Debunking Breitbart´s Jesus

 

Last year, Breitbart News published an incredibly bad article written by a Christian apologist attacking Jesus Mythicism (but really all non-belief in Gospel Jesus). I was too tired to bother "deboonking" it at the time (although I linked to it from a blog post), but here comes my belated comment. 

>>>The Christian season of Lent always triggers the anti-God squad, and 2024 is no different, with limelight-seeking atheists trotting out the tired “Jesus never existed” thesis in preparation for Holy Week.

>>>Writing in Aeon, professional provocateur Gavin Evans leads the band of God-slayers with his February 15 article, entitled “There Was No Jesus,” rehashing old arguments that Jesus was the invention of a group of unscrupulous hucksters who sought to create a religion around a myth of their own creation. 

The position that Jesus was a myth was indeed a popular one among American atheists about 20 years ago, but judging from more recent atheist YouTube content-creators, it´s not any longer. It´s always been a minority position among scholars. The well-known atheist scholar Bart Ehrman is a *critic* of mythicism. 

The most prominent scholarly mythicist, Richard Carrier, does *not* claim that Jesus was "the invention of a group of unscrupulous hucksters who sought to create a religion around a myth of their own creation". The apostles really did believe they had met a heavenly figure named Jesus. Later generations turned him into a historical figure, but even they weren´t necessarily "unscrupulous hucksters" but rather wrote teaching stories (compare the ever-changing myths about pagan gods and heroes). Only at an even later date did Christians start to interpret the Gospel stories as some kind of gospel truth...

Oh, and "God-slayer" sounds like "God-killer", which is an anti-Semitic slur. 

>>>The gist of Evans’ plodding 4,100-word piece is that “a cult leader who drew crowds, inspired devoted followers and was executed on the order of a Roman governor” should have left a deeper trail in contemporary records.

I haven´t read Evans´ plodding 4,100-word piece, but as reported by Breitbart, his argument is correct. Jesus should at the very least have been mentioned *much* more prominently by Josephus. In reality, of course, Josephus doesn´t mention him at all! (But see further below.)

>>>Evans’ screed apes the argument of the likes of Richard Dawkins, who wrote that it is possible “to mount a serious, though not widely supported, historical case that Jesus never lived at all” as well as the musings of Christopher Hitchens, who asserted that Jesus’ existence is “highly questionable.”

Dawkins wasn´t a mythicist, and the quote (from "The God Delusion") is therefore taken out of context. His point is that mythicism, while stronger than many assume, is probably still wrong. I´m not familiar with the Hitchens quote and frankly don´t care. And why is Evans said to "ape" Dawkins? Is the Breitbart author anti-evolution?

>>>Yet as biblical scholar Stephen K Ray pointed out to Breitbart News, the first century did not have the Internet and social media, much less newscasters and chroniclers. Moreover, Jesus was raised in a backwater village and performed his ministry away from the metropolis and as secretly as possible for only three short years.

How did Josephus collect so much information on 1st century Jewish history without the Internet? And Stephen K Ray (whoever he might be) must be a really bad Bible scholar, since the Gospels do *not* depict a secret ministry at all, but a highly public one during which Jesus was followed by huge crowds, hostile Pharisees and even some Roman soldiers. 

The idea that the ministry took three *long* years (as opposed to just one short year) comes from the Gospel of John, in which Jesus cleanses the Temple at Jerusalem *in the beginning of his ministry*, a highly public act which must have gained him attention and notoriety. Exactly the kind of stuff which would have gotten the attention of Josephus´ sources. Something´s wrong when apologists try to falsify *their own holy scripture* to fit the apologetic narrative!

>>>His trial was rushed partly at night to push it through the Jewish Passover, and Jesus was one of thousands executed as a disrespected criminal who would have been buried in a common grave had it not been for one of his secret followers.

What does this even mean? Where does the Bible say that thousands of people were executed during the Jewish Passover?! 

>>>Despite all this, there is more documentary evidence for the existence of Jesus and the historicity of the four Gospels than for any other ancient historical figure. No one in the first centuries ever doubted his existence, much less his ministry.

>>>We “know” Jesus really existed insofar as we can know any historical fact. That is to say, none of us was present on the earth two thousand years ago to empirically verify Jesus’ existence, so we must rely on the historical record.

>>>But the historical record is as conclusive as we could possibly hope for. As Theodore Dalrymple noted in the City Journal, “If I questioned whether George Washington died in 1799, I could spend a lifetime trying to prove it and find myself still, at the end of my efforts, having to make a leap, or perhaps several leaps, of faith in order to believe the rather banal fact that I had set out to prove.”

>>>In other words, what you believe depends on what you are willing to believe.

Well, the last sentence at least is true. The rest is hogwash. Dalrymple isn´t a historian but a notorious provocateur. There are currently 63 volumes of documents by or about George Washington from his (Washington´s) lifetime. No leap of faith required. And no, we don´t have "more documentary evidence" for Jesus than for any other ancient figure. Again: if Jesus did what´s recorded in the Gospel, he should be mentioned as prominently as John the Baptist (or even more so) in Josephus, but he isn´t. But sure, the argument that nobody doubted Jesus´ existence is a legit argument against mythicism.

>>>Plenty of scholars have undertaken to collect all ancient historical references to Jesus, which are surprisingly ample. They include the celebrated Roman historian Tacitus; Suetonius, chief secretary to the emperor Hadrian; Julius Africanus, who quoted the historian Thallus in a discussion of the darkness that followed the crucifixion of Christ; Pliny the Younger, who in his Letters recorded early Christian ritual practices; Lucian of Samosata, who stated that Jesus was crucified for introducing new beliefs.

>>>The Jewish historical record includes the most famous ancient Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, who, in his Antiquities, refers to James, “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ” as well as to Jesus’ death under Pontius Pilate.

This is a joke, right? The author evidently believes in the Testimonium Flavianum (which virtually all scholars today regard as a later forgery). Indeed, scholars now believe that the historical facts found in the Gospel of Luke and Acts are based on Josephus, making at least two of the Gospels (Luke and John) later than his works. Suetonius never mentions Jesus. Nobody takes Julius Africanus (a Christian apologist) seriously. That being said: yes, the fact that some ancient historians mention Jesus and treats him as a real person is a legitimate argument against mythicism.

Now, do Julius Caesar, Socrates or Aristotle. Or George Washington...

>>>The Babylonian Talmud confirms Jesus’ crucifixion on the eve of Passover and the accusations against Christ of practicing sorcery and encouraging Jewish apostasy.

WTF??!! Yeah, the Talmud mentions Jesus *but claim that he lived 100 BC and was executed by the Jews themselves*. This is used by mythicists as evidence that the Jesus mythos was very malleable!

>>>The texts of the New Testament itself, which include historical assertions about Jesus, were written not many years after his death, when many of his contemporaries were still alive. Yet there is no record of any contemporary figure refuting these claims or asserting that Jesus never lived.   

Breitbart News tries to have it both ways. If the ministry of Jesus was almost secret, not many contemporaries would have known about it. But here, all of a sudden, Breitbart accepts the Gospel narrative that the contemporaries must have been legion (and very well-informed, to boot).

>>>The clearest evidence of Jesus’ historical existence is the witness of literally thousands of Christians in the first century AD, including the twelve apostles, who were willing to give their lives as martyrs for Jesus Christ.

Again: where do all these thousands of eye-witnesses to Jesus (presumably in Nero´s Rome 30 years after the crucifixion) come from, all of a sudden? Church tradition doesn´t mention a massive exodus of eye-witnesses from Jerusalem to Rome at any point. Yes, there may have been thousands of martyred Christians during the Neronian persecution, but only a few of them would have been eye-witnesses to Jesus´ ministry. Doesn´t the author understand the difference? 

>>>They could have escaped death by disowning Christ or stepping forward to say that it all had been a hoax. This did not happen. Some people will die for what they believe to be true; no one will die for what they know to be a lie.

And? "Some people will die for what they believe to be true" is correct and applies equally well to all persecuted groups, not just 1st century Christians. "No one will die for what they know to be a lie" is a more interesting proposition. Please apply it to Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet! Exactly...  

>>>Yet, as Stephen Ray observed, there are many today who want to make a name for themselves by spouting off about something they cannot prove and with a hatred for something they intensely want to disprove.

Projection?

Original article here: 

As Easter nears, some atheists insist: "There was no Jesus"