I mentioned a couple days ago the John Tors travesty, an outraged attempt to “rebut” the Macleans article questioning the historicity of Jesus. His ignorance is only exceeded by his arrogance. And it’s all just so sad to behold. Anyway, I promised an annotated commentary. Here you go…

-:-

An elaborate rebuttal to the Macleans article was published by John Tors, a Christian apologist who threw up a raving verbose bucket of fundamentalism that isn’t even worth an in-depth rebuttal. But for everyone’s benefit, I shall give you an annotated commentary, stating the fallacy committed, error made—or mainstream source or the chapter numbers in Proving History (PH) or On the Historicity of Jesus (OHJ) or Not the Impossible Faith (NIF) or Hitler Homer Bible Christ, where the claim is already refuted (again, these guys can’t be bothered to actually respond to what’s actually in my book).

• “[Bethune]…invariably [relies on] one-sided regurgitations of the assertions of liberal scholars with little or no opportunity given to conservative scholars…” : Translation: “[Bethune]…invariably relies on mainstream scholarship and doesn’t take fundamentalists seriously…”
• “The authors of the Gospel books are all identified in their titles.”  : Nope. OHJ 7.4.
• “We have the authorships confirmed by early Christian writers who were in a position to know, men such as Papias…” : Nope. OHJ 8.7.
• “We do not have such extensive corroboration for any other historical work from ancient times.” : Pliny the Younger directly attests as an eyewitness to his father’s authorship of the Natural History and Tacitus’s authorship of the Histories. Nothing of the kind exists for the Gospels. And most manuscripts of most ancient books actually identify their authors in their titles (as the Gospels actually do not; see above) and in many of those the authors even identify themselves in the text, and discuss who they are and when they wrote. Nothing of the kind exists for the Gospels.
• “In fact, the Gospel books comprise two direct eyewitness testimonies by two apostles, Matthew and John” : Nope. OHJ 8.7 and 10.7.
• “A third, Mark, would be accepted in a US. Court of Law as the direct eyewitness testimony of the apostle Peter.” : Nope.
• “Luke, the author of the remaining Gospel book, tells us that his account is based on data ‘just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us’ (Luke 1:2)” : Nope. NIF 7.
• “Nor were these Gospel books ’written decades after [Jesus’] death,’ as Bethune blithely asserts.” [Proceeds to make up a bunch of bogus and ridiculous dates for them based on tinfoil hat fundamentalism] : Try reading a mainstream college textbook.  (Funny as hell, he attaches a lengthy appendix listing and complaining about the fact that nearly all the Evangelical Christian scholars also agree with the mainstream dates he opposes! He doesn’t get the irony. Who here is the fringe weirdo again?)
• “…by men who emphasized that they were writing what they had personally seen…” : Nope. Mark and Matthew say no such thing (and Matthew can’t have done so, as he just copied Mark). Luke and John explicitly deny it (the authors of John say they used a written source by someone else…who didn’t exist: OHJ 10.7; Luke says he used only written sources, none of which he names, but one of whom we know is Mark, and the other probably Matthew; But Luke identifies none of his sources, and identifies none of their authors as an eyewitness: NIF 7 and OHJ 9.
• “This constitutes better and more certain documentation for the events of the career of Jesus than there is for any other ancient personage, including Alexander the Great” : Nope. OHJ 2.2.
• “…and for the two emperors who ruled Rome during the life of Jesus, Caesar Augustus and Tiberius.” : Nope.
• “…there is absolutely no possible justification for any of the assertions made in Bethune’s article, viz. that ‘the truth of the son of God lies beneath the surface of Gospel accounts written decades after his death'”: There are in fact ample justifications; and they are, again, fully mainstream: OHJ 10; PH 1 & 5.
• “The requirement to ignore the Gospel books when all other ancient writings are given the initial presumption by the standards of ancient historiography is a textbook example of special pleading.” : Nope. OHJ 10. And PH 5, “Multiple Attestation.”
• “The requirement to believe that Jews would follow an imaginary Jewish messiah that no one had ever seen is special pleading in light of the fact that history has seen more than fifty claimants to the mantle of Jewish messiah…” : Non sequitur. Also, false. They “saw” Jesus…in visions: Romans 16:25-26, Galatians 1:11-12.
• “The requirement to believe that people would believe that this messiah rose from the dead, when the standard for believing such a thing is so high no one else has ever even dared try suggesting their leader rose from the dead…” : Nope. NIF 3. And OHJ 5 (Element 31).
• “…any non-eyewitness must rely on the testimony of an eyewitness for any account, his own account can be worse than that of the eyewitness from whom he heard it (if he has forgotten things or misunderstood them in the first place), but it cannot possibly be better (since a non-eyewitness has no independent knowledge by which to correct errors in the account handed down to him or to add additional, accurate details). This is beyond any possible dispute…” : Nope. Unlike a single eyewitness, a third party can collate many witness accounts and determine what is in common and what is not and thus have a more secure set of facts than each individual alone (this is why modern police procedure is to separate witnesses and interrogate them separately). The more so when the witnesses diverge in allegiance (so you can compare friendly with neutral and hostile witness accounts). But also, eyewitness testimony is not all that exists. Documents can also exist, often produced collectively or vetted by officials or experts, which do better at recording and remembering details than unassisted human memory. This fact is why writing was invented in the first place. (And now of course we have photographs, audio and video recordings, material forensic evidence, etc.)
• “…studies are adduced (“We got gen-u-ine science!”) to try to support this nonsense.” : Because fundamentalists prefer tinfoil hats to actual science. Actual science (as in, actual facts) tells us memory sucks (it doesn’t record well, is highly biased, and gets changed over time), especially motivated memory, and oral transmission sucks, especially transmission of sacred stories, which get molded by audience needs and improvisation over time (not just the telephone game problem, but actual deliberate modifications are made: as shown in the classic study of Theodore Weeden). On memory science, and the science of oral transmission, and historical precedents for both, one need merely read Ehrman’s new book, Jesus Before the Gospels. But more on this is in OHJ 6.7, and 4 (Element 15), and PH 5 (“oral preservability,” “coherence,” “contextual plausibility,” and “vividness of narration,” esp. w. endnote 104 on p. 322); and the studies of urban legends and how they become more detailed (yet wholly fictional) over time (same note), and the example of the Cargo Cults and their rapid invention of “remembered tradition,” OHJ 5 (Element 29). Facts galore. Fundies hate, hate facts.
• “Ehrman, however, has no academic training in science (nor, as far as can be determined, does Bethune)…” : No, they just quote, cite, and accurately report on what actual scientists have discovered. Unlike Tors. Who both has no academic training in science and also ignores those who do. Oh irony. Feel its sting.
• “Anyone trained in real science, however, will be singularly unimpressed with this study.” : Except all the scientists who actually are. Which is, all the scientists. (And it’s not just the one study, BTW. Google “straw man.” …Not wicker man. That’s a totally different thing.)
• “The experimental set-up in no way emulates an event such as the raising of Lazarus.” : It doesn’t have to. The study shows memory is unreliable. It doesn’t matter what event one is trying to remember. Observing resurrections does not alter human neuroscience. But no matter. No one had to remember this. The Lazarus story is completely made up: OHJ 10.7.
• “…this study in no way supports the idea that the raising of Lazarus, say, could have been a false memory.  That is impossible.” : That’s good, because it didn’t happen, so no one had to remember it anyway (see above). But it’s also false. A man who was merely misdiagnosed as dead could have been misremembered as dead for several days when in fact he was only just taken to burial within hours of pronouncement. Thus, what became a fabulous story of resurrection, was actually just one more commonplace story of misdiagnosed death, all from simply misremembering (and then exaggerating over time) a single detail.
• “It should be noted that, inasmuch as the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus are the best attested facts of ancient history…” : Pardon me as I choke on my whiskey laughing… See OHJ. All of OHJ. But for an aperitif, we’ve already done this for Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon. (That’s far better attested than the death and resurrection of Jesus; the [earthly] life and ministry of Jesus is even more poorly attested than his death & resurrection, since the former aren’t even mentioned in the letters of Paul, our earliest sources, nor in 1 Clement, or Hebrews, or even 1 Peter: OHJ 11.)
• “…as we have seen, if these claims about the untrustworthiness of memories were true, we would have to throw out everything we know about ancient history. “ : Nope. See PH. All of PH. But for an aperitif, see my discussion of Spartacus (which links in turn to many other historical figures far better attested than Jesus).
• “In fact, everyone has memories from their past and, while they are not perfect, they are certainly essentially reliable.” : The Devil is in the definition of “essentially.” Did Trump “essentially” remember Muslims celebrating the towers falling from New Jersey rooftops? What about when someone “essentially” conflates different people and events in their memory? Or alters their memory from contamination from other stories? Or confuses a story they were told with something they saw? And so on. The scientific literature is rife with evidence of “essentially” false memories. And indeed, we are talking about not even modern rational people, but regular hallucinators with magical worldviews: OHJ 4 (Element 15).
• “The earliest memory I have…” : Oh shit. He doesn’t know the difference between anecdotes and data. I can play that game too. I’ve never been murdered. Therefore murder doesn’t exist. Tors also seems to be confused at this point. He is conflating Bethune’s treatment of memory science in the study of a historical Jesus, and Bethune’s second section on whether its not even memory at all. Tors seems to think Bethune argued that people “misremembered” Jesus being historical. Nope. If Jesus was historical, we know from countless examples, including and especially in religious traditions, that countless details will be misremembered, and the figure and his history will be transformed, even to being unrecognizable compared to what really happened and what was really said (see the example of Haile Selassie in OHJ 2.1). But if Jesus didn’t exist, then none of the claims about him are even memories to begin with. They are fabrications (either of private visions or deliberate devices). Like so many other actual real world examples (see OHJ 5 [Elements 29, 31, and 44-48], and index, “Ned Ludd,” “Moses,” “Abraham,” “Romulus,” “John Frum,” “Tom Navy,” “King Arthur”…).
• “Bethune … asks, “What are the chances, 50 years after the fact, that the author of the Gospel of Matthew remembered hearing the Sermon on the Mount – a polished and nuanced discourse – exactly as it was said?” But this is a red herring.  Even though Matthew was writing about ten years after Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, not fifty, there is no chance that he would remember it “exactly as it was said” (though it is possible he made shorthand notes during Jesus’ preaching and used them later).” : Fine concession. Even for a tinfoil hatter who thinks Matthew was written in the 40s AD by a witness, and not someone merely copying verbatim and exaggerating Mark with wild legends after the 70s AD. But two problems here: it’s well known that speeches of historical figures in antiquity were typically invented by recorders based on what the recorder assumed or wanted the figure to have said, and thus are not reliable records of what they actually said (see OHJ 5, Element 44, esp. n. 164); and the Sermon on the Mount was definitely composed after the Jewish War, and in Greek not Hebrew, thus can never have been based on any memory of what Jesus said: OHJ 10.5.
• “All that matters for establishing the historicity of the life, ministry, miracles, death, and resurrection of Jesus is whether people can remember the main facts of historical events years later, not whether they can remember every word spoken at the time – and that they can certainly do.  So the historicity of Jesus is beyond any reasonable doubt.” : That would be true. If we had any recorded memories of a historical Jesus. We don’t. See OHJ. All of OHJ.
• “Liberal scholars proclaimed the date of AD 70 as the earliest possible date for a Gospel book for one reason and one reason only:  Jesus foretold the destruction of the temple … Needless to say, this is not evidence; it is metaphysical bias.” : Nope. This is not bias. It’s a thoroughly evidentially established probability (SAG IV). All examinations to date have confirmed prophetic and psychic powers do not exist. So that anyone has them is extremely unlikely. Jesus is in the set of “anyone” (and you can’t get him out of that set by any non-circular argument, because there is no established set of actual psychics to get him into). He also failed to correctly predict his return or when the end of the world would come, in the very same stories that have him predict the Jewish War, so we even have direct evidence he wasn’t psychic. As with the forgery of the book of Daniel, we can tell the Jesus story was forged precisely when the forgers get all history right and then get all history wrong. The turning point between those two facts, is when they wrote the book. Obviously. And Tors would agree with this for any other book in any other religion on earth. So he really needs to read The Outsider Test for Faith. And then remove the plank from his own eye before complaining about the splinter in anyone else’s. But also, contrary to Tors’s ignorant declaration, this isn’t our only evidence. There is evidence Mark used the Jewish War of Josephus as a source, which was written in the 70s AD (OHJ 10.4). Paul has no knowledge of any Gospel or any of their stories (whether in Mark or anywhere else), and none of his accounts of the gospel match theirs (OHJ 11)—likewise, in fact even more notably so, 1 Clement, which can’t have been written earlier than the 60s AD (OHJ 8.5). And Mark seems peculiarly concerned with explaining why the end of the world hadn’t come yet, even though Jesus had “said” it would, a concern that would only start to arise after an average human lifespan had passed (so, about in fact the 70s AD); and why God allowed the Jewish temple to be destroyed by heathens, and still not end the world, which evidently had come as a surprise, indicating that in fact he had not predicted that (on both points: PH 5.iv and OHJ 10.4).
• “Furthermore, Paul wrote thirteen genuine letters, not only seven…” : Nope.
• “If people can forget in forty years that Jesus didn’t actually exist, how can they possibly retain accurate memories of who signed Jesus’ death warrant more than a century and a half after that event?” : Good question. Since it was written everywhere and even a part of the creed, how did any Christians claim Jesus died in completely different eras? It almost sounds like Christians believed they could situate Jesus in any era they wished. Which sounds exactly like a historical person. Except not. OHJ 8.1.
• “Now, it would certainly be interesting to ask Bethune for the names of these ‘numerous scholars’; as far as I know, while some scholars try to argue that the reference in Tacitus is to someone other than Christ, I can find no scholar other than Carrier who argues that this passage is an interpolation.” : That’s so weird, because they are named not only in my peer reviewed book (OHJ 8.10), my peer reviewed journal article (in Vigiliae Christianae, reproduced in HHBC 20), my public entry on Ehrman, and the leading standard reference in the field (Van Voorst), how did Tors not find any? It’s almost as if he hasn’t read anything at all on the subject.
• “To be precise, Carrier contends that the sentence “The author of this name, Christ, was executed by the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius” was a Christian interpolation, and Bethune avers that Carrier argues for this “persuasively.”  Really?  One wonders exactly which of Carrier’s arguments Bethune finds persuasive.” : Why wonder? You can actually read them: HHBC 20.
• “Carrier’s main argument is that the original manuscripts of Annals identify the persecuted group as “Chrestiani” (which was later corrected to “Christiani”).” : Nope. Not my main argument. Funny. Tors never even mentions my actual arguments. How bizarre. It’s almost like he doesn’t know what they are. Or doesn’t have an answer to them.
• “the “Chrestus” mentioned by Suetonius is in fact widely acknowledged to be Christ!” : Nope. OHJ 8.11. Also, that would be weird. Because it would mean Jesus lived in Rome and was instigating riots there a decade after Pilate left Judea. Hm. What was Tors trying to say about memory again?
• “…one would ask why these supposed Christian interpolators would not correct the supposedly problematic “Chrestiani” at the same time that they made this interpolation.” : Weird question. When Tors himself answered it a few lines earlier (Christian was sometimes spelled Chrestian, so scribes could assume that’s what happened). But really, more likely, it’s because this was an accidental interpolation of an interlinear note. The scribe would in that case not have even noticed what he was spelling. He was just copying out what was there and inserting the letters he thought were meant to be inserted. Which so commonly happened, that even the supposedly infallible Bible is rife with thousands of spelling errors.
• “Why would the interpolators not soften the viciously anti-Christian tone of the passage, if they are changing the text anyway?” : Tors evidently hasn’t read any Christian martyrdom literature from the period. This is exactly the gruesome cruelty and arrogant dismissal from the elite they liked to claim happened to them.
• “And the case for a Christian interpolation in the more important passage mentioning Jesus in Josephus is equally risible.” : Funny. If that’s so, why does Tors neither mention nor rebut a single one of my peer reviewed arguments for it?
• “First, while the epistles’ focus is not on the life of Jesus…” : Which is weird. OHJ 11.
• “…a number of things about it are mentioned in them…” : After which Tors lists forgeries and theological rather than historical claims. Paul never says Jesus “descended” from David or anyone. Paul never says Jesus was born of a real woman. He never even uses for Jesus the word he usually uses for “born,” but only ever the word he uses for divine manufacture. Paul never says anyone saw or met the incarnated Jesus. Paul never says Jesus ate a “last” supper (only that he inaugurated a ritual meal in a vision). Paul never says Jesus was known to have been killed, buried, or resurrected by any means other than scripture and revelation. Paul never mentions him having a ministry. Or as ever visiting or living in any city; as ever performing miracles, healings, or exorcisms; as ever preaching in sermons or parables; as ever having or choosing disciples; as having ever preached to the Jews (only the apostles heard his preaching…which both Paul and Clement of Rome say was learned by the apostles through revelation and scripture). Or as ever having been seen doing anything on earth. Ever. Not even Hebrews does so. Or 1 Peter. OHJ 11.
• “…there was no reason for Paul to repeat [any of these or other earth-history facts about Jesus] in his epistles…” : A claim refuted extensively in OHJ 11.
• “…there are no eyewitness accounts of Osiris, while there are four about Jesus…” : Nope. OHJ 7 and 10.
• “Bethune avers that “For a century there are no other Christian witnesses.” Apparently he has never heard of Clement of Rome, who wrote ca. AD 69-70, or of Papias (ca. AD 100), or of Ignatius (ca. AD 110), or of Polycarp (also ca. AD 110).” : Nope. Clement never mentions any earthly fact about Jesus, is completely ignorant of every Gospel story, and only knows sayings from and about Jesus from revelation and scripture (OHJ 8.5). Papias most likely wrote c. 130, indeed a hundred years late, and he was a gullible fool (OHJ 8.6). Ignatius did not likely actually write in 110 but after Papias (OHJ 8.5). And Polycarp didn’t write until after the middle of the second century, well after a hundred years had passed. These are all the mainstream conclusions of non-tinfoil-hat wearing experts (scholarship cited in OHJ).
• “Because Peter, a Tea Party type, thought defilers were ruling over the Jews, he made up an imaginary friend.” : As every other founder of every other religion did. Google “prior probability.”
• “Yes, people who feel oppressed do that all the time, don’t they? Look at how many made-up people the Tea Party claimed had risen from the dead.  (It was zero, for those who don’t know).” : Wrong cultural context. Try again: OHJ 4 and 5.
• “…he made this imaginary friend to eclipse “both Yom Kippur and Passover,” the two holiest days in Jewish life. Because Jews who want to get rid of outsiders who defile Jewish practice always do that by eclipsing Jewish practice.  Right.” : That is, in fact, literally what the book of Hebrews says (8-9). As also Paul (OHJ 4, Element 18). So, evidently, some Jews did indeed do exactly what Tors thinks impossible. It’s not like Jesus existing would have made this development any more likely: OHJ 12.3-4.
• “And then not only did Tea Party Pete make up this imaginary friend, he got thousands of Jews, who were trained from the cradle to worship no one as “Lord” but God, to worship Tea Party Pete’s imaginary friend as Lord.” : No credible evidence for thousands. Sorry. NIF 18.
• “And then persecution started, but none of these converts ever asked Tea Party Pete for actual evidence showing that his imaginary friend was real.” : Indeed they did not. They simply trusted that the founders saw Jesus in a vision. That’s exactly what Paul says in Galatians 1 and 1 Corinthians 9 and 15. Same as every religion in history, from Islam to Mormonism.
• “And then, of course, “as the tendencies of human memory predict,” Imaginary Friend was “‘factualized’ to better attract adherents.”  Because we all want our countrymen to believe in Imaginary Friends.  L-o-g-i-c-a-l.” : Evidently. Hence exactly the same thing has happened over and over again, every time the conditions allowed: OHJ 1.4, 4.1, 4.6 (Element 14), and 5 (Elements 29, 31, 44, and 45).

Enough ignorant fundamentalist tinfoil-hat rigmarole. Let’s go back to only taking secular mainstream scholars seriously.