this isn’t quite right either. To begin with, the diversity of early Christianity is truly astounding already if Christianity is meant to have begun with a founder of a small group in Jerusalem. In addition to the problematic textual evidence for Jesus himself, there’re plenty of other problems: the equally sparse and conflicting info on the Twelve apostles, the curious geographic distribution of early Christianity, the identity of all the “other Christs” mentioned in both Paul and the Gospels are all just a few. Another more fundamental problem are the differences between the first generation of Christianity and post-Gospel Christianity (See my essay “Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?” for more all these issues)

That seems plenty to get us started. Over to you, Cam...

-DF

Nailed: Completely Brilliant or a Tragic Waste of Trees? YOU be the Judge...

2012-01-19T09:28:00.000-08:00

2011: The Year in Review

All in all, 2011 was an awesome year, albeit a ferociously busy one. Nailed continues to garner more fans and accolades, and generate cranky hate mail. I was especially proud to see Nailed voted one of the top 5 Atheist/Agnostic Books of 2010 in this year’s AboutAtheism.com Reader’s Choice Awards! It’s a real thrill to have my book honored alongside world-class authors like the late, great Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Hawkins and all the contributors of John Loftus’ awesome, paradigm-wrecking collection The Christian Delusion.

Thanks again to all of you who write in to express your appreciation for the book; your ongoing comments make my day on a regular basis, and I couldn’t be more pleased and grateful. And a huge shout-out to all the atheist groups and amazing Secular Student Alliance affiliates who hosted me this year - I’ve met so many incredible student activists on campuses all across the country, it truly gives me hope for the future. Rock on!

It’s also been a great year for the annual Atheist Film Festival here in San Francisco; this year we had first run Hollywood feature films AND Hollywood film directors here in person. The festival continues to get bigger and better every year - as does the fantastic, magnificent student-run Skepticon, which is hand’s down my favorite secular event of the whole year (and this coming from a secular event organizer!) Skepticon 4 had a powerhouse of fantastic speakers again this year, including PZ Myers, Richard Carrier, Rebecca Watson, Greta Christina, JT Eberhart, Jen McCreight, Julia Galef, the brilliant Sam Singleton, myself, and still more - if you can make it to Springfield, MO for this year’s, don’t miss it!

My fiction-writing alter ego Kilt Kilpatrick has also been busy with two new books: the first is UNDER THE KILT, a heretic-friendly collection of erotic short stories in many genres that has also landed an award - a Best Paranormal Romance Award of 2011 from The Romance Reviewers.com (Woo hoo!). I’ve also co-edited (with the brilliant and fabulous Inara LaVey) DEMON LOVERS, a hot paranormal erotica anthology of Succubus and Incubus stories that has just came out this month.

Of course, all this atheist and erotica-writing goodness (not to mention that whole day-job thing which is such a time-suck...) has made it a tough year for blogging, though I did manage to post The Ultimate Christmas Quiz, a follow-up to my Ultimate Easter Quiz. Another tough setback to this year was the loss of my grandmother, who died this October after a long period of declining health. It’s been very hard to see her go; I was just very grateful to be able to spend time with her and the rest of the family at the end.

Anyway, so that’s what I’ve had on my plate this year... I expect that 2012 will be a better year for more regular blogging - but if it isn’t, it only means I’m busy working on the first books in my new series The Complete Heretic’s Guide to Western Religion. The first out will be on the Mormons (see my talk at Skepticon IV for a sneak preview), the second will be Jesus: Mything in Action, a follow-up to Nailed focusing more on the “Historical Jesus” vs. the “Jesus of Faith” and addressing some of the criticisms of Nailed. Speaking of which...

So, there have been several critiques of Nailed posted online. In a perfect world, I would respond to all of them individually, but with time at a premium, perhaps it’s best if I address the most relevant criticisms in one big post. To be painfully honest, most of the critiques are so, well... lame, I wonder if even other Christian apologists find them very compelling. One exception is my friend (frenemy?) Dr. James McGrath, who initially lambasted my talk at Skepticon 3 but whose subsequent correspondence with me has been much more congenial and constructive (and I have him to thank for bringing O’Neill’s post to my attention in the first place). While we continue to disagree on the Historical Jesus, I enjoy discussing lines of evidence with him.

As for the rest of the critical responses however, so far they seem to be the same stale mix of bluster, deliberate cluelessness and empty verbosity that we’ve come to expect from characters like J.P. Holding, Alpha & Omega, et al. They were so tedious it seemed completely unnecessary for me to bother with them; and besides no one seems to be reading them. But maybe I’m too close to the material to be impressed by their objections; if any of you come across any points in a critique that strike you as valid, please do feel free to contact me via e-mail (everybodylovesdave at gmail dot com) or Facebook and I’ll be happy to post a response here. (Feel free to leave comments on the blog too, of course; it’s just that I don’t usually discover my own blog comments until weeks or months later. I know, I know; I’m a bad blogger...)

And Then There’s This Guy...

That said, there is one review that I do want to respond to here; not simply because it’s almost completely wrong, but because it’s often so ass-backwards wrong in ways that actually prove the points I argue. (and because demonstrating all this gives a surprisingly high entertainment value) It’s the screed-in-book review’s clothing from an Australian blogger, Tim O’Neill. O’Neill calls himself a “wry, dry, rather sarcastic, eccentric, silly, rather arrogant Irish-Australian atheist bastard,” so you would think we would get along like a house on fire. Sadly, no. As George Bernard Shaw pointed out long ago, if you roast an Irishman on the spit, you can always get another Irishman to turn the crank...

True confession time: O’Neill hasn’t impressed me to date; I typically have run across him in the comment threads of atheist blogs, usually snarking around and defending himself against charges of being an abrasive douchebag. He often acts as if he’s spearheading a one-man quest for rationality and can’t understand why everyone else doesn’t listen to him. He also gets frequently carried away with his need to: A) be right all the time, even when he’s wrong; and B) castigate the errors of lesser beings with unusually high levels of bitchiness. For instance, he used to regularly show up on Richard Carrier’s blog doing his usual pissy, nitpicking schtick until of course he took it too far and Carrier actually caught him in a lie, which seems to have put an end to his antics on that blog. So in a nutshell, when I run across O’Neill nowadays, my first thought is almost always: what IS this guy’s fucking problem?

O’Neilled: Tons of Mistakes that Show Tim O’Neill Never Investigated Nailed at All

It seems to boil down to a weirdly obsessive vendetta against proponents of the Jesus Myth theory. This is the first of several vindictive straw-man generalizations that permeates O’Neill’s screed. Now, I’m the first to agree with O’Neill that there are plenty of crackpot alternative Jesus theories being promoted in truly terrible half-baked books by amateurs (Kersey Graves’ The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors, Luigi Cascioli’s The Case against Jesus, Joseph Atwill’s Caesar’s Messiah, and Baigent/Leigh/Lincoln’s infamous Holy Blood, Holy Grail all spring to mind, and there are many more); in that respect we’re both on the same page. In fact, if anything, I dislike them even more than he does; the crackpots just make the job of legitimate Mythicists harder. But for O’Neill to lump together the crank theories with the serious scholarship being done by Doherty, Price, Carrier, et al. is just asinine.

When I first read O’Neill’s review of Nailed, I found it curious that he describes me as an atheist activist on the board of SF Atheists and “the founder of an atheist film festival,” all true enough - but which conveniently ignores any of my relevant credentials, like my degree in history, my association with CSER (The Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion), or that I’ve been specifically researching the Historical Jesus question for more than ten years. And I knew there was something seriously flawed when he (rightly) mentioned that Nailed has certainly received high praise from prominent figures - but then identified Richard Carrier and Robert M. Price (who he misnames “R.G. Price”) as “atheist activists, amateurs and hobbyists.”

Atheist activists, amateurs and hobbyists? Price and Carrier both have relevant PhDs, both are multiply-published authors, academics, philosophers and biblical scholars, have been active on the scene for well over a decade, and are major contributors to some of the most important and ground-breaking biblical publications in recent years. Dr. Price is a professor of biblical criticism, a member of the Society of Biblical Literature as well as the Jesus Seminar, CSER, and edited the Journal of Higher Criticism. Dr. Carrier is the former head of the Secular web, and has repeatedly been recognized as one of the most influential atheist thinkers on the planet today. Tim O’Neill, I know Richard Carrier. Richard Carrier is a friend of mine. And you, sir, are no Richard Carrier.

O’Neill tries to stigmatize Nailed and Doherty’s The Jesus Puzzle and “most Myther books” for being “self-published” books - which only shows how little he knows about the realities of the publishing world today. Again, I do have sympathy for his suspicions (or I would, if he wasn’t being such a douche); but the truth is self-publishing isn’t just for vanity presses any more, as he’ll find out if he ever decides to go from being a blog gadfly and actually make the effort to publish something. Three different publishers were interested in publishing Nailed, but the decision to self-publish just made more sense financially. And oh yes, the manuscript was peer reviewed, beta-read, edited, line-proofed, corrected, formatted and re-formatted (as he might have known just by reading the 6 pages of acknowledgements!) His constant little jabs at denigration just come off as a mix of jealousy and desire for self-promotion.

Yet another grossly uninformed allegation is his ridiculous assertion that all “Mythers” are just out to push an atheist agenda, so they start with their conclusion, and spin half-baked ad hoc theories purely out of political motivations, like creationists. This would be laughable if it wasn’t so insulting and patronizing. My atheist activism has absolutely nothing to do with whether Jesus was real or not. I don’t need for there to have been a mythical Jesus; the bible fails on its own just fine with or without a genuine founder from Nazareth.

The truth is something O’Neill can’t seem to fathom: I never set about to be a “Myther” - in fact, it was quite the opposite. Like the overwhelming majority of atheists, twelve years ago it had never even occurred to me there might never have been a historical Jesus. Then one day (after reading Ken Smith’s brilliant Ken’s Guide to the Bible) I became curious to find out what Jesus really said and did, and how much was just legendary accretion. Once I began to look into the sorry state of the evidence for Jesus, I realized (as have so many others before me) that something is seriously flawed with the notion of a “Historical Jesus.”

Honestly, I get that the Myth Theory is still a hard sell for many, so I have sympathy for anyone with initial skepticism. We should be skeptical, especially of books by non-specialists in the field, like mine. And at the end of the day, it’s no skin off my nose if anyone else accepts it or not. I’m not dogmatic about it. I’m not a masochist or a contrarian. I defend the Jesus Myth theory for just one simple reason: I am sincerely convinced that it’s right. I’m certainly willing to reject it if it turns out to be wrong; indeed, there have been many supporting arguments and lines of evidence that I have discarded because they did turn out to be wrong. As I say in the book, if I’m wrong, I want to know. But so far, after more than a decade of personally subjecting the Jesus Myth explanation to the crucible time and again, I’m more convinced than ever that it remains the best answer to the problem.

Maybe if O’Neill could manage to understand that Mythicists like me actually have reasons for our position, and that the dominant historical opinion on Jesus is seriously flawed, we could have an actual discussion. But he doesn’t seem interested in real conversation; he wants a chew toy. In fact, I can’t shake the feeling that all O’Neill really craves is notoriety - to be the Perez Hilton of atheism.

O’Neill’s False “Fitzgerald’s False Dichotomy”

On to the specifics. Over and over, O’Neill gets his facts wrong; makes pronouncements with a Bill O’Reillyesque voice of authority when he clearly doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about; twists my actual points into a ridiculous straw man, or, as we can see here, just makes things up that only exist in his head. Here’s O’Neill, complaining about how “I frame the debate”:

“So from the start Fitzgerald sets up an artificial dichotomy, with conservative apologists defending a traditional orthodox Jesus on one hand and brave "critics who (dispute) Christian claims" who don't believe in any Jesus at all on the other. And nothing in between. This is nonsense, because it ignores a vast middle ground of scholars - liberal Christian, Jewish, atheist and agnostic - who definitely "dispute Christian claims" but who also conclude that there was a human, Jewish, historical First Century preacher as the point of origin for the later stories of "Jesus Christ".”

I agree: That is nonsense, and this nonsensical “dichotomy” is O’Neill’s own creation, not mine. As I explicitly say in the first chapter (and repeat on the back of the book) the evidence has been gathered from all across the theological spectrum. What’s more, I frequently cite the work of the “middle ground of scholars” throughout the book -including several of the ones he claims I’m ignoring - by name. And whenever possible, I point out when I am presenting information that represents the majority opinion of all scholars. So where is O’Neill coming up with this “dichotomy” of his? The truth is, even if the ultimate conclusion in Nailed seems radical, the facts that support it are often considered not radical at all by the majority of Biblical scholars - many have been accepted as the majority opinion for centuries.

But that’s not the Real Jesus!

So much of what I argue should not sound controversial. O’Neill admits as much when he dismisses Myth No. 1 ("The idea that Jesus was a myth is ridiculous!") as “not really controversial” and that:

“After all, no-one except a fundamentalist apologist would pretend that the evidence about Jesus is not ambiguous and often difficult to interpret with any certainty, and that includes the evidence for his existence.”

He and I are in almost in perfect agreement here. What O’Neill doesn’t seem to grasp is that Nailed was written to highlight and address those very difficulties. Instead, he declares I’m confused and can’t keep the “Jesus of Faith” straight from the “Historical Jesus.” Is he kidding? Are there no Christians in Australia? Either O’Neill forgets that nearly one third of the planet (not just “fundamentalist apologists”!) believes in the Jesus as presented in the Gospels; or to him, the fact matters not at all. Worse, he somehow manages to think that addressing the issue of that Jesus’ historicity is a failing of the book. Unbelievable.

To O’Neill’s mind, none of that mere Christianity is of any interest. He constantly sniffs that the real Jesus remains untouched by the book - the Historical Jesus that he claims all real scholars accept: the “Jewish preacher (that was) the point of origin for the Jesus story simply because that makes the most sense of all the evidence.” First of all, as one might have guessed from the subtitle, or heard me say repeatedly in the book, Nailed was written to debunk the Christian myths that prop up the official story of Jesus. So perhaps O’Neill shouldn’t be too surprised that the main focus of the book is exactly that: the Jesus of rank-and-file Christianity.

And still, that’s not to say I don’t have anything to weigh in on the Historical Jesus! O’Neill should know that the “Historical Jesus” he touts as being the real Jesus is on no firmer evidentiary ground than the “Jesus of Faith,” something I do focus on in my upcoming book Jesus: Mything in Action. In fact, there is no single “Historical Jesus.” There are scads of various hypothetical and contradictory historical “reconstructions” of him - and none of them based on anything remotely like what an objective observer would consider reliable evidence. This wide variety of secular Jesuses and the problematic historical sources for all of them are symptomatic of the very predicament that prompted me to write Nailed in the first place. But more on that in my guest post on Freethought Blog, “Will The Real Jesus Please Stand Up?”

Who are the Biblical Historians?

Surprisingly, O’Neill takes objection when I point out something I didn’t expect anyone to have an issue with: that even though the majority of Biblical historians reject the idea that Jesus never existed, the majority of Biblical historians have always been Christian preachers, so what else could we expect them to say? O’Neill insists many scholars may well be Christians and allows that a tiny few (but not many) may be preachers, but “a great many” are definitely not.

I’d be willing to grant him that there are probably more non-Christian biblical scholars today than ever before, but that doesn’t change the fact that from the beginning, biblical studies have always been dominated by Christian clergy of various denominations - and remain so. One simply has to flip through a standard history of biblical studies, or take a roll call of the Society of Biblical Literature any time since its founding in 1880 to quickly see that not only do they freely admit that the entire field was originally an apologetic endeavor, but there has scarcely been a member who was not also a pastor, priest or rabbi.

Even in secular circles today, it is difficult to find a biblical scholar who does not come out of a religious background - even those without a divinity degree. Rabbi Jon D. Levensen, one of today’s most prominent Jewish biblical scholars, notes “It is a rare scholar in the field whose past does not include an intense Christian or Jewish commitment.” (The Hebrew Bible: The Old Testament, and Historical Criticism: Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies, Westminster John Knox Press, 1993, p. 30)

What’s more, as religious scholar Timothy Fitzgerald (no relation) notes in The Ideology of Religious Studies (Oxford University Press, 2000), even among former believers, theological assumptions are pervasive: “even in the work of scholars who are explicitly non-theological, half-disguised theological presuppositions persistently distort the analytical pitch.” (p. 6-7) Again, see “Will The Real Jesus Please Stand Up?” for a deeper examination of these fundamental issues.

Myth No. 2: Jesus Christ - Superstar?

Myth No. 2 (“Jesus was wildly famous - but there was no reason for contemporary historians to notice him ... ") looks at the back-pedaling apologists do when confronted with the total lack of contemporary historical corroboration for the events presented in the Gospels. Needless to say, O’Neill misses the entire point and asks why we should expect anyone at the time would have noticed Jesus - since to O’Neill’s thinking, the Jesus depicted in the Gospels - and the spectacular events surrounding him - aren’t even worth discussing, and in his judgment, the “real” Jesus was, in his words, “pretty small fry.” As he puts it:

“Even if we take their accounts at face value, a chanting crowd greeting his

entrance to Jerusalem, a trial that no-one witnessed and a run-of-the-mill

execution are hardly big news.”

Except of course, if we actually take the gospels at face value, we get considerable more than that: political scandals; a massacre; an empire-wide census and taxation; Heavenly hosts of angels and a miraculous star announcing his birth; prophets declaring him the new messiah; the holy spirit descending from heaven upon him while the voice of God announces Jesus is his son; multitudes following Jesus and spreading news of his teaching and miracles throughout Judea, the Galilee, and beyond the Jordan as far as Syria and the Decapolis; his healing members of the households of the highest ranks of society, including temple leaders, Roman centurions, and royal officials; the prophets Moses and Elijah appear from heaven to speak with him; the entire city of Jerusalem acclaiming Jesus as the messiah, multiple (and illegal) trials before the entire Sanhedrin and many onlookers, the Tetrarch Herod Antipas and his war council, and the Roman governor, who engages with a huge crowd wildly clamoring for Jesus’ death before releasing a notorious rebel; crowds attending his scourging, his humiliating march up to Golgotha, listening to him give a speech, and his long, excruciating execution; followed by hours of supernatural darkness covering “all the land,” two major earthquakes in Jerusalem, the miraculous tearing of the temple curtain, a mass resurrection of famous saints who emerge from their supernaturally-opened graves en masse and wander the streets of Jerusalem, “appearing to many,” Jesus’ return from the grave and multiple appearances to his followers (for a day, or a week, or forty days, depending on who’s telling the story) before ascending to Heaven in front of many witnesses.

O’Neill thinks it’s naive to believe most of these spectacular events happened - Well, good on you, Tim! Neither do we - that’s the entire point. I agree it’s naive to believe the events in the gospels literally happened - but it doesn’t change the fact that over 2.1 billion people do, so it’s hardly a waste of time pointing out how ridiculous it is that there is no corroboration in the historical record for any of these spectacular occurrences. But with his 20-20 tunnel vision, all he can see is how none of this applies to his “historical Jesus.” And he isn’t even right about that.

When I provided the evidence that there indeed were contemporary commentators - along with the reasons we could expect each of them to discuss Jesus - O’Neill grumbles “Fitzgerald labours mightily to detail all the writers who he claims "should" have mentioned Jesus.” (Why is it if I don’t go into exhaustive detail on one point I’m either being sloppy or making shit up, but when I do take the trouble to provide the information, I’m suddenly “laboring mightily”? You can’t win with this guy - he has all the gusto of a Fox News pundit ragging on Obama) Despite it being right there on paper, O’Neill not only denies it - he goes on to inadvertently demonstrates my point. His Shrillness continues:

“Yet Fitzgerald again claims that these writers do mention other figures similar to Jesus. "In many cases", he claims, "these same writers have much to say about other much less interesting messiahs - but not Jesus" (p.42) In "many cases"? Which cases? Fitzgerald does not say. And other messiahs are mentioned? Which ones, where and by who? Again, despite this being a key point that should potentially back up and substantiate his creaking argument, he never bothers to tell the reader. The reason is simple - what Fitzgerald is saying here is absolute nonsense.”

Incidentally, perhaps this is a good time to mention the real reason I didn’t list them all out: Nailed was distilled down from a manuscript that was originally not 250 pages, but nearly a whopping 700 pages. So in fact, there’s a lot of information that I don’t mention, and many hard choices I had to make about what to include and what to leave out in a book that’s intended to be a reader-friendly intro to the subject... Just one other hard reality O’Neill will have to face if he ever becomes an author himself. As I cautioned in Ch. 1 (not the only caution of mine that O’Neill ignores...) the book is an all-too-brief thumbnail sketch.

Annnnyway, here’s where O’Neill makes my point for me. He proceeds to name a few would-be messiahs from the first century: Athronges (Athronges the Shepherd); the unnamed Samaritan Taheb/messiah; Theudas (also known as Theudas the Magician) who is mentioned anachronistically in the book of Acts; and “the Egyptian” another failed Jewish messiah also name-dropped by Luke. (Incidentally, he was probably called “The Egyptian” not because he was from Egypt, but to evoke Moses). In actuality, as I alluded to in the section he quoted, there are many more loser messiahs and messiah-like figures that he could also have brought up: Simon of Peraea, Judas of Galilee, John the Baptist, Simon Magus/Simon of Gitta, Yeshua ben Hananiah, Jonathan the Weaver, Apollonius of Tyana, Carabbas, Simon bar-Giora and still more. (And if you’re interested, I do go into more detail on many of them in “Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?”)

None of these failed messiahs, prophets and rabble-rousers succeeded anywhere near as well as our Jesus of Nazareth. But every one of these loser messiahs did beat Jesus on one crucial matter: all of them managed to leave a trace in the contemporary historical record - so why couldn’t Jesus? If O’Neill is right, the real Jesus was just “small fry” and his exploits and supposedly radical new teachings were ignored by history for his entire life - actually, for over a century. But if that’s so, O’Neill (or rather, those historians whom he’s parroting) can’t explain what for me is the central paradox of the Historical Jesus: Either: he did and said all these amazing, earthshaking things - and no one noticed. Or: he was just one more failed messiah of the early first century - and yet after his death, a fringe cult springs up, scattered all across the Roman Empire from Spain to the Egyptian Desert to Asia Minor, made up of bickering house churches that can’t agree about the most fundamental basics of his life and teachings. This oft-encountered “Stealth Messiah” approach to the problem simply doesn’t hold up.

By the way, O’Neill is also wrong when he weirdly (and irrelevantly) claims we have no contemporary sources for Hannibal - though (to his credit) he thanks a commenter for correcting his error by pointing out that we do have a fragment from Book IV of Sosylus’ The Deeds Of Hannibal - even if he does downplays the two passages as “a tiny fragment” that “seems to contain a few lines” - in fact, as you can see here, it’s a bit more than that; two paragraphs with just over a dozen lines. But besides that, O’Neill is unaware that we do have at least one complete and contemporary account of Hannibal in book three of Polybius of Megalopolis’ The Histories, where he not only discusses Hannibal at great length, he also mentions in passing the other authors who “who have dealt with Hannibal and his times” (3.6.1).

Myth no. 3: Forging Josephus

Myth No. 3 is where O’Neill really dials up his assholedom to 11. This chapter focuses on ancient historian Flavius Josephus and two disputed passages in his writing, the Testimonium Flavianum and the “James Reference,” both which are claimed to be references to Jesus. O’Neill starts out by begging the question, baldly asserting “that Josephus does mention Jesus - twice.” However, the Testimonium is so blatantly a forgery no scholars today still dispute the fact; the only debate now is how much of it is forged. Even O’Neill accepts that at least some of it is not original to Josephus and was added by Christian scribes later. Of course, as Jeffrey Jay Lowder has pointed out, the very fact that there has been any tampering with the text at all makes the entire passage suspect.

But not to O’Neill. He cannot conceive that my filthy Myther comrades or I honestly dispute the two passages; instead he gleefully and repeatedly paints us as wringing our hands in anxiety, desperate to say anything or pull any underhanded tactic just to make the damning text go away so we can wallow in our lies. Charming.

O’Neill rightly notes that the majority of scholars accept the passage as at least partially authentic, but what he fails to add (if he even realizes) is that the “Partially Authentic,” or Reconstuctionist camp is the largest camp simply because scholarly opinion is so divided over the extent of tampering; it is a very large tent with lots of room for disagreement - and there is ferocious disagreement. And there are many scholars in that significant (and I think, correct) minority who are convinced it is a complete forgery.

O’Neill, repeating a dreadfully tired old line from the Christian apologists he despises, adds “once the more obvious interpolated phrases are removed, the passage reads precisely like what Josephus would be expected to write and also uses characteristic language found elsewhere in his works.” This would all be very convenient – just take out all the incriminating parts and then it all works fine! But there are several things he and the apologists get wrong here. To be begin with, there is no consensus on what is “obviously interpolated;” the permutations of what’s considered genuine and suspicious differs from theorist to theorist). Secondly, Josephan scholars Steve Mason and Ken Olson have both pointed out that the passage does not use Josephus’ characteristic language. In fact, its non-Josephan vocabulary and misuse of terms are just two of several other strong indications that the entire passage is not just a partial, but a total forgery. As I note in Nailed, (pp. 52-54) here are a few (not all) of the others:

“Still another is that it barely relates to the rest of the chapter. The following paragraph starts by saying “About the same time also another sad calamity put the Jews into disorder.” Another sad calamity? But what sad calamity? Josephus has just presented a commercial for Jesus, not a sad calamity! This reference skips over the Testimonium entirely and points to the previous section. That passage, where Pilate sets his soldiers loose to massacre a large crowd of Jews in Jerusalem, certainly fits the bill as a sad calamity, but no versions of the Testimonium do, “reconstructed” or not.

Many commentators, including Doherty, G. A. Wells and Peter Kirby, have noted that without the Testimonium passage, the continuity between the passages flanking it flows seamlessly into each other. This fact alone is a tremendous indication that the passage is 100% entirely fraudulent.

Perhaps the major giveaway is that this passage does not appear until the 4th century. For the first 300 years of its existence, there is no mention of the Testimonium anywhere. This couldn’t have been simply because no one happened to read it; Josephus’ histories were immensely popular and pored over by scholars. For centuries his works were more widely read in Europe than any book other than the Bible. According to Josephus scholar Michael Hardwick in Josephus as an Historical Source in Patristic Literature through Eusebius, more than a dozen early Christian writers, including Justin Martyr, Theophilus Antiochenus, Melito of Sardis, Minucius Felix, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Julius Africanus, Pseudo-Justin, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, Methodius and Lactantius, are known to have read and commented on the works of Josephus.

Origen in particular relied extensively on him; his own writings are filled with references to Josephus. But it is obvious Origen had never heard of the Testimonium. When his skeptical Roman opponent Celsus asks what miracles Jesus performed, Origen answers that Jesus‘ life was indeed full of striking and miraculous events, “but from what other source can we can furnish an answer than from the Gospel narratives?” (Contra Celsum, 2:33) In the same book (1.47), Origen even quotes from Antiquities of the Jews in order to prove the historical existence of John the Baptist, then adds that Josephus didn’t believe in Jesus, and criticizes Josephus for failing to mention Jesus in that book!

And no one else seems to have heard of the Testimonium for 300 years, either – it is never quoted until the 4th century, when the notorious Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea begins quoting it repeatedly.”

And where did Eusebius get his copy of Antiquities of the Jews? From Origen - who had never heard of the passage! There's simply no way around it: the Testimonium is 100% pure forgery, and it stretches belief that anyone but Eusebius is the forger.

But what about the Arabic Evidence?

O’Neill thinks he’s pulling out his trump card when he dredges up the Arab version of the Testimonium discovered by Israeli scholar Schlomo Pines, and the medieval Syriac Testimonium, which he claims preserve an original, uninterpolated Testimonium. He crows “So how does Fitzgerald deal with the Arabic and Syriac evidence? Well, he doesn't. He is either ignorant of it or he conveniently ignores it.”

Well, he’s half right. I am quite aware of, and did indeed ignore the Arabic and Syriac “evidence” - just as I ignored the Slovanic Additions “evidence” in the Russian and Rumanian manuscripts. Why? Because despite sensationalistic claims like O’Neill’s, none of them add anything to the debate. Nor is he (or the sources he’s relying on) aware that several years ago historian Alice Whealey conclusively proved both these claims wrong.

But since we’re here, let’s go down this rabbit hole:

The Arabic version of the Testimonium is indeed a paraphrase, preserved in the world history of a tenth-century Arab Christian, Melkite Bishop Agapius of Hierapolis, whose history is pithily entitled Kitab Al-Unwan Al-Mukallal Bi-Fadail Al- Hikma Al-Mutawwaj Bi-Anwa Al-Falsafa Al-Manduh Bi-Haqaq Al-Marifa, or: The Book of History Guided by All the Virtues of Wisdom, Crowned with Various Philosophies and Blessed by the Truth of Knowledge.

O’Neill neglects to mention (or simply doesn’t know) that the late Prof. Pines himself cautioned against claiming that the Arabic text represents Josephus' original version. Peter Kirby noted we can’t be sure Agapius was even quoting straight from a manuscript at all (he doesn’t even get the title of Josephus’ book correct, which suggests that he was working from memory, which would also explain any differences with the Greek version) And even if he was, it is certainly very late and corrupted, and thus practically worthless. What’s more, Pines freely acknowledged that there were several other explanations for the text; he personally believed that Agapius acquired his subject matter from texts in the care of - surprise! Eusebius, our prime suspect for forging the Testimonium in the first place! (see Gaalyahu Cornfield, The Historical Jesus: A Scholarly View of the Man and his World, Macmillan, 1982, p. 190) See where this is going...?

The medieval Syriac version of the Testimonium cited by Michael the Syrian in his World Chronicle traces back to some Syriac Christian; historians believe it is probably the seventh century James of Edessa. It reads differently from the Greek: Instead of "He was the Christ," it reads "He was believed to be the Christ," identical wording of a text of the Testimonium that Jerome possessed. The only plausible conclusion is that both had access to a Greek version of the Testimonium containing that variant. None of which prevented Eusebius from still being the original source for the Greek variant behind both Jerome’s late 4th century text (itself close to a century after the Testimonium first appears in Eusebius’ writings!) or the even later Syriac one.

So this was already the sorry state of evidence for both these writings before 2008, when Josephan scholar Alice Whealey made her rather conclusive case (see Alice Whealey, “The Testimonium Flavianum in Syriac and Arabic,” New Testament Studies 54.4 (2008) pp. 573-90) that even the once-much-touted Arabic version of the Testimonium actually also derives from... you guessed it - Eusebius, by way of an intermediary Syriac version, and so long story short, neither of these medieval Arabic or Syriac texts came from Josephus. Which is why I didn’t include any of this wild goose chase in Nailed. Which, if O’Neill really kept up with Josephan studies as much as he’d like us all to think, he should have known all along...

BTW, O’Neill also didn’t mention - sorry, I mean he is either ignorant of it or he conveniently ignores - the “evidence” of the so-called Slavonic Additions, but as long as we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel, we might as well drag in the beefed-up, blatantly counterfeit, Old Russian Testimonium found in a few fifteenth-century Russian and Rumanian versions of The Jewish War – That’s right, The Jewish War, not Antiquities – the forger didn’t even put it in the right book! The prevailing view is that it was added in about the 10th or 11th century, and no historians today defend its authenticity.

Origen-al Sin

O’Neill turns on the charm again:

“Not content with ignoring inconvenient key counter-evidence, Fitzgerald is also happy to simply make things up. He talks about how the Second Century Christian apologist Origen does not mention the Antiquities XVII.3.4 reference to Jesus (which is true, but not surprising -Note from Dave: Really?) and then claims "Origen even quotes from Antiquities of the Jews in order to prove the historical existence of John the Baptist, then adds that Josephus didn't believe in Jesus, and criticises him for failing to mention Jesus in that book!" (p. 53) Which might sound like a good argument to anyone who does not bother to check self-published author's citations. But those who do will turn to Origen's Contra Celsum I.4 and find the following:

Now this writer [Josephus], although not believing in Jesus as the Messiah, in seeking after the cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, whereas he ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities befalling the people, since they put to death Christ, who was a prophet, says nevertheless-being, although against his will, not far from the truth-that these disasters happened to the Jews as a punishment for the death of James the Just, who was "the brother of that Jesus who was called Messiah",--the Jews having put him to death, although he was a man most distinguished for his justice.

So Origen does not say Josephus "didn't believe in Jesus", just that he did not believe Jesus was the Messiah (which supports the Arabic and Syriac evidence on the pre-interpolation version of Antiquities XVII.3.4) And far from criticising Josephus "for failing to mention Jesus in that book", Origen actually quotes Josephus directly doing exactly that - the phrase "αδελφος Ιησου του λεγομενου Χριστου" (the brother of that Jesus who was called Messiah") is word for word the phrase used by Josephus in his other mention of Jesus, found at Antiquities XX.9.1. And he does not refer to and quote Josephus mentioning Jesus just in Contra Celsum I.4, but he also does so twice more: in Contra Celsum II:13 and in Commentarium in evangelium Matthaei X.17. It is hard to say if this nonsense claim of Fitzgerald's is mere incompetence or simply a lie. I will be charitable and put it down to another of this amateur's bungles.”

First, I must confess that I never meant to imply that Origen said Josephus “didn’t believe in Jesus” in the sense of Jesus not existing - I certainly don’t think that’s the case. That was an unfortunate and very poorly tempered sentence on my part; and painful as it is to give such a douche a bone, I have to say I totally agree with O’Neill’s criticism of it. Origen is chiding Josephus here for being a Jew, not for denying Jesus’ historicity. In fact, Josephus shows no sign of ever having even heard of Jesus at all, which is the reason Eusebius inserted his forged Testimonium into Antiquities in the first place.

But on every other point here, O’Neill is dead wrong - he (or more likely, whoever his unacknowledged source is) is in fact, demonstrating that the opposite is true. To begin with, how can O’Neill deny that Origen is not doing exactly what I said he did: criticizing Josephus for not mentioning Jesus? Read it again - it’s right there in black and white:

“... he ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities...”

It should also be noted that the quotation marks in the Contra Celsum passage above are not original to the text; in Origen’s time of course there was no such punctuation mark. They have been inserted there to give the impression that Origen is giving a direct quote here. But Origen is not quoting Josephus; not here and not in any of his other passages where O’Neill claims he does.

In fact, turnabout is fair play - let’s look at what these passages say. Here the first passage in question, Book 20, Chapter 9 of Antiquities of the Jews. Here, Josephus is describing the antics of a very unpopular high priest in Jerusalem, the unfortunately named Ananus ben Ananus. O’Neill claims Origen is quoting Josephus “word for word” here, and he is talking out of his ass. Origen does not even claim to be quoting Josephus here - and he isn’t. See for yourself:

"And now Caesar, upon hearing the death of Festus, sent Albinus into Judea, as

procurator. But the king deprived Joseph of the high priesthood, and bestowed

the succession to that dignity on the son of Ananus, who was also himself called

Ananus. Now the report goes that this eldest Ananus proved a most fortunate

man; for he had five sons who had all performed the office of a high priest to

God, and who had himself enjoyed that dignity a long time formerly, which had

never happened to any other of our high priests. But this younger Ananus, who,

as we have told you already, took the high priesthood, was a bold man in his

temper, and very insolent; he was also of the sect of the Sadducees, who are

very rigid in judging offenders, above all the rest of the Jews, as we have already

observed; when, therefore, Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had

now a proper opportunity (to exercise his authority).

Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the

sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was

called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, (or, some of his

companions); and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers

of the law, he delivered hem to be stoned: but as for those who seemed the most

equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws,

they disliked what was done; they also sent to the king (Agrippa), desiring him to send

to Ananus that he should act so no more, for that what he had already done was

not to be justified; nay, some of them went also to meet Albinus, as he was upon

his journey from Alexandria, and informed him that it was not lawful for Ananus to

assemble a sanhedrim without his consent. Whereupon Albinus complied with

what they said, and wrote in anger to Ananus, and threatened that he would

bring him to punishment for what he had done; on which king Agrippa took the

high priesthood from him, when he had ruled but three months, and made Jesus, the son of Damneus, high priest."

As you can see, Josephus nowhere calls this James “James the Just,” nor blames the destruction of Jerusalem on his death, nor is he even talking about the destruction of Jerusalem here. Most importantly for our purposes here, neither, as O’Neill insists, does he use the phrase “(Iakôbou tou Dikaiou hos ên) adelphos Iêsou tou legomenou Christou” - “James the Just, who was a brother of that Jesus who was called Messiah." The line in question is actually “ton adelphon Iêsou tou legomenou Christou Iakôbos onoma autôi”which means “the brother of Jesus (who was called Christ), the name for whom was James.” In fact, Josephus' somewhat tortured syntax here is a clue, but let's continue:

Further along in Contra Celsum (2:13) Origen uses the exact same line as before:

“Titus destroyed Jerusalem, on account, as Josephus wrote, of James the Just, the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, but in reality, as the truth makes clear, on account of Jesus Christ the Son of God.”

Origen claims Josephus wrote this, but not where - and again, he’s wrong; Josephus never wrote any such thing. And we get that exact same line in Origen’s third and final alleged Josephan quote, his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew:

“And to so great a reputation among the people for righteousness did this James rise, that Flavius Josephus, who wrote the Antiquities of the Jews in twenty books, when wishing to exhibit the cause why the people suffered such great misfortunes that even the temple was razed to the ground, said that these things happened to them in accordance with the wrath of God in consequence of the things which they had dared to do against James the brother of Jesus who is called Christ. And the amazing thing is that although he did not accept Jesus as Christ, he yet gave testimony that the righteousness of James was so great, and he says that the people thought that they had suffered these things because of James.”

So in short, in absolutely none of these cases is Origen quoting from Josephus.

In fact, as Richard Carrier has pointed out, the phrase found in Josephus has a peculiar and distinctive idiom (“the name for whom was James”) never found in Origen’s writings, so it’s even more apparent that Origen is not giving a direct quote in any of his writings. Incidentally, I am indebted to my friend Dr. Carrier for all the analysis of the Greek in this section of Nailed. For a thorough examination of the evidence that conclusively demonstrates the James Reference is an accidental interpolation or scribal emendation and that that passage was never originally about Jesus Christ but Jesus ben Damneus (The Jesus who is actually mentioned in the passage, and fits the context!), see his forthcoming paper “Origen, Eusebius, and the Accidental Interpolation in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.200” in the Journal of Early Christian Studies 20.4 (coming Winter 2012)

James Reference, part II

At the risk of beating a dead horse, there’s still more in this small section that he has gotten horribly, horribly wrong. I know that O’Neill has an undue amount of ego invested in poo-pooing this book, but, please believe me when I tell you I’m honestly baffled that any reasonably bright, reasonably objective person can look at all the problematic features of the James Reference and still fail to find the solutions offered in this chapter thoroughly convincing. And it feels like in his withered little heart, O’Neill knows he’s in the wrong on this issue and is coming a bit unglued. Let’s watch.

“This second reference to Jesus is difficult for Mythers to deal with. Dismissing it as another interpolation does not work, since a Christian interpolator in a later century is hardly going to invent something as significant as the deposition of the High Priest just to slip in this passing reference to Jesus which, unlike the interpolated elements in the Antiquities XVII.3.4 passage, makes no Christian claims about Jesus.“

Hmmm... it can’t be a deliberate interpolation... why does all that sound familiar? Oh yes, it’s because that’s exactly what I say on p. 58! He piles on to this bad start, and that’s when it really gets fascinating - look what O’Neill does in this section: It’s a rhetorical hot mess: He flails away, his snarky rhetoric goes into high gear, substituting pissiness for facts with lines like: “But Fitzgerald falls back on one of the several gambits Mythers use to get their argument off this awkward and pointy hook;” or “While he declares this ingenious solution to his problem to be ‘the only explanation that makes sense,’ it is actually highly flawed,” or "The clumsy idea that Fitzgerald proposes is highly awkward in all respects.”

But when it’s time to back up all his smack talk with facts, his objections are piddling, goofy and random (“But this does not explain why Josephus would identify one son (James) by reference to his brother and the other (Jesus) by reference to their father”). Nor does he provide any evidence, only some truly ignorant statements like “This was in the mid-Third Century and long before Christians were in any position to be ‘tacking on’ anything to copies of Josephus.” He also puts on heavy-duty blinders, as when he declares:

“More importantly, neither Carrier nor Fitzgerald explain why an interpolator would "tack on" this reference to their Jesus.”

Except, of course, that we do explain, at length, for a considerable portion of this chapter (see pp. 59-60) that it is an accidental interpolation; a fact that eludes O’Neill. In fact, he seems so completely clueless to the fact, you have to wonder was he still reading by this point at all, or just skimming? Or is he taking some “La-la-la I can’t hear you” approach and hoping no one would notice? He continues to ramble on autopilot, arguing to no one over the same non-existent point before declaring victory. Truly bizarre behavior, an almost Donald Trumpian level of masturbatory ego-trip.

He really needs to read the whole section again - he simply ignores the answers the book already provides to his own rhetorical questions. Besides that, his “objections” are ludicrous, and his “explanations” explain none of the problems of the passage: Why does Origen say elsewhere that there are no references to Jesus outside the gospel (see p. 53 of Nailed - already cited here in the section for Myth No. 3) if he thought Josephus mentioned him here (or in the Testimonium, for that matter)? Why does he - or any of the more than a dozen other early church fathers that relied heavily on Josephus for three hundred years (again, see p. 53 of Nailed) - never discuss this as a witness to Christ in all their citations of Josephus? Why do none of the details of the death of this James match the details we have from any other account of the death of James the Just?

And why didn’t Luke know of this account and include it in the New Testament book of Acts? Why would the Jews be in an uproar over the death of a Christian leader when Christians are supposed to be a hated, if not outright illegal, sect at this time? Why would he use the term “Christ” here - a term he studiously avoids using in reference to all other messianic figures he discusses in the rest of his writings? And why would he do so without explaining what it meant to his pagan Roman audience? The questions just go on and on. And O’Neill & Co. have no answer for any of them.

But all of these serious problems and more suddenly make perfect sense if the passage was originally really about Jesus, the son of Damneus - the Jesus who is actually being discussed in the passage - and the text was accidentally “corrected” to read “who was called Christ” instead. O’Neill and those who insist otherwise are left wrestling with a tremendous number of baffling unanswered questions instead.

O’Neill has once again inadvertently proved the opposite of what he set out to prove. In the immortal words of O’Neill: “it is hard to say if this nonsense claim is mere incompetence or simply a lie. I will be charitable and put it down to another of his bungles.”

And on a personal level, I have to say it’s frustrating when naysayers like O’Neill seem perfectly oblivious to the real reason these two obviously doctored passages in Josephus are defended so stridently by most biblical historians: because without this pair of long-disputed, deeply problematic snippets, there is literally nothing else in the entire first century to corroborate the Gospels. The force of their objection has always been based on theological imperatives, not evidential strength.

Myths 4 through 7: Phoning it in

After this confused rant, O’Neill runs out of steam, and can barely work enough negativity to dismiss the next four chapters as “mere padding” with, yes, yet another tiresome pronouncement that none of this applies to the real Jesus. Apparently, in that part of Australia called Tim O’Neill Land, the fact that the Gospels were not written by eyewitnesses, present wildly varying depictions of Jesus, are riddled with historical and archaeological errors, and that we have not a shred of physical evidence for Jesus, are of interest to “absolutely no-one except the most clueless of Biblical literalists or naive traditional Christians.” Don’t you feel bad for not being as smart as Tim O’Neill? You should.

He does work up enough steam for one more jab:

“Though there are some howlers in it that, yet again, shows that Fitzgerald is an amateur who really needed an informed editor. At one point he writes:

Matthew has Jesus making a pun where he tells Peter "upon this rock I will build my church" (Matt. 16:18). Though if this had happened in reality, Peter would have scratched his head and asked, "Say Jesus - what's a church?" since churches hadn't been invented yet, and wouldn't be developed until many decades later. (p. 70)

The word translated as "church" in most English editions is ἐκκλησίαν and it simply means "assembly, gathering, all of a given group", so it would be very odd for Peter to have "scratched his head" at what would have been a perfectly sensible and clear statement. Personally, I do not happen to believe Jesus said this at all and it seems this was something put in his mouth later by the writer of Matthew. But the naivete of Fitzgerald's English-based argument is indicative of his weak grasp of the material.”

“English-based argument?” Are you kidding me? The Historian in me is simply annoyed, but my inner Linguist is deeply offended. Once again, O’Neill misses the point because his pre-occupied knee-jerk snark reaction has him looking for mistakes that aren’t there. Of course I know the Greek for church is ekklêsía. But a statement like "upon this rock I will build my ekklêsía" is most definitely not “a perfectly sensible and clear statement” for an early first century Jew. For them, ekklêsía weren’t something that was built upon; as he needlessly points out, the word simply meant a gathering, actually a “duly summoned assembly”. No one at the time would have understood it in the context given here by the much-later author of Matthew, which is why it’s in the section on anachronisms in the first place. Curb your dog already.

Myth No. 8: Paul’s Jesus

By Myth No. 8, O’Neill has given up and just falls back on the same tired old arguments that prompted me to write Nailed in the first place. He starts with the understatement that: “Paul does not actually say much about Jesus' life and preaching.” In fact, it’s not just Paul - it’s the entire first generation of Christian writers. And it’s not that that he doesn’t say that much; he has nothing to say about his Risen Christ that seems to clearly refer to a life on earth, and again and again shows strange lapses about Jesus’ life, teachings, miracles, family, apostles, and the events of his ministry. Though he spends plenty of time in his letters having to remind his flock what he has taught them; he never bothers to tell them about what Jesus taught or did - or explain why he disagrees with the men who are supposedly Jesus’ family and disciples! Mythicists didn’t invent the “Silence of Paul” - that has puzzled and troubled biblical scholars for centuries.

Personally, I don’t know for certain if Paul himself believed in a purely spiritual Christ (along the lines of the savior in the original Ascension of Isaiah, who descends through successive layers of heavens by dying and rising again in each one) as Earl Doherty argues convincingly; or if Paul thought Jesus was on earth in some unspecified time in the past as a covert messiah, who “made of himself no reputation” (Phillip.2:7) and was unwittingly crucified by demons. But no matter how you slice it, it’s very obvious that Paul’s Christ is in stark contrast to the Jesus(es) in the Gospels - see pp. 129 -132 in Nailed for more details on those many differences.

And for a guy who keeps trying to nail me on linguistics points, O’Neill makes his share of blunders here, such as when he claims Paul states Jesus was executed by “earthly rulers” in 1 Cor. 2:8. In fact, the word used in that verse is not exsousia (εξουσια), the word the New Testament prefers to use when referring to earthly authorities like the Roman overlords or the temple leaders. It is archôn (ἅρχων; plural, ἅρχοντες, archontes); the same word for “rulers, powers” that we see in verses like Ephesians 2:2:

“You once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience…”

As any Sunday School teacher can tell you, “The prince of the power of the air” (ton archonta tēs exousias tou aeros, τον αρχοντα της εξουσιας του αερος) is Satan himself, the ruler of this world. Archon also can have the mundane meaning of earthly authorities, but we don’t see that in New Testament contexts like here, or in Ephesians 3:10, where the closely related word archai is used to talk about “the principalities and powers in the heavenly places,” or here in Eph. 6:12:

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

The word translated “rulers” here is actually kosmokratoras (κοσμοκράτορας), literally “cosmic rulers.” So it’s very clear that in Christian usage, Archon is not being used to describe earthly authorities. In fact, in his genuine writings, Paul never mentions that Pilate, or Herod, or the Jewish leaders, or the Romans, or anyone else on earth crucified Jesus – in fact Pilate never even appears in the epistles except for a single mention in the much later forged Pastoral epistle 1Timothy (6:13). According to Paul, and all of the other epistle writers who wrote before the Gospels were written, there is never a hint of Jesus being crucified by any human person or government; it is the Archai or Archons, that is, Satan and his minions, who crucified Jesus.

Likewise, though O’Neill insists Paul says Jesus “ had a earthly, physical brother called James who Paul himself had met,” “an earthly, physical brother” is exactly what Paul does not say about James or any of the others referred to in the New Testament as the “Brothers of the Lord” (such as the 500 Brethren in 1 Cor. 15: 6); see pp. 144-145 in Nailed for further discussion, including the absence of any “consistent tradition” of James being Jesus’ brother - or anyone else being Jesus’ disciples (see Myth No. 9 for details).

And it’s ironic that O’Neill picked I Cor. 15:3-4; since in these verses, he tells us how he “knows” his Christ died and was buried, and it is for the same reason given in so many other places in Paul’s writings (and other Epistles) - because it was prophesied in the Hebrew scriptures:

For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures...

O’Neill takes exception to me noting that Paul disdainfully dismisses James as though he was a nobody in Galatians 2:6. In fact it’s not just at 2:6; Paul is dismissive of all the leaders of the Jerusalem church, and has nothing to say at all about them being disciples or kin to Jesus. He even accuses them of trucking with false believers! Don’t take my word for it - read Galatians 2 for yourself:

¹ Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and also took Titus with me. ² And I went up by revelation, and communicated to them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately to those who were of reputation, lest by any means I might run, or had run, in vain. ³ Yet not even Titus who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised. ⁴ And this occurred because of false brethren secretly brought in (who came in by stealth to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage), ⁵ to whom we did not yield submission even for an hour, that the truth of the gospel might continue with you.
⁶ But from those who seemed to be something—whatever they were, it makes no difference to me; God shows personal favoritism to no man—for those who seemed to be something added nothing to me. ⁷ But on the contrary, when they saw that the gospel for the uncircumcised had been committed to me, as the gospel for the circumcised was to Peter ⁸ (for He who worked effectively in Peter for the apostleship to the circumcised also worked effectively in me toward the Gentiles), ⁹ and when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that had been given to me, they gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. ¹⁰ They desired only that we should remember the poor, the very thing which I also was eager to do.

And the very next thing, he’s opposing both Peter and James for not following the gospel - again, with not a single so much as a hint that they had any kind of relationship to Jesus!

¹¹ Now when Peterhad come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed; ¹² for before certain men came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision. ¹³ And the rest of the Jews also played the hypocrite with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy.
¹⁴ But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all, “If you, being a Jew, live in the manner of Gentiles and not as the Jews, why do youcompel Gentiles to live as Jews?

(and their clash continues for the rest of the chapter...)

Conclusion:

O’Neill gives up long before the end of the book; not that I can see how he could find anything to argue against there, but I could be wrong about that... But before he pulls his most weakest, most chicken-shit maneuver of all - telling critics not to bother posting on his comment thread - O’Neill ends his screed predictably enough, with one final rant at “Mythers.” Mythers begin with their conclusion, they desperately want the Christ Myth to be true because they want to undermine Christianity, this book is weak, clumsy, confused, amateurish and represents everything that is hopelessly wrong about the “Myther thesis,” etc. etc.

So it seems that I will have to find a way to live without Tim O’Neill’s approval... which he seems to reserve to himself anyway. I’ll leave it up to the rest of you, Nailed’s readership, to be the final judge.

But I do take issue with his assertion that “the overwhelming majority of scholars, Christian, non-Christian, atheist, agnostic or Jewish, accept there was a Jewish preacher as the point of origin for the Jesus story simply because that makes the most sense of all the evidence.” In fact, it does not make the most sense of the evidence, which I defend in the essay “Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?” and in my forthcoming book, Jesus: Mything in Action, coming in 2012.

Response to the Ultimate Easter Quiz!

2011-04-25T15:36:00.000-07:00

Response to Easter Quiz

A reader named Christian Huls was good enough to take the time to tackle my Ultimate Easter Quiz on the Mu Sasha blogpage, and challenged most of its ten points. Here are his objections and my response, which shows why, with all due respect, aptly named Christian’s rebuttal is completely wrong.

-DF

#1 Matthew and Luke don’t say what hour He was crucified, just when the darkness came, the last three hours (Matt. 27:45; Luke 23:44). Mark states that He was crucified at the 3rd hour (Mark 15:25), and then speaks of the same three hours of darkness (Mark 15:33). The only difference is John’s Gospel which has Him standing before the crowd at the 6th hour. The synoptic Gospels are using Hebrew, daylight time, while John uses Roman time which began at midnight.

I’m afraid that's far from the only difference. The Synoptics have the crucifixion occurring on Passover - though their accounts continue to grow and expand and start contradicting their source, Mark. For just one example, Mark (14:53 -15:1) has all seventy-one judges of the Sanhedrin pulling an all-nighter at the High Priest’s house and wrapping up the trial at dawn (even though this is just a couple of the many, many historical inaccuracies of Jesus’ trial). Luke (22:66) gets off to a late start, and doesn’t even have the council start arriving until daytime! (He has Jesus brought to the High Priest’s house too (22:54), but just so he can be roughed up and mocked) - but John goes way beyond even that - his Jesus doesn’t even get crucified on the same day.

In Mark’s original Gospel story, the sequence of events is laid out very clearly, beginning a few days (at least two days) after Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem (11:1-11). Mark tells us it is the 13th of Nisan, “two days before the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread” (14:1). On this day, while the chief priests and scribes, outraged by his cleansing of the temple that week, plot against Jesus (14:1-2), Jesus is anointed by an unnamed woman at the house of Simon the leper (14:3-9), and then Judas goes to the priests and offers to betray Jesus to them (10-11). The next verse starts on 14 Nisan, as Mark 14:12 says: “Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they killed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him “Where do you want us to prepare, that you may eat the Passover?” This is the Day of Preparation for Passover. At sunset it becomes the new day, 15 Nisan, Passover itself. That evening they have a Passover meal, the Last Supper, go to the Garden of Gethsemane, Judas betrays him, he is arrested and his trial lasts all night. At dawn of Passover morning, the Sanhedrin session wraps up and he is led away to Pilate, where he is condemned and then crucified. Mark tells us exactly when this is: at “the third hour”, that is, 9 a.m. At the sixth hour, darkness covers the land, and at the ninth hour (3 pm) he dies. According to Mark (and Matthew and Luke, who copy him), Jesus dies on the afternoon of Passover, the 15th of Nisan.

Matthew and Luke follow Mark, but both take their own liberties with Mark’s storyline, making corrections and additions. For instance, Luke expands on the basic story considerably and gives us three different interrogations, two different episodes of identical mockery, a scourging, at least five different foot trips (one while carrying a cross uphill!), an exchange between the Governor and the city of Jerusalem, and a farewell speech from Jesus from Golgotha – all in three hours!

But John, as usual, completely breaks with the other Gospels. In his story, the Chief Priests and Pharisees (in real life, bitter political enemies, not co-conspirators) are not upset about Jesus driving the moneychangers from the temple - because John has that story take place three years earlier! Instead, in John, the motive for them plotting to kill Jesus is because he has raised Lazarus from the dead (11:1- 46). So he has stopped traveling openly and has been hiding out with his disciples in the remote wilderness hill town of Ephraim (11:54) - contrary to the Synoptics, who say during this same time he has been slowly making his way from the Galilee to Jerusalem (10:32 - 33) by way of Capernaum (9:33); the Jordan (10:1), Jericho (10:46), Bethphage and Bethany (11:1) - followed by multitudes of people! (10:1)

On the 9th of Nisan, “six days before the Passover,” Jesus comes to Bethany (12:1). Here, he is anointed by Mary, Lazarus’ sister, in Lazarus’ (Not Simon’s) house (12:1-8). The next day (12:12), 10 Nisan, Jesus makes his triumphant entry into Jerusalem (12:12-15) before huge crowds who have all come to see Jesus and the newly risen Lazarus (12:9-12). Days later, but before Passover (13:1), Jesus has a last dinner with his disciples. Jesus does not talk about the bread and wine being his body and blood (John’s Jesus already gave that speech in Galilee way back in chapter 6:53-56). Instead he washes the feet of his disciples. After dinner and 5 whole chapters (13 -17) of talk, he takes them to an unnamed garden past the Kidron brook (18:1). By then it is night (13:30). Judas arrives later that night and Jesus is arrested (18:2-11).

John has them take Jesus not to Caiaphas, but to his father-in-law Annas’ house (18:13). John also makes an interesting blunder here: He has Peter follow Jesus into the High Priest’s courtyard (18:15) and also has the High Priest (18:19) interrogating Jesus – all this before Jesus is taken to the High Priest! (18:24). And in John, Jesus is beaten at Annas’ house, not at Caiaphas’ house (18:24) then led off to the Praetorium (18:28) with no Sanhedrin trial at all. John tells us this is still before Passover (12:28). Jesus’ trial concludes and he is crucified at about the 6th hour (noon). And John finally tells us (three times) what day this is: The Preparation Day of the Passover, the 14th of Nisan (19:14, 31, 42). (It’s been 14 Nisan since dinner). According to John, Jesus dies on the afternoon of the Preparation Day of the Passover, the 14th of Nisan.

Incidentally, according to Jewish law, neither of these two conflicting scenarios is plausible. No trial would have been held either on the Day of the Passover (as Mark’s Gospel has it) or on the Day of Preparation for the Passover (as John’s Gospel claims), or even on the eve of either day. No matter whether you choose to believe the anonymous author of the Gospel of Mark, or the anonymous author of the Gospel of John, neither date works. To make matters worse, both Gospels claim Jesus was crucified on a Friday – even though Mark has Passover falling on a Friday, and John has Passover falling on a Thursday.

# 2 & #3 There are some Non-Christian and anti-christian witnesses. Phlegon, a historian who lived in the first century, wrote a history called Chronicles which was quoted by Julius Africanus, Origen, and Philopon. He recorded that in A.D. 32 there was a day that darkness caused by an eclipse occurred from the sixth to the ninth hour all over the world and that it was followed by a great earthquake.

I discuss Phlegon (and many other supposed “witnesses”) in NAILED. First, Phlegon was no eyewitness. He did not live in the first century; he wrote in the mid-second century c. 140. Third century monk Julian Africanus did cite him, but when we read what Phlegon actually wrote, he says absolutely nothing of Jesus, nor that the eclipse took place during a full moon (which would have been impossible at Passover), nor that it lasted three hours, nor that it occurred in Jerusalem, nor that it occurred during 33 AD, the alleged year of Jesus’ crucifixion - all of which Julian attributes to him! (Nor that it covered the entire world, as you claim. And if you think about eclipses, you quickly realize that a world-wide eclipse is impossible, anytime) And the earthquake Phlegon mentions did not take place in Jerusalem, but in the city of Nicaea, in Bithynia, over 600 miles away in Asia Minor.

And btw, do you really think that there was a mass resurrection of holy men in Jerusalem? And if so, that no one else in the world commented on it - not even the other Gospel writers?

#s4-5 This is not a disagreement. None of the gospels say “only Mary went.” Some just focus on the character that they felt was most important. If you study a harmony of the Gospels, these are describing different times (for the most part). And as before, one writer focused on the angel who spoke. To say, “there was an angel there.” Doesn’t mean that there couldn’t have been two.

This is typical apologetic tortured logic. Sorry, but when Mark says they came and saw an open tomb, and Matthew says they came and saw a closed tomb, that is a disagreement. When Mark says they went inside that open tomb and found a young man sitting inside on the right, but Matthew says an armed guard of Roman soldiers stood watch over the closed tomb before there was a great earthquake and an angel descends from heaven, his face blazing like lightning and his clothing white as snow; utterly terrifying the Roman guards who all faint dead away and then that angel rolls away the stone and sits on it, that is a disagreement.

And please keep in mind that there are many, many more discrepancies than just these - I didn’t even mention all the post-resurrection contradictions alone! - but it would take an entire encyclopedia (and it has, several of them) to list them all – these are just a sampling of some of the more blatant ones.

When you read each story, it’s painfully obvious that these are four different stories, and these gospels (and still more that didn’t make it into our bible) all stood on their own, in their own communities of early Christian believers, for decades before anyone ever even thought to combine them all in a collection. An artificial “harmony” of them is just a modern attempt to try and make them all match, but even that only creates a fifth story that no one ever had before. Besides, no gospel harmony has ever even come close to succeeding - the two conflicting nativity stories in Matthew and Luke alone are enough to stop that before it even gets started.

#s6-7 The women came to the tomb, which had already been opened by the angel who sat on the stone and terrified the guards. They saw the tomb empty and Mary fled to tell Peter that they took the body. Peter and John ran to the tomb. The women saw the two angels and one of them said that He is risen. He told them to go report it to Peter and the disciples, but they fled in fear and didn’t. John arrived and looked in, and then Peter arrived and ran inside. They saw the wrappings and left. Mary had returned as well and was weeping. She encounters Jesus, believing Him to be the gardener. She returned to the group and reported what she saw, and then the other women added what they saw as well. But the men did not believe. Two men encountered Jesus on the road to Emmaus, and returned to Jerusalem to report it to the group, who still did not accept it. Jesus then appeared in the room where they were meeting and convinced them. Only Thomas wasn’t there, so the met again the next Sunday and he didn’t believe until Jesus appeared again. After that He appeared to some of them while fishing and fed them. He also appeared to James at some point, but the Gospels don’t record this. It’s included in the early creed (dated to within 3 years of the events) found in 1Corinthians 15. They had been told to meet Him at a mountain in Galilee, and He appeared to them there and gave them the final words before He departed to Heaven.

I don’t want to be unkind, but here’s a perfect example of a failed harmony attempt. Halfway through your first sentence, you’ve already disagreed with Matthew, and the rest of the line conflicts with the other three gospels. The whole thing is just a messy hodgepodge crammed with everyone running back and forth like crazy, with so many dropped plot elements that you couldn’t make fit together. I think even you’d admit if nothing else, the whole attempt here sounds just a bit desperate. Read your new version here, then read any of the gospels and ask yourself if all this hubbub was what REALLY happened, would anyone have written their gospel the way they did? If you’re honest, I think you’ll have to say no.

#8 Mark 16:19 also mentions the ascension as well. Again, each of the writers focused on different details. Matthew clearly refers to the major events of the 40 days in summary. He never states that all of the events occurred in the same day.

I’m sorry, but you are completely wrong here on every point. As the majority of Biblical scholars have long recognized, everything after Mark 16:8 is a later interpolation. Mark 16:9-20 is one of at least three different ending tacked on to Mark, none of which appear in our oldest and most reliable manuscripts. To our best knowledge, the original author of Mark ended his gospel with the angel saying they should go to the Galilee, where they would see him (16:7) and the women running from the tomb in fear and never telling anyone what they saw (16:8).

I never claimed that Matthew said all those events occurred on the same day - that is what Luke says. Matthew follows Mark and has the angel (and somewhat redundantly, Jesus himself) tell the women that they will see him appear on a mountain in the Galilee (60-100 miles away from Jerusalem, incidentally). You claim “Matthew clearly refers to the major events of the 40 days in summary.” Really? Matthew says nothing of the kind. In fact he only says, and I quote: “Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them” (28:16).

As I said, it’s Luke who has all this happen on a single day (the longer ending to Mark also follows Luke, contradicting the genuine Mark who said Jesus would see them in Galilee). Don’t believe me? Read Luke 24 again: Jesus appears to them at dinner that same evening (24:1, 33-36), eats with them (24: 41-43) then after the meal he commands them - contrary to Matthew and Mark - to wait in Jerusalem (24:49) and takes them out to Bethany, where he promptly ascends to heaven (24:50-51).

#9 What is your evidence for any of this other than dogmatic the claims of other skeptics? John claims to be the writer of John (John 21:24). There is evidence that Matthew was written well before the close of the first century. There is outside evidence by other second century Christians that the gospels were written early, and by the four named writers. And just because the synoptics are similar, it is an assumption that they all borrowed from Mark. If they did, then why are there a few things in Mark NOT included in the others? Furthermore, none of the gospels contradict. They appear to be different eyewitness testimonies.

Let’s break this down.

1) What is your evidence for any of this other than dogmatic the claims of other skeptics?

What’s my evidence that the Gospels weren’t written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? It’s certainly not “the dogmatic claims of other skeptics” (as I think you meant to type). The majority opinion of all biblical scholars (Christian or not) is that the attributions on our four familiar gospels simply appear to be names added to them some time during the second century, long after they were written. Most scholars agree the Gospels and other writings used for reading in church at first existed without titles, until Christian communities acquired more than one and needed some way to tell them apart.

And this isn’t just opinion; but is well established by the evidence. For example, all were written in Koine Greek by educated Greek speakers; there never was an Aramaic or Hebrew original of Matthew, for instance, as some early church fathers claimed (besides, the apostles were supposed to be illiterate anyway, accord to Acts 4:13). In fact, some passages have Jesus saying puns that only work in Greek. The evidence is so well supported that this isn’t controversial at all. Even very conservative Christian scholars who do believe that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were actual historical figures recognize that they did not write the works that bear their names.

2) John claims to be the writer of John (John 21:24).

This is doubly wrong. First of all, the author of this Gospel never claims to be anyone named “John;” the apostle John never even appears in this gospel, let alone seems to be dictating it. (Besides, scholars have long recognized that John originally ended a chapter earlier, at John 20:31, so everything in chapter 21 is a later addition to begin with). The author claims the text is the work of the mysterious unnamed “disciple who Jesus loved.” No other Gospel even makes any mention of this unnamed disciple or his special bond with the savior, and even in this Gospel he only starts appearing towards the end of the story (13:23, 19:25-27), and usually one-upping Peter (see John 20:1-8, 21:7, 20-22)

You are right in that the Gospel ends by finally claiming the Beloved (though apparently not very modest) Disciple is its author – but the same line inadvertently hints that this was in reality written long after his time, by others: ”This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true.” (John 21: 24) So who was the Beloved Disciple really supposed to be? Several different candidates have been proposed, including Lazarus, who is said to be loved by Jesus (John 11:3, 5), and various other unnamed disciples who appear in John (1:35-40;18:15-16). No one really knows.

Of course this would never do for a Gospel’s author, and in the 2nd century, the Church finally solved the problem by declaring the author was the Apostle John, son of Zebedee. How did they know? Guesswork, actually. Clearly it had to be one of the three who was closest to Jesus in the other Gospels, so they narrowed it down to Peter, James, or his brother John. Since it wasn’t Peter, and James was supposed to have been killed early (Acts12:2), it could only be John. Christian tradition has generally attributed the fourth Gospel to him ever since. But since this gospel was written well in the second century (among other reasons), it couldn’t really be written by anyone from the alleged time of Jesus.

3) There is evidence that Matthew was written well before the close of the first century. There is outside evidence by other second century Christians that the gospels were written early, and by the four named writers.

First, I think you’re confusing Matthew with Mark, which was the first Gospel written and may well have been written shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70. I discuss the second century evidence in NAILED - there is no first century evidence for any Gospel - and how it points to a date after the war with Rome. Mark was not written any earlier than that, no matter how badly some apologists wish it was earlier. Scholars across the theological spectrum (though some still debate it) tend to agree that Matthew was written a decade or two after Mark. I’ve already discussed why we know the authors weren’t Matthew, Mark, Luke and John above - and again, that is not a controversial statement. Neither is this: Matthew and Luke each took Mark’s gospel, and reworked it for their own purposes. Biblical scholars call this Markan Priority, and this is not some radical controversial theory concocted by atheists; it has been the majority opinion of all Bible scholars for well over a century and one of the basic foundations of biblical scholarship.

4) And just because the synoptics are similar, it is an assumption that they all borrowed from Mark. If they did, then why are there a few things in Mark NOT included in the others?

The Synoptics are not similar - they are identical, except where they deliberately alter Mark’s text or add to it. This is not an assumption; it is the “Synoptic problem,” overwhelmingly acknowledged by biblical scholars for over 200 years. The authors of Matthew and Luke simply reworked an original story by “Mark,” a non-eyewitness who knows little or nothing about Judaism or the geography of Judea, and who appears to have written his Gospel decades after the events he describes, using various sources for his material, including midrash, classical Greek literature and philosophy, Jewish numerology, astrological motifs and sacred geometry. It also appears that he wrote it as an allegory, and fully expected his educated readers to recognize that.

“Matthew”, and later, “Luke” kept the outline and much of Mark’s material, (50% in Luke, a whopping 90% in Matthew) and simply padded it with additional material and fictional touches they came up with themselves. There are many cases of intercalation, which is when Mark arbitrarily switches scenes and then goes back to the action again. One way we catch Matthew and Luke copying Mark is when they follow these same personal touches of Mark themselves.

Matthew also corrects many of Mark’s mistakes about Judaism, Judean life, politics and geography, even repeated misquotes of scripture (unlike Luke, who fails to catch them and repeats Mark’s mistakes).

And where they aren’t copying Mark outright, Matt and Luke disagree completely with each other on even the most rudimentary information about Jesus. We can also demonstrate conclusively that Luke also borrowed freely from histories that Josephus completed after the year 93, so his Gospel could not have been written before that, and it’s probably much later; the most recent dates I’ve heard proposed are around the year 115 - 130. Needless to say, since Matthew and Luke are dependent on Mark, then their accounts of events cannot be considered independent testimony. So then for the events depicted in the Synoptic Gospels we have not three perspectives, but just one.

“John’s” Gospel, on the other hand, is totally different from the Synoptics in nearly every way from the other three, giving a different timeline of events and a different personality and theology to Jesus. And all four Gospels show signs of later editing: changing, snipping, or adding material to an evolving story. And as I pointed out in the quiz, for the first 200 - 300 years, we have very little or often nothing at all, to determine how faithfully any of the original New Testament writings were preserved at all.

5) Furthermore, none of the gospels contradict. They appear to be different eyewitness testimonies.

So...you admit a few things in Mark are NOT included in the others, but this isn’t a contradiction? How does that work? Actually, it doesn’t matter, because we’ve already seen several examples of contradiction: detailed reports that are in complete contradiction to one another - was Jesus in Judea often, going back and forth to Jerusalem before hiding out after raising Lazarus, as John says? Or did he travel to Judea and Jerusalem with a multitude of followers for the very first time a week or so before his death, as Mark says? In fact, the Gospels contradict each other everywhere from before Jesus’ birth to after his death, and everywhere in between. This doesn’t necessarily mean one of them might not be true, anyway, but there simply no way all of them can be.

What makes you say these appear to be eyewitness accounts? We all know apologists have long insisted they are, but none of these third person narratives appears to be anyone’s testimony. Take a look: they don’t just often contradict each other in detailed, convoluted and fundamental ways, they often get basics of first century Judea embarrassingly wrong, have historical mistakes, anachronistic mistakes, have omniscient narrators telling us what Mary thought or what angels told Joseph in dreams, or reporting things that no one could possibly know, like details of secret meetings of the Pharisees or the exact moment when Satan enters Judas’ heart.

Besides, none of them even claim to be eyewitness testimony - quite the opposite. The four Gospels were all originally written anonymously; none of them mention the name of their author. Only John’s Gospel even purports to be written by an anonymous disciple, and this claim has clearly been tacked on by a later editor. Luke is the only one to claim that he is writing history; He even claims that his is the ONLY Gospel out of many, many others, that is giving the real story, as handed down to him. And even this is demonstrably a total lie, since he hasn’t done any research; he’s only ripped off Matthew and Mark’s gospels, along with other material like Josephus’ history and the nativity story of John the Baptist from his cult’s scriptures, which was a rival to early Christianity for over a century. As I discuss in NAILED, he is crappy historian, even by ancient standards (although he’s a brilliant novelist!)

And all four gospels contain giveaways that they are being written long after the facts: Luke opens by telling us his story has been handed down to him (Luke 1:1-2) and Matthew lets it slip that he is writing long afterwards, such as when he described the cover-up of the resurrection, “this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day,” (Matt. 28:15) and the story of Judas’ field of blood (“Wherefore that field was called the field of blood, unto this day" Matt. 27:8).

And there are other indications that make this even more apparent, not least of which is that all four Gospels make clear allusions to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in the year 70, some four decades after their stories take place: Mark's "Little Apocalypse" in chapter 13 lists details that happened only after the war, not during the alleged lifetime of Jesus; The Parable of the Wedding Feast in Matthew and Luke (Matt. 22:2-14; Luke 14:16-24) and the statements in John 2:13-22 and 11:48 all presuppose the destruction of Jerusalem and the fall of the temple, and there are still several more instances where the Evangelists accidentally add elements to their tales that never could have occurred during the time they are depicting.

And of course, you are right on for #10. Resurrection day is better. The Roman Catholic church began calling it Easter much later.

Finally we agree on something!

***

Note to Christian: I don’t mean to come down to hard on you personally; you seem like a decent enough guy, but I have to say you’re repeating outdated apologetic misinformation that’s been stinking up the place for way too long. The facts simply aren’t what so many preachers and apologists have confidently been trumpeting for years, if not centuries. Which is why I wrote my book NAILED in the first place...

All the best,

-Dave Fitzgerald

April 25, 2011

The Ultimate Easter Quiz!

2011-04-25T15:13:00.000-07:00

1. When did Jesus get crucified?

a. At the 3rd Hour (9am), on Friday, the morning of Passover.

b. Shortly after the 6th Hour (noon), on Friday, the day before Passover.

c. He didn’t really get crucified, his identical twin Thomas Didymus did.

d. He didn’t really get crucified, he only appeared to be crucified.

e. We don’t know for sure, since the gospels disagree irreconcilably.

2. What supernatural events occurred at his death?

a. An earthquake hits Jerusalem (actually, two); strong enough to break stones.

b. Supernatural darkness covers all the land.

c. The sacred temple curtain spontaneously rips in half.

d. A mass resurrection of all the Jewish holy men, who crawl out of their graves

and appear to many in Jerusalem.

e. All of the above, depending on which Gospel you read.

3. What historical evidence do we have for those supernatural events?

a. Every major ancient writer of the time worldwide mentioned them.

b. Many important writers in Judea discuss them.

c. Several writers in Jerusalem mention them.

d. No one mentions them, but we do have archeological evidence for them.

e. There is not a single lick of evidence for any of them, written or otherwise.

4. How many women went to the tomb?

a. Three: Mary Magdalene, James’ mother and Salome.

b. Two: Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary.”

c. Lots: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, James’ mother Mary and other women.

d. Just one: Mary Magdalene.

e. No way to know, since none of the Gospels agree.

5. What did they find there?

a. A young man, sitting inside the tomb on the right.

b. Two men, standing inside.

c. Two angels sitting on each end of the bed.

d. An armed guard of Roman soldiers standing watch, when suddenly a great earthquake
occurs, and an angel descends from heaven, his face blazing like lightning and his clothing
white as snow; the Roman guards are utterly terrified and all faint dead away; the angel rolls
away the stone and sits on it.

e. No way to know, since none of the Gospels agree.

6. What happened after the visit to the tomb?

a. The women ran away in terror and never told anyone what they saw.

b. Jesus appears, is initially mistaken for the gardener, and then is tenderly reunited with Mary.

c. The women tell the disciples, who don’t believe them.

d. Peter runs and beats everyone to the tomb; or possibly gets beaten by one of the other disciples.

e. No way to know, since none of the Gospels agree.

7. Where/when did the risen Jesus first appear to the disciples?

a. On a mountain in the Galilee (60-100 miles from Jerusalem), just as the angel told them he would.

b. We don’t know; we aren’t told anything after the women run from the tomb.
c. He appears to two followers (not disciples) on the road to Emmaus (seven miles

from Jerusalem)

d. He materializes in a locked room in Jerusalem as the disciples are at dinner.

e. No way to know, since none of the Gospels agree.

8. When/Where did Jesus ascend back to heaven?

a. Jesus returns to heaven on the same day he arose, right after dinner, from a room in
Jerusalem.
b. We don’t know exactly, but it’s at least 8 days after the resurrection, when the despondent
apostles have gone back to being fishermen on the sea of Tiberias.
c. After his resurrection, Jesus spends at least 40 days of teaching his disciples in Jerusalem
before ascending to heaven from the Mt. of Olives.
d. Jesus didn’t ascend into heaven; he met his disciples in the mountains of Galilee and told
them he would be with them always.
e. We don’t really know; Luke is the only gospel writer who actually mentions the ascension.

9. Who wrote these gospels, anyway?

a. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John - I mean, come on, it says so right there.

b. Actually, none of the gospels even claim to be written by eyewitnesses - all

were originally anonymous and written at least a generation later.

c. Well, it’s more like the end of first century for Mark and sometime in the early to mid 2nd
century for the others, if you must know.
d. Hold on - Not only that, but Matthew and Luke just reworked Mark gospel, adding their own
material and tweaking Mark’s text to better fit what they thought it should say.

e. Get this - if all that weren’t enough, all the Gospels have been edited and added to by later editors, and

for the first 200 - 300 years, we have no way to determine how faithfully the originals were

preserved.

10. Where does the word “Easter” come from?

a. From the Aramaic word for Passover.

b. It originally was “Eastern Holiday” - referring to the Passover celebrated by

Jews in the eastern part of the Roman empire.

c. From est ova, Latin for “Where are the eggs?”

d. From an ancient Celtic pun that means both “Bunnies” and “Chocolate.”

e. from Eastre/Eostre, the pagan Goddess of Spring.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

ANSWERS

1. When did Jesus get crucified?

a. At the 3rd Hour (9am), on Friday, the morning of Passover.

b. Shortly after the 6th Hour (noon), on Friday, the day before Passover.

c. He didn’t really get crucified, his identical twin Thomas Didymus did.

d. He didn’t really get crucified, he only appeared to be crucified.

e. We don’t know for sure, since the gospels disagree irreconcilably.

Note: According to the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), Jesus was crucified at 9am on Passover; John insists it was in the afternoon the day before Passover. To make matters even worse, they all say this was on a Friday. Later Christian sects argued he was never crucified at all; it was just a spiritual ruse.

2. What supernatural events occurred at his death?

a. An earthquake hits Jerusalem (actually, two); strong enough to break stones.

b. Supernatural darkness covers all the land.

c. The sacred temple curtain spontaneously rips in half.

d. A mass resurrection of all the Jewish holy men, who crawl out of their graves

and appear to many in Jerusalem.

e. All of the above, depending on which Gospel you read.

3. What historical evidence do we have for those supernatural events?

a. Every major ancient writer of the time worldwide mentioned them.

b. Many important writers in Judea discuss them.

c. Several writers in Jerusalem mention them.

d. No one mentions them, but we do have archeological evidence for them.

e. There is not a single lick of evidence for any of them, written or otherwise.

Note: Incidentally, though we have no historical evidence for any of these spectacular events, oddly we do have historical accounts for much less interesting incidents including the antics of other, lesser, would-be messiahs during the same time period when the Gospels say Jesus’ fame was spreading like wildfire throughout Judea, Galilee, and beyond to the Decapolis and Syria.

4. How many women went to the tomb?

a. Three: Mary Magdalene, James’ mother and Salome.

b. Two: Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary.”

c. Lots: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, James’ mother Mary and other women.

d. Just one: Mary Magdalene.

e. No way to know, since none of the Gospels agree.

Note: a. Three: (according to Mark)

b. Two: (according to Matthew)

c. Lots: (according to Luke)

d. Just one: (according to John)

5. What did they find there?

a. A young man, sitting inside the tomb on the right.

b. Two men, standing inside.

c. Two angels sitting on each end of the bed.

d. An armed guard of Roman soldiers standing watch, when suddenly a great

earthquake occurs, and an angel descends from heaven, his face blazing like

lightning and his clothing white as snow; the Roman guards are utterly terrified and all faint dead away; the angel rolls away the stone and sits on it.

e. No way to know, since none of the Gospels agree.

Note: a. A young man: (according to Mark)

b. Two men: (according to Luke)

c. Two angels: (according to John)

d. Guards/Earthquake/Blazing Angel/Romans Terrified: (according to

Matthew)

6. What happened after the visit to the tomb?

a. The women ran away in terror and never told anyone what they saw.

b. Jesus appears, is initially mistaken for the gardener, and then is tenderly

reunited with Mary.

c. The women tell the disciples, who don’t believe them.

d. Peter runs and beats everyone to the tomb; or possibly gets beaten by one of the

other disciples.

e. No way to know, since none of the Gospels agree.

Note: The women running away in terror and never telling anyone is the original ending of Mark, which stopped at ch. 16, verse 8; the rest of the chapter was one of two endings which were added much later. John tells the story of Mary coming alone and mistaking Jesus for the gardener. Luke has the women run and tell the disbelieving disciples, but then has Peter change his mind and run to the tomb. John has Peter and “The Beloved Disciple” both run to the tomb, and has Peter lose the race - so obviously, the beloved disciple (who is supposed to be the real source of John’s Gospel) is the best.

7. Where/when did the risen Jesus first appear to the disciples?

a. On a mountain in the Galilee (60-100 miles from Jerusalem), just as the angel

told them he would.

b. We don’t know; we aren’t told anything after the women run from the tomb.

c. He appears to two followers (not disciples) on the road to Emmaus (seven miles

from Jerusalem)

d. He materializes in a locked room in Jerusalem as the disciples are at dinner.

e. No way to know, since none of the Gospels agree.

Note: Matthew has Jesus meet his disciples on a mountain in the Galilee. Mark’s gospel originally ended at the empty tomb with no appearance of Jesus. Later an ending based on Luke’s was added. Luke has Jesus appear first to Cleopas and another unnamed follower on the road to Emmaus before he appears to the disciples, which of course begs the question: Who the hell is Cleopas, and how does he rate? John, as we saw, has Jesus appear first to Mary before he magically interrupts the disciples’ supper - but not all of them; he has to come back a week later to convince Doubting Thomas.

8. When/Where did Jesus ascend back to heaven?

a. Jesus returns to heaven on the same day he arose, right after dinner, from a room in Jerusalem.

b. We don’t know exactly, but it’s at least 8 days after the resurrection, when the

despondent apostles have gone back to being fishermen on the sea of Tiberias.

c. After his resurrection, Jesus spends at least 40 days of teaching his disciples in Jerusalem before ascending to heaven from the Mt. of Olives.

d. Jesus didn’t ascend into heaven; he met his disciples in the mountains of Galilee and told them he would be with them always.

e. We don’t really know; by the way, Luke is the only gospel writer who

actually mentions the ascension.

Note: Mathew ends his gospel with Jesus still on the mountain in Galilee with his disciples. John ends with the disciples instead returning to being fishermen again, and Jesus appearing to them at the sea of Tiberias. Neither gospel mentions an ascension. Mark originally ended at 16:8 with no account of the ascension either, but the ending tacked on by later editors followed Luke and had him ascend right after dinner the same day of his resurrection, though Mark’s dinner takes place in Jerusalem and Luke’s in nearby Bethany. Strangely, Acts 1:9-12 (also written by the author of Luke) contradicts all four gospels by telling us Jesus was around for forty days (!) (with no reaction from the public or his enemies who executed him!) before he ascends to heaven from the Mt. of Olives.

9. Who wrote these gospels, anyway?

a. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John - I mean, come on, it says so right there.

b. Actually, none of the gospels even claim to be written by eyewitnesses - all

were originally anonymous and written at least a generation later.

c. Well, it’s more like the end of first century for Mark and sometime in the early

to mid 2nd century for the others, if you must know.

d. Hold on - Not only that, but Matthew and Luke just reworked Mark gospel,

adding their own material and tweaking Mark’s text to better fit what they thought

it should say.

e. Get this - if all that weren’t enough, all the Gospels have been edited and

added to by later editors, and for the first 200 - 300 years, we have no way to

determine how faithfully the originals were preserved.

Note: Technically all of these are true, except for a.

10. Where does the word “Easter” come from?

a. From the Aramaic word for Passover.

b. It originally was “Eastern Holiday” - referring to the Passover celebrated by

Jews in the eastern part of the Roman Empire.

c. From est ova, Latin for “Where are the eggs?”

d. From an ancient Celtic pun that means both “Bunnies” and “Chocolate.”

e. from Eastre/Eostre, the pagan Goddess of Spring

Note: Only e) is correct; The rest are pure lies. Fun fact: The goddess Eastre

(a.k.a. Eostre) may be a later variant of the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar/Astarte, though some scholars suspect the medieval St. Bede just made her up.

***

How did you do? Be sure to share it with your Christian friends and compare scores!

-DF

David Fitzgerald is (among other things) a historical researcher and the author of the new book NAILED: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All (recently voted one of the Top Five Atheist/Agnostic Books of 2010 by About.com)

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nailed-Ten-Christian-Myths-That-Show-Jesus-Never-Existed-At-All/105120489555633?v=wall

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/32505

Dialogue with Dr. James McGrath, part II

2011-01-12T14:25:00.001-08:00

Last post I responded to Butler University's Dr. James McGrath's critique of my talk on the Jesus Myth position at Skepticon. Today I was delighted to find a very thoughtful second response from him on his blog, which I'm happy to respond to below:
-DF

Dr. McGrath:

First of all, sincere thanks again for your kind words and timely response, both much appreciated. I was delighted to read your post this a.m. I also appreciate and completely agree with what you say here:

“Let me end by saying that you do indeed touch on a lot of points that are simply mainstream scholarship, and I am glad that you are seeking to bring that sort of information to a wider audience. But as someone who also has dedicated a lot of time to arguing against creationists, I can say that having individual details correct is not ultimately enough. It is possible to deal correctly and honestly with many details, and yet nevertheless incorporate them into a misleading or unpersuasive theoretical framework. I remain convinced that that is what you are doing with the matter of the historical figure of Jesus.”

As an Evolution advocate myself, I totally hear you. I’m the first to complain that much of what passes for Mythicist theory is completely baseless, based on outdated scholarship (or no scholarship!), honestly mistaken, and more often than not, just crackpot crap. And I have little respect for amateur historians - even speaking as one myself - because although I have a degree in history and consider myself fairly well-read on the subject, I’m all too aware of all the mistaken ideas and just plain wrong approaches that I made before I began running my ideas by professional historians like yourself. I’ve buried a graveyard’s worth of mistaken ideas, flawed assumptions, and unsupported facts that failed to make it into the book. But that said, what survived that crucible so far has endured subsequent critiques from historians. So I still maintain that the best points of the Mythicist position hold up under examination and at the very least deserves a second look from most historians. I hope a read through my book will at the very least provide you with good reasons to reconsider the strength of the theoretical framework, and perhaps expose some weaknesses of the traditional position, such as explaining not just the plurality of early, competing forms of Christianity, but the plurality of competing Christs, repeatedly attested to both in Paul’s epistles (2 Cor. 11:4, 13-15, 19-20, 22-23; Gal. 1:6-9, 2:4) and in the Gospels (Matt. 7:21-23, Mark 9:38, Luke: 9:49).

First of all, I want to stress that I don’t feel I’m completely bucking mainstream historical opinion, even if my ultimate point seems radical. I didn’t start out as a Mythicist, and it wasn’t until after coming across the arguments of many different historians that I became one. None (well, maybe three out of dozens and dozens) of the ideas I put forth in the book are original to me, but all have been made and accepted by recognized scholars across the theological spectrum. I would even say that most of the points raised are non-controversial, many even among evangelical apologists. For example, in addition to the scholars you mention, Bart Ehrman in particular is staunchly against the Mythicist position. But I find that his excellent work supports what I, and others in the Mythicist camp, argue at least as well (if not more so) as his own position that Jesus was merely a failed apocalyptic prophet. And if I come across as suggesting the entire historical mainstream is foolish for not seeing the same conclusions, I will temper that accordingly in future talks, because I certainly do not feel that way at all. I do want to lambast most apologists for the many foolish things they claim, deny, and try to weasel out of, but that’s a different matter...

I’m pleased to see you and I agree on more than I originally expected, which was nice surprise. But let’s discuss those points we don’t a little further.

* I’m with you that Luke-Acts is historical fiction (even though the author wants us to think it is 100% genuine history). But even when Acts seems to incorporate some genuine historical sources, such as the letter of Claudius Lysias to Governor Felix in 23:26-27, in ch. 6 of my book I discuss still more instances where anachronisms or historical impossibilities make it clear that he is fabricating events. And “Luke” has no qualms about completely altering even the events Paul corroborates (e.g. whitewashing over the antagonism between Paul and the church leaders at the Jerusalem Council); and Paul’s own account blatantly contradicts much of Luke outright. Several scholars have also noted Luke’s dependence on FJ’s Antiquities for myriad little historical touches (see esp. Steve Mason’s "Josephus and Luke-Acts," in Josephus and the New Testament (1992), pp. 185-229) and Luke’s general unreliability, even by ancient standards (cf. the citations of Richard Pervo and Richard Carrier on p.101 of my book).

When we get to his gospel, Luke shows his dependence on Mark (although again, he wants us to believe that his is the only real gospel out of all the many others) - and Mark’s original gospel has many indications that it is an allegory.

* Your quote from Augustine’s City of God is precisely that one I have in mind when I discuss Seneca the Younger. You’ll see Augustine notes that Judaism is one of other theological “superstitions” Seneca criticizes, but then tries unconvincingly to explain why Seneca “did not dare to mention” the Christians. It’s also odd that De Superstitio is one of the only works of Seneca’s that was not preserved out of over a hundred of his others.

* I take your point regarding Origen's mention of Josephus, though I still respectfully disagree for the reasons I mentioned previously. And I should add that there are many more reasons I cite that throw both of Josephus’s alleged mentions of Christ into question. Whatever one thinks of the overall thesis, I think the cases against both the Testimonium and James Reference (as I try to lay out in ch. 3) are entirely convincing.

* I do find (as have others before me) that 1 Corinthians 1:22-23 appears to contradict the Gospels:

“For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”

Paul says here that his crucified Christ provided no miraculous signs, and that this was a stumbling block to the Jews. But all four of the canonical Gospels not only have him doing many miraculous signs, but make it clear that his crucifixion and resurrection were powerful signs as well. John evens numbers them for us. And though Paul is not above bragging about his own miracles (Rom.15:19), and 2 Cor. 12:12 tells us they are the signs of legitimate apostles, Paul never makes mention of all the miracles Jesus did. Instead, he

strangely declares in the opening of the Kenosis Hymn (Phil. 2:7) that his Jesus “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men” (And there are other aspects of the Kenosis Hymn that are in more striking divergence from the Gospels’ Jesuses).

And even in this same passage from 1 Cor., we see remarks that imply that no one would have known about Jesus before he began to be proclaimed by preachers like Paul:

“For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.” (1 Cor. 1:21)

I spend ch. 8 discussing many such passages, and again, it is not just Paul who talks like this, but every pre-gospel Christian writing we have. No matter whether Paul and his generation thought that their Jesus had lived and died on earth some time in the past as an unknown figure (in order to fool the demonic archons of our world) or thought that he was a figure born in the shape of a man and crucified on a higher level of heaven (like the Jesus of the Ascension of Isaiah), or even from pure allegory or mythology, it seems very clear that the early believers got all their information about him from scriptural exegesis - since they are constantly telling us that Jesus performed everything according to the scriptures. When they talk about their early Jesus, they are describing a mythological figure. Even those rare points that could be interpreted easily as referring to a human Jesus are problematic when examined (as I discuss in ch. 8).

But when we come to the Gospels and Acts, this is completely reversed - everyone starts by preaching the human Jesus. And it’s important to note that we don’t have several different authors composing the earthly life of Jesus within a few decades - we have one author, Mark, who is writing a gospel, not a biography, packed with symbolism and allegory, and proclaiming Jesus like a mystery faith - just as Paul does. “Mark” writes his gospel sometime after the War with Rome, and we know that the later gospel writers build their gospels on his, putting their own theological spin upon it. By the time Docetism and other Gnostic ideas arrive, the Gospel story has already been mutating for years, if not decades.

***

From the get go, I grant that on the face of it, the Mythicist position can be a hard sell. But having honestly spent the last ten years reading all the perspectives I could on the Historicity question, when I look at not only the lack of contemporary evidence for Jesus, but the seeming explosion of both rival Christian movements and rival Christs, the fundamental differences between the Jesuses of the earliest generation of Christianity and those of the Post-Gospels, the myriad historical difficulties, implausibilities and impossibilities entailed in all of our Jesus stories and still more serious considerations, it becomes very difficult for me to accept that there even could have been a historical figure behind Jesus of Nazareth.

So that’s where I’m coming from.

This letter is already way too long, and yet still way too short to make the case I’d like you to consider. So, I’d just like to end by saying how much it would mean to me if you would reconsider giving the book a read and sharing your impression with me. I don’t think it’s the last word on the Mythicist position; indeed, I feel all its shortcomings very acutely, and I think the subject will covered much more ably defended by others in the future. But for all that, I think it has some important points to make, and at the very least perhaps you could help me argue them better, discard any that are flawed, and perhaps even change my mind on the whole thing. Or vice versa, even...

All the best,

-David Fitzgerald

Response to Dr. James McGrath

2011-01-09T16:08:00.000-08:00

As many of you already know, this past November I was a speaker at Skepticon 3 in Springfield, Missouri (and btw, if you can make it to this year's, you won't regret it - it's an awesome event!). My talk there was well-received, and you can hear it on Youtube here. Dr. James F. McGrath, a New Testament scholar at Butler University in Indianapolis heard it - and really hates it. You can read his post here. In a nutshell, he claims the talk is full of blatant errors and says nothing biblical scholars don't already know. While he does make some reasonable points, for the most part I disagree completely with what he has to say, and you can find my reasons why below. Since my response is too long for the comment field on his blog (and in case these issues are brought up by other critics) I'm posting it here.
-DF

Dr. McGrath, I had a chance to read your post this morning and first wanted to thank you for taking the time to review my brief talk at Skepticon; it pleases me there are points you found entertaining. I sincerely appreciate and welcome your corrections and comments, even if they are painful to hear. However I feel the need to respond as there are several points where I disagree with your assessment, and in some places it appears you’re operating under a misapprehension or are simply mistaken.

To begin, though I did preface my talk by apologizing for it being a quick and dirty intro to the subject, it appears one of your chief complaints is that the issues discussed are not sufficiently nuanced, and you are absolutely right; in this 45+ minute talk for a popular audience they certainly are not; as you saw, even this all-too-brief introduction ran out of time, with no time for unpacking every argument of a 245 page book, let alone discussing the finer points of historical-critical methodology. My new book, NAILED: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All, does discuss them in much greater depth, and also has references to additional scholarly reading for those who desire still deeper examination of the issues. And on the whole, NAILED has received an overwhelmingly positive response both from biblical historians and general readers.

Let me address a few of the items you consider factual errors: You say I get off to a “rough start” in listing a sampling of the more spectacular gospel events that are not corroborated by contemporary historians, though it appears you don’t actually take issue with my point I’m making there: that if any of these Gospel events actually occurred, it would be reasonable to expect mention of them in contemporary sources. You do echo recent criticisms of Bart Ehrman when you imply that I treat these serious problems as “dirty little secrets that scholars are hiding.” As he makes it clear in Jesus, Interrupted, scholars might well know these things, but the news certainly hasn’t percolated to the overwhelming rank and file of the public, believers or nonbelievers alike. Besides, most believers don't read the scholars you have in mind but listen to preachers and apologists and regard them as scholars instead (which is the reason for the conflation in my talk). I certainly know that NT scholars have been aware of these issues for generations, and I often say as much often, if not this particular time. And I certainly don’t make any claims that I’m the first or only commentator to bring them up.

Besides, your complaint that all this is “common knowledge to scholars” seems weirdly irrelevant. My talk is for an audience most of whom indeed don’t know all this, so it makes little sense to carp that I’m only communicating what scholars have already said, or that a talk relaying to the public what scholars say should be derided "because it isn't news." Surely you teach classes on these subjects - do you assume your students already know all these things?

You rightly note that we do not discount the historicity of ancient events simply because miracles are associated with them, and I want to make it clear I don’t discount Jesus’ historicity on any single point alone, let alone any a priori naturalist bias against miracles. I do say that elements on the scale of a mass resurrection of venerated Jewish holy men who emerge from their tombs and wander Jerusalem, appearing to many (Matt. 27: 52-53) can be safely rejected (without taking an “all or nothing” approach) since we have no corroboration from them in sources that discuss much less interesting Judean events during the same time without a word about earthquakes, angels or supernatural darkness.

At the risk of conflating the “Jesus of Faith” with the “Jesus of History,” I wanted to start out by addressing the problems that undermine the traditional image of Jesus, which I think is still important to bring up even though not strictly relevant to the historicity issue. That said, it isn’t just these blatantly mythological elements of the Gospels that are in question. As I discuss in the book, even the most basic elements of Christ’s life are problematic: Not just the dates associated with his life and ministry, but the identity of his disciples, details of his trial and crucifixion, his relationship to John the Baptist, and discrepancies between the evolving Christologies found in pre-Pauline elements (such as the Kenosis Hymn in Philippians 2:8-11) and Paul’s generation of believers and the later Gospels. All these and still other considerations are compounded by the uncontroversial scholarly consensus on the Synoptic problem and Markan Priority.

On top of this, there is the fact, ably demonstrated by numerous historians, including Arnold Ehrhardt, Thomas Brodie, Richard Carrier, Randel Helms, Dennis MacDonald, Jennifer Maclean and more, that Mark’s entire Gospel is a treasure trove of symbolic, rather than historical, meaning. Even the anonymous author of Mark tells us what he is doing right from the outset: he is writing a gospel, not a history or a biography (Mark 1:1). What’s more, he makes it clear that he is passing on the secret, sacred truths of a new mystery faith, the Mystery of the Kingdom of God:

“The Mystery of the Kingdom of God is given to you, but to those who are outside everything is produced in parables, so that when they watch they may see but not know, and when they listen they may hear but not understand, for otherwise they might turn themselves around and be forgiven.”

(Mark 4:11)

I am certainly not the first or only commentator to note that the first century is a particularly well-documented period. There is a wealth of extant writings from first century writers, and some mythicists (particularly John Remsberg) have gone overboard citing plenty of them without regard for motive. I was very careful to not include any who did not have good reason to mention Christ; even so there are many Roman and Jewish writers that meet the criteria. I list them along with the reasons they could have been expected to mention Christ, including Philo of Alexandria. For example, Seneca the Younger’s book On Superstition lambasts every known religion - including Judaism. But strangely, he makes no mention whatsoever of Christ or Christianity. This uncomfortable fact later made Augustine squirm in City of God (6.11) as he struggled to explain away Seneca’s glaring omission.

You rightly note that his older brother, Gallio, never mentions Jesus or Paul. That silence is remarkable, too - compounded by the fact that Gallio appears in Acts (18:12-17) as the magistrate who heard Paul's case and threw it out of court. If this were true, it’s curious that even in Acts, Gallio has never heard of Jesus. This makes no sense at all if Jesus was a recently executed famous miracle worker (let alone one who had returned from the dead and remained in Jerusalem for forty days, as Acts also says).

While I take your point about Justus of Tiberius (and incidentally, I do note in the book that only fragments of his writings survive, and that Photius complained about him in the 9th century) and do appreciate the caveat, I am not so quick to dismiss Photius’ comments entirely based solely on the hypothetical scenario you suggest. For one reason, we know that the early Church Fathers were eager for any trace of historical support for Jesus (even hostile), yet neither such an account from Justus or the Testimonium Flavianum appear in the writings of more than a dozen of these early Christian writers, including Justin Martyr, Theophilus Antiochenus, Melito of Sardis, Minucius Felix, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Julius Africanus, Pseudo-Justin, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, Methodius and Lactantius. And in any case, he is far from the only historian I cite in the book.

You claim I make several errors re: Josephus’ Testimonium Flavianum and the James Reference. This is another point which would be better served by you reading my book. In fact I spend an entire chapter discussing both of the passages in detail, also citing several historians, including Josephus scholar Michael Hardwick. As I point out, there is no debate that the Testimonium is a forgery; the only issue is over how much of it is a forgery. I give the relevant factors that point to it being a complete, not a partial, interpolation (Agapius’ 10th century Arabic Testimonium, and for that matter, the medieval Syriac Testimonium, notwithstanding), and even why the evidence points to Eusebius of Caesarea as the forger.

And with all respect, it is you who are mistaken about Origen. It is very clear that Origen had never heard of the Testimonium; in response to Celsus asking what miracles Jesus performed, Origen answers that Jesus’ life was indeed full of striking and miraculous events, “but from what other source can we can furnish an answer than from the Gospel narratives?” (Contra Celsum, 2.33) In the same book (in fact, the very same passage you allude to - 1.47), Origen even quotes from Antiquities of the Jews in order to prove the historical existence of John the Baptist, and after adding that Josephus didn’t believe in Jesus, does indeed criticize him for failing to mention Jesus in that book, saying that “he ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities befalling the people.” And the simple fact that Josephus was a Jew is sufficient to account for the fact that he did not believe in Jesus; it’s unnecessary to go further and posit some veiled reference to the Testimonium.

As I make clear in the book, the phrase tou legomenou Christou in the James reference is quite problematic, and I list several solid reasons why the passage makes no sense if Josephus is talking about the James who was head of the Jerusalem church, but makes perfect sense if he is talking about James, the brother of Jesus, son of Damneus - the Jesus who is actually mentioned in the paragraph. At any rate, this argument is hardly original to me: several prominent scholars have already argued the very same thing, and James Carleton Paget, one of the leading experts on the issue declares it unresolved on present evidence: I refer you to his "Some Observations on Josephus and Christianity," Journal of Theological Studies 52.2 (October 2001): 539-624 (pp. 546-54 treats the scholarship on this passage). Incidentally, as it turns out, it is also incorrect to say Origen provided evidence for the James Reference in the copy of Antiquities he knew (though several scholars besides you also maintain this). Richard Carrier has a paper in submission status proving this point, which I can forward to you if you wish to see it.

You are not quite correct when you say I turn to Colossians for what Paul thought about Jesus; those passages come from several NT writers, not just those of Paul (and/or the DeuteroPaulines, if one accepts them as such). And I strongly disagree that one needs to dismiss significant amounts of evidence to say that Paul’s Christ is not a historical figure. Nor does the suggestion that Paul’s epistles are only occasional writings, or writing to those who already know everything about Jesus explain the curious lapses - or the places where he outright contradicts all the various contradictory Gospel Jesuses, such as when he denies his Jesus performed any miracles (1 Cor. 1:22-23).

The “Silence of Paul” concerning basic aspects of Jesus’ life has long puzzled biblical scholars, and those few curious points where Paul could be interpreted as speaking about an earthly Jesus only make the contradictions between Paul’s Christ and the Gospels’ Jesus of Nazareth stand out - passages like his revelation of the Lord’s Supper and his list of “witnesses” to the risen Christ in 1 Corinthians, his uncharacteristic and anachronistic gloat in 1 Thess. 15-16, and his strange conflicts in Galatians with men we think of as Jesus’ family and disciples (but whom he dismisses as nobodies!) - again, I discuss all these in the book.

If I gave the impression that Gnosticism predates Christianity, I do need to temper that, though in certain parts of the Roman Empire, Gnostic, Marcionite and other forms of early Christian movements were in place before their orthodox counterparts took hold.

But like you, I don’t necessarily believe that Christian Gnosticism was the very earliest form of Christianity; I only discuss them to give a sense of the diverse spectrum of Christian thought in antiquity. Personally, I suspect we may never tease out just how complicated the interplay was between them. (I do find it fascinating to see how the Nag Hammadi’s pagan text Eugnostos the Blessed was preserved in the process of being turned into a Christian text, the Sophia of Jesus Christ, hinting at a very intermeshed and long-term relationship with Gnosticism)

Your contention that I (and others) “misuse Midrash" is curious; you seem to be objecting that Jews didn't create new figures from old stories at all, when of course the Talmud is full of midrashic aggadah (e.g. The Book of Tobit). On the other hand, if you’re arguing that the Gospels don’t contain aggadic midrash, then I have to disagree with you, and would refer you to Randel Helms’ Gospel Fictions or Thomas Brodie’s Birthing of the New Testament; cf. Richard Pervo’s Mystery of Acts, which demonstrates that even Acts at times slips into aggadic midrash of the Gospels themselves. (Or are you merely advising that the NT usage is not midrash per se, but should be termed aggadic midrash or midrashic aggadah to distinguish it from halakha midrashim? If so, point granted)

Lastly, the quick and dirty intro talk is just that - all the weightier historical considerations such as various forms of historical criteria, redaction criticism (particularly in the case of the Synoptics, John’s Gospel, and Acts), the state of the manuscript evidence, evolving Christologies, textual analysis, etc. all had to wait for the book. And none of this book was created in a vacuum; As noted in the book, I did research from all across the theological spectrum for years, and the final product has been discussed, debated and peer-reviewed by several historians, both classical and biblical. Though my ultimate conclusion may strike many as radical, much of what I argue is not especially controversial and is accepted general historical consensus. I can’t guarantee that you’ll like the book or its conclusions any better than my talk, but I do hold out hope, and in any case, again, I would sincerely welcome further input from you.

All the best,

David Fitzgerald

NAILED now available!

2010-12-21T12:53:00.000-08:00

After ten years of research, writing and revisions, David's book NAILED: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All is published and available. We're celebrating by finally putting up another post, the second in the five years since this blog was created! David promises to be more timely in his posting from this point forward.

Why would anyone think Jesus never existed? Isn’t it perfectly reasonable to accept that he was a real first century figure, even if not some divine messiah? As it turns out, no. Nailed sheds light on ten beloved Christian myths, and with evidence gathered from historians all across the theological spectrum, shows how they point to a Jesus Christ created solely through allegorical alchemy of hope and imagination; a messiah transformed from a purely literary, theological construct into the familiar figure of Jesus – in short, a purely mythic Christ.

PRAISE FOR DAVID FITZGERALD'S: Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All:

“Fitzgerald’s is possibly the best ‘capsule summary’ of the mythicist case I’ve ever encountered …with an interesting and accessible approach.”
—Earl Doherty, author of The Jesus Puzzle

“Fitzgerald summarizes a great number of key arguments concisely and with new power and original spin. I really learned something from him. Recalls classical skeptics and biblical critics. A surprising amount of new material.”
—Robert M. Price, author of Deconstructing Jesus and The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man

“David Fitzgerald reveals himself to be the brightest new star in the firmament of scholars who deny historical reality to “Jesus of Nazareth.” His brilliance would have been sufficiently established had he done nothing more than illustrate and explain traditional arguments with a clarity and transparency never achieved by us old-timers. But he has done more. He has developed new arguments and insights as well...”
—Frank R. Zindler, editor of American Atheist Press and author of The Jesus the Jews Never Knew

“Fitzgerald has hit the nail on the head…A nice, readable introduction to the top ten problems typically swept under the rug by anyone insisting it's crazy even to suspect Jesus might not have existed.”
—Richard C. Carrier, Ph.D., author of Not the Impossible Faith: Why Christianity Didn’t Need a Miracle to Succeed and the forthcoming book On the Historicity of Jesus Christ

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

David Fitzgerald is a writer and historical researcher who has been actively investigating the Historical Jesus question for over ten years. He has a degree in History and was an associate member of CSER, the former Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion. He lectures around the country at universities and national secular events and is best known for his popular multimedia presentation "The Ten Thousand Christs and the Evaporating Jesus."

NAILED is now available on Amazon, Amazon.UK, Barnes & Noble and other fine online book retailers:
Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/235sqeb
Amazon.UK: http://tinyurl.com/2c4wosj
Barnes & Noble: http://tinyurl.com/2fxsuth

Available in all major e-formats (Kindle, nook, etc) at: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/32505

My Blog

2005-12-01T16:20:00.000-08:00

Hi all!
Where's Dave been? I've been locked away, hard at work turning my multimedia presentation The 10,000 Christs and the Evaporating Jesus into a full-fledged book and DVD, except for the occaisonal speaking engagement. In the meantime, all you 10K Christ fans out there can keep up with new developments and future 10K Christs events here.

FAQS:

I just got here. Did you say The 10,000 Christs and the Evaporating Jesus- what is that?
The 10,000 Christs and the Evaporating Jesus (10K Christs for short) is a multimedia investigation of the historical evidence for Jesus Christ. It's more fun than it sounds. It asks "What can we know about the real Jesus? Can we even be sure there was a historical Jesus? And if not, how could this huge enchillada called Christianity have ever come about?" I like to call it a thoughtful and slightly smart-assed examination of the historical evidence for Jesus. It sheds light on the origins on Christianity, including some of the lesser-known saints and scoundrals who helped bring us the Christian scriptures. The audience responses have been tremendous.

When can I see it?
10K Christs was a big hit at American Atheists' national convention last month in San Antonio, TX. Thanks to everyone there who had such nice things to say about it!

January 8, 2006 -Atheists & Other Freethinkers, Sacramento, CA
March 25 -San Francisco Atheists, San Francisco, CA
April 16 -American Atheists National Convention, San Antonio, TX

Upcoming 10K Christ Events:

June 4 The Humanist Forum, Palo Alto
The 10,000 Christs and the Evaporating Jesus. See www.humanists.org for details.

June 24th - West Coast Regional Atheist Meet (Crowne Plaza Hotel San Francisco Mid-Peninsula, Foster City)
I'll be part of a panel discussion called "Jesus 2006: Strange New Wrinkles & Weird Old Theories on Jesus." My co-panelists will be Columbia historian Richard Carrier and Bay Area writer Don Havis. For more details, check out the SF Atheists website: www.sfatheists.com

(FAll 2006) TBA - Personal Theology Seminar Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley

Stay tuned! More to come...

Yours in Christs,
-D