In March of 2018 the NonSequitur show hosted a debate between two YouTubers: Godless Engineer, who runs the popular eponymous atheist channel, and Michael Jones, who runs the popular Christian apologetics channel Inspiring Philosophy. The topic was whether evidence establishes Jesus existed. The whole debate illustrates the problem with only asking amateurs to debate things like this (neither participant has a relevant advanced degree or any peer reviewed publications in the subject).

I think they both run good channels. Obviously I find a lot of what Jones argues on his channel to be face-palmingly bad, as all Christian apologetics is, but he does some of the best communicating of what are, honestly, common beliefs and assumptions among his peers. And Godless Engineer, with whom I obviously more often agree, likewise runs a sharp and entertaining channel and is even doing great work editing the CHRESTUS app developed to assist with debating the historicity of Jesus (with significant updates currently in the pipe), for which I’m a paid consultant, ensuring the quality of its content. But live, an issue like this needs expert discussion. Because when Jones makes claims any historian can easily poke holes in, Engineer won’t know he’s being snowed. Nor will the audience or the host. And this is a methodological issue, not a partisan one. Even if you’re rooting for the other team, you can say the same thing, the other way around: how do you know Michael Jones and the public isn’t being snowed by Godless Engineer? Both participants are disarmed; and both prone to error. So why run these “all amateur” debates? I see no sound reason to. It can only spread disinformation and miseducate the public.

I won’t fisk the whole debate or evaluate the technical performance of either side (you can watch it all online: Part 1 and Part 2). That’s irrelevant trivia—and at any rate, as you’ll soon see, Jones made such an enormous quantity of mistakes, even an expert would have lacked sufficient time to call them all out. Nor will I examine every detail of their debate. Instead, I’ve been hired as an actual expert—with both a Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University and numerous peer reviewed academic publications in the actual subject of the historicity of Jesus—to respond to 99 things Michael Jones said in this debate. The 99 items were chosen by my patron. As that’s already quite a lot of things, I’ll be as brief as sense allows, but already I have to split this into two parts, just as they did. But in every case, what I hope you’ll notice as a general theme is why Jones’ being an amateur leads to the audience getting snowed by what sound like solid arguments but actually don’t hold any water in real historical reasoning.

I’ve commented on this problem before, even coming from actual experts: see How to Successfully Argue Jesus Existed (or Anything Else in the World). That article covers a lot of important ground relevant to every point here following. But this Q&A illustrates a particular variety of—ironically, for those who get the pun—the non sequiturs of historicity apologetics. For each item I’ll provide a rough quote of Michael Jones, and in parentheses the video and block of minutes in which it appears, followed by my response.

1

This is only a fringe theory and 99% of scholars don’t even say this is up for debate. It’s more popular in layman circles on the internet. (1.7-18)

Lots of fringe theories turn out to be true. So this is a non sequitur. The question mythicists are asking is whether the majority of historians are reaching reliable conclusions from the evidence, not what conclusions they are reaching. So merely repeating the latter does not answer the former. The fact of the matter is, a consensus has no value if it has not been reached by any sound methodology (see On Evaluating Arguments from Consensus).

And a further fact of the matter is, no fewer than twelve fully-qualified experts have lately gone on record admitting the historicity of Jesus is either doubtable or legitimately debatable. Moreover, there are only two peer reviewed books specifically on the question of historicity that have been published in the last hundred years: and both found historicity doubtable, not defensible (see Carrier and Lataster; contrast the academic quality of these with the pop market garbage produced by Ehrman and Casey). So historicity appears to be an assumption in the field, not an established datum. Consequently, it only gets defended, even by experts, irrationally. And this should be concerning, not a point of pride.

2

John Dominic Crossan noted, even if no Christian wrote anything for the first 200 years of Christianity, we would still know Jesus existed and very basic facts about his life from hostile sources. (1.7-18)

That isn’t relevantly true. That a religion’s enemies quote their own myths back at them, does not evince those myths are true. If Mormons wrote nothing for 200 years, but in that time their enemies kept arguing “Joseph Smith got their scriptures from the angel Moroni, but obviously Moroni was Satan in disguise,” would any historian accept that as evidence the angel Moroni existed? Of course not. Merely repeating what someone says is not evidence that what they said is true.

Which makes this another non sequitur. But it’s worse than that, because in fact the best evidence Jesus didn’t exist is precisely what Christians did write. If we didn’t have the mysteriously silent Epistles of Paul or the highly myth-heavy Gospels or the weird history of the church related in Acts, we would have no evidence against the historicity of Jesus at all! The problem is not the silence of the historical record—it’s the weirdness of it. As I documented extensively under peer review in On the Historicity of Jesus.

3

We have numerous hostile and secular sources claiming the existence of Jesus. Tacitus, Josephus, even the Babylonian Talmud, Suetonius, Lucian, Pliny, Mara bar Serapion, Celsus. (1.7-18)

Not a single instance of which is usable as evidence. No honest historian will tell you that derivative sources are corroborating sources. We have no evidence any of these authors got any of their information from any other source than Christians citing their own Gospels, or than those selfsame Gospels. We therefore cannot use these references as evidence that what the Gospels say is true. As even Bart Ehrman admits: these kinds of sources are “not particularly helpful in establishing that there really lived a man named Jesus,” because they are all based “on hearsay rather” than “detailed historical research,” and thus only have their information from later Gospel-citing Christians, so “whether or not Jesus lived has to be decided on other kinds of evidence from this” (Did Jesus Exist, pp. 55, 65).

It’s even worse than that, because Jones evidently didn’t check these sources. The Talmud is a Medieval source yet only knows of a Jesus executed by Jews in the 70s B.C. So he either must admit it’s wholly unreliable and thus unusable, or our Gospels are lying about when Jesus lived and died. Suetonius never mentions Jesus Christ—only a guy named Chrestus starting riots in Rome decades after Jesus died thousands of miles away, which is simply not our Jesus. So Jones either must admit this source is wholly unreliable and thus unusable, or the Gospels are lying about where and when Jesus lived and died. Pliny never says Jesus was a historical man, but only a worshiped deity. And Josephus, Tacitus, Lucian, and Celsus, even if wholly authentic, all simply repeat Christian assertions originating in the Gospels or subsequent legend, giving no indication of fact-checking any of it. No competent historian should be claiming any of this is evidence for the historicity of Jesus. Hence we should be asking why any historian does. Because their doing so discredits them as reliable authorities in this matter. A profession that ignores its own methods and even logic is not an authority we can rely on anymore. So why is Jones still relying on it?

4

In Tacitus and his Annals book 15, where it says “Christos” existed, saying “this passage is highly contested” implies that the majority of scholars think this is a forgery. But which Tacitus scholars actually reject this passage? (1.7-18)

This is two non sequiturs in one.

First, saying a passage is contested does not imply anything about a majority. It implies simply what it says: that its authenticity is strongly contested. And it is: multiple scholars have raised doubts in the peer reviewed literature, and on a basis of good evidence. Particularly my 2014 article in Vigiliae Christianae (a reproduction of which you can get, along with much else, in my book Hitler Homer Bible Christ), which cites the other scholars who are likewise doubtful, and builds further on every good argument they had. Indeed, there was never any defense of the passage in any academic journal until Willem Blom published one years later, in 2019. For which I’m awaiting libraries to reopen; I doubt it has any strong argument, but who knows, maybe it will change my mind (if anyone already has a copy, please send it!).

And it would have to. Because if a passage has multiple peer reviewed articles contesting it (or indeed, even one), you are obligated to address those articles’ arguments before reaffirming it. It remains in doubt until you can do that. You now have to compare the arguments in at least the latest challenge (which would be mine) with the latest defense (which would be Blom’s) before you can affirm it. You cannot simply “assume” all pertinent scholars are even aware of these arguments, much less have dismissed them; even less, that they did so on a sound basis. Once a passage is this seriously contested, the debate moves to the evidence, not the consensus. Because that consensus is no longer informed—until a large number of relevant scholars have actually read and examined that challenge, and voiced their rejection of it, and its basis (so we can confirm that basis is sound, and not illogical). Otherwise, you can’t cite a consensus that has been properly challenged against that challenge. The whole point of a proper challenge is to identify a flaw in the consensus credible enough to pass peer review. Merely saying “but, the consensus” does not answer that challenge.

Second, it doesn’t matter. Even if the passage in Tacitus is fully authentic as we have it, it has exactly zero weight as evidence for the historicity of Jesus. Historicity apologists love to get all hung up on the “outrage” of accusing Christians of meddling with a beloved passage about Christianity in Tacitus; but then forget it’s a complete waste of time even rehabilitating it. They simply ignore the fact that mythicists keep pointing this out: the most likely source Tacitus would have had for this is Christian informants simply repeating the Gospels (most likely, in fact, through the intermediary of his friend Pliny the Younger).

Tacitus wouldn’t need any further fact-checking of it than that, because what Christians were “admitting to” would already be, to his ears, fully hilarious, and totally suited his prejudices. And notably, Tacitus never mentions fact-checking it, or doubting it enough to have done so, nor does he say anything factual about Jesus that’s not derivable from Gospel mythology (such novel material being the only other way we could infer he had any other source). This is in fact my actual argument in On the Historicity of Jesus, Chapter 8.10. I otherwise devote only a single paragraph there to the possibility of inauthenticity, and set it aside.

As I noted, even Bart Ehrman agrees with this point: even if authentic we simply can’t use the passage in Tacitus to support the historicity of Jesus.

5

This passage in Tacitus comes from the lone 11th century manuscript of it. Now Godless Engineer said there is no I, but an E in Christos in this passage, so I luckily got a photocopy. It’s an I. (1.18-21)

Someone has gotten the facts telephone gamed here, whether it’s Jones or Godless. The manuscript originally had an E in the word it contains for Christians (so, it said, in fact, Chrestians), and someone erased that E and replaced it with an I. So someone confused saying that, with saying this occurred in the separate word in that passage referring to Christ. So either Jones or Engineer got confused here.

But once you get the facts correct, then you have to address the argument. Tacitus says he is explaining the first word by appeal to the second—which means at some point in the text’s history, it did say Chrestus—or nothing at all. Because you cannot explain how the name became “Chrestiani” from “Christus.” Tacitus was a precise grammarian of Latin. He would have kept the words typographically and thus etymologically coherent (or else explain why he wasn’t). So they either both had an I or both had an E. Or both weren’t there. The manuscript evidence indicates it was originally an E. Which is actually evidence for the second being an interpolation: the Christus line was added by someone other than Tacitus. For a full survey of this point see the summary (with images) by Jobjorn Boman.

That is not the only evidence against that one line’s authenticity. There are at least four other lines of evidence converging on the same conclusion. Jones mentions none of them. I can only assume he doesn’t even know what they are. He therefore can have no informed opinion as to their strength.

But, again, this is all side show. As I just explained, for the historicity of Jesus, it doesn’t matter whether this line is interpolated or not.

6

We do think the original word there was “Chrestians” which is not really an issue, we have dozens of manuscripts and actual funeral inscriptions from the first couple centuries of Christianity which do refer to themselves as Chrestians. (1.18-21)

Here being an amateur shows. During the Imperial period only colloquialists—yokels and imprecise grammarians—made this spelling mistake, confusing the sound of a Latin I with the sound of a Latin E. This confusion, akin to itacism in general, was common among lower class speakers of Vulgar Latin or Greek or the “common tongue” (and be aware, until the 4th century, Christian scribes were indeed of poor quality and made countless spelling errors and mistakes indicative of their poorer training and lower status dialects: see my article Three Things to Know about New Testament Manuscripts). Precise grammarians, elitists like Tacitus or Suetonius, never did this, nor would. So it is not a very strong argument to say “it’s not an issue.” It is. Because it’s weird for Tacitus to do this. It would be like Jones himself breaking into an Irish brogue inexplicably at random, and back again, in the middle of a sentence. You would need to explain that.

As it happens, the best explanation (because it is far more likely something Tacitus would do) is that Tacitus originally wrote this passage about, in fact, the Chrestians, as in the followers of the Jewish instigator Chrestus who Suetonius tells us was starting riots in Rome in the 50s A.D. (decades after Jesus was killed—a Jesus, remember, who never went to Rome, much less started riots there). The line about Christ was added later, by someone else, either deliberately or accidentally confusing Tacitus’s discussion of the Chrestians (messianic Jews rallying to the cause of the Claudian rioteer) as a discussion of the Christians (messianic Jews worshiping a crucified Christ). Now, we can’t be sure of this; it’s a fair probability this is what happened, but uncertainty remains. Hence, I set it aside in OHJ and don’t even use it as an argument when weighing this evidence for historicity. But if you really want to digress on this side subject, you really need to get the argument straight before you can offer any coherent challenge to it.

7

Arguing from silence does not necessarily work in history. For example all our sources for Alexander the Great were written 300 years after he existed. Starting with Diodorus, then we have Quintus Curtius, Arrian, and Plutarch. This is long after and historians don’t really use arguments from silence like this for that very reason. (1.18-21)

Almost nothing in this statement is true. We have tons of sources for Alexander that are contemporary with him and even more within decades of his life (unlike any source we have for Jesus); and even the later sources listed here are only trusted by historians today because they cite and rely on sources near to and contemporary with Alexander (unlike any source we have for Jesus); and I cannot fathom why Jones would think historians “don’t really use arguments from silence.” They use them all the time. It’s a standard feature of historical methodology. So he appears to be “making shit up” here, and hoping no actual historian will call him on it.

On everything Jones gets wrong here about Alexander the Great, see my several pages on the point in On the Historicity of Jesus (pp. 21-24). See also all the other failed examples incompetently attempted in like ways, which I catalogue and link to in Okay, So What about the Historicity of Spartacus?

On the standard use of arguments from silence by real historians in every field, see my whole section on this in my other peer reviewed book, Proving History (pp. 117-119), which quotes and cites actual professional guides to historical method on the point, including Gilbert Garraghan’s Guide to Historical Method (§149a); Robert Shafer’s Guide to Historical Method (p. 77); Louis Gottschalk’s Understanding History (pp. 45–46); and most recently Neville Morley’s Writing Ancient History (pp. 67–68). Yes, arguments from silence have limitations and must be judiciously employed. But no one who knew what they were talking about would say historians don’t use them.

Jones thus not only gets every single fact wrong in this statement, he also gets the logic wrong. I can’t speak for how Godless Engineer exactly framed it, but under peer review, for example, I didn’t argue “Jesus didn’t exist because no one but Christians mentioned him.” To the contrary, my conclusion regarding all the extra-biblical evidence (non-Christian and Christian) is that its silence has no effect on the probability Jesus existed (see OHJ, Chapter 8). This requires accepting some uncomfortable things, like that Jesus was a total nobody and did nothing remarkable to earn any notable’s notice. But if you can choke down that pill, you can rescue Jesus from the fact of his being ignored. I do, however, find the silences in Paul too overwhelming to explain away with any litany of ad hoc excuses (see OHJ, Chapter 11). In each case I explain what makes the difference between a valid or invalid argument from silence, and in detail show why the general historical record doesn’t effect one, while the letters of Paul do. And I demonstrate this against every usual objection—so if you are squirming in your seat right now certain you have a rebuttal, you had better actually read that chapter before attempting one; because, trust me, whatever you are going to attempt, I’ve already thought of it.

Jones thus seems to be committing a very common mistake of logic here: he is confusing a rebuttal to an argument for historicity as an argument against historicity. Those are not the same thing. Historicists claim “there is a ton of evidence for Jesus,” and we answer by surveying ancient literature and pointing out it’s the other way around: there isn’t any (by any standard that real historians actually employ). It is invalid to then say “you are relying on an argument from silence.” We aren’t. We are simply saying the evidence you claim exists, doesn’t. That is not an argument that Jesus didn’t exist. It’s an argument against a common argument that he did. The effect of our argument is to move the needle back to zero (a state of “there’s no evidence either way”); not past zero into evidence against historicity.

This changes when we talk about, for example, the authentic Epistles of Paul, for example. Then we are making an argument for silence and we are saying this moves the needle into the negatives. But it does not do so merely because it’s an argument from silence. It does so because it’s an argument from silence that meets established criteria of a valid argument from silence. To rebut which you have to address the actual argument. You can’t just assert “but, no arguments from silence count.” Some do. So you have to actually look at why we are saying this one does and address that. Merely complaining that it’s “an” argument from silence is not an argument that it’s invalid. Jones is thus deploying another non sequitur here.

8

I can pull up dozens of examples of arguments from silence. Marco Polo going to China and not mentioning the great wall, or the great Tea District. Ramses the 2nd fought a great battle against the Hittite Empire in Megiddo and we’ve dug there and found no archeological evidence of a battle that was ever fought there during the late bronze age. So arguments from silence just do not work when it comes to historical investigation. (1.18-21)

This is a profoundly ignorant statement, as I just demonstrated. Every real historian agrees arguments from silence can work, and often uses them. It’s a complete non sequitur to say “in some cases they don’t work, therefore they never work in any cases.” That’s illogical. It’s just worse that his examples are terrible. One could adduce real examples of invalid arguments from silence (I do this myself in both OHJ and PH). But for some reason he chose these. Why? Does he not know they are bad examples?

Indeed this is a good example of why amateurs should never debate things like this. Amateurs make blusteringly confident arguments…after forgetting to check basic facts, like whether the Great Wall of China was even there when Marco Polo visited China (it wasn’t—a much more obvious reason for him not to have mentioned it). Of course, whether Marco Polo did visit China has been debated by real historians of medieval China. And when you survey the literature of real experts discussing this (like Drs. John Smith and Hans Vogel), curiously you never find them saying what Jones claims, that “arguments from silence are invalid.” Nope. They all accept they have merit. Rather, they debate the facts, not the form of argument. They note very good reasons why, for example, Marco Polo would not have mentioned things like tea. Their point is not that “there are always good reasons for a silence,” but rather “when there are strongly evidence-based reasons for a silence, it then fails to carry weight.” So Jones is basically ignoring the entirety of what actual historians argue, and making up a confidently asserted falsity in its place.

BTW, Jones likewise hoses his claim about Rameses. He is confusing Rameses’ Battle at Kadesh with Thutmose’s Battle at Megiddo. And he has completely garbled the debate, which has been over archaeological support of the details of Thutmose’s siege, not whether it happened. And never in those debates will you find anyone saying “arguments from silence are invalid.” To the contrary, they all agree they can be valid, and thus only debate whether specific evidence validates any.

These particular errors illustrate why neither participant in such a debate should be an amateur. I am not a specialist in either period these examples were erroneously scrabbled from; but being an expert historian, I know how to fact-check such claims—and more importantly, I know that one must do so before confidently asserting them. So if I were in a live debate, all I could do is ask Jones how sure he is either of his examples is correctly stated and actually illustrates his point. And yet I’ll bet he’d swear up and down he thoroughly checked them and knows he’s representing them correctly (and being an amateur, he might even believe that’s true). Then after the debate, when I fact-checked them and found he got everything wrong, I’d be justifiably pissed off. He would have snowed me. And the audience.

This is the problem with amateurs in general: they too often do this; and the only way to catch them at it is by fact-checking them after the live feed is through. Better to just not have them involved in the first place. Honest professionals wouldn’t do this. Their estimates of confidence when asked are much less likely to be Dunning-Krugered.

Case in point…

9

As regards to no early church father quoting this passage in Tacitus. They have no reason to. Tacitus is a hostile witness as I said. It’s not gonna support someone like Origen who’s trying to respond to Celsus. (1.18-21)

Notice how confidently Jones says this. As if he checked. I know he didn’t. Because if he had, he’d know what he just said was provably false, and thus he wouldn’t have said it. I carefully provide examples in my article for Vigiliae Christianae (readily available in Hitler Homer Bible Christ) of Church Fathers who knew Tacitus’s work and did have a reason to mention this passage, and others who surely would have, yet who instead say things that entail no Christian had ever heard of what Tacitus said in this passage.

Jones doesn’t know that. Because he didn’t check his own claim about the evidence before making an assertion about it. Because he’s an amateur.

10

Celsus didn’t doubt that Jesus existed. He talks about Jesus’ Mother, Jesus’ birth, Jesus’ dying on the cross, Jesus basically being a person. We have no evidence of Christ Mythers existing for 1700 years of Christianity’s existence. So that simply doesn’t work. (1.21-22)

This is another double non sequitur.

The first statement is only true because Celsus simply trusted that the Gospels, however embellished, were based on something. He makes clear he has no other source for Jesus. This is why it is a useless observation to say that Celsus, writing 130 years later, and who thus had no access to any way to fact-check the Gospels, didn’t challenge the existence of Jesus. We actually don’t even know he didn’t (we don’t have Celsus; we only have a selective fisking by Origen). But we also have no reason to expect he would. Just as Christians didn’t challenge the existence of Hercules or Osiris or Dionysus, even though we know they obviously didn’t exist. Christians didn’t know that; and had no way of finding out. Ditto Celsus.

The second statement, meanwhile, is false. We do have early references to Christians who didn’t believe Jesus was a real historical person. Ignatius talks about them explicitly, demanding his fellow Christians shun them (OHJ, Chapter 8.6; and yes, I know what your apologetic riff will be here, I’ve heard it all before, and already refuted it there; for a summary see How Did Christianity Switch to a Historical Jesus?). 2 Peter was forged specifically to rebut and condemn them (OHJ, Chapter 8.12; we’ll get to this below). But all the literature from the people these authors are talking about was destroyed. As was the original text of the Ascension of Isaiah, which appears to have originally imagined Jesus being killed by demons in the sky, not by Romans on Earth (OHJ, Chapter 3.1). All gone. Or doctored to say something else.

Which is, BTW, a good example of properly invalidating an argument from silence: we know for a fact that all such literature was destroyed by historicists, and that historicists were rampant forgers of evidence for historicity; so we cannot expect evidence of mythicist Christians to survive. Thus, our lacking it is an invalid argument from silence. We are lucky even to have what scraps of evidence did survive (see OHJ, Chapter 8.12).

(And yes, I did catch the hilarious irony that Jones just confidently asserted an argument from silence after having just insisted no arguments from silence are valid. That his own argument from silence was provably invalid is only funnier still. Alas, such hypocrisy typifies apologetics.)

11

As Jeff Lowder, one of the founders of Infidels.org noted, there’s no apologetic merit for someone trying to argue the resurrection or theology of Christianity. (1.21-22)

Clearly a prepared talking point that Jones only fit in awkwardly without really explaining what he meant. I think in context Jones means here that the same arguments he is making for historicity don’t hold for the resurrection or any other theological claims, as opposed to merely mundane claims such as that there was a man named Jesus behind all the myth and legend. That’s true. Attesting a belief is different from attesting a belief is true. And what we are debating is how ancient the belief was that Jesus was an ordinary guy in Earth history; not whether such a belief ever arose. We all agree it did. But it doesn’t work the other way around. Because a story rife with implausible legendary material taints the likelihood of the mundane material beside it, casting all of it in doubt (see Craig vs. Law on the Argument from Contamination and For the Existence of Jesus, Is the Principle of Contamination Invalid?).

There is no mundane source for Jesus. It’s all mythographical and theological. Even later mundane claims based on that are not, as I already explained, actually sources, but derivative rationalizations. Tacitus does not strip away the miraculous stuff about Jesus because he had a purely mundane source; he strips it away from his source because he doesn’t believe such nonsense, and prefers to represent a rational explanation of events instead. By the same token, we can’t claim that although Hercules was surrounded with myth and legend there must have been a real Hercules; much less think so because some historians back then decided to strip away the miracles and convert Hercules into an ordinary historical person (just as Tacitus did with Jesus—assuming he mentioned Jesus at all). To the contrary, we can doubt there was a mundane Hercules precisely because we only ever hear of him existing in the context of an implausible mythology or theology—just like Jesus.

The effect of this is: we cannot assume Jesus existed. We need evidence. Evidence more than just assertions of a belief. Unlike for many other people attested in antiquity, who aren’t solely represented in mytho-theological sources (see my explanation of this point in So What About Hannibal, Then?). In other words, Jesus isn’t some mundane person someone claimed existed. He was only ever claimed to be an eternal celestial superbeing who talks to people in visions from outer space, and later only ever represented narratively in implausible mythology. You can’t pretend that’s the same thing. And for any other person, you wouldn’t.

12

So in regards to Christians being persecuted in Rome, actually yes Tacitus is the only source that blamed it on the Christians, but Suetonius also mentions that Nero was persecuting Christians. (1.21-22)

This is another example of getting the argument wrong, and thus deploying another non sequitur. The point he is supposed to be addressing is that Suetonius clearly had no understanding of Christians being persecuted in connection with the burning of Rome—which he also describes; no Christians. He mentions Nero persecuting them for immorality, not arson, in a completely different place in his biography. Merely repeating the fact that Suetonius mentions the persecution is thus a non sequitur. It simply does not address the point.

This is one more item of evidence that no one—including Tacitus—ever connected Christians with the burning of Rome. All Christian accounts of the Neronian persecution also never connect it with the burning of Rome. Which is about as damning as you can get (as surely they would know their own history better than Tacitus). When you survey all the examples (which I list in my peer reviewed article on the point), including Suetonius, it assembles a picture indicating the insertion of a line about “Christ” in the Tacitus account did not occur until the 4th century (as only by the end of that century is any writer aware of such a link).

Even in the forged 4th century letters between Paul and Seneca, the first we hear of connecting Christians with the fire, it’s in evident unawareness of Tacitus doing so; in fact, this text appears to be the first ever to invent such a link, and does so by completing the converging lines of evidence for interpolation in Tacitus: the forger of this correspondence has Seneca exclaim “Christians and Jews have even been executed as contrivers of the fire” under Nero (Epistle 12.6). Notably, Tacitus never says “Jews” were involved. Unless, in fact, he did. The author of this text evidently had read the real passage in Tacitus, blaming the Chrestian Jews, saw a parallel (now created by the fire under Galerius in the 3rd century that was blamed on the Christians), and thus “added” Christians to those punished for the fire under Nero. This later inspired some scribe to think (or pretend) Tacitus had meant this all along, duly inserting a line establishing it.

When you put all the evidence together (and this isn’t even all of it), it becomes increasingly clear Tacitus never wrote that line. “But, Suetonius” doesn’t escape this fact. To the contrary, Suetonius is evidence for it.

13

So in regards to Clement of Rome and Eusebius [not mentioning Christians being persecuted by Nero in connection to the fire of Rome], I’d like to know where you’re getting that from? [You cite] Remsburg [but he] has been really highly disputed. Clement of Alexandria or [unintelligible] were [not?] saying they put together an exhaustive list of all of the sources of Christianity. They weren’t responding to Christ mythers; they had no need to do that. And even if that was the case that doesn’t mean necessarily that Tacitus was wrong. (1.21-22)

This statement is a horrible mess. Not only because Jones was nervous and rambled through it, so you could barely follow or even hear what he was saying. But even more so because it’s a whole string of non sequiturs, resulting in hopeless confusion. Godless Engineer had just gone through a massive list of examples of there being no mention of Christians being persecuted by Nero for the fire—Christian and pagan sources. Jones ignores almost all of them. He also ignores the point being made. He somehow got confused into thinking this list was given as evidence Jesus didn’t exist, or Christians weren’t persecuted under Nero. No. G.E. was listing it only as evidence supporting interpolation in Tacitus. Jones never responds to this, Godless Engineer’s actual argument.

G.E. is right. It is a fact that even Eusebius (!) had never heard of Christians being persecuted for the burning of Rome. Nor is it mentioned in 1 Clement (some scholars have tried to “read it into” that letter, but that simply doesn’t work logically; see my discussion in OHJ, pp. 271-72, 309-310). Nor does it appear in any of the “42 sources” assembled by Remsburg. Jones does not appear to understand Godless Engineer’s use of Remsberg here: he is not using his list of silent sources to prove Jesus didn’t exist (the only point on which Remsberg “has been really highly disputed,” and rightly so: see my properly vetted and updated treatment of the same argument in OHJ, Chapter 8.3), but to prove no one knew of any connection between Christians and the burning of Rome—and on that point, G.E.’s right. No one can dispute this; much less “really highly.” Likewise his use of Clement of Alexandria as an example. And so on.

Godless Engineer mentioned many more examples, which Jones simply ignores. So Jones really got pwned here (by technical debate scoring standards, he really tanked this); but no one noticed, because the audience didn’t know how he screwed up (and Godless Engineer wasn’t really allowed adequate time to point this out, another problem with live debates: they favor making more false claims than time is allowed to point out). In the end, the evidence accumulated (and indeed it’s more extensive than even G.E. listed) really does entail Tacitus probably didn’t connect Christians to the burning of Rome.

Which is an important logical point: the probability of something not getting mentioned in one source that had any chance of mentioning it (had it been a fact) is always much higher than the probability of scores of sources not mentioning it. So it gets increasingly implausible to make excuses for why every single one of these sources, even sources explicitly about Nero’s persecution of Christians, does not mention this connection to the fire. That probability quickly becomes vanishingly small (see my explanation and demonstration of the mathematical point in OHJ, pp. 518-19, note 13). Jones had no response to this.

14

Historians like Ronald Syme, Michael Grant, Donald Martin, G.E.F Chilver note Tacitus is one of the most reliable historians from the ancient world. Ronald Syme says “the prime example of Cornelius Tacitus is distrust. It was needed if someone were to write about the Caesars.” (1.22-23)

This is a common Christian apologetical non sequitur. They misquote historians as if claiming Tacitus was the most reliable historian of the ancient world (no expert, much less these four men, ever said that), and then illogically jump from there to “Tacitus never made a mistake and always meticulously fact-checked everything,” a total non sequitur that all experts, especially these four men, would resoundingly laugh at.

All experts who have discussed Tacitus’s reliability discuss his flaws, and all concur he was most flawed when reporting rumors that played to his prejudices. Like, say, loathed cultists admitting they worshiped a convict executed by Tiberius’s business manager (a most ignominious embarrassment to the elite sensibilities of the likes of Tacitus). Tacitus would not fact-check this, because he didn’t need to. The Christians themselves were copping to it! He would not comprehend any reason this would be invented (not being an anthropologist, he was ignorant of the counter-cultural basis for the formation of shocking myths in general, and had no relevant background knowledge of the Jewish tropes underlying this one in particular: see OHJ, Chapters 4 and 5). So we can expect he would confront this claim with no skepticism. It was the most delicious gossip.

Nor can we establish Tacitus even could fact-check it. The archives at Rome had burned down twice already in the intervening years; and there is no reason to believe they’d have included the massive minutiae of rolls of provincial convicts, nor does Tacitus give any indication he’d know what to look for. He doesn’t even seem to know this guy’s name was Jesus—and that’s already a very common name, wholly inadequate to find a requisite record by, even if Tacitus absurdly sailed all the way to Judea just to find it… were it even there either, and after eighty years and a massive war, even that’s unlikely (see The Romans Neither Could Nor Cared to Investigate the Resurrection of Jesus and No, Seriously, the Romans Neither Could Nor Cared to Investigate the Resurrection of Jesus).

Take Michael Grant for example, author of (note the subtitle) Greek and Roman Historians: Information and Misinformation (Routledge 1995), a required reading in the field of Greco-Roman historiography. He there mentions Tacitus’s appreciated proclivity to use good sources when available (like state inscriptions), and Tacitus’s appreciated self-declarations of critical skepticism, but then also surveys ample evidence of his unreliability, admitting that Tacitus “did not really live up to” his own “high standard,” often reporting untruths as factual, and otherwise distorting the record in line with his presuppositions (p. 84; cg. p. 43). Indeed, Grant concludes, Tacitus “conducted extremely little independent research” (p. 39).

Unlike Christian apologists (like, say, Michael Jones) who will dig deep into old, obsolete scholarship to find whatever cherry picked assertion they need, Michael Grant acts like a competent historian and cites the most recent scholarship on Tacitus, Ronald Mellor’s Tacitus (Routledge 1993). Mellor is blunt: “Besides relaying unverifiable rumors, Tacitus occasionally reported a rumor or report that he knew was false” (for a full discussion see the section “There is inconclusive evidence that Tacitus had independent sources” in Jeff Lowder’s Josh McDowell’s “Evidence” for Jesus: Is It Reliable?).

Syme (writing all the way back in the 1950s) was more gullible and fawning, yet even he admitted Tacitus was not wholly reliable and often failed to fact-check. And Martin and Chilver (both writing in the 1980s), more honest and up to date, are even more critical. And Grant is unmistakable, and endorses the conclusions, likewise, of Mellor, an even more renowned Tacitean scholar. So Jones evidently isn’t even reading the scholars he cites. Making this another example of why we should not be asking amateurs to live-debate stuff like this. It’s not like Godless Engineer could stop the debate and go do a few days of checking these sources himself. Whereas an expert could catch Jones out right away. (For example, I am very familiar with the historiographical literature on Tacitus: Greco-Roman historiography was one of my four oral defense majors for my Ph.D. at Columbia, earning me the intermediary advanced degree of M.Phil.)

15

Tacitus was extremely skeptical. And any time he doubted a passage and wondered if it was wrong, he told us. He would say ‘I don’t know if this is accurate’. Like for example just before this passage he says there was a conspiracy to assassinate Nero and he says “I’m not sure where this originated from.” (1.22-23)

Another string of non sequiturs. Jones illogically leaps from “on rare occasions Tacitus mentions his sources or lack thereof” to “Tacitus always told us where he learned stuff and how reliable it was.” The latter is demonstrably false. Tacitus in fact rarely does that. And as all the Tacitus experts even Jones cited admit, especially not when his prejudices are sated by the claim being reported. As Grant and Mellor further note, even when Tacitus states lofty historical ideals, he more regularly falls short of them in practice. So Jones simply has no true or logical statement to make here. But the audience doesn’t know that; Godless Engineer might not even know that. They were all snowed. This is the problem with amateurs.

16

Just after this passage, I believe it’s section 53, he gives you a quote from Pliny and he says “it’s absurd, but I thought it best to tell you anyway.” So Tacitus would always tell us if he was skeptical of something. (1.23-24)

I already called out the non sequitur here (leaping from “he rarely does this” to “he always does this”). But also note, the passage he is now referencing (Tacitus, Annals 53) is a citation of Pliny the Elder, and Tacitus there explains why he doubted what Pliny recorded, thus bearing no analogy to his discussion (if we even presume it authentic) of Christians.

More importantly, this is the very Pliny the Elder who wrote an extensive account of the Neronian era, being an eyewitness to all of it, including the fire and its aftermath—and indeed Pliny’s (now lost) history is Tacitus’s most likely source for his account of the fire. It’s thus peculiar that we know Pliny the Elder never mentioned Christians in his history, because his son, Pliny the Younger (in Letters 10.96) confesses to knowing nothing about Christians (least of all that they were suspects in the horrific arson of Rome itself), and yet we know from his extensive correspondence that Pliny obsessed over the beloved writings of his father—making this a fairly conclusive argument from silence. It merely adds to the fact that no one else (Christian or pagan) ever mentions Pliny the Elder discussing Christians either (at all, much less in connection with the fire); and indeed we probably don’t have his history for that very reason (though a copy of it might still exist to be excavated at Herculaneum, so maybe we’ll find out).

17

When I emailed Ronald Miller this week and I asked him about this he said he thought Tacitus would likely be referring to early Roman sources, based on how it reads and based on the linguistic style. Tacitus in this one passage doesn’t bring up any skepticism. He doesn’t even make any notice of Christian sources mind you. He doesn’t even see any familiarity of any Christian sources, through any of his writings. I don’t know of many scholars who try to argue he was basically getting his information from that. (1.23-24)

I don’t know who Jones means by Ronald Miller (Ronald H. Miller has been dead for years; and I don’t know anyone else he could mean here). Perhaps he meant noted Tacitus expert Ronald Mellor, whom I just quoted; but in Mellor’s book on Tacitus he declares Tacitus would not have researched this claim about Jesus at all (Tacitus, p. 32), that indeed “these questions did not interest Tacitus” (p. 45).

I suspect Jones has conflated a discussion of Tacitus’s account of the fire (which definitely derived from Roman sources; in fact, almost certainly Pliny the Elder), with a discussion of the single line about Christ inserted into it. Even if so inserted by Tacitus, Tacitus indicates he is adding this explanation for his current audience sixty years later; so we cannot say this information came from the same source as the rest of his material (and as we just saw regarding the silence of Tacitus’s most likely source—Pliny the Elder—it probably can’t have). It also doesn’t sound like Jones told Mellor about my recent peer reviewed article challenging this, or that Mellor has read it, so Mellor can’t have had an informed opinion of its argument anyway. It’s thus unfair to bring him into it.

So this appears to be another snow job. While Jones is going all Dunning Kruger again by claiming he doesn’t know many scholars who say this, in fact most real experts who’ve discussed this passage, including major Christian authors like R.T. France, E.P. Sanders, even William Lane Craig (!), admit Tacitus likely got this datum about Christ from Christian informants (most likely in fact through Pliny the Younger, as I demonstrate in OHJ, Chapter 8.10; for quotes and documentation regarding expert opinion, including of Sanders and France and Craig, see again the section “There is inconclusive evidence that Tacitus had independent sources” in Jeff Lowder’s Josh McDowell’s “Evidence” for Jesus: Is It Reliable?).

Thus, Jones confuses this one datum with all the data about the fire (and the “Chrestians” blamed for it); and then ignores all pertinent evidence regarding both. He also seems to conflate “Christian sources” as in written texts (Christian literature) with “Christian sources” as in interrogated Christians; the former certainly would not have been referenced by Tacitus, but rather the latter, most likely through an intermediary like his friend Pliny, whom we know interrogated Christians just a few years before Tacitus completed the Annals. We have other examples of Tacitus asking Pliny for data to include in his histories, so that’s Tacitus’s most obvious channel of information about Christian beliefs to inform his readers with (see discussion in Robert Van Voorst’s Jesus Outside the New Testament, pp. 49-52).

And as I already noted, Tacitus would have no reason to be skeptical of this information; if even the Christians themselves were admitting to it, all he needed was his own prejudices to confirm it. If he even wrote this line at all.

18

Regarding this passage of Josephus. Josephus leaves a lot of holes in his work, for example Suetonius mentions how the Jews were expelled by Claudius. Josephus is supposed to be writing a history of the Jews. He doesn’t mention that. So Josephus is called “a patchwork author.” He leaves a lot of holes in his history. And just because he doesn’t mention [the fire at Rome], that would just be an argument from silence and doesn’t show the actual passage in Tacitus is wrong. (1.23-24)

I agree. Not because “it’s an argument from silence” as Jones irrationally declares (as I’ve already well explained, plenty of arguments from silence can be valid, and all real historians accept that that’s the case). But because there is evidence Josephus wouldn’t have mentioned it. Not only if it had ever been linked to Christians (in whom Josephus shows no actual interest, once we account for passages he didn’t write: see OHJ, Chapter 8.9). But even more so if it had originally been linked to the Jewish partisans of Chrestus. Because Jones is unknowingly noting a double lacunae that entails a singular coherent explanation: the expulsion of Jews under Claudius that Suetonius mentioned (also covered by Dio Cassius, whose account clearly indicates sources independent of Suetonius; Acts 18:2 likewise mentions it) was in fact due, Suetonius says, to the rioteer Chrestus and his partisans—the very people Tacitus appears to have originally said were blamed for burning Rome under the next administration. So it would appear that Josephus is deliberately avoiding any mention of this movement and its (real or alleged) crimes. Which actually supports the conclusion that Tacitus originally wrote it was these Chrestians who were blamed for burning Rome, and not our Christians.

19

Appealing to authority is not a fallacy, it’s only a fallacy if you appeal to someone outside your field. If I was appealing to Michael Jordan, or Shaqille O’Neal, you should call me out, but for example if you and I were debating Young Earth Creationists, I think you and I would both agree on that cause we both accept the theory of evolution. We would appeal to authority. We would appeal to the experts that did the genetic sequencing. That dug up the fossils because we didn’t do it ourselves. We have to rely on what they’re telling us about these fossils, so appealing to authority is not a fallacy. (1.27-28)

It is a fallacy when there is a peer reviewed challenge to the consensus. You cannot logically say “all challenges to a consensus are false; because, the consensus.” That’s a non sequitur. Once you have a peer reviewed challenge to a consensus, the debate has to switch to the evidence. In fact that’s the only reason a consensus can even be credible in the first place. Any other behavior is by definition dogmatism. It is also a fallacy to say “no scholar agrees with this, therefore it’s false” when no scholar has even read the peer reviewed challenge. Only informed opinions are valid—even from experts. And even then those opinions have to be demonstrably well formed—not based on statements obviously false or fallacious. See On Evaluating Arguments from Consensus.

And we all know it’s a fallacy to cherry pick experts. When the historicity of Moses was challenged, most experts objected, even many who read the challenge to what was then the consensus. And yet look what happened: it is now the mainstream consensus that the historicity of Moses is dubious. There are countless examples in history and science of an expert consensus resisting a change to their understanding; and then that understanding changing anyway. Because time makes more converts than reason. And for this very reason, you cannot know a priori which situation we are in: one where the consensus is stubborn against sound reason, or one where the consensus is stubborn with sound reason. Therefore you have to look at the evidence. Anything else is head-in-sand.

This whole “arguments from authority are always valid” nonsense is usually just an attempt to avoid doing what you are epistemically obligated to do when there is a peer reviewed challenge to a consensus: look at the evidence, and decide based on that, and not on opinions, especially opinions that disregard the evidence or even falsely report what it is (as a great many experts still do in this case: see How to Successfully Argue Jesus Existed and List of Responses to Defenders of the Historicity of Jesus).

20

You kind of did as well because you obviously said that there were a lot of scholars doubting this. You didn’t clarify that that’s not true, but I would caution you again this because this is how Ken Ham argues. He argues just because all these evolutionists believe this it doesn’t make it true. Then he argues ‘that they have presuppositions, that we can’t trust what they say”. That’s not a good argument. (1.27-28)

Here Jones misses the point. He is defending the cherry picking fallacy; rather than doing what he should be doing: admitting there are many experts (real experts, not Shaqille O’Neals) who doubt the historicity of Jesus or admit it’s at least respectably debatable, and therefore we can’t decide this question by cherry picking which experts we will side with; we have to choose which experts to side with based on the evidence. Which experts are reporting the facts correctly, and which are not? Which experts are giving logically valid reasons for their position, and which are not? Which experts are even explaining why they have the opinion they do? And when they do explain, how logically valid or factually accurate is that explanation? I cover all this in On Evaluating Arguments from Consensus.

Once we ignore amateurs (like, say, mythicists with no relevant graduate degrees and no peer reviewed publications on the subject), what do we see in the literature? We see wildly unreliable and demonstrably false statements from historicists. Like that Jesus is better attested than Alexander the Great or [insert your example here]; or that we have independent attestation to Jesus’s existence outside the Gospels; or that Paul said “he learned the Gospel from the Apostles who came before him”; or that Philo never described an archangel peculiarly matching Paul’s description of Jesus; or that only governments erected inscriptions; or that angels were never called men; and so on. Some will even lie, and repeatedly, about what’s in any peer reviewed case against historicity. Experts defending the consensus say quite a lot of completely false things. Why? And why should we go on trusting a consensus that does that?

“But, the consensus” is not a valid response to any of this.

21

And if what you’re basically saying is that these other historians who understand the Latin and understand the Greek, you can understand these passages better. Now as Bart Ehrman admits, this is not an argument that I’m right, but it does show that you have quite an uphill battle to climb if you want to argue against the overwhelming consensus. (1.27-28)

This is another non sequitur. Godless Engineer never claimed to “understand the Latin and Greek” better. He entirely relies on actual, peer reviewed experts who do. So it’s not valid to deploy a “What do you know?” argument. Jones doesn’t have this expertise either. So he, too, should be paying attention to the experts Godless Engineer is citing. And when there are competing conclusions in the peer reviewed literature, you have to examine the arguments: which side has the evidence; which side is reasoning without fallacy. You can’t use as an excuse to do this the absurd claim that “even though I’m also a total amateur, I get to choose which scholars are right and which are wrong without even looking at any of their evidence or arguments; therefore you’re wrong because I said so.”

22

The reason Galileo won in his days was because he had the evidence on his side. If you want to challenge the scholarly authority, you really need to show that and scholars have dealt with these issues for the past 100 years and unfortunately I don’t think Christ Mythers have really acknowledged a lot of the response to this and that’s why the majority of the scholarly community rejects this. (1.28-29)

This is a false statement. The majority of the scholarly community hasn’t even read either of the peer reviewed challenges to the consensus now in print: Carrier or Lataster (and note, Brodie doesn’t count here, because he only published a personal memoir about why he came to doubt, not a treatise thoroughly addressing arguments for and against historicity or presenting any coherent alternative theory of the origins of Christianity). Worse, no scholar has published a peer reviewed defense of that consensus in a hundred years. Even worse, those rare few scholars who even bother to read one of these peer reviewed books challenging their assumptions (or falsely claim to), base their resulting conclusions on false claims about what’s in it (which ought to be a huge red flag), and don’t even respond to its actual arguments (another huge red flag).

Jones’s analogy is also invalid, producing yet another non sequitur. No one is claiming this is a matter capable of such decisive resolution as geocentrism vs. heliocentrism. Thus Galileo is not a relevant analog for mythicists or historicists. Galileo actually got tons of things wrong throughout his career. And he was only vindicated on things for which there is vastly more evidence than there is for the historicity of Jesus. What mythicists are pointing out is that we are in exactly the opposite situation from Galileo: the evidence deciding the matter for Jesus is extraordinarily dismal, compared to whether the Earth is moving—or the modern theory evolution, or the Holocaust (two other common false analogies trotted out here): the evidence for those, as for Galileo, is vast. All mythicists are pointing out is the entirely true fact that for Jesus that’s simply not the case. We are thus asking people to rethink their dogmas, and reexamine what this dismal evidence can actually support. Because otherwise, dogma is all that remains.

23

2 Peter is not talking about Christ mythers. That is imposing a lot under the texts that wouldn’t be there. All he is saying is we did not follow cleverly devised myths. Scholars I’ve read on that regard this as they’re talking about the pagan myths, we didn’t follow those, we were reporting what we saw and even if that’s not what it said, it’s very very general to think they were talking about Christ mythers. (1.29-35)

Let’s look at the evidence. This is 2 Peter 1:15-2:3:

¹⁵ And I will also make every effort so that you are able to recall these things at any time after my departure. ¹⁶ For we did not follow cleverly contrived myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; instead, we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. ¹⁷ For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased!” ¹⁸ We ourselves heard this voice when it came from heaven while we were with him on the holy mountain. ¹⁹ We also have the prophetic word strongly confirmed, and you will do well to pay attention to it … [here the author inserts a digression on prophecy, by way of explaining this remark before returning to the argument] 2 ¹ There were indeed false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, and will bring swift destruction on themselves. ² Many will follow their depraved ways, and the way of truth will be maligned because of them. ³ They will exploit you in their greed with made-up stories. Their condemnation, pronounced long ago, is not idle, and their destruction does not sleep. [Here the author goes on about how awful these people are and how they will be judged, making further clear he means fellow Christians, whose teaching is demonic and must be shunned.]

There is no logical way to claim here that 2 Peter is rebutting “pagan myths.” This passage is indisputably rebutting the claims of what this author says are the false Christian teachers he is condemning—and not just condemning, but elaborately warning his readers to shun. Those teachers are “heretics” who rely on “made up stories” that amount to “even denying the Master who redeemed them.” In other words, these are Christians.

What does that mean? Think. How does this author—who is lying, BTW, as this is a forgery written to represent Peter as condemning this Christian heresy—argue against these heretics? By insisting stories like the Transfiguration are not “cleverly devised myths” that “deny the Master” but were real historical events, “because I was there, we were there, this really happened!” Which is a lie—this author is not Peter, and wasn’t there, nor evidently knew anyone who was. Rather, 2 Peter is simply inventing an eyewitness to a story in the Gospels, in order to “prove” the Gospels historical and not “cleverly devised myths,” myths which deny “the truth” and even, he insists, the reality of “the Master.”

Which is all the statement of a polemicist. It’s clear these were not Christians claiming there was no Jesus at all, but that the stories placing him on earth before eyewitnesses were false. More likely, they taught they were sacred allegories (in alignment with the very words of Jesus); the phrase “cleverly devised myths” is, again, a polemical statement (which we find a lot in the NT, indicating these mythicist heretics were a real worry: see 1 Timothy 1, 1 Timothy 4, 2 Timothy 4, 1 John 1, 1 John 4, and 2 John 1). So when you look at what the author of 2 Peter is saying in context, and acknowledge that this is a forgery crafted to “rebut” and warn against what this author is deeming a Christian heresy, it is very clear what is happening here: there were Christians claiming the Gospel stories were myths, that no one ever actually met Jesus in person as the stories claim (rather than only in mystical visions, as the only actual eyewitness we have repeatedly says: Romans 10 and 16; 1 Corinthians 9 and 15; Galatians 1). And that teaching required this polemicist to respond by inventing the false claim that “no, these were not myths, we were really there.”

There isn’t any other way to read this. If you actually read it, that is—rather than ignore it all and just repeat a historicist dogma that doesn’t even make sense of the text. Further attempts to avoid this conclusion simply don’t hold up.

24

We have no evidence of any skeptic of Christianity ever doubting Jesus existed. From Trypho to Celsus to Tacitus. All of these hostile witnesses, they would just love to say that was true but they do not. So again the first time that we actually see definitive Christ mythers existing, is not until the late 1700s. (1.29-35)

As just shown, this statement is false. 2 Peter was indeed written to rebut just such Christians. So were several of the Ignatian letters, written around the very same time, which contrary to going dogma, were not written to rebut so-called “Docetism” but some Christian heresy that was claiming every historical fact about Jesus in the Gospels was fake—a myth—requiring “Ignatius” to insist the contrary, and that his fellow Christians shun any Christians saying otherwise as the Devil.

Meanwhile, listing Celsus and Tacitus here is a non sequitur. Neither would have any way of knowing the Gospel Jesus was invented; nor any way to check if it had ever occurred to them. For example, Celsus repeats lots of things in the Gospels as if they happened that we today deem false (e.g. that Mary was possessed of demons and actually claimed to have seen the risen Jesus). He instead gives a rationalizing explanation (Mary was crazy), rather than “researching” whether this was even true at all (as Bart Ehrman concludes, Mary probably didn’t exist). We see this again in Pliny the Younger, who would be Tacitus’s most likely source of information about Christian beliefs (if Tacitus even said anything about it): as soon as Pliny heard what “depraved superstitions” Christians were preaching, he didn’t fact-check them. He simply dismissed them as silly. And ended his investigation there.

By contrast, Trypho the Jew, who is actually a fictional character invented by a Christian again writing an anti-heretical text (not long after 2 Peter and Ignatius), actually does mention the possibility that Jesus didn’t exist. He is noncommittal, both because this is a Christian imagining what a Jew might say and because there wouldn’t be any way for anyone to check such a thing anyway (this is well over a century after the fact and hundreds of miles away). But Justin Martyr, the contriver of this conversation, did seem to be aware of arguments from some people to the effect that Jesus might not even have existed. Which we expect from a Christian polemicist—as we can see from Ignatius and 2 Peter and several other Epistles, there was even a Christian sect saying this that the historicizing sect was terrified of and enraged at and keen to damn and persuade everyone to shun.

In Dialogue with Trypho 8.4 Justin depicts his imagined Jewish opponent Trypho saying, “after receiving groundless hearsay, you invent a Christ for yourselves, and because of him you’re heading to a pointless destruction,” to which Justin responds, “we have not believed empty fables [the word here again is myths] or stories without any proof, but stories filled with the Spirit of God, and bursting with power, and flourishing with grace!” (Ibid. 9.1). Justin of course offers no evidence any of that is true, or even epistemically relevant. But the point is…we’ve heard this before: just as with Ignatius and 2 Peter, Justin responds to what Trypho said by insisting his beliefs are not based on myths but true stories. Which means Justin meant Trypho’s remark to be accusing Christians of believing untrue myths. So here we have a Christian who knew there were some who suspected Jesus was mythical, that the Gospels are just made-up stories…and who was keen to “rebut” that accusation by simply forcefully gainsaying it.

25

Every scholar I’ve read on this says that this is overwhelmingly the style and the content of typical Tacitian work. Again he uses words that he uses elsewhere like “shameful acts” he talks about basically all fits with the overall style. (1.29-35)

Non sequiturs. Tacitus is not demonstrably independent and thus not usable evidence even if the passage in question is authentic. And no one today is claiming the parts of the passage Jones is here talking about are inauthentic. Only the one line about Christ is suspect; and all converging lines of evidence indicate it wasn’t originally there. So Jones clearly doesn’t even understand what the argument is, or its relevance.

26

Tacitus uses “Chrestians” which is important, because that’s how a lot of Romans were referring to Christians around that time, based on our inscription evidence and even in a lot of Christian manuscripts.

This is false. I already covered all this in entries above. No pagan elite sources “around that time” ever refer to Christians as Chrestians, only non-elite Christians did (and only half a century or more later). And as an elite grammar enthusiast, Tacitus wouldn’t. The simplest explanation for why Tacitus alone among his class would say “Chrestians” is if he meant, in fact, Chrestians—partisans of the Claudian-era rioteer Chrestus. And since Tacitus would never explain that name by appealing to the etymologically and orthographically different word “Christos” (without explaining such an oddity), this is evidence that Tacitus…didn’t. Any other explanation requires appending several ad hoc suppositions not in evidence here.

27

So for example Elsa Gibson wrote a book on this and she noted that there was one actual tombstone that had both Chrestians and Christians on it. She noticed that the scribe didn’t know what to put on there so they just put both spellings on there. (1.29-35)

Indeed. We have examples of vulgar or non-elite colloquial dialects (and misspellings and confusions of spelling) in many inscriptions. This has no relevance to Tacitus, who was a literary elite and a stalwart grammarian.

28

Regarding Tacitus, based on our historical evidence, it would be completely ad hoc to be talking about somebody else that was crucified under Pontias Pilate during the reign of Tiberius, in Judea, who started a Christian movement, than what the actual Christian movement we have today [says]. (1.29-35)

Indeed. The latest peer reviewed literature does not aver that Tacitus meant someone else was executed by Pilate in Judea. The argument is that he didn’t write that line altogether, not that he did and meant someone else by it. Which makes this comment by Jones yet another non sequitur. The evidence indicates Tacitus originally wrote the whole passage about the Chrestians, and did not add the line now there about who originated that name. And this is not ad hoc. It is supported by several converging lines of evidence, beginning with Suetonius. See, again, my article on this in Hitler Homer.

29

And going back to 2 Peter, for the sake of this argument I’m not saying it’s reliable. That could be written in the 3rd, 4th century for all I care for this discussion. It would not actually challenge what Tacitus tries to tell us about a historical Jesus. (1.29-35)

This is so bizarre a non sequitur I don’t even comprehend what Jones is attempting to argue here. There is no connection between Godless Engineer’s argument from 2 Peter, a forgery as likely produced in the 2nd century as ever, which is that it attests mythicist Christians, and his argument from Tacitus, which is that it fails to corroborate the historicity of Jesus. That Jones connects those two disparate arguments betrays how confused he is. He doesn’t even know what he is arguing against.

30

Paul always refers to Jesus as Christ Jesus. We see that even 1 Peter 4:14 says “the name of Christ.” It’s quite common that titles just become names. Like if I was gonna ask you what was the name of the mighty Mongul general that conquered the world’s largest empire you told me it was “Genghis Khan,” but no it was actually Temujin. That was his title, but you know him by his title. Titles become names. (1.35-37)

Yet again Jones becomes confused and doesn’t seem to comprehend what Godless Engineer was arguing, producing this marvelous non sequitur. G.E. did not argue “Christ is a title, therefore Jesus didn’t exist” (or any such thing). He argued “Christ is a title; Chrestus is a name,” ergo Occham’s Razor entails references to Chrestus and Chrestians just as likely means Chrestus and Chrestians, not Christ and Christians. Jones offers no rebuttal to this argument. Instead, he gets distracted with the trivial point that G.E. is wrong to assume Tacitus would use the name Jesus (note that Pliny the Younger, who would be Tacitus’s most likely source, conspicuously never mentions it either)—but that isn’t actually necessary to G.E.’s argument, so its being mistaken is moot.

Here is how it would go if these were experts and not amateurs debating this: what Godless Engineer said is true (and indeed many inscriptions bear the name Chrestus, and the phrase Chrestiani could indeed refer to a family or group associated with a Chrestus, as it was a common name). But what he actually said is more soundly rebutted by pointing out that vulgar Latin and Greek often conflated the e and i in writing Christian. So we also know “Chrestians” sometimes did refer to “Christians”—in inscriptions and manuscripts originating from lower class sources. To which expert rebuttal another expert would respond: that’s true, but Tacitus did not write in Vulgar Latin; indeed, he would abhor the very notion of doing so. Where the debate would go from there you already know, from my entries above.

31

If I was gonna ask you when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, are you gonna go “Was it Augustus Caesar? Was it Claudius Caesar?“ No you are gonna know I’m talking about Julius Caesar. Because Caesar becomes highly associated with the name. The reason why Tacitus uses Christos and not the name Jesus, cause he was associating that with the actual movement “Chrestians” who he is talking about. It wouldn’t make sense for him to go “Oh yeah Jesus”. (1.35-37)

Jones’s point about naming conventions is correct. But what G.E. was really talking about was that we know Chrestians could be a thing separate from Christians, and converging lines of evidence indicate Tacitus originally wrote about the former, not the latter (an argument to which Jones never responded so far as I can tell).

I don’t think G.E. knew to make the grammatical point, however, that Tacitus, a renowned and published grammarian and highly elite stickler for Latin, would never explain the word “Chrestian” by citing the word “Christ,” unless he saved face by apologetically explaining why he was doing such a vulgar thing. Tacitus would either have written Christians and Christ, or Chrestians and Chrestus; he would never mix and match. This is one of several converging lines of evidence leading us to suspect Tacitus did not write the line about Christ at all.

To illustrate the point, notice how even the elite Latinist Tertullian looked down his nose at anyone who would do such a thing, blaming pagans for the mistake: “Christianus…is derived from anointing…even when it is wrongly pronounced by you Chrestianus, for you do not even know accurately the name you hate” (Apology 3) This is the same Tertullian, BTW, who though an avid reader of Tacitus, shows no knowledge of Tacitus ever writing about Christians, not even when Tertullian describes the Neronian persecution—he has no notion of it ever being connected with the burning of Rome, or any charge of arson. Which, BTW, is another converging line of evidence leading to the same conclusion.

Although I should pause at this point to note: these two wasted way too many minutes on a wholly trivial argument. Yes, the evidence indicates Tacitus never wrote about Christians originally. But it doesn’t matter. Even if he did, we have no evidence he had any other source for it than Christian informants (who would only be repeating the Gospels at everyone by then), whether directly or through intermediaries like Tacitus’s friend Pliny. Speculations to the contrary remain speculations; and it’s speculation in, speculation out. So we cannot establish independence. Therefore this passage cannot support historicity. And even the raging historicist Bart Ehrman himself agrees it can’t. End of story. Move on.

32

Well why are they called “Chrestians?” He’s referring to his actual title which became a name. Even in the new Testament we see that start showing up. Chrestus was a name. There are about 18 inscriptions of Romans named Chrestos in the ancient world. However none of them were Jewish. None of them. Not one. And that’s for the same reason why no one of European descent has an original Korean name. It’s just not the part of the culture. The only time we see Chrestus show up with regard to a Jewish leader it has to do with the Christos. And that again comes from the numerous times that Christians called themselves “Chrestians.” (1.35-37)

This is a common apologetic line, but it’s baseless. We do not know the ethnicity, much less the religion, of every person bearing the name Chrestus on any extant artifact (of which, including literature and papyri, there are more than a hundred surviving examples, not just “18”), much less every person so named (it’s a non sequitur to think every name any Jew ever went by is represented in extant materials, or that no Jews, particularly leaders of resistance movements, took unique names—indeed, we have dozens of examples of uniquely named Jews), so this “not one” claim is hogwash. And honest experts wouldn’t be chucking hogwash like this. One more reason we should not be having amateurs live-debating these things.

In actual fact countless Jews adopted Greek names throughout the ancient period, particularly slaves who had such names forced on them, as well as those seeking or holding a citizenship (whether to Rome or one of countless Greek polities under Roman rule). Chrestus is a name highly likely to be associated with slaves and freedmen (and indeed half of all known references are confirmed to be), regardless of their ethnicity or religion (it’s the Latin equivalent to the modern English nickname “Handy”). So Jones’s line about “Europeans don’t take Korean names” is just more hogwash; the analogy’s invalid: in the Roman era Jews did often take Greek names. Meanwhile, Suetonius explicitly tells us there was a Jewish instigator in Rome under Claudius named Chrestus (again, he can’t confusingly have meant Jesus; Jesus never lived in Rome, and was long dead by the time of Claudius). So Jones is here chucking buckets of hogwash just to dodge the obvious fact that Suetonius meant what he said.

Honestly. Crap like this offends me as a historian.

33

For example, Justin Martyr actually uses it as a pun in his writings, so he talks about how “you call us ‘Christians’, but you say us Christians are detestable” somehow—I’m paraphrasing what he says—but it’s wrong to call what’s excellent, and he uses the word “Chrestians,” unjust. So he uses that word as sort of a pun. You know, you’re calling us Christians but you shouldn’t insult what’s good. (1.35-37)

This is a terrible argument. I don’t even know where to begin.

First, Jones is factually wrong. Justin Martyr never uses the word Chrêstianoi (Chrestians). He often uses chrêstos (and once, chrêstotês), but never in any such connection; he uses the word chrêstotatoi (“we are most excellent people,” Apology 4.1), but not in any sentence near the word Christian; while in the one sentence Jones is referring to, Justin only uses the word chrêston, “good” (“we are accused of being Christians, but to hate the good is not just,” Ibid. 4.5), which for Justin indicates a similar, not identical sound is being played on for the pun (if a pun was even intended).

Second, Jones’s argument is illogical. It’s another non sequitur to cite as an example a passage that is actually a counter-example: Justin assiduously avoids the linguistic vulgarity, and makes no mention of “Chrestian,” much less of it being a common or acceptable substitute for “Christian” in elite literature. Indeed, if this were all we had to go on, from this remark we’d sooner conclude Justin had never heard of the two words being interchangeable. Jones is only shooting himself in the foot here, and exposing what an amateur he is—he doesn’t even know he’s got the facts and logic wrong here.

34

Tertullian says Christians is a Greek word and it means nothing more than ‘a disciple of Christ’, “which by interpretation is ‘the anointed’ and when you misname it ‘Chrestian’, even that implies nothing worse than a goodness and sweetness of temper.” (1.35-37)

This a bit garbled, but he’s going off memory in a live debate so his inexactness is forgivable. But even corrected, as I already noted earlier, this passage in Tertullian is actually evidence against Jones’s point.

35

Lactantius said later on that people who were ignorant of this fact, refer to him as ‘Chrestus’ and the simple reason is for that is [back then] the E and the I were pretty similar for Greco-Roman speakers, so it almost sounded practically the same [note: Jones is referring to itacism; see above]. So once you actually study the development of the ancient Greek, they were virtually interchangeable in the ancient world, and that’s why we see manuscripts and inscriptions ascribed as ‘Chrestians’. (1.37-38)

This is another amateur argument. He’s telephone-gamed the facts here. Before Late Antiquity, the vocal phenomenon he’s talking about was only reflected in writing among lower class speakers and scribes of Latin and Greek. That’s why Lactantius condemns it (it is, he says, only “the error of the ignorant who change the letter” from i to e: Divine Institutes 4.7). Once again, Jones cites an example that refutes his own point. Seriously.

36

There’s no other movement from the ancient world attributed to anyone named Chrestus of Christians. We only have one that the ancient historians talked about and that’s the story regarding Jesus of Nazareth who was called the Christ and ‘the Chrestus’. (1.37-38)

I have no idea what Jones is talking about here. On the second point, I’m sure someone could say Christ was good (chrêstos). I see no bearing of that on any point being debated here. On the first point, the only reason we don’t have another mention of Chrestiani as a group is that the section where Tacitus would have discussed them (the year under Claudius of the Chrestus riots) is lost. That’s the point: if we look at all the converging lines of evidence (for which see my peer reviewed article in Hitler Homer, which includes all sound arguments marshaled by previous experts), it looks like Tacitus is talking about a group he previously called the Chrestiani.

And this makes sense because this is a standard Latinism for partisans generally: hence the “Pompeiani” are partisans of Pompey, continuing even after his death; the “Brutiani” were likewise continuing supporters of Brutus’s decision to assassinate rather than submit to any Caesar; the “Galbiani” were the supporters of Emperor Galba; and so on. So if Tacitus wrote about later partisans of Chrestus, being accused of stirring up shit again, we can fully expect he would call them Chrestiani. Because that’s how Latin works. Again, an expert would know this. And this is why amateurs shouldn’t be debating stuff like this.

37

Regarding 2 Peter. Again, I think you need to see what this says. If anything they are talking about the myth regarding his majesty, not the myth regarding the eyewitness accounts of him as a person. (1.38-42)

This is not a sustainable apologetic. As we saw earlier, looking at the quote in its entire context, the whole letter of 2 Peter was written to rebut and condemn a group of Christians (a “heresy”) who were evidently claiming the Gospels were myths, that no one saw Jesus in life as they claim (which is polemically represented as “denying” Christ’s reality); for which 2 Peter was forged to invent an assertion of having been there and seen it.

38

Again, we have no direct evidence of anyone doubting the existence of Jesus. And again even if this was a late century works, it would not affect what Tacitus talked. (1.38-42)

We have next to no direct evidence of any Christian sect disfavored by the faction that won political power under Constantine. Nearly all “heretical” literature of the first two centuries was destroyed; and if we know anything about early alternative sects of Christianity at all, it’s only through the lens of their dishonest and often clueless enemies; and even then, only of later disputes. We have almost nothing at all for the early second century, and literally nothing at all for the first (even though Paul attests considerable factions and heresies already developing as early as the 50s; and again, tells us next to nothing about them).

So this is another non sequitur. You can’t make claims about the silence in a body of literature you don’t have. Unless you have direct clues that allow such inferences—and when we look for those, we find several clues of there having been mythicist Christians (multiple indirect lines of evidence), but no comparable clues that there weren’t. (See OHJ, Chapter 8.12.)

39

Tacitus talks about Jesus as a historical person. … This is why this passage is highly cited by scholars when we’re looking on the historicity of Jesus. (1.38-42)

This is both false (outside Christian apologetics, most experts admit the Tacitus passage is of no use as evidence, as I already noted—because we cannot establish its independence from Christian mythology) and a non sequitur. The question is not whether the extant text of Tacitus references Christ as historical; the questions are whether that’s what Tacitus originally wrote (and multiple lines of evidence suggest the one relevant line about Christ was not written by Tacitus) and more importantly, even if he wrote it, whether we can demonstrate he got that information from any source not derivative of the Gospels (and the answer is no).

40

This is kind of goal-post shifting when it comes to historical figures. Again, we don’t have any historical evidence on sources of Alexander the Great til 300 years after he existed. Maybe they were referring to another Alexander. Maybe Alexander had a son Alexander and the original Alexander the Great died and they just didn’t want to sound bad so they just continued on the story with his son. (1.42-43)

I’m sorry. I have to be blunt here. This is ignorant bullshit from top to bottom, already dispatched above. No goal posts have been moved here; the problem remains the lack of a ball to toss between them. For further guidance see Okay, So What about the Historicity of Spartacus? and So What About Hannibal, Then?

41

Or maybe they just made Alexander up to give the Greeks more street cred in the Persian area, or in Mesopotamia. This you could say for other Jews as well. Like Hillel. Maybe the Jews just made him up to give themselves more credit. You could say that with a lot of historical figures and Christ mythers won’t do that same kind of thing with people like Hannibal, or Alexander the Great, or Hillel or the high priest Caiaphas or Honi the circle drawer. So again this would not stand up to other historical references. We have sources that’s within 100 years of Jesus existence is far better than a lot of other things like again Alexander the Great, or Hannibal. (1.42-43)

All false. Ignorant bullshit again, top to bottom. See above. Particularly, apply the lessons in my article on Hannibal to Honi and Hillel and Caiaphas and Gamaliel. The analogy is invalid in every case. The same standards always get you different results for Jesus because the evidence for Jesus is different. And until you understand that, you are not competent to debate the matter.

42

Going after the title again. They were called Christians and they followed after the Christ. If Romans are hearing that, why would they care about what his actual name is? For the very same reason you’re not going to refer to him as Tamijin, you’re going to refer to him as Genghis Kahn. Because that’s how people know him. (1.43-44)

Jones must be running out of steam. By this point he’s just repeating the same non sequiturs I already dispatched above.

43

Regarding [the second passage in] Josephus. I have looked at this all week because [Godless Engineer] mentioned it in [his] videos. I’m trying to find historians who actually doubt this, but maybe you could refer me to some? (1.44-49)

How is it that someone comes to debate this, had a whole week to prepare, and still couldn’t find any of the literature G.E. cites on it? How “amateur hour” can we get here?

Experts, who want to honestly debate this, will get and read the latest literature on it. It’s easy to find: when this debate was on, there was only one peer reviewed monograph on historicity published in the last hundred years, and G.E. refers to it often enough that there can be no excuse for “not being able to find it.” In Chapter 8.9 of On the Historicity of Jesus I cite and summarize my own peer reviewed journal article on the matter, which was then the latest peer reviewed literature on the authenticity of the James passage in Josephus, and that cites previous experts who have likewise been in doubt over it. And that’s affordably accessible in Hitler Homer Bible Christ. For a briefer online summary, see Josephus on Jesus? Why You Can’t Cite Opinions Before 2014. See also my recent discussion of Mason.

44

No one I have seen actually doubts this and it’s very likely not an interpolation, because it uses a word in there “called,” legomenos, and that actually translates into other areas of Josephus’ writing to ‘so-called’, or alleged. A Christian wouldn’t use that word because they believed he was the Christ. (1.44-49)

False. Christians repeatedly used that word of Christ, even in the Gospels. It’s an extremely common word (so it’s not at all indicative of Josephus to use it), and not inherently pejorative (as even Christian use of it attests). Jones would know all this if he would act like an expert and actually read the latest peer reviewed article on the point before debating it. See above.

45

Luckily from the first Josephus passage we do know what Christian interpolations looked like. They say he was the Christ. Another scribe is not gonna come on and think and just prefer him as the so-called ‘Christ’ or the alleged Christ. (1.44-49)

This is twice false. Not only did Christians say that (per above), but the most up-to-date theory of how the phrase “called Christ” got into the text of Josephus entails that it happened accidentally, not deliberately; so Jones’s argument here is yet again a total non sequitur, built out of a false analogy, illustrating his ignorance of the latest peer reviewed literature on the very subject he is supposed to be informedly debating.

46

Unanimous consent regarding this second Josephus passage among scholars that specialize in Josephus is that it’s authentic. No one doubts this is a marginal letter [?] as [Godless Engineer] said in [his] videos. Because it doesn’t match Christian interpolation. And it matches Josephus’ use of the vocabulary because he uses the same word elsewhere. (1.44-49)

This is truly a face-palm moment. Jones starts with the non sequitur that experts who haven’t read the latest peer reviewed challenge to this phrase’s authenticity can have an informed opinion on an argument they’ve never read and evidence they’ve never seen (which is why, for this, You Can’t Cite Opinions Before 2014; nor any after 2014 from anyone who hasn’t consulted the latest peer reviewed literature on the point; or who stalwartly ignores what it says—like, say, Steve Mason). Then Jones conflates the common scribal phenomenon of interpolating a “marginal gloss” (he doesn’t even get the terminology right) with a deliberate interpolation (which is a forgery; not the same thing). And thus he produces another “comparing apples with oranges” non sequitur: that it can’t be an accidental interpolation, because it doesn’t look like a deliberate one. And then to really show what an amateur he is, he ends with the boner of an argument that using legomenos is indicative of Josephan style—it’s not; the word was in such common use, it is indicative of no author’s style. This is almost as bad as saying “Josephus must have said it, because it contains the word ‘the’, and Josephus uses the word ‘the’ elsewhere.” Hello Face; meet Palm.

47

Josephus distinguishes between the Jesus that he mentions at the end of [the James passage] as Jesus ben Damneus. He doesn’t refer in the [passage] to the present one as Jesus ben Damneus. He refers to Jesus the so-called, alleged Christ. He’s clearly distinguishing by how they are known. (1.49)

Jones is clearly losing it here. Maybe because he seems tired and flustered. It is illogical to cite the presence of the very phrase in question (“called Christ”) as evidence for it being authentic. Whether it was there is the very thing in dispute. Jones is thus arguing in a circle, assuming the conclusion in his premise, then using that premise to reach the conclusion. If that phrase wasn’t there, then Josephus wouldn’t be distinguishing the two Jesuses. That’s the whole point. It stands as one of several lines of evidence for the conclusion: that phrase wasn’t originally there.

Moreover, if Jones would read the actual peer reviewed literature on this, he’d know not only all of that (and thus, hopefully, not have made either mistake), but also that it’s just as likely Josephus even once made the connection explicit. As I show in my article on this in the Journal of Early Christian Studies (reproduced in Hitler Homer), it would be typical for a scribe to have replaced the phrase “of Damneus” in the first instance with “called Christ,” once they’d confused themselves (as I show countless scribes did) into thinking a marginal note was an intended correction for an error (in this case a common error all scribes were then familiar with, called dittography: accidentally duplicating a word or phrase in one line from a few lines away). That’s not even required (Josephus can easily have intended the equation to be obvious from the context of his story). But it remains relevant that it would be a common sort of thing to happen. Converging with all the other evidence I adduce, the conclusion is hard to evade by any legitimate logic.

48

That James’s death is recorded in Josephus is fine because the Bible doesn’t mention how James died. It’s not in there. I think you might be confused regarding that. Most scholars I think accept this as being a pretty good account of how James would have most likely died. (1.49-50)

Here definitely Godless Engineer is the one confused; Jones is right: James the brother of Jesus never dies in the Bible. In fact there is no James the brother of Jesus in Acts, the earliest purported history of the church. After Acts 1, when the public history of the church begins, no brother of Jesus ever appears or is ever mentioned. Rather it talks about a different James being killed in a different way and in a different decade. What I think G.E. meant was that the only Christian account of James the brother of Jesus being killed (related in Hegesippus: see OHJ, Chapter 8.8) does not match the description provided by Josephus. In fact, no Christian author ever seems aware of the account in Josephus until Eusebius, who is the first to find the account actually in Josephus—in a way that indicates the interpolation (of the words “the one called Christ”) took place between Origen and Eusebius (see my chapter on this in Hitler Homer).

49

Regarding the Tacitus thing, what else does Tacitus cite as references? For a lot of this stuff he doesn’t. (1.49-50)

Exactly. So you can’t argue “he always cites his sources.” He rarely does. Nor can you claim to “know” what his sources are. At best, for this datum about Christ, it’s 50/50 whether those sources were Christian informants or sources independent of the Gospels; and you can’t build an argument either way on 50/50. And at worst, all evidence points toward Tacitus most likely getting this solely from Christian informants long after the Gospels were circulating. Which has the same effect on the data: we can’t use it to “corroborate” the Gospels. If we can’t confirm it’s independent, we can’t conclude it’s independent. And if we can’t conclude it’s independent, we can’t use “it’s independent” as a premise in any argument. And that means we can’t use this passage as evidence for historicity. As much as you might desperately want to, you can’t. Even Bart Ehrman has admitted this now. So it’s time to give up this indefensible hill and move on.

50

That’s typically how you did ancient works. You didn’t have your citations like modern historians do. You didn’t have your footnotes like modern historians do. You just kinda put it all in there. So I would say it’s just special pleading with the rest you see in Tacitus. (1.49-50)

Like an amateur, Jones doesn’t realize he is talking about himself here. By insisting Tacitus “must” have had independent sources for this datum about Christ, it is Jones who is engaged in special pleading. That’s G.E.’s point.

51

And there’s no reason to actually distrust Tacitus this. (1.50-54)

This gets to the heart of how Jones is failing here. He is simply ignoring every reason given him as to why we should distrust Tacitus on this. It is not that we think Tacitus is lying or is wholly unreliable in everything he writes. The reasons given are two: (1) there is a lot of evidence Tacitus did not write this line about Christ in the first place (all of which evidence Jones either ignores or gets wrong) and (2) even if it’s authentic, experts on Tacitus tell us he typically didn’t bother fact-checking vulgar trivia like this, especially when it suited his prejudices, and we already know his most likely source was living Christian informants, while we have no evidence it’s the other way around (that he “more likely” used some unknown, uncited source independent of the Gospels).

That last point we know not only because we know Tacitus communicated with Pliny for data to put in his history and we know Pliny had just recently interrogated Christians about their beliefs (and Pliny even says he had to because he knew nothing on their beliefs; and if Pliny didn’t, neither likely would Tacitus), but also because Tacitus would have done exactly what Pliny did: interrogate some Christians (or ask someone who had—like, say, his best friend Pliny), and upon hearing the ignominious things they believed, given up any further research as a waste of time.

There also weren’t likely any records then available to Tacitus to check such a thing by even if for some really bizarre reason he decided to spend a whole day digging through thousands and thousands of dusty sheafs of papyrus that somehow miraculously survived being burned up twice, just to verify an obscure fact he had no reason to doubt. Pro tip: he wouldn’t. As Michael Grant said—and remember this is Jones’s own cited authority—“independent research” wasn’t Tacitus’s thing; and as Ronald Mellor wrote—and remember this is also Jones’s own cited authority—Tacitus certainly wouldn’t waste any time on such a triviality.

In contrast to all that, we have no evidence of like kind for the contrary view. So we’re done here. All the evidence is against Jones, and even if we ignored all that evidence, we still have no evidence for Jones’s contention that Tacitus had some independent source. Jones simply can’t establish the independence of Tacitus’s source. Which is why every real and honest historian agrees we have to throw this out of court.

52

Again this is a typical Tacitan-style passage that fits with how he writes, it fits with what he does regarding his work. He doesn’t say this is speculative at all. It agrees with what we know about the movement, about what the Christians were saying. It agrees with Josephus about what he was basically saying. (1.50-54)

Jones here again gets hopelessly confused. No one is claiming the passage as a whole wasn’t written by Tacitus—only the one line about Christ is in contention. So its being in Tacitean style is a non sequitur. Nor is anyone claiming Tacitus is “speculating,” so that’s another non sequitur—the argument is that even if he did write that line, he is getting it from Christian informants, the very people who would know, which is the opposite of speculating. That’s what ancient historians preferred to do: ask living authorities in the know. And obviously it would “agree” with what Christians were saying if it came from Christians! Jones seems to really be confused here. Only if what Tacitus said didn’t agree with what Christians were preaching would we have evidence of Tacitus having some other source than Christians!

Jones also adds that it agrees with Josephus, but that’s only if you are so gullible as to believe the Testimonium Flavianum was ever written by him (it wasn’t, not even a little bit: see OHJ, 8.9 and Josephus on Jesus? Why You Can’t Cite Opinions Before 2014; see also below) and so foolish as to not notice that even were it authentic it faces the same problem: Josephus’s most likely source would be Christian informants citing the Gospels. Josephus does not say otherwise. So you can’t establish the independence of that passage’s content either. As even Bart Ehrman admits, you have to look for other evidence than this. Josephus just doesn’t cut it. Neither does Tacitus. Jones is really wasting his time on this.

53

About the interpolated version if you want to get on that, I’m more than willing to talk about the un-interpolated version, or the Testimonium passage as well. So again it just seems like a huge special pleading. We gotta throw all this dirt on these passages regarding Jesus. We wouldn’t do for any other historical figure in Tacitus for that mind. So I don’t understand why we have to do this with one historical figure. (1.50-54)

Actually yes, we would do that for any other historical figure. If we had all the same evidence of meddling and textual corruption and inability to establish the independence of a source, the conclusion would always be the same: the passage is unusable as evidence. This is not an ad hoc dismissal of a source; these points are based on multiple converging lines of evidence. Actual, real evidence. We aren’t making any of this up. So we cannot be accused of special pleading; special pleading is claiming things you don’t have evidence for—like that Tacitus had a reliable source independent of the Gospels for that one line about Christ. That’s special pleading.

You know what also is special pleading, BTW? Claiming there is an “un-interpolated version” of the Testimonium in Josephus. No such thing exists. There is only a wholesale invention by modern scholars, agreeing with no manuscript in existence, based on no evidence of any kind, that matches Josephan discourse style even less. To insist “that” is authentic is special pleading seven ways from Sunday. On why that’s simply not a valid way to argue here, see, again, OHJ, 8.9 and Josephus on Jesus? Why You Can’t Cite Opinions Before 2014.

54

Okay, regarding Origen. As even Jeff Lowder notes, in this passage which just acknowledges the mere existence of Jesus—and Celsus wasn’t even arguing against that so he would not even need to use that—Josephus is not a believer. There’s no reason for him to use that passage and try to argue that Jesus was divine and actually resurrected. So I don’t think that necessarily follows. (1.54-end)

I’m struggling to guess what Jones meant to be arguing here. I don’t think he understood what Godless Engineer was talking about. What Jones was confronted with was the fact that not even his hypothetical “un-interpolated version” of the Testimonium appears in Origen, not even by reference. Jones seems to be trying to ramblingly insist Origen would have no reason to reference it. Which is simply false six ways from Sunday.

Let’s look at what I wrote about this in my peer reviewed book (OHJ, pp. 335-36), which is relevant because it seems clear Jones has never read any peer reviewed literature on the historicity of Jesus. Like an amateur, he’s simply citing another amateur as his sole authority, Jeff Lowder—who, for all his genius, is not a historian (hence I myself cite him only when I, as an expert, have vetted his accuracy; something Jones, being an amateur, cannot do). Worse, Jones is referencing something Lowder wrote so long ago that Lowder himself might not even agree with it anymore, not having kept up on the peer reviewed literature since—remember, Why You Can’t Cite Opinions Before 2014. So, compare that, with this:

Considering just Origen alone, there are several passages where it’s almost certain he would have remarked upon this paragraph, even quoted it, had he known of it. For example, in his treatise Against Celsus Origen is tasked with proving there was any near-contemporary attestation to the affairs of Jesus. [This is the very task he sets forth in Origen, Against Celsus 1.42, in response to the several challenges made by Celsus as noted in Against Celsus 1.37-41.] Yet all he can present in said proof [Against Celsus 1.47] are passages in Josephus attesting John the Baptist and (supposedly) James [but actually, for the latter, mistaking Hegesippus for Josephus]. Likewise, at many other turns in his contest with Celsus, Origen would surely have had irresistible use of the fact that this same Josephus attested to the ministry of Jesus, declared him wise (and thus did not think him a charlatan, as Celsus persistently argues), corroborated his resurrection on the third day (a fact Celsus insists only Christians affirm), and confirmed that he fulfilled prophecy (a major point Origen struggles to establish, and for which the agreement of a Jew would have been priceless).

All attempts to explain away Origen’s silence require adopting one or more ad hoc hypotheses for which there is no evidence, such as that Josephus had written something wildly different, which the TF then replaced; or are illogical—for instance, even if an original TF had treated Christians negatively, that would even more have demanded a response, not less so, as the last thing Origen could allow is Celsus (or any other critic) citing Josephus, the very source whose authority Origen praises, against him, without a preemptive apologetic. So the silence of Origen is simply very improbable unless there was no TF at all. The silence of all the rest of Christian and anti-Christian literature only adds to that improbability. And the obvious improbability of the content of every single sentence (as [I] just surveyed [earlier]) adds even more. So we are already looking at an extremely low probability that this passage, or anything even remotely like it, existed in the original Antiquities.

OHJ, pp. 335-36

There are numerous other lines of evidence, BTW, that converge on the same conclusion: that Josephus never wrote anything about Jesus here. Jones seems unaware of any of this evidence or how it operates.

55

Regarding the Arabic [version of the Testimonium], yes he [?] is aware of Eusebius but isn’t using [a] Eusebius passage for that, as historians have noted. And I don’t think you realize it, but there is [another author who] tried to rework a lot of Josephus in Latin. It cites every good mention of Josephus, but it doesn’t say he was the Christ. (1.55-end)

Jones seems confused again. This response to what G.E. said is almost too muddled to extract an argument from. What G.E. said is correct: Alice Whealey proved (quite conclusively) that the Arabic Testimonium does derive from Eusebius and not Josephus. In other words, Jones appears to be out of the loop here. He is mentioning an old view in the field that has since been refuted. By Alice Whealey. Jones thus doesn’t know how to respond to that. He evidently doesn’t know this happened. He’s relying on old source materials, a common problem with amateurs, Christian apologists especially. Jones also is confused about the Latin. That’s derivative of the interpolated manuscript of Josephus (the same one we have ancestors of in Greek, which comes from the library of Eusebius); so it does not independently attest an earlier version of it. For both points I’ll just direct you to a catch-up: see The End of the Arabic Testimonium.

This is where Part 1 of their debate ended. I’ll next cover Part 2.