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Eyewitnesses Wrote the Gospels”……………....….65 Myth No Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All by David Fitzgerald 2010 Praise for Nailed “Fitzgerald’s is possibly the best ‘capsule summary’ of the mythicist case I’ve ever en- countered …with an interesting and accessible approach.” Earl Doherty, author of The Jesus Puzzle “Fitzgerald summarizes a great number of key arguments concisely and with new power and original spin. I really learned something from him. Recalls classical skeptics and biblical crit- ics. A surprising amount of new material.” —Robert M. Price, author of Deconstructing Jesus The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man brightest new star in the firmament of scholars who deny historical reality to “Jesus of Naz- areth.” His brilliance would have been suffi- ciently established had he done nothing more than illustrate and explain traditional argu- ments with a clarity and transparency never achieved by us old-timers. But he has done more. He has developed new arguments and insights as well that will help any honest seeker after truth understand how a fictional cter — perhaps the hero of a mystery play or liturgy — could come to acquire a bi- ography. Thanks to Fitzgerald, we can see more clearly now how Jesus got a life.” —Frank R. Zindler, editor of American Atheist Press and author of The Jesus the Jews Never Knew: Sepher Toldoth Yeshu and the quest for the Historical Jesus in Jewish Sources “Say what you will about the overall conclu- sion that Jesus never existed, but you can't deny that when it comes to the ten modern myths about Jesus dissected here, Fitzgerald has hit the nail on the head. All ten points are succinct and correct. A nice, readable intro- duction to the top ten problems typically swept under the rug by anyone insisting it's crazy even to x- isted.” —Richard C. Carrier, Ph.D., author of Impossible Faith: Why Christianity Didn’t Need a Miracle to Succeed book On the Historicity of Jesus Christ (www.richardcarrier.info) 5 6 Parts of this book previously ap- peared in the online essay “Ten Beau- tiful Lies about Jesus,” which took Honorable Mention for the 2010 Mythicist Prize offered by the Mythi- cists' Forum, a consortium of secular New Testament scholars. The infor- mation in that essay has been up- dated and corrected where necessary for this book. 7 Nailed: Ten Christian myths that show Jesus never existed at all Copyright © 2010 by David Fitzgerald All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by Lulu.com 1. Christianity—Origin. 2. Christianity and culture. ISBN: 978-0-557-70991-5 For everyone who ever thought to themselves: “I wonder what Jesus was really like? 9 10 Contents Myth No. 1: “The idea that Jesus was a myth is ridiculous!”.........13 Myth No. 2: “Jesus was wildly famous – but…”….……………...21 Myth No. 3: “Ancient historian Josephus wrote about Jesus”…....51 Myth No. 4: “Eyewitnesses wrote the Gospels”……………....….65 Myth No. 5: “The Gospels give a consistent picture of Jesus”…...75 Myth No. 6: “History confirms the Gospels”………………...…..91 Myth No. 7: “Archeology confirms the Gospels”…………..…..103 Myth No. 8: “Paul and the Epistles corroborate the Gospels ......125 Myth No. 9: “Christianity began with Jesus and his apostles”.....151 Myth No. 10: “Christianity was totally new and different…”.…...165 Conclusion: Can Jesus be Saved?………………179 Appendix: Apologist Sources…………………..189 Endnotes………………………………………….217 Select Bibliography……………………….……...227 Acknowledgements……………….………….....239 About the Author………………………………. 245 “Facts are sometimes the most radical critics of all.” -Theologian Wilhelm Wrede 12 Myth No. 1: The idea that Jesus was a myth is ridiculous! “In matters of religion it is very easy to deceive a man, and very hard to undeceive him.” -Pierre Bayle Didn’t There Have to Have Been a Jesus? Most people have never heard of the ancient Greek my- thographer Euhemerus, who first theorized that the gods of mythology were deified human beings, and their myths based on legends sprung from accounts of real people and events. So many might be surprised to find that they are Euhemerists on the subject of Jesus. That is to say, though they may not believe Jesus was the di- vine Christ that Christianity venerates as the Son of God and savior of the world, and may regard accounts of the miracles and wonders attending him as mere leg- endary accretion, nevertheless they certainly believe there had to have been a central figure that began Chris- tianity. Perhaps he was just a wandering teacher or an ex- orcist, an apocalyptic prophet or a zealot who opposed the Romans. Perhaps he was all these things, or even a composite of several such early first-century figures; but at any rate, surely there had to be somebody at the Myth No. 1 original core of Christianity, arguably the most famous individual in human history. All this seems to be a per- fectly reasonable, completely natural assumption to make – so why would anyone be so foolish as to pro- pose that Jesus never existed? Doesn’t it just make more sense to assume that there was a historical Jesus, even if we are unable to re- cover the real facts about his life and death? As it turns out, no. The opposite is true: the closer we look at the evidence for Jesus, the less solid evidence we find; and the more we find suspicious silences and curious re- semblances to the pagan and Jewish religious ideas and philosophies that preceded Christianity. And once you begins to parse out the origins of this tradition or that teaching from their various sources, the sweater begins unraveling quickly until it becomes very difficult to buy that there ever was – or even could have been – any his- torical figure at the center. Ten Beautiful Lies About Jesus Christianity, like all religious movements, was born from mythmaking; and nowhere is this clearer than when we examine the context from which Jesus sprang. The supposed historical underpinning of Jesus, which apologists insist differentiates their Christ from the myriad other savior gods and divine sons of the ancient pagan world, simply does not hold up to investigation. On the contrary, the closer we examine the offi- cial story, or rather stories, of Christianity (or Christian- ities!), the quicker it becomes apparent that the figure of the historical Jesus has traveled with a bodyguard of widely accepted, seldom examined untruths for over two millennia. The purpose of this all-too-brief examination is to shed light on ten of these beloved Christian myths, ten 14 Is the Jesus Myth Ridiculous? beautiful lies about Jesus: 1. The idea that Jesus was a myth is ridiculous! 2. Jesus was wildly famous – but there was no reason for contemporary historians to notice him... 3. Ancient historian Josephus wrote about Jesus 4. Eyewitnesses wrote the Gospels 5. The Gospels give a consistent picture of Jesus 6. History confirms the Gospels 7. Archeology confirms the Gospels 8. Paul and the Epistles corroborate the Gospels 9. Christianity began with Jesus and his apostles 10. Christianity was a totally new and different miracu- lous overnight success that changed the world! I also want to give a thumbnail sketch of how the evidence gathered from historians all across the theo- logical spectrum not only debunks these long-cherished myths, but points to a Jesus Christ created solely through the alchemy of hope and imagination; a mes- siah transformed from a purely literary, theological construct into the familiar figure (or more truthfully, figures) of Jesus – in short, a mythic Christ. And fi- nally, I want to briefly discuss how very different things would be if there had been a historical Jesus. Who Says There’s No Jesus? We’ve already begun. Our first Christian myth is the knee-jerk dismissal of the idea that Jesus may have only been a figure of legend. Unsurprisingly, apologists take umbrage at the very notion and declare that historians have always overwhelmingly agreed that Jesus was real. Campus Crusade for Christ Minister Josh McDowell gives prime examples of these sorts of dis- missive pronouncements in his book The New Evidence 15 Myth No. 1 That Demands a Verdict (p. 120): “No serious scholar has ventured to postu- late the non-historicity of Jesus.” (Otto Betz, What Do We Know About Jesus?) “Some writers may toy with the fancy of a ‘Christ-myth,’ but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historic- ity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians who propagate the ‘Christ-myth’ theories.” (F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?) It’s true enough that the majority of Biblical his- torians do not question the historicity of Jesus – but then again, the majority of Biblical historians have al- ways been Christian preachers, so what else could we expect them to say? For all their bluster, the truth is that for as long as there have been Christian writings, there have been critics who have disputed Christian claims and called events from the Gospel stories into question. And since at least the 18th century a growing number of historians have raised serious problems that cast Jesus’ historicity into outright doubt, as we’ll see. Jesus vs. Julius Caesar For instance, historian Richard Carrier has pointed out the problems with Christian apologist Douglas Geivett’s claim that the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection meets “the highest standards of historical inquiry,” and is as certain as Julius Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon 16 Is the Jesus Myth Ridiculous? in 49 B.C.E. Carrier notes, “Well, it is common in Christian apologetics, throughout history, to make ab- surdly exaggerated claims, and this is no exception.” Then he compares the evidence for both events: First of all, we have Caesar’s own account.
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