jpholding
November 19th 2003, 04:37 PM
Recently someone posted a link to our refutation of the Christ-myth (http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_01_01_01.html) on one of those public forums where fundy atheists hang out, and one of them, whom we shall designate "Bananaz," (his avatar is of a crucified banana) had the temerity to attempt a reply. This poor fellow has adopted a peculiar habit of responding in the form of a drippy outline rather than in straight narrative. He also has (in line with the usual fundy-atheist orientation) an impression that doing a little Internet search and reading a handful of books is enough to make a sound judgment on matters of historicity, in disagreement with historians and other scholars with credentials enough to paper the Taj Mahal. But one would not be a "freethinker" without such arrogance, so that was a given. Let's proceed to Bananaz' responses. He begins with an address to my point about the "Trypho" error, not with a response to it, but an end-around diversion to another topic, the "Therapeautea" of Egypt. Bananaz reports the following from "a random webpage I found while reading about Hinduism":
Readers of the history of India are aware that in 249 B.C. Ashoka the Great, the Buddhist emperor, made Buddhism the state religion of India and sent missionaries to all parts of the world, then known to him, to preach the gospel of Buddha. He sent missionaries from Siberia to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and from China to Egypt.
"Random webpage" is about the level of scholarship we would expect here. As it happens this "random webpage" is http://www.hinduism.co.za/jesus.htm, and an article titled, "Why a Hindu Accepts Christ and Rejects Churchianity," by one Swami Abhedananda who offers no indication of credentials in history, New Testament scholarship, or any relevant field, or in anything that is spoken of, for that matter. The article is filled with a great deal of regurgiated argumentation of the sort we have refuted in detail in various places onsite; but keeping to the target, the general claim of the sending of these missionaries, it's a pretty lame point to make use of:
While it is agreed by scholars that Ashoka sent such missionaries to places as far away as Egypt, "there is no record of their having arrived there" [Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism, 77]. Indeed the only "evidence" that they did arrive, and did anything of note, is alleged similarities between Buddhist thought and that of certain Jewish groups like the Essenes -- with no concern for whether the concepts in question are mirrored in earlier Judaism (i.e., asceticism -- mirrored in Elijah well before this time!).
Ashoka himself was more interested in spreading certain ideals admired by all religions, and he himself was tolerant of other religions, The duties Ashoka prescribed were "not distinctly Buddhist" and could have been practiced in any religion. [Hajime Nakamura, Indian Buddhism, 75].
The group that Bananaz wants to draw our attention to is referred to about 250 years after Ashoka sent out these missionaries -- and is clearly identified as a Jewish group (see below).
Bananaz quotes this amateur site further: "The Buddhists were also called Theraputta, a Pali form of the Sanskrit Sthiraputra, meaning the son of Sthira, or Thera: one who is serene, enlightened, and undisturbed by the world. Thera was one of Buddha's names." Oops, well, at Access to Insight, a site on Theravada Buddhism, "thera" is defined not as "one who is serene," etc. but as "Elder," and as "An honorific title automatically conferred upon a bhikkhu of at least ten years' standing." While it is likely that such a person would, by virtue of his stature, have achieved such serenity, this completely rubs out any linguistic connection between the two (as if an uncritical hop from a Pali Indian language to Greek were not bad enough as is). In fact, the real source of the name is told us by an article in the Harvard Theological Review (by real scholars, with credentials), which notes:
The group in question, the Therapaeuta -- mentioned, as Bananaz says, by Philo (though where Josephus calls Philo "the Pythagorean" as is claimed, who knows!) -- is called this name by Philo -- it is NOT the name that they call themselves, and Philo does not say that they call themselves anything.
The name actually derives from a Greek word for "therapy" and the verb form means serve, wait on, attend to, or provide for. Philo uses the word in other places to refer to those who "serve" God (including the Essenes) and the word is used in Plato of those who serve the Greek gods, and in a papryi of those who serve Isis and Serapis. In no case is there any specific connotation connectable to Buddhism. Did they all borrow this word from India?
Finally, Philo calls these Therapaeutae "pupils of Moses" who "have dedicated their personal lives and themselves to the understanding of the facts of Nature" -- in other words, these are Jews, not Buddhists!
This leaves Bananaz with only one point:
From page 12 of "Jesus and the Lost Goddess": "The fourth-century Christian Literalist historian Eusebius saw so many similarities between the Way of the Therapeutae and the Christian Way that he claimed the Therapeutae were amongst the first followers of Christ. But Philo's description of the Therapeutae was written before the time that Jesus is supposed to have been teaching, so he is clearly not writing about disciples of an historical Messiah, as Eusebius believed."
Yes, clearly, Philo isn't -- and clearly, Eusebius simply had his chronology mixed up. So what point was Bananaz trying to make, and why?
Next up, Bananaz relates some "tasty tidbits" he is "partial to:"
Serapion condemned the Gospel of Peter (around 200 C.E.) because it contained the belief that Jesus only "seemed" to be a man, and was not really flesh. The Gospel of Peter was probably written between 70 and 160 C.E. (possibly at the same time as the Synoptic gospels found in the Bible).
It's hard to say why Bananaz thinks GoP is of any real use. His dating for GoP is ludicrous (if he wants to debate the Synoptic dates, he can see http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_02_02_02.html); as Philip Jenkins notes in Hidden Gospels [95ff], scholars since the 1880s when it was rediscovered considered GoP to have been dependent on the canonical Gospels; it is not until that 200 mention by Serapion that it appears at all in any external record, and the hersies it teaches "were characteristic of mid-second century thought," so that none but Crossan date it earlier than 150 AD. The main heresy is docetism, which Bananaz seems to find so tasty, but docetism is if anything antithetical to a Christ-myth position: It does not hold that Jesus did not exist, but that he existed in the form of a sort of illusion. That's not really compatible with the mtyhicist position, since docetism would say that the events in the NT did happen, we just don't understand the nature of the one with whom the events were concerned.
Bananaz' other tidbit comes from Justin Martyr, whom he says "fervently argued that Jesus existed in the flesh" whereas Marcion argued otherwise, but once again, Marcion was no mythicist; he was a docetic, and not even one close to the kind Bananaz needs, for his thought was not for "non-historicity" (even normal docetism was not), but, as Henry Wace put it:
The Docetism of MARCION differed from that of preceding Gnostics. With them the great stumbling-block had been the sufferings of Christ, and accordingly it is the reality of Christ's passion and death that their antagonists sought to establish. Marcion, on the contrary, was quite willing to acknowledge the proof of our Lord's love exhibited in His sufferings and death, but it was repulsive to him to own His human birth, which according to his view would have made our Lord the debtor and the subject of the Creator of the world. Accordingly, while Basilides had admitted a real birth of the man Jesus, Valentinus at least a seeming birth in which the body elsewhere prepared was ushered into the world, Marcion would own no birth at all, and began his gospel with the sudden announcement that in the 15th year of Tiberius Christ came down (by which we are to understand came down from heaven) to Capernaum, a city of Galilee (Tert. adv. Marc. iv. 7). Marcion's disciple Apelles so far modified his master's doctrine that he was willing to own that Jesus had a solid body, but denied that there had been a birth in which He had assumed it (Tert. de C. C. 6); and he held that of this body our Lord made only a temporary use, and that when He had shewn it to His disciples after His resurrection He gave it back to the elements from which He had received it (Hipp. Ref. vii. 38, 260). Something of this kind seems to have been also the view of the sect known as Docetae.
Clearly Marcion holds no view that would aid the mythicist, "non-existence" position.
Next up, Bananaz says that Freke and Gandy offer "a more fulfilling answer as to why this time period (which included Pontius Pilate) was chosen" to put Jesus in, but when summed up it's no different than Wells' unfalsifiable psycho-explanation that Pilate was "particularly detested by the Jews, and is indeed the only one of the prefects who governed Judea between AD 6 and 41 who attracted sufficient attention to be discussed by the two principal Jewish writers of the first century." Freke and Gandy just come at it from the opposite direction, pointing also to Pilate being mentioned by Josephus and Philo (Bananaz includes a goofy claim that Pilate was "the only prefect from the years 6 to 41 to be mentioned by name by Josephus and Philo." I can't check Philo just now, but Josephius clearly mentions Coponius (6-9 AD; Ant. 18.1.1), Ambivius (9-12; Ant. 18.2.2), and Marullus (37-41, Ant. 18.6.10), just to name three I checked; though he calls them, as he does Pilate procurators) and claiming that "Jews needed an explanation for the terrible events which were befalling them" and that "Jewish Gnostics deliberately set the Jesus story in the years in which the crisis began," allegedly when Roman taxation began in 6 AD (when Jesus was born) and when Pilate did stuff like defile the Temple (which is the same as Wells' "particularly detested" routine). It is said in closing that the "Gnostic Messiah Jesus offered defeated and dejected Jews meaning and new hope," though not a scent of evidence for any "Gnostic" flavor is provided (apparently Bananaz has not heard that the "Gnostic Jesus" thesis has been debunked; maybe he'd like to debate that as well).
Onward. I have a huge section of quotes from scholars and historians about the absurdity of the mythicist position:
Greco-Roman historian Michael Grant, who certainly has no theological axe to grind, indicates that there is more evidence for the existence of Jesus than there is for a large number of famous pagan personages - yet no one would dare to argue their non-existence. Meier [Meie.MarJ, 23] notes that what we know about Alexander the Great could fit on only a few sheets of paper; yet no one doubts that Alexander existed. Charlesworth has written that "Jesus did exist; and we know more about him than about almost any Palestinian Jew before 70 C.E." [Chars.JesJud, 168-9] Sanders [Sand.HistF, xiv] echoes Grant, saying that "We know a lot about Jesus, vastly more than about John the Baptist, Theudas, Judas the Galilean, or any of the other figures whose names we have from approximately the same date and place." On the Crucifixion, Harvey writes: "It would be no exaggeration to say that this event is better attested, and supported by a more impressive array of evidence, than any other event of comparable importance of which we have knowledge from the ancient world." [Harv.JesC, 11] Dunn [Dunn.EvJ, 29] provides an anecdote similar to the one above regarding Shakespeare. Referring to Wells' thesis, he writes: The alternative thesis is that within thirty years there had evolved such a coherent and consistent complex of traditions about a non-existent figure such as we have in the sources of the Gospels is just too implausible. It involves too many complex and speculative hypotheses, in contrast to the much simpler explanation that there was a Jesus who said and did more or less what the first three Gospels attribute to him. The fact of Christianity's beginnings and the character of its earliest tradition is such that we could only deny the existence of Jesus by hypothesizing the existence of some other figure who was a sufficient cause of Chrstianity's beginnings - another figure who on careful reflection would probably come out very like Jesus! Finally, let's seal the coffin on consenus with these words from a hardened skeptic and an Emeritus Professor of History, Morton Smith [Hoff.JesH, 47-8] . Of Wells' work, this historian and skeptic of orthodox Christianity wrote: "I don't think the arguments in (Wells') book deserve detailed refutation." "...he argues mainly from silence." "...many (of his arguments) are incorrect, far too many to discuss in this space." "(Wells) presents us with a piece of private mythology that I find incredible beyond anything in the Gospels." None of these scholars, we emphasize, is a friend of fundamentalism or evangelical Christianity. Contrary to the protestations of the "Jesus-myth" consortium, they make their statements based on evidence, not ideology. Conspiracy and bias exist only in their own imagination.
Apparently a little dizzy from all this prestige in his living room, Bananaz just titles a section, "authorities say it, so it must be true!" (read: he is not competent to address such authorities, so he just calls them names) and selects only Harvey's comment to quote. Bananaz follows this with an ironic comment:
Personally, I haven't investigated every inch of ancient history. Nor have I scratched the surface. But if Harvey says this event is well-attested, then it must be well attested!
Indeed so. Harvey (and the others) have credentials in history and NT scholarship that Bananaz would faint away at the sight of; and never mind that Bananaz admits he hasn't as much as scratched the surface. There's jealousy of competence talking. Still, Bananaz does admire authorities he agrees with, so he immedlatly cites his own, Richard Carrier of the SecWeb (who has far fewer creds than any of the named persons), and to Harvey's comment on the crucifixion being so well attested, Bananaz cites Carrier's retort that the resurrection lacks a particular level of attestion, and is so confused that he claims "Richard Carrier argues that the crucifixion is not as well attested to as Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon in 49 B.C.E." The article by Carrier here (which we address here clearly is not talking about the crucifixion at all. So Bananaz is already firing blanks from the start, but let's make comparisons for both events, crucifixion and resurrection, from Carrier's retort:
First of all, we have Caesar's own word on the subject. Indeed, The Civil War has been a Latin classic for two thousand years, written by Caesar himself and by one of his generals who was definitely an eye-witness and who knew the man personally. In contrast, we do not have anything written by Jesus, and we do not know for certain the name of any author of any of the accounts of his physical resurrection.
I have to give this statement the Stupid Skeptical Irony Award, because we know darned well that "Jesus' own word" on his crucifixion OR his resurrection would be rejected by Skeptics as a fabrication! Beyond that, we have addressed the matter of Jesus writing here (and incidentally, don't think for one moment that Caesar himself put pen to paper; you can bet your patoot he had scribes, just as Jesus did) and of Gospel authorship (link above), and the Gospels are as good as, if not better than, Caeser here.
Second, we have many of Caesar's enemies, including Cicero, a contemporary of the event, reporting the crossing of the Rubicon, whereas we have no hostile or even neutral records of the resurrection until over a hundred years after the event, and fifty years after the Christians' own claims had been widely spread around.
For the crucifixion, we have enemies of Christianity (Tacitus, Lucian) and a neutral (Josephus) as well as all the Gospels. These are all later than Cicero to Caesar; but I wonder whether this makes any difference, since whereas had political reasons to mention the conquest, Christianity's enemies would have no parallel positive motivation.
Third, we have a number of inscriptions and coins produced soon after the Republican Civil War related to the Rubicon crossing, including mentions of battles and conscriptions and judgments, which in fact form almost a continuous chain of evidence for Caesar's entire march. On the other hand, we have absolutely no physical evidence of any kind in the case of the resurrection.
Hmm, don't we? It's a little unfair to demand coins and inscriptions of the sort the state only could have the means to produce, especially from Jews who would not produce things that could be images, but what about these burial cave inscriptions from the first century?
Fourth, we have the story of the "Rubicon Crossing" in almost every historian of the period, including the most prominent scholars of the age: Suetonius, Appian, Cassius Dio, Plutarch. Moreover, these scholars have a measure of proven reliability, since a great many of their reports on other matters have been confirmed in material evidence and in other sources. In addition, they all quote and name many different sources, showing a wide reading of the witnesses and documents, and they show a regular desire to critically examine claims for which there is any dispute. If that wasn't enough, all of them cite or quote sources which were written by witnesses, hostile and friendly, of the Rubicon crossing and its repercussions.
Well, for the Crucifixion, Tacitus, Josephus, and Lucian fill this bill, except for the part about citing or quoting sources, which would hardly be necessary for such a simple event as the Crucifixion. Obviously the Resurrection is not qualified here (other than Josephus note that it was claimed to have happened, and Tacitus' hint of the movement continuing from Judaea), but ideologically, that is what we would expect. Here though is the big one:
Fifth, the history of Rome could not have proceeded as it did had Caesar not physically moved an army into Italy. Even if Caesar could have somehow cultivated the mere belief that he had done this, he could not have captured Rome or conscripted Italian men against Pompey's forces in Greece. On the other hand, all that is needed to explain the rise of Christianity is a belief--a belief that the resurrection happened. There is nothing that an actual resurrection would have caused that could not have been caused by a mere belief in that resurrection. Thus, an actual resurrection is not necessary to explain all subsequent history, unlike Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon.
Oh? That's "all" that's needed to explain the rise of Christianity? That "all" just slides right by uncritically -- we say, an actual resurrection is indeed needed. (http://www.tektonics.org/nowayjose.html) Bananaz has lots more homework to do.
So Bananaz really bit the big one here, confusing the Crucifixion and the Resurrection from the get-go. Then I offered an extended explanation as to why Jesus was not mentioned in sources:
As far as the historians of the day were concerned, he was just a "blip" on the screen. Jesus was not considered to be historically significant by historians of his time. He did not address the Roman Senate, or write extensive Greek philosophical treatises; He never travelled outside of the regions of Palestine, and was not a member of any known political party. It is only because Christians later made Jesus a "celebrity" that He became known. Sanders, comparing Jesus to Alexander, notes that the latter "so greatly altered the political situation in a large part of the world that the main outline of his public life is very well known indeed. Jesus did not change the social, political and economic circumstances in Palestine (Note: It was left for His followers to do that!) ..the superiority of evidence for Jesus is seen when we ask what he thought." [Sand.HistF, 3] Harris adds that "Roman writers could hardly be expected to have foreseen the subsequent influence of Christianity on the Roman Empire and therefore to have carefully documented" Christian origins. How were they to know that this minor Nazarene prophet would cause such a fuss?
Jesus was executed as a criminal, providing him with the ultimate marginality. This was one reason why historians would have ignored Jesus. He suffered the ultimate humiliation, both in the eyes of Jews (Deut. 21:23 - Anyone hung on a tree is cursed!) and the Romans (He died the death of slaves and rebels.). On the other hand, Jesus was a minimal threat compared to other proclaimed "Messiahs" of the time. Rome had to call out troops to quell the disturbances caused by the unnamed Egyptian referenced in the Book of Acts [Sand.HistF, 51] . In contrast, no troops were required to suppress Jesus' followers. To the Romans, the primary gatekeepers of written history at the time, Jesus during His own life would have been no different than thousands of other everyday criminals that were crucified.
Jesus marginalized himself by being occupied as an itinerant preacher. Of course, there was no Palestine News Network, and even if there had been one, there were no televisions to broadcast it. Jesus never used the established "news organs" of the day to spread His message. He travelled about the countryside, avoiding for the most part (and with the exception of Jerusalem) the major urban centers of the day. How would we regard someone who preached only in sites like, say, Hahira, Georgia?
Jesus' teachings did not always jibe with, and were sometimes offensive to, the established religious order of the day. It has been said that if Jesus appeared on the news today, it would be as a troublemaker. He certainly did not make many friends as a preacher.
Jesus lived an offensive lifestyle and alienated many people. He associated with the despised and rejected: Tax collectors, prostitutes, and the band of fishermen He had as disciples.
Jesus was a poor, rural person in a land run by wealthy urbanites. Yes, class discrimination was alive and well in the first century also!
A final consideration is that we have very little information from first-century sources to begin with. Not much has survived the test of time from A.D. 1 to today. Blaiklock has cataloged the non-Christian writings of the Roman Empire (other than those of Philo) which have survived from the first century and do not mention Jesus. (A list followed). To this Meier adds [ibid., 23] that in general, knowledge of the vast majority of ancient peoples is "simply not accessible to us today by historical research and never will be." It is just as was said in his earlier comment on Alexander the Great: What we know of most ancient people as individuals could fit on just a few pieces of paper. Thus it is misguided for the skeptic to complain that we know so little about the historical Jesus, and have so little recorded about Him in ancient pagan sources. Compared to most ancient people, we know quite a lot about Jesus, and have quite a lot recorded about Him!
Bananaz ignores all of this, just saying we offered a "long list of excuses," and zeroing in on the point about Jesus being a "minimal threat," asking why Herod didn't think so when he killed the infants. Hmm...how about some critical thinking? Did Herod know the kid's name was Jesus when he went after him? (Bananaz also doubts historicity on this; he can deal with this for his odd claim that 5-10 infants killed is "mass genocide".) It is also asked, rather foolishly, "why would Pilate kill Jesus if Jesus was such a 'minimal threat'?" Why? Because Jesus became an instrument in the hands of the powers of the day, and that issue is covered here.
In closing for now, Bananaz brings up the inevitable reference to Remsberg's list, which our friend on this forum also gave him this link on. (http://www.tektonics.org/remslist.html) We'll see if Bananaz has any more to say after his peel blackens and falls off.
Readers of the history of India are aware that in 249 B.C. Ashoka the Great, the Buddhist emperor, made Buddhism the state religion of India and sent missionaries to all parts of the world, then known to him, to preach the gospel of Buddha. He sent missionaries from Siberia to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and from China to Egypt.
"Random webpage" is about the level of scholarship we would expect here. As it happens this "random webpage" is http://www.hinduism.co.za/jesus.htm, and an article titled, "Why a Hindu Accepts Christ and Rejects Churchianity," by one Swami Abhedananda who offers no indication of credentials in history, New Testament scholarship, or any relevant field, or in anything that is spoken of, for that matter. The article is filled with a great deal of regurgiated argumentation of the sort we have refuted in detail in various places onsite; but keeping to the target, the general claim of the sending of these missionaries, it's a pretty lame point to make use of:
While it is agreed by scholars that Ashoka sent such missionaries to places as far away as Egypt, "there is no record of their having arrived there" [Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism, 77]. Indeed the only "evidence" that they did arrive, and did anything of note, is alleged similarities between Buddhist thought and that of certain Jewish groups like the Essenes -- with no concern for whether the concepts in question are mirrored in earlier Judaism (i.e., asceticism -- mirrored in Elijah well before this time!).
Ashoka himself was more interested in spreading certain ideals admired by all religions, and he himself was tolerant of other religions, The duties Ashoka prescribed were "not distinctly Buddhist" and could have been practiced in any religion. [Hajime Nakamura, Indian Buddhism, 75].
The group that Bananaz wants to draw our attention to is referred to about 250 years after Ashoka sent out these missionaries -- and is clearly identified as a Jewish group (see below).
Bananaz quotes this amateur site further: "The Buddhists were also called Theraputta, a Pali form of the Sanskrit Sthiraputra, meaning the son of Sthira, or Thera: one who is serene, enlightened, and undisturbed by the world. Thera was one of Buddha's names." Oops, well, at Access to Insight, a site on Theravada Buddhism, "thera" is defined not as "one who is serene," etc. but as "Elder," and as "An honorific title automatically conferred upon a bhikkhu of at least ten years' standing." While it is likely that such a person would, by virtue of his stature, have achieved such serenity, this completely rubs out any linguistic connection between the two (as if an uncritical hop from a Pali Indian language to Greek were not bad enough as is). In fact, the real source of the name is told us by an article in the Harvard Theological Review (by real scholars, with credentials), which notes:
The group in question, the Therapaeuta -- mentioned, as Bananaz says, by Philo (though where Josephus calls Philo "the Pythagorean" as is claimed, who knows!) -- is called this name by Philo -- it is NOT the name that they call themselves, and Philo does not say that they call themselves anything.
The name actually derives from a Greek word for "therapy" and the verb form means serve, wait on, attend to, or provide for. Philo uses the word in other places to refer to those who "serve" God (including the Essenes) and the word is used in Plato of those who serve the Greek gods, and in a papryi of those who serve Isis and Serapis. In no case is there any specific connotation connectable to Buddhism. Did they all borrow this word from India?
Finally, Philo calls these Therapaeutae "pupils of Moses" who "have dedicated their personal lives and themselves to the understanding of the facts of Nature" -- in other words, these are Jews, not Buddhists!
This leaves Bananaz with only one point:
From page 12 of "Jesus and the Lost Goddess": "The fourth-century Christian Literalist historian Eusebius saw so many similarities between the Way of the Therapeutae and the Christian Way that he claimed the Therapeutae were amongst the first followers of Christ. But Philo's description of the Therapeutae was written before the time that Jesus is supposed to have been teaching, so he is clearly not writing about disciples of an historical Messiah, as Eusebius believed."
Yes, clearly, Philo isn't -- and clearly, Eusebius simply had his chronology mixed up. So what point was Bananaz trying to make, and why?
Next up, Bananaz relates some "tasty tidbits" he is "partial to:"
Serapion condemned the Gospel of Peter (around 200 C.E.) because it contained the belief that Jesus only "seemed" to be a man, and was not really flesh. The Gospel of Peter was probably written between 70 and 160 C.E. (possibly at the same time as the Synoptic gospels found in the Bible).
It's hard to say why Bananaz thinks GoP is of any real use. His dating for GoP is ludicrous (if he wants to debate the Synoptic dates, he can see http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_02_02_02.html); as Philip Jenkins notes in Hidden Gospels [95ff], scholars since the 1880s when it was rediscovered considered GoP to have been dependent on the canonical Gospels; it is not until that 200 mention by Serapion that it appears at all in any external record, and the hersies it teaches "were characteristic of mid-second century thought," so that none but Crossan date it earlier than 150 AD. The main heresy is docetism, which Bananaz seems to find so tasty, but docetism is if anything antithetical to a Christ-myth position: It does not hold that Jesus did not exist, but that he existed in the form of a sort of illusion. That's not really compatible with the mtyhicist position, since docetism would say that the events in the NT did happen, we just don't understand the nature of the one with whom the events were concerned.
Bananaz' other tidbit comes from Justin Martyr, whom he says "fervently argued that Jesus existed in the flesh" whereas Marcion argued otherwise, but once again, Marcion was no mythicist; he was a docetic, and not even one close to the kind Bananaz needs, for his thought was not for "non-historicity" (even normal docetism was not), but, as Henry Wace put it:
The Docetism of MARCION differed from that of preceding Gnostics. With them the great stumbling-block had been the sufferings of Christ, and accordingly it is the reality of Christ's passion and death that their antagonists sought to establish. Marcion, on the contrary, was quite willing to acknowledge the proof of our Lord's love exhibited in His sufferings and death, but it was repulsive to him to own His human birth, which according to his view would have made our Lord the debtor and the subject of the Creator of the world. Accordingly, while Basilides had admitted a real birth of the man Jesus, Valentinus at least a seeming birth in which the body elsewhere prepared was ushered into the world, Marcion would own no birth at all, and began his gospel with the sudden announcement that in the 15th year of Tiberius Christ came down (by which we are to understand came down from heaven) to Capernaum, a city of Galilee (Tert. adv. Marc. iv. 7). Marcion's disciple Apelles so far modified his master's doctrine that he was willing to own that Jesus had a solid body, but denied that there had been a birth in which He had assumed it (Tert. de C. C. 6); and he held that of this body our Lord made only a temporary use, and that when He had shewn it to His disciples after His resurrection He gave it back to the elements from which He had received it (Hipp. Ref. vii. 38, 260). Something of this kind seems to have been also the view of the sect known as Docetae.
Clearly Marcion holds no view that would aid the mythicist, "non-existence" position.
Next up, Bananaz says that Freke and Gandy offer "a more fulfilling answer as to why this time period (which included Pontius Pilate) was chosen" to put Jesus in, but when summed up it's no different than Wells' unfalsifiable psycho-explanation that Pilate was "particularly detested by the Jews, and is indeed the only one of the prefects who governed Judea between AD 6 and 41 who attracted sufficient attention to be discussed by the two principal Jewish writers of the first century." Freke and Gandy just come at it from the opposite direction, pointing also to Pilate being mentioned by Josephus and Philo (Bananaz includes a goofy claim that Pilate was "the only prefect from the years 6 to 41 to be mentioned by name by Josephus and Philo." I can't check Philo just now, but Josephius clearly mentions Coponius (6-9 AD; Ant. 18.1.1), Ambivius (9-12; Ant. 18.2.2), and Marullus (37-41, Ant. 18.6.10), just to name three I checked; though he calls them, as he does Pilate procurators) and claiming that "Jews needed an explanation for the terrible events which were befalling them" and that "Jewish Gnostics deliberately set the Jesus story in the years in which the crisis began," allegedly when Roman taxation began in 6 AD (when Jesus was born) and when Pilate did stuff like defile the Temple (which is the same as Wells' "particularly detested" routine). It is said in closing that the "Gnostic Messiah Jesus offered defeated and dejected Jews meaning and new hope," though not a scent of evidence for any "Gnostic" flavor is provided (apparently Bananaz has not heard that the "Gnostic Jesus" thesis has been debunked; maybe he'd like to debate that as well).
Onward. I have a huge section of quotes from scholars and historians about the absurdity of the mythicist position:
Greco-Roman historian Michael Grant, who certainly has no theological axe to grind, indicates that there is more evidence for the existence of Jesus than there is for a large number of famous pagan personages - yet no one would dare to argue their non-existence. Meier [Meie.MarJ, 23] notes that what we know about Alexander the Great could fit on only a few sheets of paper; yet no one doubts that Alexander existed. Charlesworth has written that "Jesus did exist; and we know more about him than about almost any Palestinian Jew before 70 C.E." [Chars.JesJud, 168-9] Sanders [Sand.HistF, xiv] echoes Grant, saying that "We know a lot about Jesus, vastly more than about John the Baptist, Theudas, Judas the Galilean, or any of the other figures whose names we have from approximately the same date and place." On the Crucifixion, Harvey writes: "It would be no exaggeration to say that this event is better attested, and supported by a more impressive array of evidence, than any other event of comparable importance of which we have knowledge from the ancient world." [Harv.JesC, 11] Dunn [Dunn.EvJ, 29] provides an anecdote similar to the one above regarding Shakespeare. Referring to Wells' thesis, he writes: The alternative thesis is that within thirty years there had evolved such a coherent and consistent complex of traditions about a non-existent figure such as we have in the sources of the Gospels is just too implausible. It involves too many complex and speculative hypotheses, in contrast to the much simpler explanation that there was a Jesus who said and did more or less what the first three Gospels attribute to him. The fact of Christianity's beginnings and the character of its earliest tradition is such that we could only deny the existence of Jesus by hypothesizing the existence of some other figure who was a sufficient cause of Chrstianity's beginnings - another figure who on careful reflection would probably come out very like Jesus! Finally, let's seal the coffin on consenus with these words from a hardened skeptic and an Emeritus Professor of History, Morton Smith [Hoff.JesH, 47-8] . Of Wells' work, this historian and skeptic of orthodox Christianity wrote: "I don't think the arguments in (Wells') book deserve detailed refutation." "...he argues mainly from silence." "...many (of his arguments) are incorrect, far too many to discuss in this space." "(Wells) presents us with a piece of private mythology that I find incredible beyond anything in the Gospels." None of these scholars, we emphasize, is a friend of fundamentalism or evangelical Christianity. Contrary to the protestations of the "Jesus-myth" consortium, they make their statements based on evidence, not ideology. Conspiracy and bias exist only in their own imagination.
Apparently a little dizzy from all this prestige in his living room, Bananaz just titles a section, "authorities say it, so it must be true!" (read: he is not competent to address such authorities, so he just calls them names) and selects only Harvey's comment to quote. Bananaz follows this with an ironic comment:
Personally, I haven't investigated every inch of ancient history. Nor have I scratched the surface. But if Harvey says this event is well-attested, then it must be well attested!
Indeed so. Harvey (and the others) have credentials in history and NT scholarship that Bananaz would faint away at the sight of; and never mind that Bananaz admits he hasn't as much as scratched the surface. There's jealousy of competence talking. Still, Bananaz does admire authorities he agrees with, so he immedlatly cites his own, Richard Carrier of the SecWeb (who has far fewer creds than any of the named persons), and to Harvey's comment on the crucifixion being so well attested, Bananaz cites Carrier's retort that the resurrection lacks a particular level of attestion, and is so confused that he claims "Richard Carrier argues that the crucifixion is not as well attested to as Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon in 49 B.C.E." The article by Carrier here (which we address here clearly is not talking about the crucifixion at all. So Bananaz is already firing blanks from the start, but let's make comparisons for both events, crucifixion and resurrection, from Carrier's retort:
First of all, we have Caesar's own word on the subject. Indeed, The Civil War has been a Latin classic for two thousand years, written by Caesar himself and by one of his generals who was definitely an eye-witness and who knew the man personally. In contrast, we do not have anything written by Jesus, and we do not know for certain the name of any author of any of the accounts of his physical resurrection.
I have to give this statement the Stupid Skeptical Irony Award, because we know darned well that "Jesus' own word" on his crucifixion OR his resurrection would be rejected by Skeptics as a fabrication! Beyond that, we have addressed the matter of Jesus writing here (and incidentally, don't think for one moment that Caesar himself put pen to paper; you can bet your patoot he had scribes, just as Jesus did) and of Gospel authorship (link above), and the Gospels are as good as, if not better than, Caeser here.
Second, we have many of Caesar's enemies, including Cicero, a contemporary of the event, reporting the crossing of the Rubicon, whereas we have no hostile or even neutral records of the resurrection until over a hundred years after the event, and fifty years after the Christians' own claims had been widely spread around.
For the crucifixion, we have enemies of Christianity (Tacitus, Lucian) and a neutral (Josephus) as well as all the Gospels. These are all later than Cicero to Caesar; but I wonder whether this makes any difference, since whereas had political reasons to mention the conquest, Christianity's enemies would have no parallel positive motivation.
Third, we have a number of inscriptions and coins produced soon after the Republican Civil War related to the Rubicon crossing, including mentions of battles and conscriptions and judgments, which in fact form almost a continuous chain of evidence for Caesar's entire march. On the other hand, we have absolutely no physical evidence of any kind in the case of the resurrection.
Hmm, don't we? It's a little unfair to demand coins and inscriptions of the sort the state only could have the means to produce, especially from Jews who would not produce things that could be images, but what about these burial cave inscriptions from the first century?
Fourth, we have the story of the "Rubicon Crossing" in almost every historian of the period, including the most prominent scholars of the age: Suetonius, Appian, Cassius Dio, Plutarch. Moreover, these scholars have a measure of proven reliability, since a great many of their reports on other matters have been confirmed in material evidence and in other sources. In addition, they all quote and name many different sources, showing a wide reading of the witnesses and documents, and they show a regular desire to critically examine claims for which there is any dispute. If that wasn't enough, all of them cite or quote sources which were written by witnesses, hostile and friendly, of the Rubicon crossing and its repercussions.
Well, for the Crucifixion, Tacitus, Josephus, and Lucian fill this bill, except for the part about citing or quoting sources, which would hardly be necessary for such a simple event as the Crucifixion. Obviously the Resurrection is not qualified here (other than Josephus note that it was claimed to have happened, and Tacitus' hint of the movement continuing from Judaea), but ideologically, that is what we would expect. Here though is the big one:
Fifth, the history of Rome could not have proceeded as it did had Caesar not physically moved an army into Italy. Even if Caesar could have somehow cultivated the mere belief that he had done this, he could not have captured Rome or conscripted Italian men against Pompey's forces in Greece. On the other hand, all that is needed to explain the rise of Christianity is a belief--a belief that the resurrection happened. There is nothing that an actual resurrection would have caused that could not have been caused by a mere belief in that resurrection. Thus, an actual resurrection is not necessary to explain all subsequent history, unlike Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon.
Oh? That's "all" that's needed to explain the rise of Christianity? That "all" just slides right by uncritically -- we say, an actual resurrection is indeed needed. (http://www.tektonics.org/nowayjose.html) Bananaz has lots more homework to do.
So Bananaz really bit the big one here, confusing the Crucifixion and the Resurrection from the get-go. Then I offered an extended explanation as to why Jesus was not mentioned in sources:
As far as the historians of the day were concerned, he was just a "blip" on the screen. Jesus was not considered to be historically significant by historians of his time. He did not address the Roman Senate, or write extensive Greek philosophical treatises; He never travelled outside of the regions of Palestine, and was not a member of any known political party. It is only because Christians later made Jesus a "celebrity" that He became known. Sanders, comparing Jesus to Alexander, notes that the latter "so greatly altered the political situation in a large part of the world that the main outline of his public life is very well known indeed. Jesus did not change the social, political and economic circumstances in Palestine (Note: It was left for His followers to do that!) ..the superiority of evidence for Jesus is seen when we ask what he thought." [Sand.HistF, 3] Harris adds that "Roman writers could hardly be expected to have foreseen the subsequent influence of Christianity on the Roman Empire and therefore to have carefully documented" Christian origins. How were they to know that this minor Nazarene prophet would cause such a fuss?
Jesus was executed as a criminal, providing him with the ultimate marginality. This was one reason why historians would have ignored Jesus. He suffered the ultimate humiliation, both in the eyes of Jews (Deut. 21:23 - Anyone hung on a tree is cursed!) and the Romans (He died the death of slaves and rebels.). On the other hand, Jesus was a minimal threat compared to other proclaimed "Messiahs" of the time. Rome had to call out troops to quell the disturbances caused by the unnamed Egyptian referenced in the Book of Acts [Sand.HistF, 51] . In contrast, no troops were required to suppress Jesus' followers. To the Romans, the primary gatekeepers of written history at the time, Jesus during His own life would have been no different than thousands of other everyday criminals that were crucified.
Jesus marginalized himself by being occupied as an itinerant preacher. Of course, there was no Palestine News Network, and even if there had been one, there were no televisions to broadcast it. Jesus never used the established "news organs" of the day to spread His message. He travelled about the countryside, avoiding for the most part (and with the exception of Jerusalem) the major urban centers of the day. How would we regard someone who preached only in sites like, say, Hahira, Georgia?
Jesus' teachings did not always jibe with, and were sometimes offensive to, the established religious order of the day. It has been said that if Jesus appeared on the news today, it would be as a troublemaker. He certainly did not make many friends as a preacher.
Jesus lived an offensive lifestyle and alienated many people. He associated with the despised and rejected: Tax collectors, prostitutes, and the band of fishermen He had as disciples.
Jesus was a poor, rural person in a land run by wealthy urbanites. Yes, class discrimination was alive and well in the first century also!
A final consideration is that we have very little information from first-century sources to begin with. Not much has survived the test of time from A.D. 1 to today. Blaiklock has cataloged the non-Christian writings of the Roman Empire (other than those of Philo) which have survived from the first century and do not mention Jesus. (A list followed). To this Meier adds [ibid., 23] that in general, knowledge of the vast majority of ancient peoples is "simply not accessible to us today by historical research and never will be." It is just as was said in his earlier comment on Alexander the Great: What we know of most ancient people as individuals could fit on just a few pieces of paper. Thus it is misguided for the skeptic to complain that we know so little about the historical Jesus, and have so little recorded about Him in ancient pagan sources. Compared to most ancient people, we know quite a lot about Jesus, and have quite a lot recorded about Him!
Bananaz ignores all of this, just saying we offered a "long list of excuses," and zeroing in on the point about Jesus being a "minimal threat," asking why Herod didn't think so when he killed the infants. Hmm...how about some critical thinking? Did Herod know the kid's name was Jesus when he went after him? (Bananaz also doubts historicity on this; he can deal with this for his odd claim that 5-10 infants killed is "mass genocide".) It is also asked, rather foolishly, "why would Pilate kill Jesus if Jesus was such a 'minimal threat'?" Why? Because Jesus became an instrument in the hands of the powers of the day, and that issue is covered here.
In closing for now, Bananaz brings up the inevitable reference to Remsberg's list, which our friend on this forum also gave him this link on. (http://www.tektonics.org/remslist.html) We'll see if Bananaz has any more to say after his peel blackens and falls off.