There are page numbers in the index in the print edition. If you are using a kindle edition there are no pages; just search the word “glossolalia.” Same section goes on to cover visions science.

I don’t “dismiss” it; I demonstrate he is not competent to advance it, and rests it on false facts and fallacious reasoning.

The difference is huge.

One doesn’t need to “answer” an absurd, factually incorrect, and illogical theory. If you want a far better theory (of the origins and development of Christianity and its literature), one based on actual correct facts, actual sound reasoning, and contextually demonstrated plausibility, read my book On the Historicity of Jesus.

Otherwise, go away.

Sorry, none of your reasoning makes sense.

For example:

“It’s hard to deny that the “New Testament” gospels (not necessarily all the Dead Sea Scrolls) were so interwoven with War of the Jews as to suggest a single author, cooperating authors, or post-facto authorship” is just a non sequitur left to right. And contradicted by the facts (see ch. 10 of OHJ: Matthew is an opponent of Mark, and Luke an opponent of Matthew, and John and opponent of Luke; these are not cooperating authors, they are authors at each other’s throats).

If you can’t even think straight about that, I see no reason to waste my time addressing the rest.

Conspiracy theories are almost always the least likely explanation of anything. Please use Occam’s Razor more faithfully.

The word “untenable” is simply not good enough and suggests you haven’t really got an answer to the Flavian political steering theory. Which is how we should refer to this, not as “Atwill’s” theory, since he is not really presenting his view academically.

Atwill did not fully explore the motive, opportunity and means that a Flavian conspiracy would have had to blunt messianic Judaism and blame the Julio-Claudians for any suppression or oppression of it. I have not seen anyone deny any of those claims but I think a whole book could be devoted to that. Rome was nothing if not a squabble of ruling families…

Tacitus tells us nothing really about the theology of the pre-73CE Christianity. Controlling it may have been a post-war pacification strategy. Surely a cult admiring or elevating a Jesus/Christ figure could have existed in Nero’s time (64 CE or thereabouts) without invalidating the possibility that it was hijacked by experts in creating and controlling religions such as the Flavians.

The main source that contradicts this late emergence of Christianity (after 75CE or so) is Tacitus. After him we have not much credible until about 110 CE describing Christianity. It’s entirely possible that a Roman-created or -encouraged cult got out of control, it happens all the time in the modern era (for instance consider the USA funding the Afghan Mujahedeen that eventually morphed into Al Qaeda, or giving Saddam chemical weapons) and had to be violently suppressed. It’s also possible that a Flavian-created or -allied cult created trouble for Julio-Claudians, say by picking which “blasphemous” targets to attack or events to disrupt. For Nero to get so angry suggests it was a threat to him and his family and not generally to Rome… perhaps he knew the cult was a Flavian plot? Hmm….

Then look at the texts. It’s hard to deny that the “New Testament” gospels (not necessarily all the Dead Sea Scrolls) were so interwoven with War of the Jews as to suggest a single author, cooperating authors, or post-facto authorship. Some scholars admit that the “New Testament” authors could have written after 73 CE, even if a Christian cult existed a decade earlier.

Politically this makes even more sense than an invention of a new cult entirely. Taming an already-existing cult would have been a high priority for a new Roman dynasty. Nero, of the Julio-Claudian family, was seen as a failure by many, perhaps Claudius tried other tactics previously, and after him Flavius? Then we would have evidence of the one that stuck. Remember the myth about Nero fiddling while Rome burned… Nero was a target of more than one false history…

Tacitus thus does not really challenge the thesis of Flavian authored New Testament by reporting the existence of Christian cultists a decade too early. He rather places the events in the context of a Julio-Claudian vs. Flavian struggle that the Flavians (and perhaps their pet cult) eventually win.

We can reconcile Atwill’s thesis with Tacitus essentially by imagining either that Tacitus’ inclusion of this persecution is falsified (quite possible given the way texts were handled and copied in this era) to back the Flavian story and blame a Julio-Claudian for attacking helpless people, or that it was a pre-existing cult the Romans felt threatened enough by to try to suppress (under the Julio-Claudians) and then tame (under the Flavians). It would be interesting to map when the most intense persecutions of Christians happened and if they correspond to periods of weakness of Flavian family power or when Flavians were threatening to take power, as in Nero’s time…

No thesis about the New Testament necessarily invalidates the existence of some original or inspiring character that these post-73CE authors wrote about… Personally I like the “taming or political direction of an existing cult” thesis, which does not say anything about the authenticity of Jesus at all, but does say much about the authenticity of the Church that for over 1300 years monopolized his name and message. I found the early Popes’ chronology to be especially interesting as there is just no good evidence for the existence of anyone before Clement of the Flavian family. Hmmm… the sixth pope named “Sixus”? Really? Jerome said Clement got the job straight from St. Peter… not sure I would ignore Jerome in favor of the claimed list of the first six popes…

Then we get into textual fidelity. While we can be pretty sure we have the Dead Sea Scrolls as written in the late first or early second century, Tacitus and the final form of the New Testament gospels is another matter. Given how few copies existed, there have been many opportunities to falsify his text over nearly 2000 years, and certainly motive.

The Roman taming or political use of an Essene spinoff cult does not invalidate the thesis of Jesus’ historical existence, but it would certainly invalidate the authority of the Christian church traditions, especially the Roman Catholic Church, and the four Gospels that were included in the New Testament which have these suspicious commonalities with Flavius Josephus’ War of the Jews.

So not Jesus but Christianity then becomes invalidated… which is sort of what Gnostics, Mormons, Islam, Christian Science, etc. do, they keep the name and core prophet status for Jesus, but then write new stories about him…. why not? If the Flavians did it…

AGW means anthropogenic global warming, i.e global warming primarily caused by mankind adding CO2 to the atmosphere.

Not the term, the concept. See Not the Impossible Faith pp. 250-51. But if you can’t acquire or afford that, an earlier draft of the same chapter (whose text was revised for the print edition, so I consider it obsolete, but if you have no other recourse) is here. Yes, I am familiar with Atwill’s work. It is untenable.

A little late to comment, but anyway, here it is:

Richard Carrier says, about G. A. Wells:
“I do not read Wells enough to give him a fair critique. He is kind of like a tertiary source, i.e. just repeating what secondary sources [actual experts] have already said (so I just go to those sources directly), and when he slips into directly analyzing evidence himself, he gets enough wrong that I don’t deem him worth my time (not egregious errors or tons of errors, mind you, just enough to put him at the end of the line as far as works demanding my attention). But books like Cutting Jesus Down may be great introductions for laymen, insofar as he isn’t really saying anything radical, but just repeating the experts themselves.”

I am not exactly sure that this is a fair assessment. It sounds more like Carrier having never taken the trouble to get acquainted with Wells, perhaps for having wasted so much time on reading the mammoth outpourings of Earl Doherty.

A better introduction to Wells would be going back to his very first books,

1971, The Jesus of the Early Christians: A Study in Christian origins. (362 pp. Pemberton; First ed.)
1975, Did Jesus Exist? (250 pp. Prometheus, 2d ed. 1986)
1982, The Historical Evidence for Jesus. (265 pp. Prometheus)

followed by the two major ones:
1996, The Jesus Legend (foreword by R. Joseph Hoffmann; 320 pp. Open Court)
1998, Jesus Myth. (350 pp. Open Court)

If this proves too much reading, a nice overview of Wells’s key themes can be found in his 4 articles on the Secular Web, shown at
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/g_a_wells/,

– Earliest Christianity (1999), a nice, short summary of key points.
– G. A. Wells Replies to Criticisms of his Books on Jesus (2000) – especially Rev. Neals.
– A Reply to J. P. Holding’s ‘Shattering’ of My Views on Jesus and an Examination of the Early Pagan and Jewish References to Jesus (2000)
– A Resurrection Debate: The New Testament Evidence in Evangelical and in Critical Perspective (2000)

Also of interest could be:

– Alvar Ellegard – Theologians as historians
http://www.sciecom.org/ojs/index.php/scandia/article/viewFile/1078/863

as Ellegard presents a variation on Wells’s basic thesis.

Both Wells and Ellegard have a distinct advantage on Doherty: they write a much more concise and clear English, and they are much more fun to read.
I am seduced by Wells’s clarity, unshakeable honesty, and absence of pretensions at being the great pundit of Christian studies. He took the time to develop his views over 40 years of constant polishing.
Doherty’s sublunar mythical figure of Christ seems a bit extreme, with two short quotes on the “rulers of the age” to balance his enormous edifice, compared with Wells’s more gentle sketch of Jesus, compatible with more passages of Paul’s epistles.