Okay. If you don’t mind me asking, what would change for you if you became convinced there was a historical Jesus behind the mythical Jesus portrayed in the gospels?
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You’re confusing “conclusions regarding the existence of Jesus” with “conclusions regarding the scholarly consensus about the existence of Jesus”. I’ve thus far stated no conclusion about the existence of Jesus. What I’m certain about is the scholarly consensus on the existence of Jesus. Boris Badenoff has tried to suggest that there is significant dispute over that in the scholarly literature. There isn’t.
Could the scholars all be wrong, and could Jesus be a fiction who never existed? That’s always a possibility. A very unlikely one, but a possibility. I have not dogmatized about it. What I’m sure about is what the scholars say, and what they say is very different from what Boris Badenoff says.
And it’s not just about the historical Jesus any longer. Boris Badenoff has increased his claims, saying the Old Testament was written in Greek, and saying all kinds of things about the Gospels, where they were written, that their authors knew nothing at all about Palestinian Judaism, etc. Once again I’m quite sure that the overwhelming majority of Biblical scholars – including the overwhelming majority of those Biblical scholars who are secular Jews like Boris Badenoff (I had such Biblical scholars as teachers, by the way) – would say that Boris Badenoff is badly misinformed about history, philology, literary method, etc. The reason I’m confident is that I spent years of study in one of the several world-class religion departments where research in Judaism and Early Christianity was being done, and have been reading in the field ever since. Boris’s connection with academic Biblical studies is – well, he has told us what that connection is: a smattering of undergraduate courses (he doesn’t claim even to have a B.A. in religious or Biblical studies), self-publishing some undergrad essays he wrote on Facebook, and appearing on a few Christian radio talk shows.
It’s no accident that the others here with doctorates in Biblical studies (Allen Wittmer Miller and deuteroKJ) agree with me and disagree with Boris Badenoff. People who know a field well tend to be able to spot dilettantes rather quickly.
Regarding the specific evidence for the existence of a man named Jesus (separate from the question of his divinity and miracles), if you are really interested in that subject, there are plenty of books written by trained historians you can read, books which will give you more accurate information than Boris Badenoff. Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels by Michael Grant is one such book, and The Historical Figure of Jesus by Ed Sanders is another. Both of these writers write from a secular rather than a pious viewpoint. Then there is Jesus in His Jewish Context by the Jewish scholar Geza Vermes. Such scholars have philological, historical and literary knowledge that dwarfs that of Boris Badenoff (which is why they were hired by major universities to teach such subjects and Badenoff wasn’t), and they present evidence for supposing that Jesus actually existed.
You may or may not be aware that for a while there was a view floating around that Socrates never existed, but was a fiction invented by Plato for pedagogical or other purposes. This view never gained any traction among scholars, for a variety of reasons, among which is that if it were true, then not only Plato, but Aristophanes, Xenophon and Aristotle all must have been “in” on the imposture, and all subsequent Greek writers, some of whom would have known about the imposture, would similarly have had to keep silent. Why such a conspiracy to fool all subsequent generations of humanity should exist, and how such a conspiracy could have been maintained (when surely there would have been at least one bold individual who lived at the supposed time of Socrates who would have blown the whistle), are questions that the “Socrates never really existed” crowd could never answer, and explains why nobody took their position seriously.
Using similar reasoning, we can conclude that the probability that Jesus never existed – entailing the claim that both his friends and his Jewish enemies (and a number of neutral Classical authors who mention his existence) conspired to make both contemporaries and future generation believe that a fictional person had actually existed – is vanishingly low. The most plausible explanation for the widespread belief that such a person as Jesus actually existed is that he did actually exist – though of course whether he was the Messiah or God or rose from the dead or performed miracles is a completely separate question. But don’t take my word for it. Read world-class scholars such as the ones I have named.
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Probably nothing. Convince me and we’ll find out.
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You dishonestly pulled the first sentence out of context. If you read the whole paragraph it’s very clear what I did. I think you’re jealous. How many times have you been on the radio for an hour? Who wants to listen to someone who claims to be a Bible scholar drone on for an hour? I think I made the otherwise boring shows interesting. Michael Brown talked about the show the next day and commented on his blog about it. I was driving one day and I unexpectedly heard Gary DeMar on the radio talk about me and our conversations for two hours and I wasn’t even on his show. Then a week or two later Gary and Richard Land had a nice long chat about me. I wasn’t even there to defend my views and I still won that debate.
I don’t have my original papers anymore. One of my daughters might still have them. I’ll see. I remember one professor commented “You’re such a card.” Same thing my mother used to say.
I haven’t looked for one. I don’t care about that audience and don’t have the credentials to be taken seriously by them anyway. I’m only interested in writing for public consumption, you know people who think for themselves.
This was a comment one of the publishers made. I care about the Bible.
I made a point in my introduction that the Bible is most purchased least read book in the world. I also pointed out that it is the most shoplifted book there is. That tells us something although I’m not sure exactly what.
At least my planet is a sphere. The one the Bible describes is not.
Again, the biblical authors were aware of the audience’s critical sensibilities. These ages are clear signal the stories are not meant to be taken literally. In the closing of one of the stories about how the Israelites came to occupy Jerusalem Yahweh throws (hail) stones at the enemy. There’s a memorial set up at a cave with five large stones commemorating the victory “which remain there to this day.” This is a very common motif in folklore. Remember in the Princess and the Pea the pea is still in the museum “that is, if someone hasn’t stolen it.” The ancients recognized the mythological nature of the story but there are people in so-called academia that just can’t take a hint.
My findings are not conclusions that are set in stone. I’m more than willing to change my mind if given reason to do so. I gave you a chance to give me these refutations you talked about and evidence for an historical Jesus. You ignored that as I suspected you would.
As I have said before when it comes to religion public opinion is all that matters. My essays are funny which is why my friends thought I should get them published. They mock any kind of literal interpretation of the biblical texts. Humor can be a devastating weapon especially against something that is downright silly anyway. Church membership isn’t shrinking, people aren’t rejecting their faith because Bible scholars aren’t doing their job, whatever that is. Rather Christianity is being laughed off the planet and there’s not a thing so-called Bible scholars can do about because they’re being laughed at as well.
I don’t care what scholars think. They have consistently had to change their claims and positions because of what scientists and the general public think. If one wants to change the way scholars think all you have to do is change the way the public thinks. So-called scholars will follow along begrudgingly as they always have before. It’s called survival and the days of this kind of “scholarship” are rapidly coming to a close. Thank God.
If you’ve studied the OT then you must know that the authors of the New Testament used images of the Jewish Messiah they found in the OT Scriptures to pound their mythical pagan solar deity into the role of a coming messiah.
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So did a real Jesus live? Was that living Jesus a template for the Biblical character?
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Yes, that’s a useful comparison. How accurate is Plato’s portrayal and to what extent does Plato adapt Socrates to become a vehicle for his own views.
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Wow. Projection personified.
Yes, an hour on talk radio is the pinnacle of achievement to which we all can aspire. That’s why radio appearances prominently appear on the C.V. immediately below one’s academic degrees.
And if George Noory gives you your own segment on Coast to Coast AM, you have officially made it.
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Most scholars think so.
Most scholars think so, though the more traditional Christians among them would not speak of Jesus as a “character”, since it suggests something fictional.
If you want to know the reasons why most scholars think that Jesus was a real person, you can read any of the three authors I already mentioned, or any of thousands of others. You wouldn’t hesitate to read an astrophysics textbook to find out why astrophysicists think that dark matter exists, and you should take the same approach with the historical Jesus. Read! Study! And form your opinion after the reading and studying, not before.
Thank you; I’m glad you found it so.
The moment you ask that question, you implicitly acknowledge that Socrates was a real person, against whose life the portrayal of Plato can be assessed. Similarly, the moment someone asks how accurate the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels is, that person is implicitly acknowledging that Jesus was a real person, against whose life the portrayal of the Gospels can be assessed.
A person who was sure that Jesus was intended as a fictional character would never ask how accurate the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels is. That would be like asking how accurate the portrayal of Voldemort in the Harry Potter novels is.
Similarly, the question “to what extent does Plato adapt Socrates to become a vehicle for his own views” implies that there was an actual Socrates, whose behavior and sayings Plato could “adapt”. If there never was any Socrates, talk of “adapting” his life or character would make no sense.
It’s of course possible to argue that Jesus is a completely fictional character, but if one believes that, one is obligated to do one or both of the following things: (1) Show from the Gospel accounts (and other literary accounts of Jesus) that Jesus was meant to be understood as a fictional character; (2) Explain how a fictional character, so soon after his “death”, became regarded by the world as a real person, even by those (such as the Jews) who, had he not been a real person, had the strongest of religious and political motivations to deny he ever existed (and a million living Jewish “eyewitnesses” to testify that he didn’t). The first task requires great expertise in literary theory, ancient literature, and ancient languages; the second requires great expertise in ancient history specifically and historical reasoning more generally. You’ll find one or both of these qualifications in the authors I cited, and in many others who have written about the historicity of Jesus.
Then stop making claims which can only be evaluated by scholarship. Make claims about which rock band is the best, or which pizzeria in your town serves the best pizza.
Actually, it’s the churches where the leadership (lay and clerical) hold views about the Bible resembling your own that are shrinking the fastest! It’s not at all surprising hearing views like yours from the leaders of the United Church of Christ, the Methodists, the Episcopalians, etc. Tom Harpur, whom you cited, was an Anglican (as they say in his native Canada, though Americans would call him an Episcopalian). In those churches where such liberal views of Jesus, Scripture, etc. are held, membership numbers are in free fall, and those churches will not exist by 2100. The only churches that will still be around by then will be the Roman Catholic, some of the Orthodox churches, and the various ultra-conservative Protestant churches, some fundamentalist, some Pentecostal, some evangelical. The path you recommend that the churches should take, the liberal mainstream churches already embarked on, several decades ago, and it leads to the self-destruction of Christianity.
Thank whom?
When was the last time you heard an atheist on Christian radio or saw one on Christian television? Besides myself I’ve heard one and atheism was not the topic of discussion. It’s no secret that most Christians are terrified of atheists and atheism. If Christianity didn’t somewhat mitigate the terror of death it would not exist and there would be no Christians. We atheists pose a real threat to the belief systems that exist solely for this function. As soon as the hosts realized the threat I posed they kept interrupting me, cutting me off and changing the subject. So my presence on these shows is quite an
anomaly indeed.
This is how cranks operate you know? When they fail to defend their ideas before the experts, they slither into the public domain where many people certainly don’t have the means to “think for themselves” and publish a lot of junk. You are using a longtime strategy of antivaxxers and AIDS deniers.
Choking hard on my Bold drink
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Hmm. Don’t agree. It’s not binary, rather it’s undecidable. We can propose competing hypotheses but the evidence for any hypothesis is lacking.
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I’m not. I find most of the arguments of atheists stale, repetitive, and boring, not threatening at all.
Conversely, it’s no secret that a good number of atheists, especially those who most involve themselves in public discussions (e.g., on sites like this) are terrified by Christianity. If they weren’t terrified, if they regarded it as simply a bunch of silly beliefs on the level of belief in horoscopes or palmistry or the Loch Ness Monster, they would simply disregard it.
You don’t see astronomy websites where professors of astronomy and astrophysics constantly attack believers in astrology, but on just about every origins website, you see professors and lab technicians in biology and biochemistry (and sometimes other fields such as psychiatry) attack Christianity and the Bible with great vehemence, as if it is a dangerous threat to their view of the world that must be shouted down or repelled. Why the constant anxiety over Christian claims, if Christianity is so obviously wrong? Why not treat it like beliefs in the Abominable Snowman or in the aliens who supposedly built the Pyramids? Why not smile at it contemptuously, rather than rage against it?
I had a phase in my own life where I raged against Christianity, and my arguments sounded remarkably like those of Dawkins, Russell, etc. In retrospect, I can see that much of my indignation was based on a fear that Christianity might be even partly true, in which case I and my life would need some serious re-evaluation, and such re-evaluation can be a scary thing. Based on my long academic interaction with many Jewish professors and intellectuals (several of them were my undergrad teachers and dissertation supervisors), and on what my Jewish friends have told me, similar defensive reactions against religious tradition can be found among secular Jews. I would guess the same is the case for secular former Muslims and secular former Hindus, though I know far fewer of them, and so have too limited a sample from which to make any generalization.
Yes, some religious people are very afraid of atheism. But many atheists are very afraid of the possibility that God might be real. One of my favorite atheists is the philosopher Thomas Nagel, who admits that he doesn’t want a theistic world view to be true. He is intellectually honest enough to acknowledge that on top of all his arguments for atheism, he has personal motivation for wanting atheism to be true. If only all atheists had that kind of self-critical analytical ability, and could make such admissions, instead of pretending that they are motive-free, “purely objective” thinkers whose views are based entirely on evidence and argument and are not influenced by emotional considerations in any way.
Do they have horns and carry pitchforks? Do you?
Christian Avengers assemble!
Well you have had a chance here to show your brilliance and the “threat” you pose to Christianity, but so far you have barely made a scratch.
Then reread what you wrote, and reflect on it:
In normal English, “How accurate is Plato’s portrayal of Socrates?” means: “How close is Plato’s portrayal of Socrates to what Socrates was really like?” So the very form of the question implies that Socrates existed, and that the only doubt is over whether Plato has correctly conveyed what Socrates was like.
If you wanted to convey the idea that Plato may never have meant Socrates to be understood as a historical person, or that Plato was inventing a character called Socrates for pedagogical purposes, or some other such thing, you would never put your question as, “How accurate is Plato’s portrayal of Socrates?” Not if you wanted to write clearly.
Anyhow, I’ve answered your questions about Jesus. There is plenty of discussion by world-class scholars over what, if anything, can be known about Jesus. The discussions are filled with copious references to contemporary or near-contemporary texts, and offer detailed analysis of the various scholarly positions. You can read these discussions, or not, as you please. All I can do is lead you to water; I can’t make you drink. But I can guarantee you, in advance of your reading, that you will find those discussions vastly more intellectually coherent, and vastly more philologically and historically informed, than what Boris Badenoff has presented here.
That’s how atheists view the arguments of Christian scholars too.
Personally, I find arguments for religion unimpressive. As long as we have no means of telling which or whose God is true or whether it exists, every religious person is simply blowing steam.
Nothing stops atheists from regarding Christian beliefs as silly and talking about it. In addition, it is pretty hard not to talk about Christianity when Christians keep trying to get their religion in the face of atheists. Jesus told you, yes you Eddie, to go spread the Gospel, so how would atheists ignore your belief when you do exactly that to them?
I think someone needs to review why there is a forum on PS.
Because Jesus said you should get it in the face of atheists and agnostics.
Which of the Gods, Amadioha my tribe’s God of thunder, Sango the Yoruba equivalent, Yahweh, Jesus?
This makes no sense considering the vast number of worlds we would need to accommodate all the various forms of theism today.
Atheism is a lack of belief and it is a pretty reasonable position to hold against the bewildering mass of disparate religions and sub-religions.
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Apparently you haven’t heard or seen mine then. Read on if you dare.
Atheists haven’t been terrified of Christianity since Christians stopped arresting, torturing, burning and murdering them for the supposed crime of unbelief. It is only in the last couple of centuries that Christian attitudes have gradually become civilized and humane. That’s because of the rise of humanism, skepticism and atheism. We infidels have given Christianity its modern face and its modern morals. You should be thanking us for that. What atheists fear is the scientific ignorance that Christianity breeds. Atheists fear theocracy. The latest example is the recent decision by a bunch of Christian nationalists on the Supreme Court. Those judges don’t give a rip about the unborn. Like the rest of the Christians they’re afraid American Jesus will punish the nation they live in for making abortions legal and safe. They’re afraid they’ll meet Jesus when they die and he’ll tell them, “I never knew you. You didn’t do enough to save those babies.” They’re just trying to cover their own butts, the only ones they really care about.
We don’t see believers in astrology, alchemy, witchcraft, the Abominable Snowman, Tarot Cards trying to force or sneak their beliefs into public school science classes. These science professors and biologists care about science education. Human progress depends on a scientific, not theological, understanding of life on Earth, and only evolution provides that. That’s why.
That’s just wrong. Most atheists don’t care if there is a God or not. Why should they? There are no verifiable consequences either way.
Yeah, nobody really does. Chris Hitchens pointed out that the Christian heaven is like a celestial North Korea, bowing and scraping to Dear Leader for all eternity. Who wants to be a slave? You people only try to believe because you’re afraid not to. You don’t love your God you fear it, you’re scared enough to spend your life in intellectual servitude to false beliefs just in case it all might be true. You’ve already admitted that anyway when you said, “much of my indignation was based on a fear that Christianity might be even partly true, in which case I and my life would need some serious re-evaluation, and such re-evaluation can be a scary thing.” Christianity only appeals to the base human emotion of cowardice. Fear is not a good reason to believe something. Thanks so much for proving my point. Told ya.
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To avoid misunderstanding, I would like to rewrite this sentence from my immediately preceding post:
as:
I have added words which should prevent any possible misunderstanding. I think that the context of the previous discussion makes such fine-tuning of the sentence unnecessary, but just in case someone here reads my original sentence with mechanical literalness, rather than in context, the added words should take care of that problem.
Which ones don’t you find stale, etc.?
You have that wrong. Nobody is terrified of Christianity. They’re terrified of what Christians (some of them) do and of what the consequences for everyone might be.
No, that isn’t what it’s a threat to.
Because the people who hold those beliefs don’t have much power and don’t elect legislators who pass laws promoting those beliefs, or teach them in schools, and so on.
Please don’t project your idiosyncratic experience onto other people. It’s insulting.
So far you seem to be extrapolating from an example of one, i.e. yourself. Not good practice.
Mind you, Mr. Badenoff isn’t much of a threat to Christianity.
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