This year the day’s fun spans Sunday October 11 (2015), 10:30am-6:30pm, at the Capitol, in Sacramento (California). Details here. (Including schedule, appearing guests, amenities, tabling opportunities, and more.) Special guests include Mandisa Thomas, Jason Torpy, Chris Johnson, Sunday Assembly, and more. Lyz Lidell (of the Secular Student Alliance) and Amanda Metskas (of Camp Quest) will be talking about the amazing things their orgs are doing. Greta Christina will be tabling. As will Brendan Powell Smith, creator of the brilliant Brick Bible. Atheist poets will be charming the crowds. And again more.
The always fun VIP reception will be the night before, 7-10pm (Saturday, October 10), so donate big to get in on that, too. It’s not just fun. VIP funding helps make the event possible.
I’ll be at both. Sunday I’ll make an appearance on the author’s panel, but I’ll also be tabling all day, selling and signing books and just chatting and answering questions. Come on down and check it all out! Have a good time! And help us celebrate and support the public image of freethought in the state capital!
There’s nothing inherently improbable in the idea that Christianity started out as a cult worshiping a celestial being, or that the “Jesus stories” were simply “made up” to support “political” or “social ethic” ideals. Serapis (Σέραπις, Attic/Ionian Greek) or Sarapis (Σάραπις, Doric Greek), for example, was invented as a Graeco-Egyptian god. The Cult of Serapis was introduced during the 3rd century BC on the orders of Ptolemy I of Egypt as a means to unify the Greeks and Egyptians in his realm.
If you would like to read my thoughts on the topic, they can be found in the comments section of this blog post on Vridar: http://vridar.org/2015/09/21/comments-open/
What is the case for the historicity of Jesus?
(1) Regarding the historicity of Jesus, the only two events subject to “almost universal assent” among New Testament Scholars are that (A) Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and (B) was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate. (A) can somewhat be put into dispute because the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist seems to serve a theological function, and so can’t be traced back to the historical Jesus: Mark immediately interprets John the Baptist as a forerunner of the Messiah (a la Elijah in II Kings 1:8). Mark then clothes John similar to Elijah (Mark 1:6. II Kings 1:8.). He then says John ate locusts and wild honey,the food of the wilderness in which Elijah lived (and so on and so on). And it would make sense Mark would model John the Baptist on Elijah because Mark says “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ ; as it is written in the prophets.” And, as Price argues:
“Jesus’ Baptism ( Mark 1:9-11)
The scene has received vivid midrashic coloring. The heavenly voice (bath qol) speaks a conflation of three scriptural passages. “You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11) combines bits and pieces of Psalm 2:7, the divine coronation decree, “You are my son. Today I have begotten you;” Isaiah 42:1, the blessing on the returning Exiles, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights;” and Genesis 22:12 (LXX), where the heavenly voices bids Abraham to sacrifice his “beloved son.” And as William R. Stegner points out, Mark may have in mind a Targumic tradition whereby Isaac, bound on the altar, looks up into heaven and sees the heavens opened with angels and the Shekinah of God, a voice proclaiming, “Behold, two chosen ones, etc.” There is even the note that the willingness of Isaac to be slain may serve to atone for Israel’s sins. Here is abundant symbolism making Jesus king, servant, and atoning sacrifice. In view of parallels elsewhere between John and Jesus on the one hand and Elijah and Elisha on the other, some (Miller) also see in the Jordan baptism and the endowment with the spirit a repetition of 2 Kings 2, where, near the Jordan, Elijah bequeaths a double portion of his own miracle-working spirit to Elisha, who henceforth functions as his successor and superior.”
(B) can somewhat be put into dispute because Paul says Jesus died “According to scripture (1 Cor 15:3),” which could either mean that (i) Jesus’s crucifixion was fulfilling scripture, or (ii) that Paul discovered Jesus’ crucifixion through an allegorical reading of Hebrew scriptures. In either case Jesus’ crucifixion in Paul serves a theological function, so it can be doubted as to whether it can be traced back to the historical Jesus. Paul also doesn’t mention Pilate, so this may be a Markan invention.
(2) Elements whose historical authenticity is almost universally disputed include the two accounts of the Nativity of Jesus, the miraculous events including the resurrection, and details about the crucifixion (because of the apparent exegetical use of Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 by Mark to construct the crucifixion narrative).
Any thoughts on if there are any indisputable data we have about the historical Jesus?
Nothing indisputable. All dubious in fact. There are certainly connections between the theology of Jesus and Isaac. Other scholars have noted this. I discuss these things in OHJ. But whether that presents in the Baptist tale I haven’t examined. I only discuss the general issues scholars have noted as to why the Baptist tale is actually a convenience and is the opposite of embarrassing. That’s covered in Proving History.
Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist is generally considered to be historical fact because it meets the criterion of embarrassment. However, historical minimalists point out that just because Jesus’ baptism was embarrassing for later gospel writers, we have no reason to think it was embarrassing to Mark. In fact, Miller has argued the Markan baptism pericope may be making a theological point, relating Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan and the endowment with the spirit to a repetition of 2 Kings 2, where, near the Jordan, Elijah bequeaths a double portion of his own miracle-working spirit to Elisha, who henceforth functions as his successor and superior.
That’s an intriguing idea that would enhance the others in the literature I already enumerate and cite in Proving History, pp. 145-48.
In terms of Josephus’ TF:
(1) Mythicists seem to have a point because When Ehrman reconstructs Josephus on page 61 of “Did Jesus Exist”, he takes out the word “messiah” as an interpolation and has, in part, “At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man … And up until this very day the tribe of Christians, named after him, has not died out.”
Why would Josephus say a tribe of “Christians” were named after “Jesus?” That makes no sense. There should be no connection in Josephus’ mind between the Word “Jesus” and the word “Christian.” The word “Christian” is named after “Christ.” And “Christ” shouldn’t be here in Josephus. So there may be good reason to argue the last line is an interpolation. Christians are named after Christ, not Jesus.
(2) However, as historicist Dr. James McGrath points out even before we had Agapius’ version of the Testimonium Flavianum, some suspected that, rather than “He was the Christ” being an interpolation in its entirety, the original may have read “He was called/said to be Christ” or something along those lines. The later mention of James as the “brother of Jesus called Christ” would also fit well with this.
(1) is correct reasoning. You are right. Ehrman failed at logic 101.
(2) is moot reasoning, since we know the Arabic of Agapius derives from Eusebius, via a later Syriac edition, and thus “he was believed to be” is a later emendation and not an early form of the text. See On the Historicity of Jesus, pp. 336-37, esp. w. n. 88 where I show that proposing the sequence the other way around requires the most improbable conspiracy theory, to alter three different manuscript traditions, and not just three manuscripts but all existing manuscripts of all three texts—that of the Jewish Antiquities, the Historia Ecclesiastica, and the Praeparatio Evangelica—when we know a single alteration in a single later Syriac manuscript explains all the evidence without any such astronomical improbability. So we know Eusebius had no knowledge of a “believed to be” being in the text.
On the rest, see OHJ, Ch. 8.9.
In terms of the influence of the Greeks on The New Testament, Vridar just did a post on me: http://vridar.org/2015/09/27/new-testament-in-the-greek-literary-matrix/#more-62350 . I’m famous! Any autographs will be $ 10.00 – lol
if you click on the link you need to scroll up to the top of the page.
If you want to read a juicy conspiracy theory, click through to the comment section for my original post here: http://vridar.org/2015/09/21/comments-open/#comment-73290