Earlier this month I presented the thesis of On the Historicity of Jesus to the SBL Western Regional Conference (held this year in Azusa, California). Oliver Eldridge interviewed me over drinks afterward. There I mentioned I kept Waters’ summary handout, which fairly faithfully tracked most of the arguments he tried to present against OHJ at the conference.

This is how that went down…

The audience was more critical of Waters’ rancorous and somewhat contemptuous (and very apologetics-heavy) rebuttal than of my proposal. Choosing a Baptist minister to tackle this issue was probably not a productive decision by the SBL. Although I think Waters was actually the one making that decision. A secular-minded scholar, whose precious religious beliefs were not threatened by the proposal to be discussed, would have been a far better choice. Not that Waters isn’t well qualified. But religion is blinding. It causes people to act out in anger and irrationality, desperate to latch onto any rationalization to reject something, often without thinking it through first (and thus not realizing their rebuttal is making them look foolish and unstudied).

The Bayesian Herring

Waters’ handout listed thirteen points of attack.

Two were irrelevant.

Waters seemed prepared to defend the authenticity of the reference to Christ in Tacitus (even though, following Jean Rougé, I recently disproved that in a peer reviewed biblical studies journal, in an article now reproduced in Hitler Homer Bible Christ). But he rightly dropped that in oral presentation when I used instead the argument that it couldn’t be established as independent of the Gospels anyway, a point to which there is no factually or logically sound response. The reference is simply useless as evidence.

Secondly, Waters gave a “gosh golly I don’t understand it so I guess I should fear it” response to using Bayesian methodology to control for biases in reaching a conclusion in the matter. Apart from being a fallacy (that you don’t understand it actually disqualifies you from criticizing it), it also isn’t pertinent (my conclusion follows whether you use Bayesian methodology or not, and I didn’t rely on any explicitly Bayesian argument in my presentation to the audience). Nevertheless, his three points against it were also incorrect:

  1. That “BT does not eliminate the need for hermeneutics” is a red herring. We aren’t doing hermeneutics. We are doing history. And ironically, Christian hermeneutics is intrinsically unhistorical, as it begins with theological faith premises, not objectively factual premises verifiable to non-Christians (or indeed even non-Baptists). When we do secular (as in, fact-based) hermeneutics (what the rest of us just call “interpretation”) we are using Bayesian reasoning. So you can’t dodge the question that way.
  2. That “BT does not eliminate the need for criteria of historicity” is not only false, I proved it extensively in Proving History: it very definitely does eliminate the criteria so far employed in Jesus studies. I there demonstrated they are all fallacious or fallaciously applied, and can only be fixed by scrapping them and adopting a Bayesian model in their stead. Waters offered no rebuttal to any of my demonstrations of this (nor to that of any other expert who has pointed out the fatal flaws in the method of criteria, which incidentally is every single expert who has ever published a dedicated study on those criteria).
  3. That “BT does not insulate against subjectivity” is a moot point. Literally no method in history does. None. Zip. Zero. So you are stuck with BT, the only method that exposes all your subjective judgments to the light of day, forcing you to defend them. All other methods conceal or obfuscate those subjectivities. Which is precisely why BT is necessary.

That’s a digression to the SBL debate, though, since none of my presentation required acknowledging any of this. I find it typical of Christian apologists that they are so terrified of the power of Bayesian reasoning to destroy their beliefs that they will burn five minutes of podium time rebutting it even when it wasn’t part of the presentation they are supposed to be rebutting.

Which Brothers of the Lord?

Waters’ first two points were attempts to insist that “Brothers of the Lord” must surely mean biological brothers of Jesus.

He offered no evidence of that fact. To the contrary, all he did was gainsay, declaring (without citing a single argument in defense of the assertion) that “brother of the Lord” cannot mean “that he is only…a regular Christian” (it means in fact a baptized Christian, not simply a regular one). Waters presented no evidence against the fact that all baptized Christians are adopted sons of God and thus, in fact, all brothers of the Lord. I presented extensive, indisputable, and thoroughly explicit evidence of that fact (OHJ, p. 108), none of which he rebutted…or even, in fact, mentioned. Waters simply insisted that it “can’t be.” Like Luke Skywalker insisting Darth Vader can’t be his father. Because that’s impossible.

Likewise Waters simply insisted “brothers of the Lord” had to be apostles. Because. … No, really, that’s it. He had no argument. He just insisted that that had to be. That the phrase “cannot” mean non-apostolic baptized Christians. For some reason. He didn’t say.

Waters did not address any of my arguments in my book refuting these claims (OHJ, ch. 11.10). Nor any of the peer reviewed arguments of Trudinger supporting me, which I cited in OHJ. Apparently Waters didn’t even read Trudinger. He didn’t even use the rebuttal to Trudinger offered by Howard. Possibly because Waters knew I had already refuted Howard, and there really isn’t any coming back from that (OHJ, p. 590. n. 101).

By debate standards, this was kind of embarrassing. Gainsaying without argument. Ignoring the arguments of your opponent. Sigh.

Whose Women and Sperm?

As Christian apologists usually do, Waters ignored the context of the verse in Galatians 4:4, and disregarded how ancient principles of rhetoric operated for the construction of arguments, and the fact that Paul used vocabulary he peculiarly employs for divine manufacture and not the vocabulary he normally used for biological birth. Waters again just argued by gainsaying. He didn’t actually explain what rhetorical function the exact same phrase employed in Paul’s argument if it was supposed to inexplicably all of a sudden be referring to a literal birth, nor did he respond to any of my rhetorical analysis of the actual function of that phrase in Paul’s argument in OHJ (pp. 577-82). Waters did not seem to actually understand the fact that Paul means “mother” as in the realm, the world order, in which we are born. And that by sharing the same birth as us, to the same mother as us, we are able to share the same victory as Jesus, and thus, like Jesus, become born of the celestial mother in our resurrection.

Waters also incorrectly gave in his handout the translation of Romans 1:3 as “descended from David,” even though the Greek says no such thing. It says Jesus was made (using the same exact word Paul used of the making of Adam and the making of our future resurrection bodies) from the sperm of David. Not from the sperm of a descendent of David. Or anything of the kind. This is, we have to concede, ambiguous. Exactly as I explain in OHJ (pp. 575-77), which analysis Waters had nothing to argue against other than repeated expressions of incredulity.

Waters also did not seem to understand ancient cosmology. Even though I went out of my way to explain it in OHJ. He cited 1 Cor. 15:39-41 as arguing against a celestial incarnation, but that’s about the heavens above the moon. Not the firmament below it. Waters evidently did not grasp the distinction between celestial as supra-lunar, and the firmament as the region of space below the moon, which was the realm of flesh (yet was still known to extend hundreds of thousands of miles). Exactly as the earlier redaction of the Ascension of Isaiah says was the location of the crucifixion. And a distinction many other authors had described (from Plutarch to Philo). All as I extensively proved (OHJ, pp. 63, 178-97).

Waters made this mistake twice, claiming that “the world” in the Ascension of Isaiah meant on earth, when in fact it meant the whole world within the sphere of the moon. As it did everywhere in ancient cosmology. This suggests Waters didn’t think very much about even the original Greek vocabulary, much less the actual cosmology. Waters also claimed Paul did not know of any “pre-resurrectional human flesh,” evidently not even understanding that Paul says the resurrection body is not made of flesh at all. Nor was Waters’ unintelligible argument at all relevant to the firmament incarnation thesis. I have to conclude Waters was confused and didn’t even understand the thesis he was supposed to be responding to.

In short, Waters expended three more arguments trying to tackle my book’s argument about these two verses (Gal. 4:4 and Rom. 1:3), by ignoring or getting wrong pretty much everything my book said about them.

A Bad Argument from Silence

Sort of like Captain Renault in Casablanca, Waters essentially claimed to be “shocked, just shocked” that “there is no [surviving] mention of a [celestially] crucified Christ in any literature” (other than, well, the Ascension of Isaiah and allusions in Ignatius, Irenaeus, and 2 Peter; so, no mention, except for all the mentions). Of course, Renault was pretending to be shocked to suddenly discover gambling that in fact he had always overlooked, whereas Waters was pretending to be shocked by the absence of evidence I extensively documented Medieval Christians systematically destroyed, doctored, or opted not to preserve in any fashion (OHJ, pp. 146-52, 214-22, 275-79). The reason that evidence is absent is because Medieval Christians systematically destroyed, doctored, or opted not to preserve it in any fashion. So we can’t use its absence now as evidence against its existence then.

WTFs

Waters tried to insist that when Philo talks about the archangel God made as the first created being, the archangel who actually carried out the creation of the universe, and governs and regulates the universe, and serves as the high priest of God’s celestial temple, that Philo was just talking about the “virtuous human soul.” Sorry, but I have to call stupid on that. Unless Waters thinks “the human soul” created the universe, even Waters himself apparently needs to phone Waters and call stupid on that.

Waters similarly tried to argue the Melchizedek figure in Hebrews was “not” a divine being or archangel, even though Hebrews says Melchizedek was “without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, and remains a priest continually” (7:1, 3). Um, Logic to Dr. Waters, that’s a divine being or archangel. That [a Pauline author] thought the Son of God was made the same way, and therefore was also “without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life,” is what folks in the poker trade call a tell.

And Continuing to Ignore Me

Waters’ penultimate argument is the most egregious example of ignoring everything argued in OHJ. He claims there are “glimpses of the historical Jesus” in the book of Hebrews, in particular the fact that he suffered “outside the gate” (Heb. 13:12) and “in the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers” (Heb. 5:7) and “descended from Judah” (Heb. 7:14). Waters did not rebut any of my arguments to the contrary, even though I meticulously addressed every single one of these verses. Simply ignoring what your opponent says, and just repeating the arguments your opponent rebutted, is not just a debate fail, it’s disrespectful.

  1. In the first case, [the author of Hebrews] does not specify whether he means a metaphorical gate (as he goes on to imply all Christians live outside the same gate, meaning in the world of flesh) or the gate of the first heaven (specifically mentioned in the Ascension of Isaiah), or any of the many gates of the actual city of Jerusalem. All we can say is that the latter would make less sense of [the author of Hebrews] argument (OHJ, pp. 544-45). And [the author of Hebrews] never mentions Jerusalem. In fact, he makes no mention of even a city. Other than a metaphorical one: the city of the world Christians no longer belong to, and the city of heaven Christians long to join. Metaphorical cities do not historicity make.
  2. In the second case, [the author of Hebrews] makes no mention of the event of Jesus’s last prayer occurring on earth, and his account matches no existing Gospel (OHJ, pp. 548-49). It is thus again ambiguous as to whether it refers to an earthly event, or preceded Satan’s crucifying of Jesus in the firmament as predicated in the Ascension of Isaiah.
  3. In the third case, once again, the word “descended” is not in the Greek (Waters thus seemed keen to distort the truth by employing the most inaccurate of translations, inaccuracies that just “happened” to support his insistence upon historicity). The passage actually says “the Lord arose from Judah,” which matches being manufactured from the sperm of David. It thus adds nothing to Romans 1:3.

To simply ignore these facts and all else I argued in OHJ when claiming to rebut it, cannot be characterized as debating honestly.

The Argument From That Can’t Be

Finally, Waters tried the lamest Christian apologetic argument of all: if myth A differs from myth B, then myth A cannot be an adaptation of myth B, or have been influenced by it in any way whatever, even when all evidence suggests it was. By this reasoning, West Side Story cannot possibly have anything to do with Shakespeare.

This is just phenomenally stupid. It is an argument that does not deserve even the pretense of respect. Especially given the fact that I explained in detail in OHJ, with citation of scholarship on mythology (pp. 387-42), that all myths (all myths, like all of them, ever, in the entire history of humanity) that are inspired by or adaptations of prior myths, differ considerably from them. To which Waters responded not at all.

Waters likewise tried to pretend all the parallels I documented are coincidences. Even though such a large collection of such specific coincidences as I documented is extraordinarily improbable (pp. 96-108, 222-34). This is typical Christian apologetics: when the obvious facts are unacceptable, it’s better to claim the least probable hypothesis imaginable must therefore be true. That’s irrational.

Conclusion

Dr. Waters simply didn’t actually respond to the arguments of OHJ. He ignored most of them, misunderstood some of them, and tried to obscure them all with stock Christian apologetics rather than taking the facts and methodology seriously. In all, it was a fairly useless debate. The only reassuring fact was that the audience seemed as bewildered by his line of attack as anyone. This encounter adds yet more evidence in support of the conclusion that we need to stop taking Christian fundamentalists seriously. They are ideologues, not objective professionals, when anything that challenges their beliefs is encountered. We need secular scholars to debate this theory. Christian believers who cannot abide even the thought of the thesis should just admit they cannot have anything honest or well-considered to say about it.

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