The Argument From Prophecy Works Against Extreme Skepticism

On his podcast last Friday, Greg Koukl spoke to a man who was interacting with somebody with one of the more extreme skeptical views of early Christianity (skeptical of Jesus' existence, skeptical of the existence of the apostles, etc.). The caller wanted to know how to make an appeal to prophecy fulfillment when interacting with that sort of skepticism. The answer depends on certain factors involved, like some of the details of the skepticism in question and which prophecies are in mind. But I want to address some of the general principles involved. Adjustments would have to be made to those principles depending on the details of a particular situation.

Controversies in Jesus studies

https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-Controversies-in-Jesus-studies-John-Dickson-Lydia-McGrew-and-Jonathan-McLatchie

Mythicism and the Public Jesus of History

https://www.equip.org/article/mythicism-and-the-public-jesus-of-history/

Do the Gospels borrow from pagan myths?

"Do the Gospels Borrow from Pagan Myths?" by Timothy Paul Jones.

The historical and human existence of Jesus in Paul’s letters

https://epistleofdude.wordpress.com/2019/03/04/the-historical-and-human-existence-of-jesus-in-pauls-letters/

Judas and Jesus

In my experience, Judas is a neglected evidence for the historical Jesus. He figures in all four Gospels as the betrayer of Jesus. But why would the Gospel writers invent such a character? Or why would primitive Christian tradition invent such a character, whom the Gospel writers then incorporate into their narratives?

Sure, betrayal is a common theme in fiction. A classic example is the consigliere who has the goods on the crime boss, and turns state's evidence.

Even if, for argument's sake, Gospel writers might invent a fall-guy as a plot device, what would motivate them to make the him a member of Christ's inner circle? Wouldn't that invite the suspicion that Judas knew something damaging about Jesus? 

So Judas is the ultimate example of hostile testimony. He's not somebody the Gospel writers have any incentive to fabricate. Not a fictional character. It satisfies the criterion of embarrassment. 

The Testimonium Flavianum

The Testimonium Flavianum is stock item in Christian apologetics. To my knowledge, the general view of scholars is that it's contains some Christian scribal interpolations, but it has an authentic core. The interpolations are distinguishable from the authentic core. As such, this is hostile testimony. A 1C witness to the existence of Jesus by the Jewish historian Josephus. 

If we reconstruct the original, what does it say? Here is John Meier's translation, with a line through the interpolated phrases:

About this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one should call him a man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of people who receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and among many of Greek origin. He was the Messiah. And when Pilate, because of an accusation made by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him previously did not cease to do so. For he appeared to them on the third day, living again, just as the divine prophets had spoken of these and countless other wondrous things about him. And up until this very day the tribe of Christians, named after him, has not died out.

Richard Carrier has attempted to discredit the Testimonium Flavianum as entirely spurious. Here's one assessment:

http://jameshannam.proboards.com/thread/1491/josephus-jesus-again

The atheist bubble

Reasonable Faith

December 26 at 9:28 PM · 

RESPONSE TO COMMENTS ON NYTIMES INTERVIEW

https://www.nytimes.com/…/su…/christmas-christian-craig.html
I am delighted that our all-too-brief interview evoked such a vociferous reaction! I’ll take hostility over apathy any day!

The most striking impression I had of the many criticisms is the ignorance they evince of the whole realm of Christian scholarship, which seems to be invisible to the detractors. They seem to be blissfully unaware that there are thousands and thousands of like-minded philosophers, New Testament scholars, and scientists who share my belief in the tenets of “mere Christianity.” These scholars are active in their professional societies, publish in peer-reviewed journals and with top academic presses, and teach at our universities. Are we to regard such eminent scholars as Alvin Plantinga, George Ellis, and N. T. Wright as idiots or charlatans? Never heard of them? That alone should tell you something.

The fact is that these detractors tend to be living in a world of their own, safely sequestered, not only from Christian scholarship, but from the broad range of scholarship pertinent to the issues discussed. Some of them go so far as to castigate Mr. Kristof for daring to disturb their tranquility by invading their world with his interview. Their intellectual isolation is evident, for example, in (i) their endorsement of Jesus-mythicism, a view which, having been tried and rejected by scholars, went out with the 19th century; (ii) their adherence to scientism, a self-defeating epistemology popular during the first half of the 20th century which is now virtually universally rejected by philosophers; and (iii) their scepticism about the possibility of miracles, despite the almost unanimous recognition by contemporary philosophers that Hume’s argument is a failure.

It’s interesting that many of the detractors are fine with theists’ holding their views by faith. But they become angry when it is suggested that there might actually be evidence in support of Christian theism. Why the anger? Many of them seemed to have overlooked the modesty of my claims. I’ve argued that belief in Christian theism is reasonable. That doesn’t preclude that unbelief is also reasonable. Must we impugn the rationality of those with whom we disagree?

Many of the detractors seem to think that theistic belief is intellectually contemptible. They thereby evince their apparent lack of familiarity with contemporary debates concerning the origin and fine-tuning of the universe, which have served to make theism a viable option even among physicists. Today theism is a respected, if minority, position among professional philosophers. If you’re interested in looking at some of the contemporary developments of arguments for the existence of God, take a look at The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

As for Christian theism, I wonder if the detractors are aware that mythology is no longer regarded as a relevant category for understanding the historical Jesus. During the twentieth century there was among biblical scholars a movement which has been called “the Jewish reclamation of Jesus.” It came to be appreciated that the proper interpretive context for understanding Jesus of Nazareth was not pagan mythology but first century Palestinian Judaism. With respect to Jesus’ virginal conception, in particular, pagan myths of gods’ assuming human form and having sexual intercourse with human females to sire offspring is precisely the opposite of a virginal conception!

How one views the virgin birth story will doubtless be affected by whether one thinks that in Jesus God has chosen to decisively reveal Himself. How we assess his alleged resurrection from the dead will be crucial here. Today the wide majority of historical scholars who have written on the topic affirm that Jesus of Nazareth was executed by Roman crucifixion, that his corpse was interred in a tomb by a Sanhedrist named Joseph of Arimathea, that that tomb was discovered empty by a group of Jesus’ women disciples early Sunday morning following his crucifixion, that various individuals and groups had experiences of seeing Jesus alive after his death, and that the original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead despite having every predisposition to the contrary. Now you may disagree with these facts, but then you need to refute the evidence that convinces the majority of scholars otherwise. These facts seem to make belief in Jesus’ resurrection and in his radical personal claims quite reasonable—unless you’ve got some overriding argument for the impossibility of miracles. Given theism, the burden of proof falls on the sceptic’s shoulders.

So I stand firmly by my claim that belief in Christian theism is a reasonable faith and would invite its detractors to look once again at the evidence in its support.

Is Jesus a copycat?

The "virgin birth" of Perseus

The Egyptian Neith’s literally spontaneous, totally virginal birthing of the God Ra, for example, well known across the Empire at the time the Gospels were written, had already likewise inspired attributing magical insemination by spiritual forces in other virgin goddesses, such as Danaë, inseminated by God’s golden rain, or Olympias, inseminated by God’s celestial bolts, or Nana, inseminated by touching a magical almond. Which adaptations are not meaningfully different from God’s insemination of Mary by a magical fluid called the Holy Spirit. She was “found with child by the Holy Spirit” (ek pneumatos hagiou: Matthew 1:18), as even said by the Lord’s angel to Joseph (in Matthew 1:20), or to Mary (in Luke 1:35): “the Holy Spirit shall come on thee” (epeleusetai epi se) “and the power of the Most High shall cover you” (episkiasei soi) and that’s why “the Holy Thing you give birth to” will be “called the Son of God.” The obsessive removal of any literal implication of sex is the Jewish addition to the adopted mytheme. Yet even that had precedent—in Egypt’s Ra, most clearly, a culture neighboring Judea’s; but even in Olympias, where a bolt of lightning is not in ancient religious conception any meaningfully different from a magical dove flying into Jesus. Either way, it’s just a manifestation of “the power of the Most High” entering in to transform the blessed. And when the one entered is a virgin, and remains so even unto birth (as with Danaë and Nana), the parallel is sufficiently complete.

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13890

But even the absence of sex is attested in pagan mythology. Most famously, in the case of Perseus, a golden shower (drops of gold falling from the ceiling into his mother’s vagina) is far closer to Mary being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit (just as magical a substance, which just as surely went into her womb to impregnate her).

Perseus was most famously conceived by golden rain falling from the ceiling into the womb of the virgin Danaë, who remained a true virgin, never penetrated by any sexual organ anywhere, all the way to the god’s birth. 

Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, understood in antiquity to be a magical substance, the pneuma, that could enter and fill people, and effect changes in the world. What material element the god used to effect the conception could not be a relevant distinction. The conceptions are otherwise effectively identical.

A better example is Alexander the Great, whose “mythical” conception came either by a snake (in presumably sexual fashion) or in the form of lightning from heaven, striking the virgin mother Olympias as she slept before her groom consummated their marriage, a decidedly sexless conception, and one much closer in model to Justin’s idea of Mary being impregnated by “the Spirit and Power of God,” a description assignable to a thunderbolt, since lightning is an ephemeral substance like the pneuma, and a very manifestation of the power of god. But here, though we have sexless conception, Olympias is not a virgin by the time she gives birth. So we only have half the idea in place. Similarly in the myth of Io’s impregnation by a “light touch and breath” from Zeus (Aeschylus, Suppliants 16-18), a sexless conception, though still of a non-virgin (although curiously this is exactly the same way Jesus impregnated the Disciples with the Holy Spirit: John 20:22, 25, 27).

Ra, Hephaestus, and Perseus thus remain the most secure exemplars. And Perseus was the most familiar, which is why Justin names him as his prime example of a widely known virgin birth before Jesus. Apart from the method being golden raindrops rather than an infusion of pneuma, all the elements are identical: the mother conceives sexlessly and is a virgin still when she gives birth to the god.

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11161

So much wrong. Where to begin?

i) Jesus "impregnated" the Disciples with the Holy Spirit? Carrier has a very strange mind.

ii) Carrier admits that Olympias doesn't count since she wasn't a virgin. In addition, wouldn't she be electrocuted rather than impregnated by a thunderbolt?

iii) The dove flew "into" Jesus? Where does Carrier come up with that interpretation? What does it even mean to say the dove flew "into" Jesus? The text never says that. 

iv) The Holy Spirit is "magical fluid?" Carrier has such a peculiar mind.

Evidently, the source of Carrier's bizarre identification is his wooden grasp of figurative speech. Scripture uses a variety of metaphors to describe the Holy Spirit and his activity, viz. wind, breath, fire, bird, oil, pouring, filling, washing, new birth, temple, fruit-bearer. 

v) Apropros (iv), Carrier's biblical illiteracy blinds him to the fact that when Luke says the Spirit will "overshadow" Mary, he's alluding to the Shekinah (e.g. Lk 9:34-36; Exod 40:34-38; Num 9:18; 10:34; Isa 4:5; Deut 33:12 [LXX]). It resembles a incandescent cloud. 

Corn gods

Continuing my analysis of Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus (Sheffield 2014). I'll comment on a section from chap 5,

Incarnate sons (or daughters) of a god who died and then rose from their deaths to become living gods granting salvation to their worshipers were a common and peculiar feature of pagan religion when Christi­anity arose…

i) Heathen deities are typically physical, and frequently humanoid beings to begin with, so they can't become what they already are. Some of them are shapeshifters (e.g. Proteus), but that's changing from one physical form to another. Heathen deities are modeled on the world. Modeled on human society and animals. They personify natural forces and natural cycles. Often they come into being through sexual reproduction. They can be killed. A fundamentally immanental and anthropomorphic view of deity. 

ii) Carrier fails to distinguish between incarnation/resurrection, apotheosis/translation, and descending/reascending from the Netherworld. But those are categorically distinct. 

Is Jesus a mythical hero?

I'm continuing my analysis of Richard Carrier's turgid monograph On the Historicity of Jesus (Sheffield 2014):

The twenty-two features distinctive of this hero-type are:

1. The hero's mother is a virgin. 

2. His father is a king or the heir of a king. 

3. The circumstances of his conception are unusual. 

4. He is reputed to be the son of a god. 

5. An attempt is made to kill him when he is a baby. 

6. To escape which he is spirited away from those trying to kill him. 

7. He is reared in a foreign country by one or more foster parents. 

8. We are told nothing of his childhood. 

9. On reaching manhood he returns to his future kingdom.

10. He is crowned, hailed or becomes king. 

11. He reigns uneventfully (i.e., without wars or national catastrophes). 

12. He prescribes laws. 

13. He then loses favor with the gods or his subjects. 

14. He is driven from the throne or city. 

15. He meets with a mysterious death. 

16. He dies atop a hill or high place.

17. His children, if any, do not succeed him. 

18. His body turns up missing. 

19. Yet he still has one or more holy sepulchers (in fact or fiction). 

20. Before taking a throne or a wife, he battles and defeats a great adversary

(such as a king, giant, dragon or wild beast).

and

21. His parents are related to each other. 

22. He marries a queen or princess related to his predecessor.

1. Qedipus (21) 

2. Moses (20) 

3. Jesus (20) 

4. Theseus (19) 

5. Dionysus (19) 

6. Romulus (18) 

7. Perseus (17) 

8. Hercules (17) 

9. Zeus (15)

10. Bellerophon (14) 

11. Jason (14) 

12. Osiris (14) 1

3. Pelops (13)

14. Asclepius (12) 

15. Joseph [i.e., the son ofJacob] (12)

The hero's journey

Ever since the 19C (James Frazer's The Golden Bough), some atheists have attempted to classify Jesus as a variation on the mythical hero archetype. One methodological problem with that tactic is the sheer variety of classification schemes. There are many different hero mythotype taxonomies, depending on which comparative sources are used, and which features are included or excluded to abstract a lowest common denominator. So the classification scheme is very rubbery. An atheist can mix-and-match to manufacture a designer mythotype that will dovetail with his preconceived agenda. Here's a useful list:

https://faculty.gcsu.edu/custom-website/mary-magoulick/hero_patterns.htm

Various Patterns of Hero Journeys from folklorists who compared hero stories from around the world. Levi-Strauss' is the one I rely on most. Kluckhohn's is the most general and useful of the other type. Campbell's coordinates well with patterns of the ritual process. Most were produced in the mid-20th century from comparisons of many stories 

Claude Lévi-Strauss’s view of the hero (based on comparison of myths from around the world, but especially Native American myths) = Structuralism

• Series of impossible mediations between oppositions which are ordered according to

o     Geography: e.g. east – west

o     Cosmology: e.g. below – above

o     Logic: e.g. integration, resolve distances

o     Sociology: e.g. patrilocal – matrilocal residence

o     Techno-economic schema: e.g. water famine à hunt à success

o     Global integration (of 2 exreme propositions

·       Hero = Mediator between dualities / oppositions

o     Often in TWIN form: Messiah & Trickster

Clyde Kluckhohn's Pattern (based on his study of Spencer’s analysis of Navaho mythology which lead to his own realization of these similarities with other world mythology)

•         The hero has adventures and achievements of extraordinary kind (e.g., slaying monsters, overcoming death, controlling the weather).
•         There is often something special about the birth of the hero (occasionally heroine)
•         Help from animals is a frequent motif.
•         A separation from one or both parents at an early age is involved.
•         There is antagonism and violence toward near kin, though mainly toward siblings or father-in-law. This hostility may be channeled in one or both directions. It may be masked but is more often expressed in violent acts.
•         There is eventual return and recognition with honor. The hero’s achievements are realized by his immediate family and redound in some way to their benefit and that of the larger group to which the family belongs.

Johann Georg von Hahn’s Hero Pattern (based on biographies of 14 heroes--mostly Western--including Oedipus)

1.    The hero is of illegitimate birth

2.    His mother is the princess of the country

3.    His father is a god or a foreigner

4.    There are signs warning of his ascendance

5.    For this reason he is abandoned

6.    He is suckled by animals

7.    He is brought up by a childless shepherd couple

8.    He is a high-spirited youth

9.    He seeks service in a foreign country

10.  He returns victorious and goes back to the foreign land

11. He slays his original persecutors, accedes to rule the country, and sets his mother free

12. He founds cities

13. The manner of his death is extraordinary

14. He is reviled because of incest and he dies young

15. He dies by an act of revenge at the hands of an insulted servant

16. He murders his younger brother

 Jan De Vries Hero Pattern (based on comparison of traditional folk tales, mostly European)

             1.    The hero is begotten

2.    He is born

3.    His youth is threatened

4.    He is brought up

5.    He often acquires invulnerability

6.    He fights with the dragon or other monster

7.    He wins a maiden, usually after overcoming great dangers

8.    He makes an expedition to the underworld

9.    He returns to the land from which he was once banished and conquers his enemies

10.  He dies

Lord Raglan’s Hero Pattern (based on comparison of 18 classical myths, mostly from the Western world)

1.    His mother is a royal virgin

2.    His father is a king, and

3.    Often a near relative of his mother, but

4.    The circumstances of his conception are unusual, and

5.    He is also reputed to be the son of a god.

6.    At birth an attempt is made, often by his father, to kill him, but

7.    He is spirited away, and

8.    Reared by foster parents in a far country

9.    We are told nothing of his childhood, but

10.  On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future kingdom.

11.  After a victory over the king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beat,

12.  He marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor, and

13.  Becomes king

14.  For a time he reigns uneventfully, and

15.  Prescribes laws, but

16.  Later he loses favor with the gods and/or his subjects, and

17.   Is driven from the throne and city.

18.   He meets with a mysterious death,

19.   Often at the top of a hill.

20.   His children, if any, do not succeed him.

21.   His body is not buried, but nevertheless

22.   He has one or more holy sepulchers.  

Joseph Campbell’s Structure of the Heroic Journey (based on comparison of parts of narratives from around the world). Similar to the pattern of separation, initiation/transformation, return of the ritual process (see Victor Turner)

SEPARATION/DEPARTURE:

1.    The Call to Adventure

2.    Refusal of the Call

3.    Supernatural Aid

4.    Crossing the First Threshold

5.    Passage Into the Realm of Night

       THE STAGE OF TRIALS & VICTORIES OF INITIATION:

1.    The Road of Trials

2.    The Meeting with the Goddess

3.    Temptation

4.    Atonement

5.    Receiving the Ultimate Boon

     THE RETURN & REINTEGRATION WITH SOCIETY:

1.    Reconciliation

2.    Healing

3.    Paradise Regained

Art imitates life

I'm continuing my analysis of Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus (Sheffield 2014). 

Analogously, the mythical Abraham is conveniently named ('father of many') in Gen. 17.5 (and his original name, Abram, 'exalted father'. is no less convenient). similarly anticipating what he would become in the future. which doesn't tend to happen in the real world [240n9]

i) To begin with, do we even have Abraham's original name? Or do we have a Hebrew cognate? Abraham didn't speak Hebrew. His parents didn't give him a Hebrew name. He has a Hebrew name because the OT is written in Hebrew. But presumably that's a translation. 

ii) More to the point, a name that forecasts a future destiny is, indeed, improbable in a godless universe, but of course, that's hardly the viewpoint of the Pentateuchal narrator. Rather, the Pentateuch depicts a God who is orchestrating events behind-the-scenes to their appointed end. History as a series of divinely-planned events. As such, there's no incongruity within the narrative viewpoint of figure who has a prescient name. 

That should make us suspicious from the start. Isn't his name abnor­mally convenient? The 'Christ' part was assigned by those who believed he was the messiah, and thus not accidental. But what are the odds that his birth name would be 'Savior', and then he would be hailed as the Savior? Are historical men who are worshiped as savior gods usually so conveni­ently named? [240]

But according to Matthew and Luke, both his parents had angelic revelations regarding the future destiny of Jesus. Of course, Carrier is an atheist, but the point is that there's nothing inconsistent with his having a "convenient" name given the Jewish outlook of the Synoptics. 

Romulus

In his book On the Historicity of Jesus (Sheffield 2014), one of Carrier's showcase examples is his claim that the Synoptic Jesus is modeled on Romulus. He discusses this at length in two different chapters. But ironically, Carrier himself is guilty of legendary embellishment. Carrier confabulates a legend about Jesus as a variation on Romulus by how Carrier selectively summarizes his sources, redacts his sources, and indulges in equivocations. Let's begin with Carrier's claims:

The Significance Of Not Having Sources On Jesus During His Lifetime

A common objection to Christianity that's highly relevant to the Easter season is that we don't have any records of Jesus' life that were written before he died. I've addressed that objection at length in another post. What I want to do here is cite a comment Richard Burridge made last year that's relevant to the topic. Burridge is one of the foremost scholars in the world on the genre of the gospels. During the June 17, 2017 Unbelievable? radio program, he commented (around one and a half minutes into the second hour) that ancient biographies were written after the figure died, since only then could a final analysis of the person's life be given. When the gospels and other early documents were written after Jesus' death, they were following common (though not universal) practice. For other reasons why the post-death timing of the early sources on Jesus isn't as problematic as critics suggest, see my post linked above.

Carrier's snow machine

Jonathan McLatchie recently debated Richard Carrier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCcq8G-WzJM

This, in turn, generated an impromptu debate between yours truly and Richard Carrier on Facebook. 

Carrier  

I don't even consider the evangelical to be the mainstream. It's a position of extreme bias. Mainstream is centrist: undogmatic believers, and nonbelievers, with full credentials. You can't be a literalist or an inerrantist, and be mainstream. You can't be a dogmatist, either. But even by that definition of mainstream, it remains the case that the widest mainstream view is that Paul believed Jesus was an earth person (and met his biological brothers, for example), in the same way he probably believed Moses was (although the mainstream view now is that there was no Moses, or that we can't assert with any confidence that there was; and that used not to be the case; the consensus changed in the decades after being challenged in the 1970s; I'm arguing that needs to happen again; and there are at least ten qualified experts who agree this challenge to the old consensus on Jesus at least needs to be taken seriously and included among the many other contradictory but viable options entertained by the mainstream).

Hays  

Amusing to see Carrier's self-incriminating attack on "dogmatists," given the fact that Carrier is a secular dogmatist.

Carrier  

The number of experts on my side only argues against the claim that no experts agree with me. Although I'm not aware of any astronomers (as in actual Ph.D.s in astronomy) who believe in a flat earth. So that analogy seems implausible. My situation is more analogous to the 1970s when the historicity of Moses was challenged. It will take decades to see if it goes the same way.

Hays  

Jonathan McLatchie's analogy was not to flat-earthers but young-earth creationists.

Carrier  

Oh, right! Wait...Who are the Ph.D.s in relevant sciences who are young earthers?

Hays  

E.g. Kurt Wise, Todd Wood, John Byl, Andrew Snelling, Jonathan Sarfati, John C. Sanford, Jason Lisle, &c. 

Chan  

Nathaniel Jeanson, David Menton, Danny Faulkner

Bukowski  

Leonard Brand, John Baumgardner, and Walt Brown as well would be prominent names.

Price mythicism

Jonathan McLatchie recently hosted a webinar with reputed Christ mythicist Robert Price. Perhaps an actor was playing the role of Robert Price, the way actors play fictional characters. "Robert Price" is clearly a westernized variation on the mythical trope of the Eastern sage, like bearded Hindu Swamis, and aging Tibetan monks in kung fu flicks who dispense fortune cookie platitudes to a young apprentice. Price represents a stock character is B Hollywood movies. There is no historical Price. Robert Price does not exist!

Gagnon on mythicism

Robert A. J. Gagnon

It is a shame that the WashPost decided to compound deep insensitivity with deep ignorance in retweeting on Christmas day a 2014 op-ed by the self-professed "polyamorist" Raphael Lataster, “Did historical Jesus really exist? The evidence just doesn’t add up," Yes, there is the evidence from the late first-century Jewish historian Josephus (minus later Christian editing) and early second-century Roman historianTacitus, among other extrabiblical sources (as the writer of this article points out). Yet there is so much more.

No one would knowingly create a life of Jesus that would lead to one's martyrdom. James (Jacob), one of Jesus' younger brothers, would not have died a martyr's death as head of the church in Jerusalem for a brother whom he made up. Simon (Peter/Cephas), surnamed by Jesus "rock" for being the first human to confess Jesus' messiahship, also would not have suffered martyrdom if in fact he had made up the figure of Jesus. The same applies to all other disciples of Jesus who claimed to have known him during his earthly ministry and suffered for their proclamation of Jesus as Christ. No one profited materially from such a hoax. Deprivations in food, clothing, and shelter, along with persecution, were the common lot of Jesus' followers. The idea of a massive conspiracy, with little or no self-gain and everything to lose, never buckling under the weight of fraud, is ridiculous.

The church would not have made up a crucified Messiah since the crucifixion posed a problem for the church's faith, a problem that it sought to explain in various ways (including atonement models). The idea of a suffering Messiah was not a standard expectation in early Judaism. Suffering and death suggested failure, not success, in a messianic mission. Yes, the church could go back to their OT Scriptures and gain comprehension through Isaiah 53 and Psalm texts speaking of a suffering righteous one, but only as an after-the-fact search for comprehension, not as an anticipated expectation for God's anointed one. The Gospels themselves speak of the despair of the disciples immediately following his crucifixion, which is exactly the historical outcome one would expect.

Moreover, no Jew would have created a Messiah who grew up in an obscure town in Galilee ("can anything good come out of Nazareth?"). The baptism of Jesus at the hands of John the Baptizer (certainly a historical figure, as attested by Josephus) suggests the superiority of John over Jesus, a problem that the Gospel writers sought to explain and minimize. They wouldn't have created such problems if Jesus had been a figure of their own imagination.

Some of the hard teachings of Jesus, including his unparalleled rejection of divorce and remarriage-after-divorce, required moderation and explanation. They were also based on a singular recognition of unique authority. What other Jew would claim the power to amend unilaterally the constitution of Israel? The universal route for authority in Judaism was derived: So-and-so appealed to so-and-so and on it went as far back as one could push it, hopefully at least to great figures in the Restoration after exile. The distinctive use of "amen" not as a responsive, confirming particle but rather as an introduction to Jesus sayings violated every prior norm, where instead of tracing his teaching to earlier sages Jesus in effect confirmed his own sayings as self-authenticating and in need of no one else's confirmation.

Declaring one's self Lord of the Sabbath and forgiving sins that were not committed against one's own self were other elements of the early church's testimony about Jesus that raised the question of which Jews would imaginatively create a human with such authority. Such claims generated offense and made the Jerusalem church subject to persecution at the hands of fellow Jews. The messianic claims of the early church not only earned the ire of fellow Jews but also brought the wrath of Roman authorities who were rightly suspicious of such a seditious threat to the emperor's claim of ultimate authority. Why would the church bring upon itself the wrath of the world through its own creation?

Along with the absence of any expectation of a crucified Messiah was the absence of an expectation of a resurrected Messiah. If one were going to make up a resurrection out of whole cloth, one wouldn't buttress it by appealing to female witnesses to an enigmatic figure at an empty tomb in the place of Jesus' body and to appearances by Jesus. The testimony of female witnesses would be regarded as unreliable because of their sex. Then somehow 500 people at one time would have to be made to see this made-up resurrected figure or at least collectively lie about it.

Why would a self-professed zealous Pharisee such as Paul give up subservience to the very Law of Moses that he excelled in and abandon his persecution of the church, all for extraordinary daily deprivation and persecution around the Mediterranean Basin were he not convinced of the historical reality of this figure now raised from the dead? Paul's call-conversion was within a few years of Jesus' death. By his own testimony he met with Cephas (Peter) and the Lord's brother James (Jacob) after three years and then again a little over a decade after that with these two and with John. He was certainly convinced of their truthfulness. Indeed, even when he had been persecuting the church he did not question the historical existence of Jesus.

The very shape of the Gospel stories and sayings conforms to what we would expect of traditions transmitted orally and preserved for decades by followers of a given teacher: sayings in easily memorizable form (e.g., parallelismus membrorum), self-contained pericopes independent of a larger narrative, with all the variations across transmission lines that would accrue from an original nucleus. An example would be the story of Jesus' distance healing of the mortally-ill, Capernaum-located "boy" of an official (Matt 8:5-13 // Luke 7:1-10; John 4:46b-53), which, while exhibiting significant variation (ethnicity and office of the supplicant, precise nature of the malady, questions about whether the supplicant meets Jesus directly and initiates a request for distance healing, the identity of the "boy" as a son or slave) shows significant points of agreement between two obviously independent sources: the reconstructed "Q" original behind Matthew's and Luke's versions and the story in the Johannine Signs Source.

No, it creates far fewer historical problems and requires much less faith to acknowledge the historical reality of the figure of Jesus than to posit the non-existence of the man from Nazareth.

A Skeptic Of Christianity Complimenting R.C. Sproul

Listen to the first few minutes of Robert Price's latest podcast. He also makes some positive comments about John Warwick Montgomery. Price doesn't believe in the existence of God, he's a Jesus mythicist, and he's debated William Lane Craig, James White, and other Christians.