You can watch an edited video of my live talk, with slides, for the Secular Humanist Society of New York earlier this month: How Would We Know Jesus Existed? But here I will provide a brief written methodological summary, for ease of reference and use.
My talk drew from my new book Jesus from Outer Space, which has an entire chapter on this point…because evidently it was needed. In my formal study, On the Historicity of Jesus, I took for granted that historians would already know what kinds of evidence we have, and thus expect to have, for historical persons whose existence we’re sure of. This has turned out a sadly false expectation. Historians shockingly often don’t know this at all. I did give two examples in OHJ, Alexander the Great (pp. 21-24) and Socrates (Ch. 8.2), and surveyed the matter using those points of reference. But people kept missing the point, and went on trying to find some example that somehow could “get passed” the point I made. They proposed Spartacus. Nope. They proposed Tiberius. Nope. They proposed Julius Caesar. Nope. They proposed Pontius Pilate. Nope. They tried Herod Agrippa, Hannibal, Caligula, and Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius. All backfired. Because we are confident in these men’s existence precisely because of all the evidence we have establishing it—literally none of which evidence we have for Jesus.
There is no person whose evidential status is actually comparable to Jesus, yet whom we are confident existed. The historicity of Apollonius of Tyana, for example, is actually sketchy. Historians aren’t that confident. And yet we still have more evidence he existed than we have for Jesus. Attempts to gainsay this fall into amateur mistakes no competent historian should be stumbling over, like counting dependent evidence as independent (it does not matter how many copies and retellings of and back-references to the same story we have, we only have the one story—that’s one item of evidence, not a hundred), counting non-evidence as evidence (Thallus never mentioned Jesus at all, and Pliny the Younger never mentioned him being a historical person), and counting hypothetical sources as actual. That it is possible the various Gospels got their different stories from tradents preserving oral tradition going back to eyewitnesses does not make it probable they did—we have abundant evidence they also just made stories up, whereas we have zero evidence they got any from sources. And that honestly should decide the matter of which is more likely. Evidence trumps hope.
We don’t do this for any other ancient person. So why are historians so desperate that they resort to this method when it’s Jesus? Anyone else, we have the evidence; we don’t have to make excuses. That we can’t make the honest case for Jesus that we can for all those other people should leave you less confident he existed, not more. And regardless of your confidence in that, you should still not be trumping up such bad evidence as we have. We don’t have anything unambiguous; and almost nothing independent of the Gospels. And the Gospels are the worst kind of evidence we could have. Some historians have been figuring this out: see Robyn Faith Walsh and the Gospels as Literature and my growing List of Historians Who Take Mythicism Seriously (and Ch. 5 of Proving History).
It’s just one step of logic from there to the obvious conclusion: having only the Gospels is like having (as we do) multiple biographical accounts of Hercules and his twelve labors—all more evidence of a mythical man than a real one (see, for example, my recent discussion in My Rank-Raglan Scoring for Osiris). “But we have the Epistles” doesn’t gain you much, because they fail to corroborate nearly everything in the Gospels, and what remains is strangely ambiguous, not at all a clear expression of Jesus having been more than an imaginary person learned of from revelation and hidden messages in Scripture (see OHJ, Chs. 9, 10, and 11). “But we have Josephus” (or Tacitus) should be too embarrassing an argument even to mention; even if they did write what their books now say about Jesus (and they probably didn’t), it still in all probability derives from the Gospels (or Christian informants relying on the Gospels). It is therefore not independent evidence. And dependent evidence has no value. A thousand copies of and references to a source still equals only the one source. A mere copy or back-reference cannot corroborate the original (beyond that it existed, which no one doubts of the Gospels).
In any event, a lot of people evidently need it spelled out more clearly: what would convince us Jesus existed? What is it that we are supposed to have, but don’t? This was the focus of my chapter on the point in JFOS, and my recent New York talk. The recorded talk briefed the most likely alternative theory of Christian origins, but it wasn’t a lecture on that, but rather on this other side of the coin: what we would actually need to be so sure Jesus existed, yet curiously don’t.
Getting Up to Speed
I will assume readers have adequately read up on the background of this debate. But for those who haven’t, you should start with the first complete peer-reviewed study of this question published in a hundred years, my post-doc work On the Historicity of Jesus (Sheffield-Phoenix 2014); and then the only other study yet published since, which essentially confirmed my results: Questioning the Historicity of Jesus by Raphael Lataster (Brill 2019). In any other science, replication (two corroborating studies getting the same result), and no peer-reviewed study getting a different result, would be sufficient to conclude that the traditional view is at least legitimately questionable. But emotion-driven dogmatism still resists this obvious conclusion. There are two other books to consider that contribute: my contractually peer-reviewed study of the methodology involved in Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (Prometheus 2012); and my brief colloquial summary of the results in Jesus from Outer Space (Pitchstone 2020), from which the lecture I am presently summarizing derives.
The gist is this: we cannot doubt the historical existence of any person, thing, or event, without having a plausible alternative explanation of how belief in its existence arose. But once we have one of those, it all depends on the evidence.
I often use the analogy of the “Roswell saucer crash”:
- What Really Happened: In 1947 a guy found some sticks and tinfoil in the desert.
- What Was Immediately Said to Have Happened: That this was debris from an alien spacecraft.
- What Was Said to Have Happened within just Thirty Years: An entire flying saucer was recovered, complete with alien bodies that were autopsied by the government.
Here we have the analog sequence of events: the believers maintain the evolved myth (“an entire flying saucer was recovered, complete with alien bodies that were autopsied by the government”), without any doubt, and just repeat it as a given; but the myth started with something else—a real thing, but not the same thing.
On the most likely alternative account, Christianity did not start with a Galilean preacher named Jesus; it started with an imagined cosmic being becoming incarnate, getting killed to effect a magic spell on the universe, and rising back from the dead to prove his triumph; all of which known only by revelation (directly or through ancient prophecies). Then a lifetime later a historical man was invented to represent all this, and that then taught as “gospel.” Which is why no solid records of the original belief were preserved: that would have undermined the newfangled gospel (see How Did Christianity Switch to a Historical Jesus?, which discusses some of the other content of my lecture I won’t duplicate here).
There is a scientifically relevant anthropological analog to this sequence of events, and a relevant historical analog, and even a contextually relevant historical analog, all establishing proof of concept:
- What Really Happened: In the 1920s the Cargo Cult movement spread across several Melanesian islands.
- What Was Immediately Said to Have Happened: Visions & spirit communications came to various shamans imparting new teachings.
- What Was Said to Have Happened within just Thirty Years: Instead of visions and spirit communications coming to many different shamans, an actual singular savior figure came to each island to impart all those teachings. In some sects this became John Frum; in others, Tom Navy; in yet others, even Prince Phillip, the queen consort of England, unlike John and Tom an actual historical man whose son is now king, yet still who never came to that island or did or said any of the things claimed.
- Yet no such persons ever existed. Sure, like Haile Selassie, Prince Phillip was real, but in the case of John and Tom, whole historical men were invented, and came to be solely believed the founders of their sects, when in every case, originally the religion began by revelation to a multitude of “apostles” and not any single person. And this transformation happened in the same exact time-frame as Christianity: revelations in the 30s; then assigned to an invented historical founder within thirty years.
- And if it wasn’t for anthropologists, we wouldn’t know that. By luck, actual scientists were studying these Melanesian cultures when all this began, so we have independent, objective, third-party observations of that—including such oddities as shamans putting their ears to telegraph poles to hear the spirit-messages that would become their religion. Needless to say, we didn’t get any such luck with Christianity: no third party observations of its origin (much less by scientists) were made (or at least preserved for us to even know about them). Imagine if this were where we were with the Cargo Cults: all we had were the later belief-claims of John Frum and Tom Navy, and all original accounts lost and not even referenced (as they conflicted with the evolved belief). We would be in exactly the situation we are with Jesus. That’s how easily it could have happened.
Likewise:
- What Really Happened: Saboteurs in 1811 invented the legend of Ned Ludd to justify their anti-industrialization movement (accordingly known as the Luddites).
- What Was Immediately Said to Have Happened: Ned Ludd was a real man who sabotaged a factory in 1779.
- Which Was Just Thirty Years after the Alleged fact: And yet it was widely believed the story was true and Nedd Ludd a real man. It was never questioned until recently. But late 18th century England remains very well documented; even newspapers exist from the time, as well as extensive collections of memoirs and correspondences, and a huge supply of commercial and government documents. Record of Ludd should exist. It does not. But imagine if that century hadn’t been so well-documented; that it was as poorly documented in extant remains as the first century. We would be in exactly the situation we are with Jesus. That’s how easily it could have happened.
And finally there is the example of Osiris, the resurrected personal savior god popularized from Egypt, a province adjacent to Judea and populated with traveling Jews, before and during the very time Christianity arose. We are directly told by one devotee, Plutarch (in his essay On Isis and Osiris), that in public stories (his “Gospels”) Osiris is represented as a historical Pharaoh, with a life on Earth, complete with named family, teachings, and adventures, but in private to true initiates it was explained that that was all myth, that no such person lived on Earth, but the real Osiris dies and rises in outer space below the moon, to where he descends from the heavens above, becomes incarnate, is killed by sky demons, and is resurrected and ascends back to glory, thereafter able to confer eternal life upon followers baptized in his name, who are thus “reborn” by symbolically sharing in his death and resurrection through that baptism.
This is basically Christianity. Except with an Egyptian skin rather than Jewish. Judaize it, replace all the Egyptian stuff with Jewish stuff, and presto, it is Christianity. Yet Osiris never existed as what we would consider a historical man—he was an imaginary being, imagined to have really died in outer space. Yet his devotees publicly preached his historical existence. This is a contextually relevant proof of concept. Osiris went from a celestial being, whose incarnation and death and resurrection were likewise mytho-celestial, to a historical being, whose incarnation and death and resurrection happened historically on Earth. If this could happen to Osiris cult, it could happen to Jesus cult. The only question is—did it?
There were in fact a lot of these religions. It was fashionable to have a historicized celestial savior deity. Practically every culture had one but the Jews. Christianity looks like they simply got around to inventing one. And like many others, it became more popular abroad than at home. In every case, these mythical-yet-historicized gods have the same structural role:
- They were all “savior gods”
- They were all the “son” of God (or “daughter”)
- They all undergo a “passion” (patheôn)
- They all obtained victory over death, which they share with their followers
- They all have stories about them set in human history on earth
- Yet none of them ever actually existed
Why would we assume Jesus is the sole exception, the only one who actually existed? As I’ve explained before (and do again in JFOS), Jesus is not like just any historical person mentioned—a teacher or administrator or politician or general, or that general’s wife or servant—he is a heavily-mythologized and worshiped savior deity, a magical culture-hero. Those people tended not to exist. So we need better evidence for any one of them, than we’d need for just any random person spoken of.
This should not be surprising. Religious founders are often mythical, yet turned into and regarded as real historical people: Moses; Romulus; Theseus; Osiris; Dionysus; Mithras; Inanna; Zalmoxis; Adonis; Attis; King Arthur. Why would it be so weird that Jesus should be among them? And how could we tell the difference? How would we know Jesus was real any more than they were? What evidence would we need?
This should not be confused with the separate question of, “How would that evidence survive for us to have it today?” As with John Frum or Ned Ludd or the Roswell saucer, it was logically possible that we’d never know—that none of the evidence we have telling us they were made up survived. But explaining why we don’t have that evidence would not make them any more likely to be historical. This is the real problem. And you can’t make that problem go away by having a good account of why we don’t have the evidence we need to be sure someone existed. We still don’t have it.
What We Could Have Had
It’s important to recognize the timeline, especially in relation to average expected lifespans back then:
The idea that this conversion of a celestial, revelatory being into a historical preacher happened too quickly simply isn’t true. We already saw that thirty years, the same time it would have taken in Christianity, witnessed much the same thing happen in even better-documented eras (Roswell; John Frum; Ned Ludd). And we simply don’t have the records (unlike we do for Roswell, Frum, and Ludd). That it could happen in the face of far better documentation and universal literacy means it is even more likely to happen in eras with a mere fraction of those assets—like the first century. So we need evidence to be sure Jesus is any different than his parallels, ancient or modern. Better evidence than we have.
In my lecture (and the corresponding chapter in JFOS) I present actual quotes of people today claiming we have better evidence for Jesus than (fill in the blank); I then list the evidence disproving this. The examples are instructive, because they reveal not only what kinds of evidence we could have had, but also what kinds of evidence we need to have—because the only reason we are confident these people existed is because we have that kind of evidence. And yet we have none of it for Jesus. I’ll just quickly survey the list:
Socrates
- We know the names of numerous eyewitnesses who wrote books about him, including at least sixteen of his disciples.
- We know of not even one such book for Jesus.
- We even know the titles of some these books, and have a number of paraphrases and quotations from them.
- Two of them we actually have (Xenophon and Plato).
- And they were written within a few years of his death, not nearly half a century later; and in his own country and language (the Gospels, remember, were written in a foreign land and language).
- And we even have an eyewitness third-party account written during his lifetime: Aristophanes, The Clouds.
- We know of not even one such account for Jesus.
- Indeed we have many contemporaries attesting to Socrates, spanning four modern volumes (Gabriele Giannantoni, Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae 1990).
- We have none for Jesus—other than as a celestial being.
- We have quotations from many historians of Socrates, using written sources about Socrates from his own time: e.g. Idomeneus, On the Followers of Socrates.
- We have none for Jesus—only repeaters of the Gospels.
- And yet Socrates wrote nothing himself and there was no global Church of Socrates to preserve records of him. And still we have vastly better evidence he existed than we have for Jesus.
Alexander the Great
- We have abundant contemporary coins, inscriptions, tablets, and other physical objects from and about him (we even have his de facto death certificate, printed in clay, from the archives of Persia).
- We have many contemporary and eyewitness sources discussing him (including contemporary texts inscribed in those same clay archives that date from his actual lifetime).
- And we have numerous credible, detailed historical accounts, referencing contemporary and eyewitness sources.
- Even Arrian wrote some five hundred years later, but used only three eyewitness historical accounts, described them and why they are good sources, and explained his method of using them.
- We have none of these things for Jesus.
Roman Emperors
- We have abundant contemporary coins, inscriptions, papyri, and in some cases even inscribed personal objects from and about them.
- In many cases we have their own writings, and references to yet other writings of theirs.
- We have many contemporary and eyewitness sources discussing them.
- We have numerous credible, detailed historical accounts, which reference contemporary or eyewitness sources.
- We have none of these things for Jesus.
Spartacus
- Sallust’s Histories covered Spartacus. He was born 10 years before the Spartacan war and wrote 30 years after, and shared the Senate with those who fought Spartacus.
- Cicero mentions Spartacus in Response to the Haruspices and Against Verres. He served during the Spartacan war.
- Diodorus covered Spartacus in his Library of History. He was a contemporary.
- Varro mentioned him (as quoted by Sosipater Charisius in Grammatical Arts 1.133). He actually fought Spartacus.
- Plus many later credible histories (within 100-200 years) using contemporary records and sources.
- We have none of these things for Jesus.
Hannibal
- We have the epitaph of Quintus Fabius Maximus. Who fought Hannibal.
- Carved in stone at his death in 205 B.C. Boasts of his victories against Hannibal, e.g., “he besieged and recaptured Tarentum and the strong-hold of Hannibal.”
- We have the epitaph of Felsnas Larth. Who was a soldier of Hannibal.
- Mentions his service under him.
- Many credible, detailed accounts by later historians who cite and quote from many writings of eyewitnesses to the war.
- We have none of these things for Jesus.
- Indeed we have a credible, detailed account from Polybius, a contemporary.
- He was a friend of the family of Scipio Africanus, who defeated Hannibal.
- He was ambassador to Hannibal’s country after the war.
- And he relied on documents and eyewitnesses. For example…
- He interviewed King Massinissa, a Roman ally who fought Hannibal.
- He interviewed Gaius Laelius, a personal friend and companion of Africanus during the war.
- He quotes from Scipio Africanus’s letter to King Philip V of Macedon regarding his personal dealings with Hannibal.
- And he quotes a bronze inscription erected by Hannibal himself.
- We have none of this for Jesus.
Pontius Pilate
- We have a historical account from a contemporary who dealt with his actions in the political arena (Philo of Alexandria, ambassador of the Jews to Rome).
- We have credible, detailed historical accounts from historians relying on contemporary sources (Josephus; Tacitus).
- We have his own autograph inscription in stone.
- We have none of these things for Jesus.
Herod Agrippa
- We have multiple inscriptions and coins attesting to Agrippa’s existence.
- We have a contemporary account (from Philo of Alexandria).
- We have a credible, detailed account from a historian writing a generation later, using firsthand, non-mythological sources (Josephus).
- Josephus even personally knew Agrippa’s son, and clearly describes him and his father as real people, an actual father and son.
- We have none of these things for Jesus.
Caiaphas
- We have his inscribed casket.
- We have credible, researched accounts in Josephus.
- Also he was never a revelatory superbeing, mythologized hero, or cosmic savior lord.
- His earliest records don’t depict him as someone only met in dreams and visions.
- And his earliest historical accounts don’t describe him in just the same respects as persons who usually didn’t exist (like Moses, Osiris, or Romulus).
Consider even Apollonius of Tyana, the heavily mythologized historical person we arguably have the least evidence for:
- Maria Dzielska, in her study Apollonius of Tyana in Legend and History, outright admits “a historian assuming that Apollonius of Tyana existed solely as a hero of an extensive legend…would not stray far from the truth.” So much for being confident.
- Except that: there is evidence external to the mythological Life written of him (by Philostratus) over a century later.
- Dzielska documents evidence of a cult attesting to Apollonius being a historical personage before that Life was written.
- The best example: Lucian of Samosata says Apollonius was so famous that every reader would know of him, and that he met a student of one of his Disciples, saying “Alexander of Abonuteichos” studied under “a man of Tyana by birth, one of those who had been associates [suggenomenôn] of the famous [panu] Apollonius and eyewitnesses [eidotôn] to all his tricks,” clearly establishing Apollonius as a historical person, widely known as such, and his eyewitness associates likewise.
- We don’t have even this for Jesus. And still we are not that confident in Apollonius. No one freaks out at the suggestion he might not have existed. And yet even he we have better evidence for than Jesus.
We don’t doubt personages we have no reason to doubt (mundane officials, family, and the like). We only doubt those we have reason to doubt—like mythologized superheroes. Then, and only then, do we need better evidence than just the existence of stories about them. And for every person we are confident existed, we have that evidence. Therefore, that we don’t have that for Jesus should leave us no longer so confident he existed. It’s as simple as that. Making excuses for why we don’t have that evidence does not change his epistemic status. We still don’t have the evidence.
Conclusion
So, in general, what could we have had:
- Possibly nothing. Then we couldn’t know. Jesus would simply be unlikely to be historical in the same way all other savior heroes were. He’d be John Frum. Ned Ludd. Moses. Osiris. The Roswell saucer. Maybe he existed; but we couldn’t say for sure, just as we can’t for any other savior heroes.
- But probably the actual first letters. As we have for other mythologized historical persons, from Alexander the Great to Ras Tafari, we’d have more mundane memoirs, correspondence, recollections. They’d clearly (not ambiguously) indicate their subject to be a recent historical man. They’d include examples from and disputes about his life, his teachings, the accusations against him. For more examples of what we could expect to have found in the earliest letters, see my discussions across Chapter 11 of On the Historicity of Jesus.
- For example: in Galatians 1 Paul could have indicated he meant not a cultic brother but an actual one (e.g. “James, the brother of the Lord according to the flesh” rather than just any brother of the Lord, which Paul elsewhere says described any baptized Christian); in Romans 1 Paul could have indicated he meant an actual descendant of David in the ordinary way (he could have simply said Jesus was, indeed, “a descendant of David,” or even better, have added how they knew that, e.g. “according to his family records,” instead of what he did say, which is weird—and wholly indeterminate); in 1 Thessalonians 2 Paul could have said something that he (in this case) would actually have believed (like that Jesus was “killed by the leading men of Judea,” and not by “the Jews,” and he wouldn’t have referred to a fall of Jerusalem that hadn’t happened yet, and so on).
- Less likely but possibly inscriptions and papyri. Even the godless Diogenes of Oenoanda erected the “gospel” of his hero, Epicurus, in stone. Faithful Jews carved their private scripture, the Revelation of Gabriel, in stone. The Letter of Mara bar Serapion is an example (forged or real) of a third party commenting on Jesus as a historical person (it just doesn’t likely date to the first century). A lot we know about ancient religious beliefs and persons comes from actual epitaphs: stone tributes to the dead, often describing what they believed, prized, or valued, and Christian believers (or even just inspired contemporaries) could have left us some. There are many ways we could have had this kind of evidence for Jesus. It is true none such is expected. But that doesn’t make the fact go away that, unlike for many historical persons claimed to have less evidence than Jesus, we still just don’t have anything like this for Jesus.
- Likewise, contemporary or researched historical accounts. The Gospels are mythographs. We could have instead had researched histories, actual or in quotation or paraphrase, by writers consulting various contemporary sources. They could have given credible accounts rather than fantastical ones. They could have named or identified sources. This is what we have for most everyone else, from Pilate and Caiaphas to Agrippa and Socrates.
- For example: in Pliny the Younger’s letter on the Christians, he would have related what he knew of Christian origins from his father’s History of Rome, which devoted an entire volume to the year in which Nero supposedly blamed the burning of Rome on the Christians, and before that event his father would have had access to relevant provincial dispatches. But the Younger Pliny says he knew nothing about Christians—which means the Elder Pliny never mentioned them, which means the tale that Nero persecuted them for the fire is false. But this didn’t have to be. The Elder could have mentioned them, this could even have been Tacitus’s source, and the Younger could then have related what his father said about them—and this could have been detailed enough to demonstrate Jesus was known to be historical independently of the Gospels, and by a third party source who would know, much as we have references like that for the other historical people I just surveyed.
- Likewise: in Josephus’s accounts of the Jewish War he plausibly relates the stories of four Jesus Christs: The Samaritan, The Egyptian, The Impostor, and Theudas. Josephus says each was equating themselves with Jesus (Joshua) and making veiled claims to be the Christ (Messiah). That is, they were claiming to be the new Joshua (the same name as Jesus), the fabled conqueror of the Holy Land, and the messiah (a christos, even though Josephus conspicuously avoids the word) who would accomplish God’s plan. The Samaritan, ascended like Joshua (Deut. 27:12) on Mount Gerizim. Theudas, like Joshua (Josh. 3), would part the Jordan. The Egyptian, like Joshua (Josh. 5), would miraculously fell the walls of a great city. The Impostor, like Joshua, would lead the people in the wilderness to paradise (see my discussions of these fellows in OHJ, index). Josephus could have related the story of our Jesus the same way. Indeed, had he really known of him, our Jesus would have received the same study. And it would thus have included plausible historical details not found in the Gospels, implying independent sources and an objective outsider view (see, for example, Reading Josephus on James). But alas, we get no such account of Jesus from him, or any historian—not even Eusebius could find any to quote or cite.
In short, we could have had what we have that convinces us all those other people existed. Jesus could even have written things (the way we know a lot of historical people existed, from Paul to Josephus). And so on. But the fact is, we don’t have any of those things—and yet Jesus is more like figures who didn’t exist than those who did. So because we have no evidence establishing him to be an exception to that trend, we have to assume he, too, didn’t exist. Or at least honestly doubt it. Or at the very least admit it’s doubtable.
We also have the many claims found in the NT attesting to Christ and his supposed fame, renown, works, deeds, miracles, etc., which allegedly everyone knew about – yet no records of this sort exists either. So either these passages are lying, conflations or imaginations, this evidence is also entirely absent.
In fact, it is the absences of essential and crucial evidence that reveals the fiction – a fabricated narrative about a fictional character written about long after his alleged death (of which was also supposed to be well known). Virtually everything about Christ the man, Christ the human, Christ the life is completely missing. That’s remarkable for a supposedly famous character.
This is why I personally abandoned Christianity. I came across the contradictions, failed promises, misleading and conflicting claims and endless empty words which caused me to embark upon the journey of figuring out what was supposedly real and what was not. I didn’t find what I was looking for in terms of any actual evidence and neither has any of the scholars, historians and researchers who are the real experts in this subject. I concluded as I must that Christianity is based upon fraudulent claims.
I now how all of your books on my shelf for reference and reading, every few years I reread them and anything new that comes out, but still, the lack of evidence screams the conclusion that any honest researcher would now know – Christianity is a fraud. I also think it is a cult (in all forms).
Anyway, thanks for yet another great update to your readers and supporters.
Just so readers know where we are coming from:
(1) In my academic study I don’t consider “famous Jesus” or “miraculous Jesus” models of historicity. I test against ony minimal historicity. Which means assuming the Gospels invent all that fame and supernaturalism. This model of historicity is immune to your concerns. Thus it is the strongest steel-man of historicity we can question. If even that version of historicity can’t prevail, then historicity is in trouble.
(2) But you are right, Christianity the religion can’t survive on such a model of historicity anyway. If Jesus wasn’t that famous and powerful, Christianity is false. Hence this is really only a debate among non-Christians: those who still are sure at least a guy existed; and those who are not. We all agree Christian apologetics is folly, and their religion isn’t true.
That the Gospels are that mythical is already the mainstream consensus. So historians have already proved Christianity false. What’s scary is that I’m saying our doubt should be even deeper still. Which, for whatever reason, remains a bridge too far even for nonbelievers.
One thing I have never understood is why those people who are convinced there never was, or doubtful there was, a historical Jesus accept (for the point of argument) the claim Jesus was born around the 4 B.C. and died around A.D. 33.
The supposedly rapid development of the cult is wholly based on accepting the dates of an undocumented birth and death. By the time the authentic letters of Paul (48 A.D.) or the Gospels were written it could be there were earlier writings which are unknown or undocumented oral stories.
You’d have to give an example of what you mean. I know of no one you describe.
Perhaps you are confusing an argument ex hypothesi, which is a form of reductio, where the arguer does not believe the premise (as to Jesus being born) but grants that premise “for the sake of argument,” in order to show that the believer’s position is even then untenable or self-contradictory.
For example, when I debate the resurrection, I always grant historicity. I don’t argue “the resurrection didn’t happen because Jesus didn’t exist” because I am far less certain of that premise than I am of the conclusion; hence I can prove the resurrection false to a vastly higher probability than I can the historicity of Jesus, simply by conceding historicity ex hypothesi (see my article Fincke Is Right: Arguing Jesus Didn’t Exist Should Not Be a Strategy).
So it’s “even if” Jesus existed, “the Gospels still date the birth of Jesus ten years apart and wildly disagree in numerous particulars concerning his birth, therefore they are demonstrably prone to outrageous fabrication or gullibly believing outrageous fabrications; therefore they are not reliable sources for anything; therefore Christianity the religion does not rest on any sturdy evidential foundation, but on myths and lies; and that which is based on myths and lies is itself a myth and a lie.”
Hence I have a whole chapter on the contradicting dates for the birth in Hitler Homer Bible Christ, where at no point is my argument “this is all a waste of time because there was no Jesus.” Rather, my argument is, in effect, “even if we grant Jesus existed, these stories contradict each other too overwhelmingly for either of them to be true.”
As to the “possibility” of early stories, that’s a fallacy. Possibly does not get you to probably. So fantasizing about mere possibilities is idle.
A good talk.
I can’t help but notice that the audience seems to include almost nobody under the age of about 60.
Perhaps that’s just how this group turned out. But if not, do you have any thoughts on how typical or significant that is – in regards to secular humanism in general, secular humanist societies in particular, or specific interest in the Jesus question?
I doubt it has anything to do with the subject.
IRL atheist groups trend older because older people have more money and/or time to attend public events. And Humanst groups trend even older because “Humanism” as a term and identity had a wave of popularity in the 60s and 70s but has diminished on that metric since. The pandemic also killed most IRL atheist groups and meetups, leaving mostly the most tradition-devoted still running, which again selects for those with a much older membership.
Young atheism has moved almost entirely online; and even IRL attends mostly only the scant few major national or regional conferences still going (which have also greatly declined im number since the pandemic, although the number had been shrinking already in the few years before).
Possibly the mythologization of Alexander and Lycurgus, or more recently, Frederick Barbarossa and Richard Lionheart might usefully be analyzed. From what little I know, the fabulous accretions to their names, either have a blatantly apologetic function, claiming the sanction of hoary antiquity for contemporary custom (Lycurgus) or a messianic hope of salvation (Barbarossa.) Or they have a narrative flair that seems far more about entertaining bored people before television. Blondel is vaguely anticipatory of a Harlequin romance, to be kind of reductive.
But the really acid test of mythologizing historical figures is the saint or sage, isn’t it? Not just Christian saints, but sufi and shia and Hindu gurus and Chinese sages.
True. But in historical-causal terms, you have to stick to a relevant culture and era, because trendlines vary by culture and era. Unless you can establish analogous conditions for any relevant comparison. For example, in OHJ I outline the analogous sociopolitical conditions between Christianity and the Cargo Cults allowing the comparison to carry, on the points of similarity actually claimed.
And there just aren’t that many “saints” or “sages” comparable to Jesus in Greco-Roman antiquity with extant content enough to build any statistical conclusions, outside of their occasional appearance inside other categories with far more members (like Rank-Raglan heroes) or far clearer parallels (like the Socrates-Aesop model, a set to which Jesus is the only other known member; and three people just is too small a sample size to draw any useful conclusions from by itself).
The only sufficiently-sized, context-applicable reference class for Jesus is “marvelous culture heroes,” and the only subset of that class with enough parallels to objectively prove membership is the Rank-Raglan Heroes set (see my article last month on that). Jesus does clearly belong to many other myth-heavy sets, but none with more than six or so members, and most with fewer than four. The Rank-Raglan set has fifteen (counting Jesus).
For example, Jesus indisputably belongs to the Personal Savior Lords set. But that set has no more than maybe six clear members (besides Jesus). So statistical results from that set are going to be weaker than we get from the Rank-Raglan set. But it is notable that the Personal Savior Lords set is all mythical as well. So that Jesus belongs to at least two sets all of whose members didn’t really exist yet all of whose members were placed in history and given mythographic biographies does validate the conclusion: guys like Jesus typically didn’t exist.
Its interesting, seeing that reference to david. From my readings, the historicity of david, “king David” is rather shaky at best as well.
And yet still better than Jesus.
The “rich, oral tradition” claim has always seemed circular to me. “If there was a historical Jesus, there must have been an oral tradition” got turned into “there was an oral tradition, therefore there was a historical person”.
But I’m a layman. I don’t know much of the scholarship. Is there scholarship advocating for a rich, oral tradition about a historical Jesus, something the historicists would point to if asked?
Your observation is correct: the field has conflated “if he existed, there was likely an oral tradition” with “there was likely an oral tradition, therefore there he existed.” There is no empirical basis for this. So, no, there is zero evidence they can point to if asked how they know there was an oral tradition. Other than the very circular reasoning you identity.
There is actually evidence against an oral tradition (e.g. stories in the Gospels are missing from all documents of the preceding generation; the Gospels are literary constructs, and copy and riff on each other literarily, not orally; the freeness with which the Gospels alter and change the story indicates the absence of any controlled oral tradition; early Christian discussions, e.g. from Papias to Ignatius and later, indicate the absence of any kind of schools or institutions or even practices for preserving oral lore, such as exist for many other well-documented oral traditions; there are no disputes about the accuracy of preservation, i.e. no one defends the pedigree of anything they relate, there are no meta-arguments about which tradition should prevail when there is a conflict, etc.).
This has not gone unnoticed. The historiography of how the field came to be so certain of oral tradition without any evidence of it is actually half of Robyn Faith Walsh’s recent book on the subject (see my blog on that this year).
You probably covered this in OHJ, but do you apply a “discount” to probability for the forging/falsification/destruction of texts by early Christian leaders that would have supported mythicism or undermined historicity? I’m not sure if I made that clear, but, as an example, shouldn’t Eusebius’s interpolation of Josephus’ TF count as a big strike against historicity? And if so, how do you quantify that in your Bayesian calculations?
That they had no evidence is not evidence he didn’t exist—though only if you concede to minimal historicity (Jesus was not famous, didn’t do hardly anything claimed of him, etc.). Which is a problem for conservative Christians, but not mainstream scholars.
Rather, the fact that medieval Christians controlled the survival of evidence to skew for historicity (destroying or letting disappear all literature that would challenge it) is background fact, and thus affects how we estimate probabilities.
For example, I have a section in OHJ on why there isn’t more evidence for mythicism and all the evidence for it there is is indirect (e.g. 2 Peter and Ignatius talk about mythicist Christians, but only to insist they be shunned; we don’t get to read anything those Christians actually said).
The usual argument is “If Jesus didn’t exist, we would have more from them, therefore Jesus existed.” The response is “Due to document control (which is an empirically provable fact, not some excuse we made up), it is not true that we would have more from them.” The premise of the argument is false; but that does not entail the conclusion of the argument is false.
So, basically, the fact you observe is not evidence against historicity, but it does remove evidence for historicity.
Where do you get your “average life expectancy” information from? Especially, “average life expectancy of a thirty year old”?
I mean, “life expectancy” is the length of life which the average baby could expect at birth. It’s a purely a mathematical construct and has little to do with real lengths of life over historical periods. In times and places where infant mortality is high, and childhood illnesses are often fatal, obviously, the average lifetime will be consequently low. At least, if we are to understand “life expectancy” as I mentioned in the first sentence of this paragraph. (BTW – wiki defined “life expectancy” as “This average is calculated based on the year of birth, sex, and region, factoring in the causes of mortality that would most likely affect the particular population.” – which is consistent with what i’ve stated).
So, how on earth are you establishing the average life expectancy of a thirty year old?
Just curious and interested…
I cite the demography scholarship in OHJ. In short, a number of studies have been done on ancient graveyards and ancient epitaph statistics, and demographic data extractable from the tens of thousands of papyrological documents we have recovered from Greco-Roman Egypt (as well as pertinent surviving literature like Ulpian’s Life Table), which has all been benchmarked to populations of known similar conditions (i.e. the early Third World) that have extensive statistical data to compare.
One result of this research is Frier’s Life Table, which is adopted by all experts in the subject today.
In short, all the forensic and documentary archaeological data matches that of early Third World life expectancy statistics (which makes sense; human life expectancy should have been the same across civilization before the interventions of modern technology).
P.S, Also, note that life expectancy for someone who has already survived to the age of thirty is going to be higher than just any life expectancy owing to the vast number of kids who died back then (e.g. 50% of all children before the age of 2).
If you average life expectancy for a newborn, it’s actually in the thirties, but this is because the huge number of dying infants and toddlers is skewing the average down. If you survived childhood, your life expectancy is better than that.
So I always use the life expectancy of an adult. They are the onlty relevant witnesses, since no one who was a baby when Jesus died is going to remember him, and it would conceal the survival expectancy of adult witnesses if we set the average for them as that of infants. Whereas life expectancies for adults are close enough to use a typical value (since fewer are dying each year, survivors of adult years don’t increase their life expectancy as substantially as survivors of childhood do).
This seems weird to WEIRD cultures (Western Educated Industrialized Rich and Democratic) because we don’t experience half of all our kids dying on a regular basis, and modern technologies add decades to our lives now. It was different back then. Very different. And we must take that into account.
The question “[W]hy are historians so desperate that they resort to [hope as a belief strategy] when it’s Jesus?” is easy to answer: because they were either raised Christian and haven’t fully escaped from it yet, or they are dependent on such people to keep their jobs.
(I say this because if some other explanation seems more likely, I hope someone will tell me what it is and explain why.)
Hey Tim, I’m with you 100%; I’m convinced there isn’t a more likely alternative. I think more so, it’s the latter part of the explanation.
Anyway, I did hear a novel alternative to this that I was sympathetic to. Ultimately I don’t think it’s more likely; more like the exception, but I still thought it provided a charitable alternative to our theory.
The comment came from someone I was having an exchange with on a comment thread on one of the mythvision youtube channel videos.
The gentleman seemed genuinely concerned about scholarship. It was very much analogous to what we often hear about “science denialism” these days.
In his mind, mythicism was undermining the project of scholarship itself. He cited the fact that in the WAY in which Jesus historicity was being approached was identical to the methods used for other historical figures. And that mythicism raises the bar. I’d heard this before, and I don’t agree with it for a variety of reasons, but the guy seemed to think, I believe somewhat legitimately, that younger scholars would throw out the baby with the bathwater and essentially start denying the historicity of other figures.
I believe he’s genuine but I think there are a lot of mitigating factors that defeat this perspective but again, I was sympathetic to it because it echos how so much science denialism has in fact proliferated.
sorry, long winded.
Why is it that the only way I can find to purchase and read “Questioning the Historicity of Jesus” by Raphael Lataster, is to buy it from the publisher for $229! I find it no where else on the net! I also can’t seem to find his previous book about the same topic, “The Case Against Theism: Why the Evidence Disproves God’s Existence”. Strange.
There is a solution at the end of this rant (so wade through):
This is the standard model now of academic publishing: fleece academic libraries (and thus students, whose tuitions pay for their libraries) with an enormousluy priced hardback; then “if” that sells “enough” copies, “then” publish an affordable softback.
It’s a greedy, cynical, abusive, elitist, and completely irrational business model that will not produce the revenues a more populist model would. Lower prices sell more units, producing greater net profits. But the elitist, out-of-touch fools running these presses disdain the common people so much they believe they wouldn’t buy obscure footnoted academic treatises.
In reality, they would. Certainly enough as would make the revenues they already are and more. Long tail niche market sales models are proven successful in every other domain. It would work in this. Especially if their editorial standards were revised to promote and facilitate clear and engaging writing as well as rigor (colloquial rather than academic English; narrative organization; etc.).
I wrote a letter to my publisher asking that they not apply this model to On the Historicity of Jesus, on both that business argument and a social justice argument (academics ought to be more accessible to the poor, not cut off from them by predatory pricing). I asked that they either skip the hardback or make both available simultaneously. They chose the latter. But I had to personally go out of my way to make that happen; not everyone realizes they can do that, and not all will succeed (my publishing house is a bit less stuffy and stuck in its ways than others).
Sheffield-Phoenix books are still slightly overpriced, but not prohibitively. Like Brill volumes are; as you are experiencing with Lataster’s book. All Brill books are like that; they consider it the price of prestige, but in reality it’s that same stupid and contemptible business model I just described.
This isn’t Lataster’s fault. The system has made it so scholars have to go through these publishers and acquiesce to their business model in exchange for the renown and hence prestige of their peer-review process (journals, BTW, are doing the same thing; in case you haven’t noticed how common a $35 prince for a single PDF is in that market). And as long as people continue pushing “Arguments from Prestige” (what I call the “your book isn’t serious scholarship because it wasn’t published by Yale” argument), this system will continue in its irrational and elitist fashion—forever.
That said, here is how you punish them and bypass their predation:
Go to your local public library and order the book on loan through the Interlibrary Loan process (speak to a reference librarian; they’ll set you up).
Because there is one loophole in this model: most of the libraries they are preying upon are in the World Catalog system, an agreement to share books with all other libraries in the network (which is most libraries in the US for example). It’s free (or at most a nominal fee). One more reason (of many) to fight to keep your local public libraries funded and thus existing—so you can use them.
Did anyone else notice how Burton Mack’s thesis would support (even though he would probably reject this) the idea that the Roman Empire created Christianity?
Not to my knowledge.
Hi, Dr. Carrier. Hope you’re doing well.
You’ve mentioned many times that Moses is now widely considered to be a mythical figure (if I’m not mistaken). But i have also seen and read that his existence is considered debatable among scholars, and that he may or may not have existed.
I’m fairly convinced that the Exodus is BS, but not too sure about Moses himself. I would just like to know if you have any resources where i could learn more about where scholars stand on this debate, and why you think he is mythical and not historical.
Thanks.
Only religious scholars try to keep the door open with a “maybe” (and maybe with a ridiculous “just so” story that gerrymanders around all the missing evidence). But religious or not, all mainstream scholars agree the historicity of Moses is dubious. Whether they allow a small probability of some extremely minimal and completely different Moses to have existed does not alter that.
And when it comes to the Moses of the Bible, all mainstream scholars agree that is a myth. So the only window left open at some unconvincing probability is some other Moses, who isn’t represented in any way accurately in the Bible.
To illustrate how minimal this has to be: all mainstream scholars agree there was no actual Exodus, that Jews were always native Canaanites and never “invaded” the Holy Land. They were always there (see A Test of Bayesian History: Efraim Wallach on Old Testament Studies). So to get a minimal Moses back in, they have to invent a completely different story about some small “band” of Jews escaping Egypt to get back home to the rest of the Jews already waiting for them for centuries; and this imagined tiny band of desperados just happened to be led by someone named Moses; and somehow his inspiring tale got coopted into the fabulous and entirely fake origin myth for all the Hebrews. There is zero evidence for any such rewrite of the story. So only desperate religionists cling to retellings like this.
It’s just like someone insisting Hercules might have really existed because the Augean stables could really have been just a small-scale hydroengineering operation and the Lyrnaean Hydra a gang of bandits, and so on. All made up stories to get the myth back to plausible, so you can leave the door open for it “maybe” being true. But as there is no evidence for it, the honest ones admit this still only gets to a small probability, not a convincing one. It’s in effect identical to adopting my error margin for Jesus: I say at most a 1 in 3 chance he existed; someone could say the same of Moses, and they’d be in exactly the same position vis Moses as I am vis Jesus. That doesn’t make them a Moses historicist any more than it makes me a Jesus historicist.
Thank you! Very informative, and seems like a pretty common tactic by apologists and Christians in general, I should have suspected as much lol.
What is the reason why the disciples are assumed to be around 30 in your graph? The stuff I’ve seen seemed to indicate (at least based on the stories and known practice of the time) that they would have all been young teenagers.
I cannot fathom any reason they would be teenagers. Such a thing is never mentioned, yet would be remarkable.
For example, the one unnamed “young man” Mark claims fled the arrest naked is described as a neaniskos (a young man, typically meaning under 30). Yet no Disciple is ever so described.
And that’s an implausible story if ever there was one (it has obvious symbolic meaning: linen garments were a common analogy for bodies, nakedness for losing a body, and white or glowing garments as resurrection bodies: hence the neaniskas in one at the tomb is probably meant to be the same boy).
In any event, you can add 15 years and it makes a trivial difference to the chart’s ranges.
Who wrote the words attributed to Jesus in the New Testament? Who else in all known literature spoke similarly? Why did those responsible for producing the N.T., produce it? What was there motivation? How can millions of strangers with widely varied backgrounds, who have no knowledge of others, who claim to have had profound life-changing transformative experiences, describe with specificity the same kinds of mystical experiences?
There are really two different questions here.
Your first set of questions are all about history, and are all answered by any recent, objective (non-apologetic) college textbook on the New Testament.
I recommend Bart Ehrman’s The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (8th edition, Oxford University Press, 2023). You should supplement that with the latest research, for example Robyn Faith Walsh’s study The Origins of Early Christian Literature: Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture.
I cite more scholarship, on various specific points you might want to delve further into in my study On the Historicity of Jesus. I include sections in there on every question you mention, such as how everything Jesus says sounds a lot like existing Rabbis and Philosophers of the era. There is actually little new that’s in his speeches. And that has now been expanded by my exploration of how much of it actually is just the reworded teachings of Paul (see examples and bibliography in Mark’s Use of Paul’s Epistles).
Your last question, however, is a question of science and metaphysics. And on that, see my summary of the logical defects in the Argument from Religious Experience, along with the books there recommended; and also my followup (on how things would be different if any of it were real). But as an example, you should also know that I had profound, life-changing, transformative mystical experiences that Taoism was the one true religion (I give my account in the early chapters of my book Sense and Goodness without God). So evidently that is not a reliable source of information about which religion is true.
I include sections in there on every question you mention, such as how everything Jesus says sounds a lot like existing Rabbis and Philosophers of the era. There is actually little new that’s in his speeches.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God[a]; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know[b] my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. 12 Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
15 “If you love me, keep my commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be[c] in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”
22 Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?”
23 Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
25 “All this I have spoken while still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
28 “You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe. 30 I will not say much more to you, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me, 31 but he comes so that the world may learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me.”
Would you quote the others who spoke like this?
How many others were transformed by Taoism as you were, roughly? Do you have examples of their testimonies and what is your own? I mentioned “millions” of those transformed by Christ’s presence in their lives. Can you summarize your and their experiences?
Bruce Metzger, “The evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is overwhelming. Nothing in history is more certain than that the disciples believed that, after being crucified, dead, and buried, Christ rose again from the tomb on the third day, and that at intervals thereafter he met and conversed with them.”
Motivation for sacrificing their lives for Christ, knowing that they manufactured the account?
Why did Mary weep and cling to Christ when she discovered he was alive?
Thanks
I am familiar with much of the information you suggest I read.
It’s not clear what you think is new in any of these quotations.
You seem to have simply selected mediator texts (where it is claimed that one needs a mediator between men and gods for their salvation, in this case Jesus). That was so commonplace a view back then we can’t even count how many examples of it there were. I have whole sections on this in OHJ (Chapter 4, Element 11: savior cults; and Chapter 5, Element 36: intercessory beings).
If you meant something else, you’ll have to be more specific. But to check the Rabbinical, Cynic, Philonic, Essenic, and Dead Sea Scroll precedents within and among all the teachings of Jesus, see my corresponding elements and their bibliographies (Chapter 5, Elements 32, 33, and 40). And for Old Testament source material see: Chapter 4, Elements 5, 9, 17, and 18.
As for how many people who have had non-Christian transformative experiences from their gods or greater powers: the last count was in the billions. Entire books have been written about ancient pagan conversion tales and mystical experiences, Muslim mysticism, modern ecstatic cults, and so on. I cite some bibliography in Chapter 4, Element 15, and Chapter 5, Element 29. But that’s just a sample. You will find abundant literature on this as well from Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Mormons, even Scientologists.
On the resurrection, meanwhile, you should be less gullible than to simply trust un-evidenced assertions by Christian faith defenders. The evidence is actually among the worst you could ever hope to have. See Resurrection: Faith or Fact? and the works cited there just for starters. But to date the most thorough discussion is by Pearce (whose bibliography alone is worth the ticket).
And in case you weren’t aware… Dying-and-Rising Gods: It’s Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. With which the mainstream consensus now concurs. See my bibliography of recent scholarship. Those scholars also extensively document tall tales of emotional encounters with gods or resurrected heroes. It was a trope of the time. The Gospels match ancient fiction in content and structure, not ancient histories. You may be behind the curve on this. See the texts I recommended from Ehrman and Walsh.
Not gullible in the slightest. What you define as unevidened is an opinion. Sincere, dedicated, highly educated scholars disagree with you. I think it is wise to study their reasons.
“For me, at the time, it felt like an enormous relief, a lifting of burden, a sense of connecting with the universe in a way I never had before. Very powerful!” “At that point Jesus became not only my Lord and Savior, but also my best friend and closest ally.”
“Jesus was my model of self-giving love…” Bart Ehrman You don’t consider him a defender of the faith, do you?
I have to say that I am disappointed. I asked for you to identify people who spoke like Christ did, claiming to be One with Father God, etc. There were/have been many “nuts running around back then” as my dad liked to say, claiming all kinds of stuff. But, who claimed to be God? Who else said I and the Father are One? Who else said, No man comes to the father except through me? Who else predicted his own death and resurrection in three days? Who other than Christ said, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe”?
I think it would be interesting if you would at least attempt to summarize the apostle’s motivation rather than arguing it’s been discussed elsewhere. I know that. I was hoping in a format like this, you wouldn’t mind offering your thoughts. Your scholarship is on par with the best like Dr. Michael L. Brown and it would be fascinating to learn from you here and now.
They asked the woman, “Why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. “Woman” he said, “why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will get him.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).
It’s the other way around. You keep citing opinions, while I keep citing at you records and studies filled with the pertinent evidence.
All you quoted from Jesus are statements that Jesus is the necessary intermediary between man and God for their salvation. This is a concept all over the ancient world. If instead of the content, you are more impressed by the creative poetry of the ways it is said, then behold, creative poetry is also found all over the ancient world. There is nothing special about this. It’s no better or peculiar a poetry than commonplace, and its content is no different than countless other salvation and mediary cults. So what is special here?
Now that you were refuted, you do what Christian apologists always do: change the subject. Thus avoiding the literal cognitive pain of having been found wrong, you try to switch rails to an entirely new claim, now about Jesus being a prophet and the like. But prophets predicting things that then miraculously came true is a commonplace across ancient myth and fiction. There is nothing new about that either.
Likewise resurrection tales with touching or other confirmations and emotional reactions. This is all commonplace. This is why you need to read more, like Walsh, and my study, both of which demonstrate these links and commonalities and show why the Gospels are literature, not memoirs, and are literature entirely in line with what was being produced at the time and with the skills and motives of their artists.
Thank you for responding. I didn’t change the subject. I had hoped that we could discuss a variety of topics, partly because you seemed uwilling or unable to offer a more thorough explanation on the issues I presented.
The fact is: no one ever spoke like Christ. No one has presented a single example of someone who walked on this earth, proclaiming to be God, as Christ did. Only Jesus. The emotional description of Mary finding that Christ was alive was included to show Scripture has the “ring of truth.” It is an important form of validation. There was no reason to include that story other than to describe the humanity, the joy, and surprise, that arose spontaneously from two people who loved each other deeply. Indeed, it represents a type of authenticity scholars look for when they attempt to determine what is factual.
I am surprised and disappointed that your answers/responses have failed to address my concerns.
Grasping evidence to prove Christ lived and that He was God involves more than you are willing to consider. I never implied that others don’t have moving or important experiences through their religious or philosophical encounters. They don’t have them like Ehrman did and countless others. They are unique. Examine them and then compare them. That’s what I wanted you to see. If you have, I had hoped you would reference them so we ould take a closer look together. I think you would be surprised. It isn’t scholarly to dismiss them casually as you have. They are worth a great deal. The transformed lives of His followers speak loudly. Again, upon close examination, what He has done for millions throughout the centuries is evidence that He rose from the dead. Not everyone who has been confounded by the reality of His presence is a nut. He would be delighted to show you, personally, right now, who He is. Just like He did for Ehrman and countless others. It cannot hurt to find out. You can conduct your own experiment. What scientist turns down an opportunity to test?
I have so much more to discuss, but I’m not going to be given that chance, I realize. I get it. Bless you, Richard.
I have studied and published on these issues for thirty years. If you have questions, please find the most suitable books and articles to consult first (this blog has a category dropdown menu and a search box), whether mine or those of other mainstream peer-reviewed experts.
If you have questions, you need to show that you have done the rudimentary work first; then you will have earned labor from me in return. Otherwise, you would need to pay me to advise or consult. My rate is $150/hour.
But if you show you have put in the work, by asking a specific question about a specific statement in a specific article or book of mine, showing you actually read it and actually know what it already says on the matter, I will answer that question for free if you post in in comments under the pertinent article here (or the most pertinent article you can find here).
A Couple of Arguments
according to Dr. Erhman
Why Jesus Mythicism is Unconvincing
One of the most radical forms of the theory of Jesus Mythicism (or Christ myth theory) holds that there never was an historical person called Jesus of Nazareth, or Jesus, son of Joseph.
I am not referring here to some forms of Jesus Mythicism, like that of G. A. Wells in the The Jesus Legend (Chicago and La Salle, Ill., 1996), in which it is held that legends grew up around an historical figure called Jesus. Rather, I refer to those who argue that an historical Jesus was an invention of early Christianity. As an atheist, I can readily agree that the Jesus of the Gospels is a fiction and legend, that miracles never happen, and that Christianity is false.
Nevertheless, I would argue that the evidence for an historical Jesus is a convincing hypothesis.
According to Richard Carrier (one such mythicist), the respectable or “good” mythicists are himself, Robert Price, Earl Doherty, G. A. Wells, Thomas Thompson, and possibly Frank Zindler. The inclusion of G. A. Wells in this list seems strange to me, because in Wells (1996) it is quite clear that the author accepts some kind of historical Jesus. Wells himself states:
“I have never – in spite of what some of my critics have alleged – subscribed to such a view [sc. viz., that of Earl Doherty]: for Paul does, after all, call Jesus a descendant of David (Rom. 1:3), born of a woman under the (Jewish) law (Gal. 4:4), who lived as a servant to the circumcision (Rom. 15:8) and was crucified on a tree (Gal. 3:13) and buried (I Cor. 15:4).”
G. A. Wells, “Earliest Christianity,” 1999.
In the course of my discussion of Freke and Gandy’s The Jesus Mysteries, I fault them for thinking that since the Romans kept such detailed records of everything (“birth notices, trial records, death certificates”), it is odd indeed that we have no such records from Roman hands about Jesus.
My response is that it is a complete myth (in the mythicist sense) that Romans kept detailed records of everything. Richard Carrier vehemently objects that this is altogether false, indicating that in fact, we have thousands of such records and that he has “literally held some of these documents in [his] very hands.” And he points out that some of them are quoted and cited in ancient books, as when Suetonius refers to the birth records for Caligula.
I go on to detail what we have no record of about Pilate from Roman records: “his major accomplishments, his daily itinerary, the decrees he passed, the laws he issued, the prisoners he put on trial, the death warrants he signed, his scandals, his interview, his judicial proceedings.”
In talking about Roman records, I am talking about the Roman records we are interested in the ones related to the time and place where Jesus lived, first-century Palestine. It’s a myth that we have or that we could expect to have detailed records from Roman officials about everything that was happening there so that if Jesus really lived, we would have some indication of it. Quite the contrary, we precisely don’t have Roman records – of much of anything – from there.
We do indeed have lots of records from someplace else that doesn’t matter for the question I’m interested in (Egypt; even though even there most of the records are not Roman or from Roman officials). I can see how my first statement on the matter could be construed (without my fuller explanation of what I meant some pages later) and how it could be read as a flat-out error. But yes, I do indeed know about our documentary papyri. A better way for me to have said it is that we do have records for other places – at least Egypt – but it’s a complete myth that we have them, or should expect to have them, for the time and place Jesus lived.
You are using material from ten years ago. This has all been addressed.
See Ehrman on Historicity Recap.
Now that you were refuted, you do what Christian apologists always do: change the subject. Thus avoiding the literal cognitive pain of having been found wrong, you try to switch rails to an entirely new claim, now about Jesus being a prophet and the like.
That is incorrect. In my last comment to you, which wasn’t posted, I briefly explained my rationale. It isn’t consistent with an open discussion to omit my clarification.
I actually already refuted that stuff ten years ago. You need to catch up.
“It’s not clear what you think is new in any of these quotations.”
New? I didn’t claim what he said was new necessarily. I asked you a very simple question based on a few examples of the words spoken by Christ, allegedly, and you did not answer. Isn’t it true that you cannot quote anyone, at all, from any place or time, who spoke like Jesus? If you could have, you would have. You didn’t. You changed the subject.
Sad. You are considered an expert along these lines as an historian from what I’ve read
You claimed no one ever said things like that. That’s “new.” I demonstrated lots of people said things like that. That’s a refutation.
The poetry is not special. Such techniques were and are commonplace. The content is not special. Such ideas were all over the ancient world at the time.
Arguing is a means to avoid my questions. You did not refer to anyone in particular, you cited no one, you quoted no one from the billions of people who have lived, who proclaimed to be one with God, to forgive sins, to answer prayer, to ask his followers to believe that the father is in him and he is in the father, nor the other words I quoted attributed to him. Nothing. I am not talking about literary style. But, Richard, you know that. I sense something else is going on.
You don’t have answers. That is at the heart of your dilemma. No one ever proclaimed all that he did about himself and his father. You offered no ideas on the motivations of those who put those words in his mouth, if that is what happened as you suggest. Saying you did is not addressing my question. “You claimed no one ever said things like that. That’s “new.” I demonstrated lots of people said things like that. That’s a refutation.” Without a PhD from Columbia many could present better amd more forthcoming arguments. You knew/know exavtly what I’m talking about. (It is these common, simple, and apparently, provocative questions that confound you.)
“The poetry is not special. Such techniques were and are commonplace. The content is not special. Such ideas were all over the ancient world at the time.” I didn’t quote poetry. Calling it that to justify dismissing it, doesn’t work. Quite frankly, I’m wasting my time. You have proffered nothing whatsover that leads me to believe atheism makes sense or is a valid Faith. I thought, wrongly, that someone of your caliber would have something important to add. God Bless
I directed you to several peer reviewed works and bibliographies on every point we discussed.
You are the one pretending that didn’t happen.
No, you did not.
And where I go you know, and the way you know.
Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?”
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
“If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.”
Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.”
Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves.
“If you love Me, [d]keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another [e]Helper, that He may abide with you forever— the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
No one ever spoke like this guy
Once again: there is nothing new here.
That the words are poetic (i.e. emotionally creative sentence construction)? Not new. That was commonplace.
That people need intermediary deities to be saved in the afterlife? Not new. That was commonplace.
That people learn of god through intermediary deities? Not new. That was commonplace.
That people can be possessed by or guided by a god? Not new. That was commonplace.
That the spirit of god can reside in people? Not new. That was commonplace.
That there were gods with sons who were thus demigods? Not new. That was commonplace.
That a mortal could become a god by adoption or appointment from another god? Not new. That was commonplace.
Prayer? Loving God as a first commandment? Gaining knowledge of truths from god? That outsiders don’t get it? All common stuff in pre-Christian Judaism and found even in surrounding paganism.
There is not a single thing here that is “new.” So it is no more true that “no one ever spoke like this guy” than it is true that “no one ever spoke like Aristotle or Seneca or Plotinus or Osiris or Aesop.” That every person, mythical and real, has their own unique voice and way of saying things is a trivial truth that distinguishes none.
He said He was God. When the religious leaders decided to get rid of him, was it because He spoke poetically and combined commonly understood ways of man relating to some god within? Was it because He taught His disciples to pray? Because He fashioned Himself as the son of some God, making Him a demigod? He claimed to be the bridge across a divide, which was a popular position back in the day?
You miss what He is conveying, His meaning, the purpose of His life. He said to them, I Myself, the One you are looking at and listenening to, the One you talk with and eat with and grow weary with, am HE. He told all who would listen: I AM HE, the Alpha and the Omega. He always existed. Before Abraham was I AM. That’s why they destested Him. He really made Himself out to be the GOD of Israel. They knew He was dangerous. They knew He kept performing miracles. It was plain for all to see. That is why He had to be removed. He was real. They saw those miracles and if they didn’t act quickly, He would take their place. They were convinced He performed miracle after miracle. He never waivered telling them repeatedly in plain language that they knew nothing of His Father, because they had no love for Him. No one has ever spoken like that. He was GOD Almighty standing in front of them, bold as can be. He had no doubt He came personally to shed his blood to be the Atonement and said that over and over.
What is so fascinating is just this. He promised to everyone with ears to hear, that if they would ask Him to prove Himself as the Son of God in the here and now, He would reveal Himself. He would make sure that you would know Jesus is alive and real and God of Gods and Lord of Lords, right here, right now.
Lots of people said they were god. And lots of people had this said of them. And when we add myth (and the Gospels are myths), the number of examples multiplies enormously (countless men in myth declared themselves gods).
But now you are moving the goal posts by changing your claim to “Jesus said he was god” (that wasn’t your original claim; that only related to Jesus poetically claiming to be God’s mediator, an even more common phenomenon). Jesus never said that; not even the mythical Jesus said that.
But for you to understand why mainstream scholars agree he never said that, you would need to catch up. You are way behind here. You have a lot of academic study to get to on this.
You can start with:
Justin Brierley on Jesus (Yahweh section)
Bart Ehrman on How Jesus Became God
Lots of people said they were god. And lots of people had this said of them.
But the religious leaders of his day confirmed what he said. Before their very eyes he did miracles. They heard him say he existed before Abe was born and they became enraged. They did not deny he said that.
They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. 14 Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15 So the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. And he said to them, “He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see.” 16 Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?” And there was a division among them.
He healed a man of blindness. They realized he did so on a sabbath. Some believed he shouldn’t heal on a sabbath day, so they were angry with him. Denied his deity. But, they could not deny he had just made a blind man see. They could tell with their own eyes. Yet, instead of crediting him, they condemned him. Others recognized the miracle and got the point. You can’t heal people and be a scumbag. HE PERFORMED ANOTHER MIRACLE RIGHT BEFORE THEIR EYES. Of all those who claimed to be God or others said they were, who confirmed their ONENESS with GOD by performing miracle after miracle religious men?
There was again a division among the Jews because of these words. 20 Many of them said, “He has a demon, and is insane; why listen to him?” 21 Others said, “These are not the words of one who is oppressed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” Again, they acknowledge his miracles. They knew he was a danger to them. They knew many were believing in him. He had to go.
The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. 32 Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” 33 The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” 34 Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? 35 If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— 36 do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? 37 If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; 38 but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”
Okay now you are just barking baloney Christian pulpit stuff.
If you want to claim any of this mythological nonsense actually happened, you have a lot of mainstream scholarship to catch up on.
Several of these claims are already dealt with in various articles on my blog, and my books. Start with any.
But now that we’ve veered off your original claims of what Jesus supposedly said being unique, because now you have evidently admitted you lost that argument, and are just repeating amateur 101 stuff now instead, I’m bored. I’ve already covered this rigmarole in existing work. I’m not wasting time repeating myself.
Go learn. Or don’t. Those are your options.
Tis a pity. You are unable to recognize the Truth for what it is. Just like the educated religious folks of his day. You cannot, did not and are unable to refute a single word I quoted that he said, allegedly. Richard, argue away the things I’m sharing with you. That is what we do. In the end, his words remain true and just as powerful and as penetrating now as 2,000 years ago.
How would we know him? That question implies a sincere desire to know him if he was in fact knowable, doesn’t it? Right now, this moment, you can find out for sure. With absolute certainty you can know Him. How? Ask Him. Are you really there, Jesus? If you are, show yourself to me.
If God exists, He himself alone can prove beyond a shadow of doubt that HE IS and that HE is a rewarder of those who seek Him diligently. There is a way to rule him out. If He doesn’t manifest His presence to you, you’ve done all you could.
My depression deepened unbearably, and finally it seemed to
me as though I were at the very bottom of the pit. For the
moment, the last vestige of my proud obstinacy was
crushed. All at once I found myself crying out, “If there is a
God, let Him show Himself! I am ready to do anything,
anything!”
Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light. It seemed to
me, in the mind’s eye, that I was on a mountain and that a
wind not of air but of spirit was blowing. And then it burst
upon me that I was a free man. Slowly the ecstasy subsided. I
lay on the bed, but now for a time I was in another world,a
new world of consciouness. All about me and through me
there was a wonderful feeling of Presence
Bill Wilson co-founder of A.A.
I had the same experience of the Tao, decades ago convincing me that religion was true; now I know better.
Countless people have such experiences confirming every religion in the world.
A phenomenon that confirms all religions, confirms none.
Your epistemology is thus simply broken.
That is not true, Richard. Examine the testimonies you refer to. Christian pronouncements of experiencing Jesus are not like those of other religions. They are substantially distinct. It seems to me as a scholar, you have to know that.
Christians describe an encounter, a life altering event, an awakening to the manifest presence of God through Christ. They are forever different people than they were, even if later on they leave Christ behind. They know something from another, entirely different dimension, has become real to them in a manner they had not conceived of or imagined possible. A new, an other world has opened up before them yielding insights into the nature of reality unknown to them before. Read them. Study them. Look at what solid, reliable folks with nothing to gain, are saying.
Don’t let me drift too far,
Keep me where you are
Where I will always be renewed
And that which you’ve given me today
Is worth more than I could pay
And no matter what they say
I believe in you
Dylan
And I go there, and I hear about the living Christ that will come to you and prove He’s real, and come and put His Spirit in you, and I’m listening to it, going, “Woah, if this is true – which I don’t think it is – I need that. But it sounds like nonsense. But if it is true, I’ll take it”. So I raised my hand and I received Christ, and I just went home and I was like [praying], “That guy said you’re real. If you’re real you’d better change me, because I’m good as dead if I don’t change,” you know… I prayed like I had been a pro.
Having been on drugs and had out-of-body experiences, what was it that made Jesus real to you? Couldn’t it have just seemed like another high?
It was the love… The love that I’ve never felt before with a romantic relationship, family, even to children. It was like a love from another dimension came into the room. A peace that was, like, heavy, and just weighty. Jesus says that “he’s given to his people the glory that the Father gave him”. And so I felt that, the glory, just in my life. And I couldn’t see angels or Jesus, but they were there, and I was convinced of it. Because I had been calling out, and then I was like, ”I’ve never felt nothing like it”, and I’m like, “This is it. This is the revealing of God in my life, and everything changes, right now.” brian welch Korn
These expressions of God’s involvement in the lives of countless people would explain exactly what it’s like if Jesus existed. He, Himself, can prove Who He is and we don’t lose anything by asling Him to become real, if He is. Nothing.
What if you never bothered to ask. What if you discovered at some point when it’s too late, that indeed He was Christ and He loved you?
I’ve done all this research, Jack. That’s my point. You are the one who is behind the curve. You have a lot of catching up to do. I’ve given you some suggestions of where to start catching up on where scholarship actually is on the things you want to talk about. You need to catch up with that before we can have any conversations about it.
Please give me three examples, specific ones, that absolutely refute the points I’ve made, please. I can’t find anything that proves that Jesus wasn’t God. Even if a million people made the same clains, or claims like these were made by others, that wouldn’t prove Christ isn’t real. Even if you believe no outside source confirmed He lived, that isn’t proof. I have asked you to quote the Rabbis who said the things He did and haven’t received one example. If you choose to dismiss what I’ve said, that is okay, but from what you’ve written, I see no valid reason to. You may have them, but I haven’t seen one piece of evidence you’ve referenced that validates your expressed opinions. Also, I think you are trying to hide your inability to present your thoughts convincingly by stating that my knowledge of these matters is too out of date, too deficient to argue successfully. That’s a sort of fake attempt at arrogance, IMO.
There are countless testimonies like the 2 listed above. What they represent is the certainty that His claims are worth examining very, very carefully. No other figure has had more of an impact on the world than this guy.
Assuming what you mean to ask here is “Where is the evidence Jesus wasn’t a God?”
Start with something basic like my book Why I Am Not a Christian. It’s just ninety pages.
If you need more, I next suggest:
Richard Schoenig, Where Christianity Errs: A Fair and Clear Philosophical Assessment (2024)
I next suggest you complete the Loftus series for the best general survey:
The Christian Delusion (2010)
The End of Christianity (2011)
Christianity Is Not Great (2014)
Christianity in the Light of Science (2016)
God and Horrendous Suffering (2024)
It is impossible to rationally continue believing in Jesus after completing that entire series. And they all have kindle versions if you prefer that format.
Any single route of analysis has even more studies that complete the depth of what can be known. For example, on resurrection apologetics, nothing is more comprehensive than Jonathan MS Pearce, The Resurrection: A Critical Examination of the Easter Story (2021); on the development of the New Testament, meanwhile, see what I already recommended above (from Ehrman and others). And so on.
Every subject has at least one article of my own coverage on my blog. So you can even choose your adventure here: pick a specific sub-topic, and do a keyword search with my blog’s search engine (upper right), and locate and read the highest listed article whose title sounds the most-on point to what you are looking for. My articles tend to further cite sources and other scholarship if you want to continue your dive.
You simply cannot dismiss these things.
The men and women who brought the message of His resurrection to the world initially, and often gave up everthing to do so, didn’t sacrifice their lives for lies that they made up. You cannot simply ignore the work of the scholar Bruce Metzger who said the disciple’s belief that Christ rose from the dead is a valid fact of historical significance. You can write them off, but they aren’t going anywhere.
Look at the work of the Oxford don who taught mathematics John Lennox, and the way he crushed Dawkins in a debate.
You presume that if I studied those ideas/books, I’d have to come to your conclusions, yet there are many scholars who understand their theories and facts they advance who believe Jesus was God. I am familiar with many of them.
I always believed that the real scholars in the world, the true inrellectual giants with a hunger for understanding, welcomed debate, welcomed challenges, genuinely. Their passion for increasing understanding propelled them where their research led them, as Antony Flew said.
What you have not done Richard, is to put into your own words a concise refutation for the specific questions I raised. That is all I asked when I first sought your opinions.
I may be wrong, but I think if I was curious and a scholar, I would seek Him experientially, if for no other reason to prove He isn’t. (In fact, that is what I did, having no doubt that He was pure myth, complete and utter nonsense, a ridiculous, silly faiy tale.)
I don’t “simply dismiss these things.” I have spent thirty years studying them, through four college degrees, all the way to a PhD, and I have multiple peer reviewed publications in the subject, and have debated it with dozens of major Christian apologists over decades.
You are the one who is demonstrating you have not done this. You do not know what mainstream scholarship has discovered. And I am telling you how to catch up and get up to speed. You are way too behind the curve here.
I asked you to provide an example of someome who spoke like Jesus did. You didn’t.
Your qualifications are exemplary which convinces me, despite that, you really cannot cite one other human being who spoke like that guy. Why? Because no one ever did. Significance? You know why: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” Also, I asked you for the motivation of someone who would make up the words attributed to Christ. The point is, no one, even with the greatest motivation, could create the content attrubuted to what Christ spoke, and no one ever has. Not one human being, not that you of, ever has.
I did give you examples. Specify what you mean by “spoke like Jesus” and there are countless examples. If you mean “said similar things,” countless examples. If you mean, “spoke poetically,” countless examples. I cover many in my book On the Historicity of Jesus.
If you do not want to accept this, I cannot help you.
He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water.
When Jesus came down from the mountain, large crowds followed Him. Suddenly a leper came and knelt before Him, saying, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.”Jesus reached out His hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” He said. “Be clean!” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. Then Jesus instructed him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift prescribed by Moses, as a testimony to them.”
“I am the way and the truth and the life”
“My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.”
“Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.”
“You know the way to the place where I am going”
“I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
“I am he,” and His words were so powerful that the soldiers fell to the ground
But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.
Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.” Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
A beginng
What in all that are you claiming is so unique as to make Jesus meaningfully different from every other literary character in history?
A few words from Alice Cooper. Compare his comments to others from various backgrounds. There is a difference, Richard.
Alice stated how Jesus Christ came into his heart and changed his life, turning his entire world upside down and allowing him to see clearly for the first time.
“When you get out there you realize that you’ve had every car, you’ve had every house and all that, you realize that that’s not the answer, that there’s a big big nothing out there at the end of that,” he added. “Materialism doesn’t mean anything. A lot of people say that there’s a big God-shaped hole in your heart and when that’s filled, then you really are satisfied.”
A significant part of Cooper’s testimony was his fight for sobriety after his wife, Cheryl, threatened to leave if he did not quit drugs and alcohol.
“After about two weeks, Cheryl had gone to Chicago and said ‘I can’t watch this.’ But the cocaine was speaking a lot louder than her,” Cooper told Greg Laurie in a recent interview. “I looked in the mirror and it looked like my makeup, but it was blood coming down, I think, I might have been hallucinating.
“I flushed the rock down the toilet and went to bed for three days, and I woke up, and I called her and I said, ‘It’s done,’” he recalled. “She goes, ‘Right, you have to prove it.’ That was the beginning of our relationship coming back.
“One of the deals was we start going to church,” he continued. “I was a poster boy for everything wrong and then when I got sober and came back to the church, I realized that’s where I belonged.”
Cooper said that both the doctrine of God’s justice and Jesus’ sacrifice helped him come to Christ.
“I came to Christ because of my fear of God,” he confessed. “I totally understood that hell was not getting high with Jim Morrison, hell was going to be the worst place ever. In fear I came back to the Lord, but I went to another church and that pastor preached the love of Christ, which, now you put the two together, and it was exactly right.”
Cooper noted that his lifestyle immediately changed after his salvation.
“I knew that there had to either come a point where I either accepted Christ and started living that life or if I died in this, I was in a lot of trouble and that’s what really motivated me,” he said. “I don’t think we accept Christ. I think we accept the fact that He accepted us.”
“You can’t put that into words,” he added. “It’s because God opens your eyes and it’s supernatural. When the Lord opens your eyes and you suddenly realize who you are and who He is, it’s a whole different world.”
Even after Cooper’s salvation, baptism, and getting plugged into his church, he felt like he had to give up on his career as Alice Cooper, the rock star.
“I went to my pastor and I said ‘I think I got to quit being Alice Cooper now,’ and he goes, ‘Really? Do you think God makes mistakes? Look where he put you, he put you in the exact camp of the philistines and you were basically the leader. Now what if you’re Alice Cooper but what if you’re now following Christ, and you’re a rock star but you don’t live the rock star life? Your lifestyle is now your testimony.’”
In a 2006 interview, Cooper explained why he continued to pursue his career in rock ‘n’ roll as a Christian.
“Christianity is basically a one-on-one relationship with Jesus,” he said. “If you’re a disciple of Jesus… [it] doesn’t say anywhere in there that I can’t be a performer. It doesn’t say anything in there that I can’t be an artist.
“I don’t do Christian rock, but I’m a Christian that does rock,” he added.
God has a never-ending love for all, and He will continue chasing after the lost, hoping they turn to Him. However, the ultimate decision of whether we accept Christ or deny Him is up to us.
Romans 5:8 “But God has made clear his love to us, in that, when we were still sinners, Christ gave his life for us.”
This content originally appeared on GodTube.com; used with permission.
Now, a few more words spoken by Christ (allegedly.) Who else spoke like He did? This is another sample. More to come, if you’ll let me.
4 “You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Jesus the Way to the Father
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know[b] my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. 12 Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
5 “If you love me, keep my commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be[c] in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”
22 Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?”
23 Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
25 “All this I have spoken while still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
28 “You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe. 30 I will not say much more to you, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me, 31 but he comes so that the world may learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me.
“Come now; let us leave.”
What in all that are you claiming is so unique as to make Jesus meaningfully different from every other literary character in history?