Is Biblical Scholarship Crawling with "Unscientific" Piety?

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Your reaction is irrational. The video I posted above is the one first posted by you, presumably because you approved of the contents of it. Now what is the content of that video? Richard Miller relating his experience of SBL people and of Biblical scholars generally. Yet you didn’t say he was “self-aggrandizing” for doing that. Yet when I do exactly the same thing, i.e., relate my experience of SBL people and other Biblical scholars, I’m “self-aggrandizing”. It’s clear that you are determined to react negatively to anything I post, even if that means employing a double standard.

I did not post this in order to butt heads with you. I related my experience for the benefit of others here, most of whom have no experience of the academic study of religion. I wanted to make sure they knew that Richard Miller was giving a very one-sided story. I do not have to ask your permission to state what I know from personal experience. Nor do I owe you an apology if what I know from personal experience does not match your negative stereotype of Biblical scholars.

Now we’re getting to the bottom of things. Based on this, the ultimate source of your rage against me (and against some others here) is that we had the temerity to say that we were not persuaded by your interpretation of some Biblical texts. And for that, we warrant ongoing violent denunciation?

Based on the way you react to disagreement with your ideas, I do not think you could ever have been a successful Biblical scholar. Scholars have to be thick-skinned; they have to learn to take criticism; they have to learn to take the rejection of their conclusions by a significant number of their peers; they have to learn to grant points to their opponents and meet in the middle on some questions. If one isn’t strong enough to take criticism, if one’s instinct is to lash out at one’s critics, one is not suited to the life of scholarship.

If anyone else here wants me to further explicate the processes and politics of the world of Biblical scholarship, I’d be glad to answer any questions. Otherwise, I’ll just refer everyone to Allen Wittmer’s judicious remarks here, and leave things at that.

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I don’t believe that’s what happened. It isn’t that we never heard of you. (And of course you’re famous; say hi to Natasha for me.) It’s that what you say is bizarre, and your arguments don’t support your claims. Whether you know Greek is quite beside the point.

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Okay here’s a good argument for the fact that Jesus never existed: Philo Judaeus was born in 20 B.C.E. and died 50 C.E. He lived as the greatest Jewish-Hellenistic philosopher and historian of the time and lived in the area of Jerusalem during the alleged life of Jesus. He wrote detailed accounts of the events that occurred in the surrounding area. Yet not once, in all of his volumes of writings, do we read a single account of a Jesus “the Christ” Nor do we find any mention of Jesus in Seneca’s (4? B.C.E. - 65 C.E.) writings, nor from the historian Pliny the Elder (23? - 79 C.E.). If, indeed, such a well known Jesus existed, as the gospels allege, don’t you think it’s reasonable that, at the very least, the fame of Jesus would not have reached the ears of ONE of these men? Amazingly, we have not one Jewish, Greek, or Roman writer mentioning ANYTHING found in the New Testament.

We also have writings from Petronius (c. 27 - 66), Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella (4 - c.70) who also never mentioned anything in the New Testament. Not one scholar or historian who was alive when Jesus supposedly lived ever mentioned anything in the New Testament. So now tell me why what I say about Jesus being a fictional character is bizarre. Name it and claim it™.

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When I first started posting my ideas on the Internet, I was greeted with a lot of negative comments from fake Bible scholars and even from my fellow infidels. I’m used to criticism. That has all changed. Almost all my comments now draw thumbs up, likes and positive reinforcement. The fact that Jesus never existed has become mainstream. It’s very pleasing to me to see this reflected in the mainstream media. There are some great articles on my Facebook page from the Washington Post “Did the Historical Jesus Really Exist? The evidence just doesn’t add up. There are clearly good reasons to doubt Jesus’ historical existence.” And from “HuffPost, Jesus Never Existed, After All - In an earlier post, I argued that the historicity of Jesus was doubtful. Some religion scholars questioned one of my sources. Now, recent scholarship comes as close as possible to settling the issue.” Even Ehrman, who has made a fortune making up stuff about Jesus has admitted Jesus mythicism is spreading like wildfire among the general public

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Philosopher, yes; historian, no. He wrote very few historical works, as far as we know, and none of them are considered “great”.

“in the area of Jerusalem” is vague, but even allowing a very liberal usage here, to mean anywhere in Palestine, then no. Philo lived his life in Alexandria, in Egypt. It is said that he visited Jerusalem once on a pilgrimage. It is not known whether he was ever in Palestine at any other time, but there is no reason to think he spent much time there.

“Amazingly, we have not one Jewish, Greek, or Roman writer mentioning ANYTHING found in the New Testament.”

Yes, we do; Josephus, a major Jewish historian writing in Greek, mentions Jesus and some other New Testament people, as well as Pharisees and Sadducees. And not to know this is not to know very basic information about the Jewish background to the New Testament.

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The entires in Josephus that mention Jesus were proved to be Christian forgeries a long time ago. Same with Tacitus. Here’s the proof. “In the edition of Origen published by the Benedictines it is said that there was no mention of Jesus at all in Josephus before the time of Eusebius [c. 300 ce]. Moreover, in the sixteenth century Vossius had a manuscript of the text of Josephus in which there was not a word about Jesus. It seems, therefore, that the passage must have been an interpolation, whether it was subsequently modified or not.” (Drews, 9)

Following is a list of important Christian authorities who studied and/or mentioned Josephus but not the Jesus passage:
Justin Martyr (c. 100-c. 165), who obviously pored over Josephus’s works, makes no mention of the TF.
Theophilus (d. 180), Bishop of Antioch–no mention of the TF.
Irenaeus (c. 120/140-c. 200/203), saint and compiler of the New Testament, has not a word about the TF.
Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-211/215), influential Greek theologian and prolific Christian writer, head of the Alexandrian school, says nothing about the TF.
Origen (c. 185-c. 254), no mention of the TF and specifically states that Josephus did not believe Jesus was “the Christ.”
Hippolytus (c. 170-c. 235), saint and martyr, nothing about the TF.
The author of the ancient Syriac text, “History of Armenia,” refers to Josephus but not the TF.
Minucius Felix (d. c. 250), lawyer and Christian convert–no mention of the TF.
Anatolius (230-c. 270/280)–no mention of TF.
Chrysostom (c. 347-407), saint and Syrian prelate, not a word about the TF.
Methodius, saint of the 9th century–even at this late date there were apparently copies of Josephus without the TF, as Methodius makes no mention of it.
Photius (c. 820-891), Patriarch of Constantinople, not a word about the TF, again indicating copies of Josephus devoid of the passage, or, perhaps, a rejection of it because it was understood to be fraudulent.

“Its brevity disproves its authenticity. Josephus’ work is voluminous and exhaustive. It comprises 20 books. Whole pages are devoted to petty robbers and obscure seditious leaders. Nearly forty chapters are devoted to the life of a single king. Yet this remarkable being, the greatest product of his race, a being of whom the prophets foretold ten thousand wonderful things, a being greater than any earthly king, is dismissed in a dozen lines.”

No Christian apologist or historian mentioned Tacitus until it had appeared almost word-for-word in the writings of Sulpicius Severus, in the early Fifth Century, where it is mixed in with other myths. Sulpicius’s contemporaries noted his skill in the ‘antique’ hand. Fantasy was his forte. He wrote about the life of St. Martin which mentioned a bunch of miracles including dead people being raised and several personal appearances by Jesus and Satan.

An ultraviolet photo of a critical word “Christians” from the earliest known manuscript of Tacitus revealed that the word reportedly used by Tacitus in Annals 15.44, “chrestianos” (“the good”), was overwritten as “christianos” (“the Christians”) by a forger. This explains the space between the letters and the exaggerated “dot” above the new “i”. The entire passage of Tacitus is not only fake, was repeatedly worked on by forgers to improve its value as evidence for the existence of Jesus.

And I shouldn’t have to point out that Josephus was not alive when Jesus supposedly lived. To bring him up only proves the sheer desperation iof your position.

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Stop you right there. The gospels do not seem to allege that Jesus was all that well known. He preached for a while, went to Jerusalem and was met by a bit of a crowd, had a public execution, and then some of his followers founded a Jewish sect. Still, that’s the best you’ve had so far. Do any of these sources mention the Essenes? That might be a check.

Anyway, the non-existence of Jesus wasn’t the bizarre part. That was your claim that the bible was plagiarized from Homer and some kind of astrological allegory.

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I’ve tried to make this very clear. What I say about the Bible is not something I came up with after drinking all night. When I was younger, I was influenced by these books in particular: Oedipus Judaicus by Sir William Drummond; The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazier; Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey; The Devil’s Pulpit by Robert Taylor. Euripdes The Baccchae And Other Plays - Translated by Phillip Vellicot; There are others.

Since then: The Messiah Myth - The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David by Thomas Thompson; Mythic Past Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel by Thomas Thompson; The Pagan Christ - Is Blind Faith Killing Christianity by Tom Harpur; Suns of God- Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled by D.M Murdock; 101 Myths of the Bible - How Ancient Scribes Invented Biblical History by Gary Greenberg; The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark by Dennis R MacDonald; Moses the Matador Allegorical, Astronomy & Astrology in the Book of Exodus by Bill Darlison; The Gospel and the Zodiac by Bill Darlison. There are others. These are all very well researched and documented, much more so than anything coming from the so-called Christian scholarship which just repeats the same old worn out ridiculous dogma over and over again.

I have yet to meet anyone claiming to be a Bible scholar who has read any of these books or even heard of them for that matter. Yet these same people will simply hand wave all of them away claiming, “All of that is nonsense which has been soundly refuted! Harumph!” Well, it hasn’t been and it never will be. It’s a great example of religious intolerance and fear of different ideas.

Parallels Between the Telemachia and Mark’s Feast.
Odyssey 3 — Mark 6:34-44
Odyssey: The first feast.
Mark: The first feast.
Odyssey: Telemachus and Athena sailed and disembarked.
Mark: Jesus and his disciples sailed and disembarked.
Odyssey: They found a great crowd on the shore - 4500 men
Mark: They found a great crowd on the shore - 5000 men
Odyssey: Everyone sat down in companies, nine groups of 500 each
Mark: Everyone sat down in drinking groups and garden beds by 100s and 50s
Odyssey: Peisistratus ordered his guests to sit
Mark: Jesus had ordered the people to sit
Odyssey: Nestor sacrificed and others prayed
Mark: Jesus offered thanks to God
Odyssey: They took meat and divided the food
Mark: Jesus took the loaves and fish and divided them
Odyssey: Everyone ate was filled
Mark: Everyone ate was filled

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We are expected to believe that Jesus was entirely ignored by all secular writers at the time that he supposedly lived even though:

Special star appears to signal his birth (Matt 2:2).
Massacre of infants in attempt to kill him (Matt 2:16).
Goes about ‘healing every disease and every infirmity’ (Matt 4:23).
Fame spreads throughout all Syria so ‘all the sick’ are brought to him - who are then healed by him (Matt 4:24).
Followed by ‘crowds’ (Matt 5:1).
‘Great crowds’ follow him (Matt 8:1).
Heals leper (Matt 8:3).
Heals paralysed servant (Matt 8:13).
Heals Peter’s mother-in-law (Matt 8:15).
‘Many’ afflicted brought to him: he heals ‘all who were sick’ (Matt 8:16).
Great crowds follow him (Matt 8;18).
Heals demoniacs and kills some pigs (Matt 8:32).
Heals paralytic (Matt 9:7).
Crowds witness healing (Matt 9:8).
A ruler comes to him for help with daughter (Matt 9:18).
Heals woman with hemorrhage (Matt 9:22).
Heals ruler’s daughter (Matt 9:25).
‘Report of this went through all that district’ (Matt 9:26).
Heals two blind men (Matt 9:30).
They ‘spread his fame through all that district’ (Matt 9:31).
Heals dumb demoniac (Matt 9:33).
Crowds marvel (Matt 9:33).
Heals ‘every disease and every infirmity’ as he travels about cities and villages (Matt 9:35).
Followed by crowds (Matt 9:36).
Preaches in cities (Matt 11:1).
Speaks to crowds (Matt 11:7).
Heals man with withered hand (Matt 12:13).
Many follow him and ‘he heals them all’ (Matt 12:15).
Heals blind and dumb demoniac (Matt 12:22).
‘Great crowds gather’ around him (Matt 13:2).
Speaks to the crowds (Matt 13:34).
Herod hears about Jesus’ fame (Matt 14:1).
Crowds follow him, he heals the sick, and feeds 5000+ (Matt 14:13).
On entering Gennesaret, he is recognized and all the sick are brought to him and all those who touch him are healed (Matt 14:36).
Great crowds come to him with the sick and they are healed (Matt 15:30).
‘The thong’ see ‘the dumb speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking and the blind seeing’ (Matt 15:31). Feeds 4000+. Crowds are sent away (Matt 15:38).
Meets crowd and heals epileptic (Matt 17:14,18).
Large crowds follow him in Judea and he heals them (Matt 19:2).
Great crowd follows him on leaving Jericho (Matt 20:29).
Heals two blind men (Matt 20:34).
Ejects Temple traders (Matt 21:12).
Heals blind and lame (Matt 21:14).
People call for his execution (Matt 27:23).
All the people admit responsibility (Matt 27:25).
Darkness ‘over all the land’ (Matt 27:45).
Temple curtain torn and earthquake (Matt 27:51).
Saints came out of their tombs and appear in Jerusalem (Matt 27:52-53).
Resurrected from dead (Matt 28:1ff).

It is of course too absurd for words for any rational person to suggest that anyone who was involved in all of this (and the above is only from Matthew - John has further miracles), and in just three years (John) or one year (Synoptics), could go unnoticed by all the secular writers of the time, and indeed anyone capable of writing. – Notes to Christian battling atheists.

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Well, I hope all those books present much better evidence than you have managed here. The manufacture of rough and commonplace correspondences between two selected incidents in two long works is not very convincing. There were two meals, before which there was a prayer, some people ate and then were full??

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How many samples do you want? A dozen? Fifty?
Odyssey 9.101-565 — Mark 5:1-20
The Cyclops and the Demoniac
Odyssey: Odysseus and his crew, in a convoy, arrived at the land of the Cyclops.
Mark: Jesus and his disciples with other boats arrived at the land of the Gerasenes.
Odyssey: On the mountains innumerable goats grazed.
Mark: On the mountains about two-thousand swine grazed.
Odyssey: Odysseus and crew disembarked.
Mark: Jesus and his disciples disembarked.
Odyssey: They encountered a savage, lawless giant who lived in a cave.
Mark: They encountered a savage, lawless demoniac who lived among the caves.
Odyssey: He asked if Odysseus came to harm him.
Mark: He asked Jesus not to torment him.
Odyssey: The giant asked Odysseus his name.
Mark: Jesus asked the demoniac his name.
Odyssey: Odysseus answered, “Nobody.”
Mark: The demoniac answered, “Legion.”
Odyssey: Odysseus subdued the giant with violence and trickery [Circe had turned Odysseus’s soldiers into swine.]
Mark: Jesus subdued the demons with divine power and sent them into the swine and then into the sea.
Odyssey: The shepherd called out to his neighbors.
Mark: The swineherds called on their neighbors.
Odyssey: The Cyclops came to the site asking about Polyphemus’s sheep and goats.
Mark: The Gerasenes came to the site to find out about their swine.
Odyssey: Polyphemus usually was depicted nude.
Mark: The demoniac, once naked, is now clothed.
Odyssey: Odysseus and crew reembarked.
Mark: Jesus and his disciples reembarked.
Odyssey: Odysseus told the giant to proclaim that he had blinded him.
Mark: Jesus told the healed demoniac to proclaim that he had healed him.
Odyssey: The giant asked Odysseus, who was now aboard the ship, to come back.
Mark: The demoniac asked Jesus, now aboard ship, if he could be with him.
Odyssey: Odysseus refused the request.
Mark: Jesus refused the request.
Odyssey: Odysseus and crew sailed away.
Mark: Jesus and disciples sailed away.

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No, quantity doesn’t add up to quality. No matter how high you pile it, there’s not going to be a pony.

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The barn door was opened a long time ago and the horses are already gone. Right from the start where the Bible should say, “Once upon a time…” we see this transvaluation in the biblical texts. There are two distinct creation accounts. Genesis begins with the Egyptian creation story but then the narrative switches to the Babylonian creation text known as Enuma Elish. This account is what happens after Marduk had killed Tiamat and formed everything on the earth and sky using her severed parts.

The story of Adam and Eve was taken from the Egyptian creation story of Geb and Nut. They disobeyed the creator deity and Nut was punished with difficulties with childbirth. Nut was made from Geb’s body. One of their sons killed his brother. The patterns between the Egyptian stories and Genesis are many and obvious. The forbidden fruit motif comes from the Sumerian myths about Paradise. The story about the loss of immortality comes from the Mesopotamian myth of Adapa.

Other Old Testament literary patterns are themselves based on Greek ones. The Isaac story is an example of, mimesis, ζηλος (rivalry) and trans-valuation. It’s a parody on Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigenia. Yahweh is shown as being superior and merciful compared the goddess Artemis and Abraham superior to Agamemnon because Isaac survives and Iphigenia does not (except in a later retelling). This art of emulation or aemulatio meant “to speak better” or using today’s vernacular " to build back better" the story. Jephthah’s sacrifice of his daughter is also an emulation of the Agamemnon sacrifice which isn’t built back better. One out of two ain’t bad for the Hebrew God.

At this point I’ll ask you where you think the biblical writers got their stories? Do you believe they are actual history as the fundamentalist Christians do? Did the writers get the stories from God through divine inspiration? Did they just make 'em up out of whole cloth - like the Catholic Church did with the Fraud of Turin? Because we can be sure the biblical authors knew nothing of the recent past let alone the distant past. The truth is you and the biblical literalists have no idea where the biblical narratives came from. So, magic happened! And somehow the biblical authors got some kind of magic glasses that not only allowed them to see into the past, back to the beginning of time and also the ability to see into the future. I’m pretty sure this is what the two seminarians on this site believe as well as what much of not most of Christian “academia” believes. Is this where you’ve thrown in your lot?

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Even if we regard this as true, it was academically improper of you not to mention their existence. You should have put in some qualifying statement such as, “If we discount the account of Jesus in Josephus as a later Christian interpolation, we have not one…”

Further, while the majority of scholars today appear to believe that the Jesus passage in Josephus was an interpolation, there is not so strong an agreement that the John the Baptist and James passages are interpolations, and many scholars have argued that these passages were in fact in Josephus’s original work, even if in slightly different form than the present one. And of course Josephus explains the difference between the Pharisees and the Saducees, a difference mentioned in the Gospels. So your claim that we have no ancient writer who mentions ANYTHING in the Gospels is incorrect.

This is irrelevant. Josephus was writing not that long after the death of Jesus, when many people who knew Jesus (whether as friend or foe) were still living, and his work covers the period during which Jesus was alive. He certainly had ample written and oral sources at hand to discuss that period.

I note that you slide over your errors about Philo without acknowledging them. An honest scholar would acknowledge error.

From whom? From recognized Biblical scholars, or random internet commenters?

Ah, yes, the Washington Post and the Huffington Post – those two great sources of reliable Biblical scholarship. (Facepalm.)

Did Ehrman endorse the view of “the general public” as correct? Sources, please.

Tom Harpur? Oh, Lord. If the other sources given in this paragraph match the academic “rigor” of Harpur, we can pretty well discount them all.

That there are elements in the Gospel narratives that have parallels in other ancient literature, including ancient mythical literature, no one denies. But to move from those parallels to “there was never any person named Jesus” is to leap far beyond what the parallels can prove.

The vast majority of trained Biblical scholars–including Jewish scholars, agnostic scholars, and atheist scholars, which blows away your limitation of the claim to “Christian scholarship” – still affirm that Jesus was a real historical person. How closely the historical Jesus matches up with the Jesus of the Gospels is an ongoing subject of debate, but the existence of Jesus is rarely doubted in mainstream scholarship. You’re misleading the readers here if you claim or suggest otherwise.

Considering that, according to the best dating we have, the Hebrew text of the Isaac story long predates any version we have of the Agamemnon story, it’s chronologically impossible that the former could be a parody of the latter.

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No, in Mark he lived among the tombs. So much for your purported ability to read Greek.

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I remember that. Part of your case was that none of the disciples names’ were Jewish. A case that evaporated rapidly upon learning that not only were there many previous Jewish notables named ‘Simon’, but that it was probably the most common male name in Roman-occupied Judea.

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Maybe you should listen more and bluster less.

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I agree that some of the spectacular miracles recorded in the Gospels would have been noticed by some non-Jewish writers – Greek- and Latin-speaking writers living in the area. But the absence of mention of such things in Greek and Roman writers does not prove that no person such as Jesus ever existed. At most, it would prove that some of the spectacular miracles associated with Jesus did not happen, which is quite a different thing. So what are you trying to prove – that many of the miraculous events recorded in the Gospels never happened, or that there was never any such person as Jesus?

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I’m talking about events. Jesus of Nazareth a town not mentioned in the Old Testament that did not exist in the First Century. The non-existent census. Cana, where’s that? Herod’s slaughter of the innocents which is an obvious parallel of the Pharoah and Moses story. The zombie invasion at the end of Matthew.

In other words, hearsay and not even first or second-hand hearsay. 60 years after the supposed death of Jesus. God comes to earth, takes human form and sixty years later an historian finally gets around to mentioning it. I have read through Josephus and I’m sure you have not. Jospehus claimed Hercules was a real person. He claimed to have seen a ten-foot tall giant casting out demons. Now while you and the rest of the Christian academic community may believe in demons that is enough for normal people to take Jospehus with a grain of salt. “Yosef ben Matityahu, Josephus was born in Jerusalem four years after the reported death of the biblical Jesus. He fought the Romans like many of his Hebrew bretheren, and gained notoriety when he betrayed his own command at Jotapata to save his own life. During captivity, he sucked up to the Emperor Vespasian, took the name Titus Flavius Josephus and became a royal historian. Always eager to please his new masters, Josephus Flavius wrote and translated a couple works on Jewish history and their wars. At age 60 he mentions the ‘wise teacher’ Jesus twice in his Antiquities of the Jews on hearsay. The general consensus among bible scholars is that his brief mention of Jesus is not accurate, but, reflective of the times. Today, Christian “scholars” use the musings of a doddering, cowardly old suck-up as the basis for their ‘evidence’ of a historical Jesus.”

I posted that to show that the fact that Jesus never existed is now a mainstream idea. It is the general public that supports religion and its churches, apologists and preachers, not the so-called Christian academic community. Jesus has joined the pantheon of mythical deities where this figure always belonged. People are running from Christianity and its churches like, as Trump would say, the world has never seen before. Turn out the lights, the party’s over - to quote another American philosopher.

No Ehrman’s argument for the historical Jesus is as goofy as it gets. “I wrote a book about what Jesus said. So, he must have existed!” Ehrman wrote a book about what the New Testament writers said Jesus said. That is a huge difference and if Ehrman doesn’t realize that he’s completely delusional.

That is not true. On the basis of Berossos and Manetho, we know that the Hebrew Pentateuch was composed in its entirety about 273-272 BCE by Jewish scholars at Alexandria along with the Septuagint. No one ever mentioned it before then. Also no one ever mentioned any of the New Testament until the second half of the Second Century.

I think a lot of their bluster is what we should call Western Superiority Complex: “We know all religions are mythical but at least our religion is based on real people and events!” No, Christianity is not based on any real people or events.

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μνημασιν which were in caves at that time. I’ll show my cards:

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Let;s see yours.