It's never a shock when the hate site Alternet has a piece of anti-Christian junk on it, it has a stable of writers who write little else or make it a mainstay of their career as alleged journalists, Amanda Marcott, Greta Christina and the frequently fact-challenged Valerie Tarico are just a few names that spring to mind. Tarico has a piece reposted at that other locus of such hate talk, Salon, in the ever silly struggle to convince the mid to low brow audience for such stuff that Jesus never existed. She is so ham handed a researcher that it doesn't take many words into it to find that out.
Most antiquities scholars think that the New Testament gospels are “mythologized history.” In other words, they think that around the start of the first century a controversial Jewish rabbi named Yeshua ben Yosef gathered a following and his life and teachings provided the seed that grew into Christianity.
At the same time, these scholars acknowledge that many Bible stories like the virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, and women at the tomb borrow and rework mythic themes that were common in the Ancient Near East, much the way that screenwriters base new movies on old familiar tropes or plot elements. In this view, a “historical Jesus” became mythologized.
For over 200 years, a wide ranging array of theologians and historians—most of them Christian—analyzed ancient texts, both those that made it into the Bible and those that didn’t, in attempts to excavate the man behind the myth. Several current or recent bestsellers take this approach, distilling the scholarship for a popular audience. Familiar titles include Zealotby Reza Aslan and How Jesus Became Godby Bart Ehrman.
Good old Bart Ehrman, one of the favorites of the internet religion bashers, I suspect because they saw him on TV or heard him on Terri Gross, not because they actually read anything he wrote. Though I suspect a lot of them merely read what other atheists, online said about him, such is the level of scholarly activity which is the basis of much of internet culture, especially neo-atheism.
But if they did bother to read what Ehman said in an article posted at Huffington Post, they'd find he, himself, dismisses the rest of Tarico's assertions in her article.
In a society in which people still claim the Holocaust did not happen, and in which there are resounding claims that the American president is, in fact, a Muslim born on foreign soil, is it any surprise to learn that the greatest figure in the history of Western civilization, the man on whom the most powerful and influential social, political, economic, cultural and religious institution in the world -- the Christian church -- was built, the man worshipped, literally, by billions of people today -- is it any surprise to hear that Jesus never even existed?
That is the claim made by a small but growing cadre of (published ) writers, bloggers and Internet junkies who call themselves mythicists. This unusually vociferous group of nay-sayers maintains that Jesus is a myth invented for nefarious (or altruistic) purposes by the early Christians who modeled their savior along the lines of pagan divine men who, it is alleged, were also born of a virgin on Dec. 25, who also did miracles, who also died as an atonement for sin and were then raised from the dead.
Few of these mythicists are actually scholars trained in ancient history, religion, biblical studies or any cognate field, let alone in the ancient languages generally thought to matter for those who want to say something with any degree of authority about a Jewish teacher who (allegedly) lived in first-century Palestine. There are a couple of exceptions: of the hundreds -- thousands? -- of mythicists, two (to my knowledge) actually have Ph.D. credentials in relevant fields of study. But even taking these into account, there is not a single mythicist who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics at any accredited institution of higher learning in the Western world. And it is no wonder why. These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology.
Why then is the mythicist movement growing, with advocates so confident of their views and vocal -- even articulate -- in their denunciation of the radical idea that Jesus actually existed? It is, in no small part, because these deniers of Jesus are at the same time denouncers of religion -- a breed of human now very much in vogue. And what better way to malign the religious views of the vast majority of religious persons in the western world, which remains, despite everything, overwhelmingly Christian, than to claim that the historical founder of their religion was in fact the figment of his followers' imagination?
The view, however, founders on its own premises. The reality -- sad or salutary -- is that Jesus was real. And that is the subject of my new book, "Did Jesus Exist?"
So, what does Tarico do to support her case that there are 5 good reasons to believe Jesus never existed? She sites David Fitzgerald, incoherently contradicting her first paragraph.
The notion that Jesus never existed is a minority position. Of course it is! says David Fitzgerald, author of Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All.For centuries all serious scholars of Christianity were Christians themselves, and modern secular scholars lean heavily on the groundwork that they laid in collecting, preserving, and analyzing ancient texts. Even today most secular scholars come out of a religious background, and many operate by default under historical presumptions of their former faith.
And what expertise does David Fitzgerald bring to the discussion of these ancient texts and the historical and social milieu from which we have them? His Amazon.com bio says:
David Fitzgerald is an atheist activist, historical researcher, writer and national public speaker. He was the co-founder & director of the world's first Atheist Film Festival and San Francisco's oldest annual Darwin Day celebration, "Evolutionpalooza!"
Today he works for the Secular Student Alliance and co-runs The Godless Perverts Story Hour. He is also author of "NAILED: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All" and "The Complete Heretic's Guide to Western Religion" series.
Oh, yeah, I can see how someone who is a professional atheist-religion basher is credible even though he apparently lacks ANY academic credentials relevant to the field. And that is an accurate description of him, he works for the CFI, probably the biggest of the alphabet soup of religion bashing groups started by Paul Kurtz, and the Secular Student Alliance, which is pretty funny because he was born in 1964. Apparently "secular students" can't be trusted to speak for themselves and run an organization.
She mentions a movie, "Zeitgeist" made, not by a scholar but by Peter Joseph, someone who worked in advertising and as a private equity trader on Wall Street, which she credits for introducing millions to the idea that Jesus was a myth, though she admits it was flawed. She credits Fitzgerald with correcting those. As an aside, apparently another of Joseph's interests is the boring, stupid, childish, brainless, metal band, Black Sabbath.
Tarico does, actually, mention two people with actual credentials, Richard Carrier and Robert Price, perhaps the two mythicists with credentials who Ehrman referred to as being the outliers in both academic opinion on the question and in the field of Christian bashers which is full of people who don't have any idea what they're talking about.
Oddly, considering his declaration that Jesus was real, Tarico enlists Ehrman to make her first of five claims that support her contention.
1. No first century secular evidence whatsoever exists to support the actuality of Yeshua ben Yosef. In the words of Bart Ehrman: “What sorts of things do pagan authors from the time of Jesus have to say about him? Nothing. As odd as it may seem, there is no mention of Jesus at all by any of his pagan contemporaries. There are no birth records, no trial transcripts, no death certificates; there are no expressions of interest, no heated slanders, no passing references – nothing. In fact, if we broaden our field of concern to the years after his death – even if we include the entire first century of the Common Era – there is not so much as a solitary reference to Jesus in any non-Christian, non-Jewish source of any kind. I should stress that we do have a large number of documents from the time – the writings of poets, philosophers, historians, scientists, and government officials, for example, not to mention the large collection of surviving inscriptions on stone and private letters and legal documents on papyrus. In none of this vast array of surviving writings is Jesus’ name ever so much as mentioned.” (pp. 56-57)
Which is a rather ridiculous "proof" that a destitute Jewish peasant preacher, preaching to Jews in a backwater of the Roman occupied territory didn't exist, that "secular" writers didn't mention him. I would bet there are all kinds of such preachers around today who are entirely ignored by people outside of their own movement and that's with mass communication and the explosion of literacy. Some scholars doubt that Jesus or his followers were literate, though I don't know what they base that on. As is frequently pointed out in this context, there is no contemporary mention of Socrates outside of a tight circle of Athenian intellectuals until well after his death. Two of his students and Aristophanes, I believe, are the only ones to mention him. And certainly Plato and Aristophanes had their own axes to grind, no doubt aspects of the man they didn't include. Plato presents him as never having argued with much of anyone but fools. Yet I am pretty sure that few atheists, especially those who claim him as one of theirs would tolerate anyone claiming he didn't exist.
And the idea of "secular evidence" in the early 1st century AD* seems to me entirely anachronistic. I doubt there was any concept of "secularism" back then. The word "secular" apparently dates from the 14th century and, in the way Tarico uses it, it would seem to be a concept invented by mid 19th century Brits.
But, then, Tarico's concept of history is rife with anachronistic conceptions and expectations, like that of pretty much all but those who take the most exigent of means to sift those out from how the people at the time are likely to have thought and written. The view of history from after two thousand years is full of opportunities to even unconsciously impose ideas and thinking on people back then which they not only likely didn't have but almost certainly couldn't have. Ideas come into being in time, concepts and expectations, as well. And that's not to mention that atheists making religion bashing a career are as likely to create such distortions of historical times and texts as those promoting religion. And, in the popular press, with no kind of academic discipline and review entering into it. No penalty to be paid for lying. To fault the Gospels and the various other writings about Jesus on the basis of the modern concepts of biography and history are absurd but widespread, especially among atheists and especially among online atheists of the kind who get posted by Alternet and Salon. And that pretty much covers the rest of her four "reasons", which are not really reasons but assertions supporting her professional shtick as a pseudo-journalist.
* I use BCE and CE to annoy the kind of people who find those anoying, I use BC and AD to annoy other people. Who says I'm not even handed?
PS. I do find it amusing to see how Alternet alternates its hatred of Christians with having to deal with the popularity of Pope Francis. I also notice that even their regular readers apparently are getting tired of the religion bashing, if their side bar of most read stories is anything to go by. But then, I don't look at the thing much anymore. No more than I look at World Nuts Daily or Clown Hall, and for the same reason.
Update: I was tempted to post the Youtube of David Fitzgerald's Godless Perverts story telling but I really can't encourage my readers to waste a quarter of an hour of their lives. OK, I suppose it falls under the category of research. Erotic it ain't, funny, less so. Seeing him, though, I do think it's pretty funny for a 50s something, dumpy guy in a kilt to be billed as hot. And he sounds ever so much like how a 12-year-old boy who has just discovered sex imagins a woman thinks. Apparently my suspicion that San Francisco is a concentration of men with Peter Pan complex has some evidence to support it, contrary to stereotype not even most of them gay. And this is the guy who Tarico cites as a reliable scholar. Such are the standards of contemporary atheism.
Sometimes the "minority position" is simply wrong. This is one of those times.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that Jesus of Nazareth is an historical fiction is the favorite hobby horse of the ignorant who, unencumbered with knowledge, are convinced they know better than scholars who spend their lives on this work. Many of those scholars, btw, are atheists (I think Erhman considers himself one), or Jewish; they have no "axe to grind," IOW, in determining there was a Jesus of Nazareth.
These "critics" are people who couldn't find their ass with both hands and a flashlight. Of course they flourish on-line. That's the new location of the back fence, where any kind of gossip is regarded as historical fact.
The big difference being that people who gossiped over back fences often were engaged in some useful activity, hanging out the laundry, weeding the garden, etc. Online babblers babble. I think online "journalism" has outdone the cabloids in lowering the quality of discourse, especially those who include unmoderated comment threads. I think if Alternet and Salon disappeared yesterday the quality of intellectual discourse on the left would not be harmed.
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