The Center for Inquiry is clearly in sad decline. They just published a wildly incompetent article on Jesus mythicism by Bill Cooke, “Five Challenges to Christ Myth Theorists,” in their magazine Free Inquiry (44.5, August/September 2024). It was pretty well roasted on Facebook. It’s even worse than that embarrassing travesty of an article by Jehovah’s Witnesses a few years back—and that’s saying something (see How the Jehovah’s Witnesses Website Manipulates Readers on the Historicity of Jesus). I wouldn’t bother with it but for the fact that Free Inquiry keeps publishing this same crap from Cooke, so it’s time for a takedown.
Apparently humanists can’t do even rudimentary academics anymore. Cooke’s article, though published this year (2024), cites no work since 2013—making it already ten years out of date, and thereby excluding literally all complete peer reviewed studies of the subject of historicity in the last hundred years. That’s principally, in 2014, Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, then published on the campus of Sheffield University by Sheffield-Phoenix Press staffed by faculty thereof; and in 2019, Raphael Lataster, Questioning the Historicity of Jesus, published by Brill, one of the most prestigious peer reviewed presses in the world. Cooke didn’t even cite academic responses to these (see List of Responses to Defenders of the Historicity of Jesus). And it shows. Cooke has no knowledge of real academic mythicism. He actually cites no mythicist studies (just an antiquated brief by Wells), not even the crappy amateur stuff I just talked about again last week, and which my and Lataster’s peer reviewed studies were designed to supersede with a quality assessment that abandoned all their nonsense. And all this despite the fact that Cooke wrote practically the same article in this same magazine in 2018. So…he didn’t even learn from his mistakes then!
CFI ineptly tried promoting Cooke’s article with an infographic that replicates his “five challenges.” Experienced readers will be rolling their eyes at every one already. And no, his explanatory text does not salvage any of these. He means just what he says here. He did not heed any of the recommendations in How to Argue Jesus Existed.
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Claim 1: We should never question the consensus. That is false. The only way a consensus can claim to be reliable is if it can be questioned and overturned if wrong—and the consensus in this field has been questioned and overturned a lot. So it’s not even unusual. Compared to other academic fields, biblical studies is the most unreliable. So you cannot simply rely on arguments from consensus there: you have to vet it. See On Evaluating Arguments from Consensus. So when Cooke asks “Why should we reject this general consensus?” he doesn’t even know that I and Lataster answer that (he doesn’t know we or our work even exist). Indeed our entire studies are about answering that. And our peer reviewers agreed the field should pay attention to what we had to say.
We document, with evidence, that the current consensus on this subject is malformed, being based on too many false assumptions and invalid methodologies. And that’s not just us saying that: even the field itself admits they are using invalid methodologies, as I documented in Proving History in 2012 (which was also peer reviewed, by professors of mathematics and biblical studies: I made that a requirement in my contract with Prometheus, which used to be a publishing arm of CFI; clearly Cooke could use some competent peer reviewers of his own). Among those invalid methods is a bizarre trusting of field-wide assumptions, even by secular scholars, that originated in Christian apologetics. I’ve discussed all this before, in several articles, but you can start the breadcrumb at Things Fall Apart Only When You Check: The Main Reason the Historicity of Jesus Continues to Be Believed.
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Claim 2: Only Americans are into this. This is both false and illogical. That Germans and Australians weren’t talking about a new theory in history would have no bearing on its merits. To the contrary, their opinions are of no use if they aren’t even examining the matter. But never mind that. Because Cooke’s claim isn’t even true. He of course cites no relevant evidence at all, so it’s unclear why even he believes it. He seriously just cites a single historicist compatriot in England to prove that “no one” in England is taking challenges to the historicity of Jesus seriously. By that reasoning, we could cite Cooke’s article to prove no mythicists exist in America either. The logic here is atrocious. So what happens when we check relevant evidence regarding what people in England think about this? Oh right. 40% of Brits doubt that Jesus existed. Almost half the population of England. The same holds in Australia. And—surprise!—Germany.
Of course Cooke is more interested in academic rather than popular sentiment. But he’s screwed there as well. You can see my List of Historians Who Take Mythicism Seriously is at over forty experts now. And that list is quite international. It includes fully qualified scholars in Britain, Ireland, Spain, Canada, Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, Argentina, Finland, Israel, and the Netherlands.
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Claim 3: Cooke gives only two alleged examples of academic mythicism being illogical. The first, that it “rests on a fallacy of the excluded middle,” because we only compare mythicism with triumphalism (the full Christian fundamentalist account of Jesus), leaving out the standard mainstream position in between, is wildly false. I actually made his very point myself, and thus explicitly ruled out the triumphalist thesis in my study (OHJ, pp. 14, 26, 30) and bent over backwards to compare mythicism with the least ambitious theory of historicity possible (OHJ, p. 34), which is entirely mainstream. This signals that Cooke has literally no knowledge whatever of mainstream Jesus mythicism—which has met the standards of the field, and thus doesn’t commit the mistakes he’s worried about.
The second, Cooke alleges, is that mythicism “contradicts Occam’s razor” because “by far the simpler explanation is that stories about a man actually relate to a man,” whereas any mythicist theory “adds an extra layer of explanation.” This is also false. Historicity depends on an enormous apparatus of assumptions that is actually more complicated (and weakly supported) than peer-reviewed mythicism. I pointed out in my study that mythicism actually requires few ad hoc assumptions, and no more than historicity (see OHJ, “Ockham’s Razor,” index; e.g., “the theories I will compare here are the minimal ones, the simplest possible theories that I think have any chance of explaining the evidence”).
Ockham’s Razor does not state that the simpler explanation is more likely true anyway (were that so, we should reject the Periodic Table in favor of Aristotle’s theory of elements). It states that if an explanation contains unnecessary premises, then the version of that explanation without those unnecessary premises is more likely to be true. We can translate this into a mathematical statement of greater probabilities (see Proving History, “Ockham’s Razor,” index), but it doesn’t get to what Cooke wants. A more correct formulation relates to the variable effect of complicating a theory on prior probability (see my discussion in the starting sections of Bayesian Counter-Apologetics). For example, historicists have to assume Jesus was nowhere near as famous as the Gospels claim, in order to make probable so many sources not mentioning him (an assumption I even adopt, in OHJ, Ch. 8); the mythicist hypothesis is simply identical, but subtracts one unnecessary element (that there was even a man to be famous in the first place).
For an example of why mythicism does not rely on as many ad hoc suppositions as usually claimed, see my discussion of Empirical Logic and Romans 1:3. I cover more examples in Kamil Gregor on the Historicity of Jesus. Every other case (though Cooke mentions no cases for us to discuss) will fall to the same analysis. Either the elements of mythicism are in evidence (either directly, Chs. 7–11, or in background, Chs. 4–6, as explained in OHJ, Chs. 1–3 and 12) or they simply replace ad hoc assumptions already required by historicity (see, for example, How Did Christianity Switch to a Historical Jesus? where I show how historicists have to adopt exactly the same assumptions as mythicism to explain the “resurrected” Jesus). For more on this point (and more examples) see my discussions in Bermejo-Rubio’s Dispassionate Plea and Gesù Resistente, Gesù Inesistente.
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Claim 4: Mythicism doesn’t add anything. It’s, as Cooke says, “sterile.” This is false. And it betrays the fact that Cooke is the one violating the Law of Excluded Middle here, and in exactly the way he falsely accuses mythicists of: he assumes the only relevance any theory of early Christianity can have is to answer or “respond” to Christian apologetics (as Cooke says, “proponents of the myth theory can’t say much in response” to various Christian apologetical stances he lists). That is not what history is for. If what Cooke wants is a counter-apologetic to Christianity, mythicism will indeed be of no use to him, just as I have already explained in Fincke Is Right: Arguing Jesus Didn’t Exist Should Not Be a Strategy. Only nonbelievers are capable of entertaining, and thus fruitfully discussing, the possibility Jesus didn’t even exist.
But as a question in history (not anti-religious rhetoric), Jesus mythicism is far from sterile. To the contrary, it calls for a substantial paradigm shift in the way we study early Christianity. Indeed, Jesus mythicism was so fruitful it anticipated almost the entirety of today’s mainstream consensus. A hundred years ago the mythicist-promoted notion that the Gospels are mythologies and the postmortem appearances of Jesus were prophetic dreams or hallucinatory ecstasies common to world religions was considered as absurd and contrary to the “consensus” as Cooke voices here; they are now the mainstream consensus (see Adventures at the Society of Biblical Literature Conference and Christianity Was a Revelation Cult). Likewise that Christians doctored and fabricated evidence—now mainstream (see Bart Ehrman’s Forgery and Counter-forgery and Orthodox Corruption of Scripture). And so on.
Today, mythicism promises a more fruitful way of studying the Epistles and Gospels and other sources—looking for their mythical rather than historical point, as for example in Can You Rebel Against Rome with Only Two Swords? and Mark’s Use of Paul’s Epistles and Did ‘Docetism’ Really Even Exist? and Yes, Galatians 4 Is Allegorical and The Difference Between a Historian and an Apologist and Robyn Faith Walsh and the Gospels as Literature. And mythicism’s fertile influence, past and present, has extended well beyond that (see Some Controversial Ideas That Now Have Wide Scholarly Support and Was the Entire New Testament Forged in the Second Century?). Mythicism also compels a more logical and critical development of methods. It shall reform a lot of bad argumentation (again, see Things Fall Apart Only When You Check, as well as The Backwards and Unempirical Logic of Q Apologetics).
Mythicism will also improve our understanding of how Christianity actually began, and why; as well as how and why it evolved its mythology over time the way it did. Rather than remaining mired in apologetically favorable positions that throw crumbs of support to Christian believers, we can return Christianity to the fold of world religions, where it resembles many other religions in history, and is not some startlingly unique development of it. Just as we did for Judaism, when the academic consensus that Moses and the Patriarchs existed was overthrown in the 1970s, evolving over ensuing decades into the current secular consensus that embraces “Moses mythicism” (see Efraim Wallach on Old Testament Studies). Was that “of no use” to history, a “sterile” development?
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Claim 5: Supporting antisemitism? Cooke never explains how any form of mythicism does this. He claims “just as the evangelicals dismiss Yeshua’s Jewishness by turning him into a celestial savior, mythicists do the same when they turn him into a celestial myth,” but he doesn’t explain how that analogy holds. It’s actually the other way around. Christians strip away or downplay and indeed replace everything substantially Jewish about Jesus and the origins of Christianity. Academic mythicism does the reverse: it firmly re-situates Christianity as a typical Jewish apocalyptic sect, and Jesus as a typical Jewish celestial being, commonly discussed and believed in by Jews of the time (I spend quite a lot of time establishing all of this in OHJ, Chs. 4 and 5). Indeed, mythicism proves that Christianity cannot be at all understood apart from its beginning as a first century Jewish sect. For example, see: Boyarin and the Dying Messiah Concept and The Original Scriptural Concept of ‘The Lord’ Jesus and Was Jesus-Is-Michael an Early Christian Mystery Teaching?
The Jewish concept of a Logos angel emanating from God that evolved into the later Christian idea of the Trinity (but appears in the New Testament entirely in line with the former and not the latter) is a prime example of how finding the Jewish origins of celestialism better informs our understanding of how and why Christianity began, and with the peculiar doctrines it did (see The Idea That Christianity Began with a High Christology). In short, academic mythicism no more promotes antisemitism than mainstream Moses mythicism now does, or the mainstream consensus that Satan and Michael and Gabriel and the Melchizedek hero of the Dead Sea Scrolls are all celestial myths. Situating Jesus among them is thus re-Judaizing him.
For some examples: we have demonstrated that you cannot understand Christianity if you do not understand how and why Jesus replaces the Passover and Yom Kippur roles of the Jerusalem Temple cult; you cannot understand Christianity if you do not understand the counter-cultural movements within Judaism of the time, to which early Christianity clearly belongs; you cannot understand Christianity if you do not understand ancient Jewish messianism, and especially the then-popular messianic mode of interpreting Jewish scriptures called pesher; and you cannot understand Christianity if you do not understand the popular demonology and angelology of first century Judaism and its commonplace recourse to celestial communicators and saviors, including the Jewish principle of Two Powers in Heaven that Jesus was situated in from the very beginning. You will find all of these points covered, with cited scholarship, in my study.
Conclusion
Cooke insists “these points need to be responded to if the myth theory of Jesus is to make any claim to academic credibility.” But that already happened ten years ago. Answering these points was what our peer reviewed studies accomplished (in 2014 with results corroborated by an independent study in 2019).
- We produced abundant evidence indicating the consensus is not well founded and should be revised (just as Thomas Thompson did with Moses in the 1970s).
- Our project began international. Lataster is Australian; and I’m American, but I built on the recent supporting work of doubters across the world, from the Irish scholar Thomas Brodie and the Danish scholar Thomas Thompson to the Argentinian scholar Emanuel Pfoh and German scholar David Trobisch. I have since persuaded or been joined by dozens of bona fide scholars all over the world who now consider doubting the historicity of Jesus to be at least as plausible as any of various other mainstream theories of Jesus. Some already did before me, like renowned British scholar Phillip Davies.
- We explicitly disavowed the false dichotomy that concerns Cooke, and directly addressed the kneejerk claim that our theory violates Ockham’s Razor.
- For over a hundred years mythicism has demonstrated considerable fertility as a source of new and better ways to approach the historical study of Jesus and the origins and early development of Christianity.
- And rather than move Jesus further away from his Jewish origins, we have brought him fully into the fold of the mystical and apocalyptic Judaism raging at the time, centering its celestialism within the Dead Sea Scrolls and other early Jewish apocalyptic literature.
So we really need to stop crap criticism like this. Scholars need to end all this amateur-hour shit and actually do their jobs. They need to actually read the peer reviewed studies, and actually respond to what they actually say. That they refuse to do this has now become the number one demonstration that Jesus didn’t exist after all. Because, evidently, no one can honestly defend the thesis that he did.
“Claim 1: We should never question the consensus.”
I agree that it’s false when “we” refers to people like Richard Carrier. You, Richard, are part of the scholars who make this consensus. You’re part of a minority, but minorities sometimes become majorities in science and history.
On the other hand, if “we” refers to everyone reading this, that’s a different story. Take me, for example–I’ve been studying apologetics from myriad angles 10+ years, but I’m not part of the inner circle. I don’t have a relevant degree. No one tallies my opinion when the consensus is analyzed. And that’s also true for most of your readership. Most are smart, educated, and thoughtful, but they’re not scholars.
And I’m fine with that. When some Christian yahoo blunders into a conversation spouting young-earth Creationism nonsense, I’m quick to tell him that both he and I aren’t voting members on these issues.
Richard, are we on the same page?
Hard to say. I’m not sure what you mean.
Laypeople do need to be able to vet a consensus (see the link I provide on that, which explains why), and here especially precisely because it is so unreliable in this field. That’s even a point I explain in this article here. This is true even in other fields: we must question the consensus at least enough to be able to verify it stands on something, though really only in proportion to field reliability—so, history and psychology, we need to do this a lot; physics and climate science, not so much.
And people like Cooke confirm this: gatekeepers in this field are using this claim about consensus to circularly argue that no one should take seriously any challenge to “their” consensus, simply to defend the consensus (rather than defending it with relevant facts and logic). Which signals that this consensus isn’t based on facts and logic, but on ignorance, emotion, and institutional inertia (case in point: Cooke didn’t even check the facts in this case before browbeating his audience with “consensus”; so clearly, he is not forming any reliable consensus).
Cooke is not writing ten years ago. He is writing now. When he should know about academic mythicism and thus note the difference and address the real stuff and not the crap. He is literally insisting mythicists do what they already did ten years ago (“these points need to be responded to if the myth theory of Jesus is to make any claim to academic credibility”). It’s as if he’s a vampire who doesn’t realize he slept ten years in his coffin rather than one day and now thinks it’s 2013 and woke to furiously complain about some never-named mythicists.
He’s a historian (PhD he says). So there’s no excuse for this. Unless he is indeed that vampire. But then he needs a new Renfield.
Meanwhile, he’s not alone in behaving this way. And this is the real problem in biblical studies. Biblical Studies Professor Hector Avalos wrote a whole book about it. Whole articles have been written about it by other real experts in biblical studies (so far, Grabbe, Davies, Meggitt, Mack, Nieminen, and others). Scholars have confessed to it on video (example, example). And I have documented it repeatedly (see several of the links I provide in this article, from Some Controversial Ideas That Now Have Wide Scholarly Support to Things Fall Apart Only When You Check: The Main Reason the Historicity of Jesus Continues to Be Believed, and in every case of an expert critic addressed in the last ten years in List of Responses to Defenders of the Historicity of Jesus).
So I certainly do not believe anyone should just “trust” the consensus in this field—much less use that as an excuse to simply ignore or dismiss multiple peer-reviewed challenges to it. And this isn’t the only issue that this holds for (Q theory and oral lore theory are examples of consensus positions in biblical studies that are also empirically baseless and defended solely on the circular premise that a desired consensus can’t be judged and therefore laypeople should just “agree” and shut up about it; the same happened to high Christology and suffering messianism, and dying and rising gods, which are addressed in Some Controversial Ideas; and mimesis criticism).
Which means you are a voting member of this conversation: if you can tell the emperor has no clothes, you should join the public pressure on scholars to stop misbehaving and actually address the matter professionally rather than trying to make it go away. The more they lose the public because they abandoned their principles, the more they will be shamed into adjusting—or be replaced by younger generations of scholars no longer sold on their dogmas.
Brodie is Irish.
Oh, good point! And not UK Irish either. There are also Brits on my list. But I must correct that nationality for him! Done.
I thought Cooke had some good points. But, to be totally honest, I just agree with his points because they (largely) reflect my own view, which is that Jesus Mythicism is a dead end.
I reached the conclusion that JM is a dead end after reading “OHJ”.
OHJ is the very best of JM that I’ve ever read, and, it failed to convince me of the case being made. And I don’t know that there’s a better case for JM to be made.
shrug
As far as a one-stop-shop, there isn’t. Lataster might help but only if you are persuaded by Ehrman or Casey, since his book is a detailed methodological comparison of them with OHJ.
So if all that evidence doesn’t persuade you, you might be unpersuadable.
But it depends on what didn’t persuade you. I have articles on nearly every subject some readers misunderstand the logic of, so you might want to make your list of what didn’t persuade, keyword search them on my blog, and see if any gaps are filled for you. Or start here:
An Ongoing List of Updates to the Arguments and Evidence in On the Historicity of Jesus
Thanks Richard. The last time Cooke criticized mythicism in Free Enquiry I wrote a rebuttal. I just don’t see any substantial proof the Jesus ever existed and Cooke never presents any.
Did they publish your reply? Or is it online in any form? I can provide a citation or link in this article.
Tom Flynn published my article. It’s available through the Free Inquiry website. “Jesus is a Myth: A Rebuttal to Bill Cooke.” June/July 2017.
Just so readers know, that article is available to subscribers only. But so is Cooke’s article that time. Whatever you wrote in response, he evidently ignored it for his 2024 article. Which looks more deliberate than incompetent.
An Answer to Bill Cook’s Five Challenges to Christ Myth Theorists
by Lee Salisbury, Amateur Theologian and Ex-Preacher/Pastor
The author Bill Cooke asks “Why should we ignore the majority consensus of Jesus scholarship”? Don’t we ignore that same majority of Jesus scholarship that believes Bill Cooke and all humanists will eventually burn in Hell? Don’t we ignore that same majority that believes in the rapture and that Jesus will soon come again? What would happen if just one of that majority even hinted at questioning said events? What would happen to their present employment? It appears to me Bill Cooke is rather selective in wanting to acknowledge what the so-called majority believes and what they don’t believe.
Bill states the myth theory indulges in serious fallacies and flaws of logic. So, what is Bill going to do with fallacy after fallacy and contradiction after contradiction in the historical Jesus story? Though I do not know for a fact if the historicity theory is more believable than the myth theory, I really don’t see either theory as absolute and do think Bill’s dogmatic opinion is unjustified.
Bill gives five challenges to the myth theory. May we give Bill just one challenge to the historical Jesus story. Please give us just one provable bit of evidence that Jesus was a historical personage that is not based on hearsay and/or second hand supposition by totally unknown individuals. Can Bill prove Jesus was crucified under Pontus Pilate and subsequently resurrected?
Of course the Roman Catholic Church does gives us undeniable evidence for Jesus historicity. The Church has the foreskin of Jesus. At last count the Church has not just one but six Cathedrals with Jesus foreskin. Hallelujah! Shame on those mythicists!
Many years ago I posted my thoughts on this issue on Internet Infidels entitled “History’s Troubling Silence About Jesus”. It was an issue I discussed with Tom Flynn. Bill refers to Tom’s piece in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief. Interestingly, Tom’s writing gives viewpoints on both sides without really declaring one right or wrong as Bill suggests.
MUST READS challenging the historical perspective: Bart Ehrman and the Quest of the Historical Jesus of Nazareth, edited by Frank R. Zindler and Robert M. Price. On the Historicity of Jesus, Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt by Richard Carrier. These authors have unquestioned academic qualifications.
In my view a major problem sincere, objective-minded inquirers of history have with the historical Jesus is the fact that historical writings are virtually silent about the Jesus of Nazareth story in the writings of non-Christian Jewish, Greek, and Roman writers. Certainly, such events, if true, would have spread throughout the Mediterranean world. Yet, the surviving writings of some 35 to 40 independent observers of the first one hundred years following the alleged crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus give little or no confirmation. These authors were respected, well-traveled, articulate, thinkers and observers, the philosophers, poets, moralists, historians of that era. Some of the most prominent figures who make no mention of Jesus are:
Seneca 4BCE – 65CE, Rome’s most prominent writer on ethics, philosophy and morals; A natural scientist who tracked eclipses & quakes; he exposes alleged correspondence between Paul and Seneca as fraudulent. Nothing on Jesus.
Pliny the Elder 23-79 CE, authored Natural History 37 books on natural events such as earthquakes, eclipses and healing. Nothing on Jesus.
Quintilian 39-96CE, authored Instituio Oratio 12 books on morals and virtue. Nothing on Jesus.
Epictetus 55-135CE, former slave who became a recognized moralist, philosopher; wrote about the “brotherhood of man” and the importance of helping the poor and oppressed. Nothing on Jesus.
Martial 38-103CE, a poet, wrote epic poems about human foibles and the diverse characters of the Roman Empire. Nothing on Jesus.
Juvenal 55 – 127 CE, Rome’s most powerful satirical poet, wrote about injustice and tragedy in the Roman government. Nothing on Jesus.
Plutarch 46 – 119 CE, a Greek, traveled Rome to Alexandria, wrote Moralia on morals and ethics. Nothing on Jesus.
Three Romans whose writings contain some superficial reference to a Christ, Chrestos or Christians are:
Pliny the Younger 61-113 CE, Governor of Bithynia, In a letter in 112 CE he asked Emperor Trajan about prosecuting Christians who “met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately amongst themselves in honor of Christ as to a god.” Aha! So somebody was worshiping a Christ! But nothing is said as to whether this Christ was Jesus, a teacher and miracle working man who was crucified and resurrected in Judea or a mythic Christ of the pagan mystery religions. Jesus allegedly said there would be many false Christs.
Suetonius 69 – 122 CE, authored Lives of the Emperors, the history of 11 emperors; writing in 120 CE about Emperor Claudius 41-54CE who “expelled from Rome the Jews who under the influence of Chrestus, did not cease to cause unrest.” Who is Chrestus? No mention of Jesus. Is he a Jewish agitator?, a mythic Christ? No one knows.
Tacitus 56 -120 CE, Roman historian, authored Germania, Annuals 14-68 CE, and Histories 69-96 CE; Tacitus in Annuals Book 15, chapter 44 written about 115 CE gives the first non-Christian reference to Christ as a man executed in Judea by Pontius Pilate. Nero in an attempt to dispel rumors that he had torched Rome, produced substitute culprits, called “a class of men loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians.” “Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate.” Why did Tacitus refer to Pilate as “procurator”, the title in Tacitus day, when it was “prefect” in the earlier Tiberius day? Tacitus’ source was partially incorrect. The question is: where did Tacitus get his information of an event 75+ years before? Does this prove a historical Jesus or could it be a legend that developed in the era of Pontius Pilate rule 26-36 CE, possibly retold by Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch who was executed in Rome 105 CE. Is Tacitus’ account historical or legend?
One thing is clear and indisputable: these Christ references must be seen as suspiciously brief and superficial relative to the bible’s portrayal of the widespread recognition of Jesus’ resurrection, the acclaim of Jesus as God in the flesh, and the continued miraculous events of Jesus working along side His church throughout the Roman Empire.
Two authors of greater significance are:
Philo-Judaeus 15 BCE – 50 CE, an Alexandrian, a Greek speaking Jewish theologian-philosopher who personally knew Jerusalem because of relatives living there; he wrote extensively on Jewish history and religion from a Greek perspective and taught the following concepts: God and His Word are one; the Word is the first-begotten Son of God; God created the world through His Word; God holds all things together through His Word; the Word is the fountain of eternal life; the Word dwells in and among us; all judgment is committed to God’s Word; and the Word never changes. Philo also taught on God as Spirit, the Trinity, the virgin birth, Jews who sin will go to hell, Gentiles who come to God will be saved and go to heaven, and of the God of love and forgiveness. Yet, Philo, a Jew in nearby Alexandria, who would have been a contemporary of Jesus never once mentions anybody named Jesus nor any miracle worker being crucified and resurrected in Jerusalem, let alone an eclipse, an earthquake, or Jews being resurrected from their graves. Why? Philo’s silence about Jesus is deafening!
Josephus 37-103 CE, a Jerusalem born Pharisee, living in Rome and wrote History of the Jews, 79 CE and Antiquities of the Jews, 93 CE. Christian apologists (defenders of the faith) consider Josephus’ Jesus testimony the one, sure evidence of the historicity of Jesus. This Jesus Testimony is found in Josephus’, Antiquities of the Jews. Contrary to those Christian apologists, the Jesus testimony is considered by many, many scholars including the Encyclopedia Britannica‘s scholars as “an insertion by later Christian copyists”. This Jesus testimony states “Jesus is the Christ, a doer of wonderful works, was crucified, and appeared the third day as the divine prophets foretold”.
Why is this Jesus testimony considered a later insertion?
Josephus was a Pharisee. Only a Christian would call Jesus the Christ. Josephus would have had to renounce his pharisaical beliefs to say Jesus was the Christ. Josephus died a Pharisee.
Josephus habitually writes chapter upon chapter about the most insignificant people and events. The Jesus testimony consists of three sentences. Why would Josephus’ Savior of the world be given only three sentences ?
The paragraphs before and after the Jesus testimony describe Romans killing Jews. The paragraph following the Jesus testimony begins “About the same time another sad calamity put the Jews in disorder”. Would the “sad calamity” refer to the appearing of the “doer of wonderful works” or Romans killing Jews? The Jesus Testimony is clearly out of context having every appearance of a later insertion.
Finally, and most convincing, had Josephus actually written the Jesus testimony, church fathers in the following 200 years would surely refer to it in fending off critics of Jesus being just another myth. But not once does Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, or Origen ever refer to Josephus’ Jesus testimony. We know Origen read Josephus because Origen’s writings criticize Josephus for attributing the destruction of Jerusalem to the killing of James rather than Jesus. The church fathers made no reference to Josephus’ Jesus testimony because Josephus did not write it.
Not only does the Jesus Testimony appear fraudulent, but Josephus’ historical accounts both contradict and omit other New Testament bible testimony:
In Josephus, John the Baptist is killed by Herod when Herod is at war with King Aertus of Arabia in 34 – 37 CE. According to the bible John was killed about 30 CE at the beginning of Jesus ministry.
Josephus makes no reference to the celebration of Pentecost in Jerusalem when allegedly devout Jews of every nation gathered and all received the Holy Spirit evidenced by speaking in new tongues; none of the Jewish fisherman; Peter as head apostle of the new church; a fellow Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus becoming the apostle Paul; or the church’s explosive growth throughout Palestine, Alexandria, Greece, or Josephus’ city of residence Rome. Peter and Paul’s alleged martyrdoms in Rome about 60 CE is completely ignored by Josephus. How interesting that Christian apologists so determined to rely on the veracity of Josephus’ Jesus testimony conveniently excuse his later oversights.
Is it probable, as the Encyclopedia Britannica asserts, that Christian copyists distorted truth by inserting the Jesus testimony? Eusebius (265-339 CE), acknowledged as “Father of Church History” and known to be the emperor Constantine’s overseer of doctrine writes, in his The Preparation of the Gospel published by Baker House (a Christian company), writes on page 619 “it will be necessary sometimes to use falsehood as a remedy for the benefit of those who require such treatment“…and page 657… “tell any falsehood to the young for their good“. Eusebius, one of the most influential Christians in history, condoned fraud as a tool to promote Christianity! The probability of Constantine’s Christianity being a product of fraud is directly related to the desperate need of evidence to support the historicity of Jesus. Without Josephus’ testimony there is no non-Christian confirmation of a historical Jesus.
Think about that: Zero Confirmation by anyone but promoters of the story! Would it be fair to conclude that no one ever heard of this Jesus? Why? Maybe Jesus Never Existed! Maybe Jesus is pure myth similar to the hundreds of other savior-gods.
We’ll never know all the answers, but the obvious issue is: When the only available evidence of an event or product is what the event or product’s promoters want you to believe – then “buyer beware”.
The facts are that non-Christian Jewish, Greek, and Roman writers of the first one hundred years subsequent to the alleged Jesus crucifixion are virtually silent about any person named Jesus of Nazareth. Considering the implications of this silence along with the many amazing similarities, if not outright plagiarisms, of prior Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Persian, and Indian savior god stories, it is highly probable that Christianity is in reality a product of religious syncretism and fraud.
In my humble opinion, the Jesus myth theory is a courageous attempt contrary to vast numbers of believers, to understand how the Jesus story developed eventually becoming one of world’s most influential religions seducing millions of gullible believers.
Just three footnotes to that:
(1) I cover the argument from silence in Ch. 8 of OHJ, and there discuss all the angles (including all the ways historicists can respond to this, and their relative merits) and give a much larger list than here. Overall, because I am testing minimal historicity, I find this silence has no effect on the probability Jesus existed, but that does require accepting (as I mentioned) the ad hoc supposition that Jesus was incredibly un-famous, which has a lot of other consequences I mention in notes later in my study.
(2) Tacitus almost certainly did refer to Pilate as a “procurator,” because Pilate was both a procurator and a prefect, and a major theme of the Annals is the embarrassments to men of Senatorial class like Tacitus that this corrupt practice entailed. In short, the designation is sneering and deliberate. The only material Christians likely added was the one line identifying the intended Chrestus here as the Christ crucified by Pilate, when in fact Tacitus was talking about the Chrestus rioter under Claudius attested by Suetonius. Details on all these points are in various articles in Hitler Homer Bible Christ.
(3) Though the evidence for interpolation in Josephus and Tacitus is overwhelming, and it’s really just stubborn emotionalism that resists it now, it is not logically necessary that they be. The effect they have as evidence is zero even if authentic. Because then they are simply repeating what Christian informants told them, which would simply repeat the Gospels, which had been circulating for a whole generation or two by the time Tacitus and Josephus wrote. This is even provable: the passage in Josephus used Luke as a source; and we can prove Pliny was a regular informant for Tacitus’s histories (I discuss this in OHJ), and Pliny’s interrogation of Christians predated the Annals by at least five years.
OFFS, that was amazingly incompetent from CFI. I mean, really, starting off with an appeal to popularity fallacy?
So from what I can see it’s likely Cooke just didn’t read your book.
Which means that we have people commenting on the issue and not getting to the Wikipedia page. Like, you’re literally in the sidebar.
(And that’s assuming he didn’t hear about you, rather than a very likely alternative which is that he did and poo-pooed you on the sayso of other people).
Which is a failure of steelmanning, and thus a major failure of skeptical inquiry.
It would seem, in fact, that Cooke has done no research on this subject in ten years. So, yeah.
Richard,
FYI my ministry years were 1972 – 1986. My deconversion was an agonizing process taking place in the early 1990s. Aside from comments on Bill Cooke, what I wrote was written about 2002 – 2003 so as you point out there are numerous points to improve.
Though endorsed by Robert Price I’d be very surprised if Free Inquiry publishes my comments.
Do you know if Richard Dawkins has ever expressed any thoughts on a mythical Jesus?
Thanks for all your work. Best regards, Lee
Dawkins was sympathetic to mythicism at least at one point, but was never very well informed about it.
Although not mentioned in the Cooke article, one argument that Dr. Ehrman continually uses is that the Jews expected a triumphant political messiah, not an ignominiously convicted, executed one. This “expectation” argument seems to ask for an answer from sociology/social movements field in the religious beliefs area. If there are historical or current examples in this interdisciplinary part of academics, it would be helpful. You covered a lot of belief switching regarding prophecies in OT such as Isaiah, etc. Perhaps even more general, encompassing evaluation of group thinking in other fields?
Indeed. That argument is contextually ignorant in a number of ways.
I list it as one of the failure modes of historicity in Historicity Big and Small (it’s P11) and addressed it ten years ago when Ehrman ineptly attempted it (see Ehrman on Historicity Recap, §7). I have since demonstrated that in fact dozens of experts conclude the opposite (see The Idea That Some Jews Were Already Expecting a Dying Messiah).
In my original study I provided abundant evidence and cited some of that scholarship too (Ehrman has never read my book; or if he has, he has never published anything about it since; e.g. his book on historicity was published before mine, and so isn’t a response to its contents). For example, I cover the
“revolution cult” phenomenon in the sociological literature (Element 29, Chapter 5); and I cover the Jewish evidence relating to this (Elements 5 and 7, Chapter 4), which has grown since (see links above). Ehrman has since passed a dissertation by a student making my point openly, so it would seem Ehrman has also quietly dropped that argument.
Can someone tell me why Ehrman, and not JDC, Burton L. Mack, Shelby Sponge, or Vermes became the “main face” of historicism? Why don’t evangelicals have conferences critiquing any of those other folks, rather than just Ehrman (I know the guy who set up the Ehrman conference in Chicago from a few years back)? I have seen, over the past twelve years that I’ve been doing serious research in this area, Muslims and Evangelicals (when debating Mythicists) quoting Ehrman constantly, but never Vermes, et al. Also, I know this has been covered for over a decade, but has anyone pinned down the reason why Ehrman engages (in his writings and debates) in so much gatekeeping, even going so far as to call Tanakh scholars in his own department “unqualified” to write a book on the New Testament? He seems to think Biblical Studies operates under the parampara system (or the Sith rule of two) where there can only be so many “true” teachers out there.
Primarily, because he is famous and biblical studies operates as a prestige economy, not an empirical one.
Secondarily, for the convoluted historically contingent reason that Ehrman popularized biblical studies to the masses, becoming a direct threat to Christian congregations (who are not supposed to know about mainstream biblical studies—exactly as Ehrman himself explains in the introduction to Jesus, Interrupted). In result he became the most recognized “atheist historian of Jesus.”
Since Christians are fond of tu quoque fallacies, they like quote-mining famous atheists who agree with them on something (“See, even Ehrman agrees with us!” which is to be read as “See, even atheist experts agree with us”). This led to a popular practice of quoting Ehrman this way.
He thus became “the most important expert in Jesus studies.” Christians need him to be, so they can keep this fallacy running; and atheists who hate mythicists need him to be, for the same reason (because everyone with a false belief resorts to the same illogical rhetoric, it’s part of the standard toolbox of all human beings who emotionally feel the need to defend something that they actually can’t). And this all stems from him simply being the most recognizable name in the field, who just happens to support Christians on certain things, which they will exploit.
This in turn gave Ehrman power. And since power corrupts, he uses that power to threaten and browbeat anyone who disagrees with him, to the cheers of adoring fans.
Because, circling back to point one, biblical studies is a prestige economy, not an empirical one.
FYI, there is another short article by Bill Cooke that mentions you:
Cooke, B. (2020). The myth theory of Jesus is rubbish. The Open Society: Official Journal of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists & Humanists (Inc.), 93(1), 17-19.
There is a free copy here:
https://search.informit.org/doi/pdf/10.3316/informit.T2024061700004700244463335
Wow. And which shows he knows my 2014 study exists—yet still didn’t cite or quote or reference it or address its contents! And this is in 2020—yet he still doesn’t cite or quote or reference even Lataster’s peer-reviewed study of 2019! And, of course, nothing in that article is even relevant to either (it’s mostly about the bogus conspiracy theory charge which I dispel in OHJ, index, “conspiracy theories”).
That pretty much dispels any chance of his honesty or competence.