I am essentially an atheist. I have a million reasons not to believe in Christianity or the Bible as it is. But I want to have my facts straight when I’m debating Christians. I don’t want to point people to this clip and end up making an ass of myself because it’s full of propagandistic falsehoods.
So, Dopers both religious and non who know more about this than I do, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what this movie gets right or wrong!
(I hope I’m not duplicating another thread, the search function was wigging on me.)
I can’t find anything meaty about the movie via search either.
We did just recently have a couple of threads which touched quite a bit on the historicity of Jesus, though:
You might also check out:
There seems to be more support for the existence of Jesus, but given the sparsity of evidence it really isn’t much of a stretch to argue that he didn’t exist. It mostly just depends on exactly how credulous you view the people of the first few centuries AD to have been. While it’s pretty clear that a lot of the New Testament is simply made up or adopted from elsewhere, it seems to take more effort to create a Jesus character than to simply pile on stories to the real life of founder of the Christian branch of Jewish thought.
Someone had to found the basic ideas. Whether even 1% of his life matches that given in the New Testament who can say, but that there was a guy who was the originator is pretty much a given. You may as well call him “Jesus” since that’s what everyone thinks of him as.
Heck, I’m an atheist who has no problem stipulating that a cult leader named (in modern transliteration) Joshua bar-Joseph existed in and around Galilee circa 30 CE. It’s unclear how much influence he personally had (as opposed to later writers using a fictionalized version of him as a character in their works), so what difference does it make?
I saw the film, and there wasn’t much to it. The filmmaker talks about his experiences at a religious elementary school. The whole thing seemed rather flimsy, abrupt, and not very convincing. If he had fleshed it out more, he would have had more of a case.
It was very self indulgent as the guy clearly wanted to be in front of the camera more than behind it. The best parts by far are the DVD extras- his interviews with Schermer and Sam Harris and the mythology professor.
The first disturbing fact (and one of the most compelling, for me) that the authors hang their hat on is the seemingly large gap between the crucifixion and the appearance of the Gospels. This is, frankly, one of the things that always troubled me about Christianity. (John, I think, comes something like 70 years afterward.) I mean, this was a pretty important story to tell and it took Mark 40 years to get it into print? Wow.
But a friend put it in perspective. Do you believe in Alexander the Great? Took something like 400 years before Plutarch got around to writing that one. (Of course we know that the story was actually committed to paper much earlier but few sources are extant and Plutarch’s is the most complete, suggesting that he compiled it from other writers.) So when you think about it, 40 years seems pretty quick for two centuries ago.
As for the rest of it: yes, Christ’s story does plot the hero fable a bit too neatly and we know that the virgin birth was a common theme, if only to avoid stoning. But if we can conclude anything about Catholicism for the past 2000 years, it’s that the Church has had a darned good marketing department. And paid them well.
That’s a good perspective, except for one issue.
We have the story of Aristotle. We have his works. We even have his will. We have Ptolemy’s history, and he rode with Alexander as one of his generals.
We actually have about three or four first person accounts of Alexander’s life.
Just because Plutarch was the most popular doesn’t mean he was the only one.
You’re suggesting that Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary, say, removes the need for Robert E. Lee’s personal memoirs. Seriously, that makes no sense.
40 yeasr is an outside estimate, and many estimate that the gap is smaller. But even if it were not, that’s hardly a damning indictment. This culture predated modern publishing technologies and techniques, after all, and most of the Palestinians were illiterate. By the standards of ancient history, 40 years is actually quite small.
In addition, most NT scholars (including skeptical ones) believe that there were additional source materials – written documents and memorized creeds, for example – that predated the gospels. On top of that, you have the Pauline epistles, which date much earlier than the gospel accounts. His epistles were by no means equivalent to the gospels, but they do demonstrate that he did write about this man Jesus at a much earlier date.
The bottom line is that you’d be hardpressed to find a single reputable historian – theist or atheist, Christian or non-Christian – who believes that there is inadequate evidence for the existence of Jesus. A few writers have gained notoriety for claiming that Jesus never existed, but they lack the credentials of knowledgable historians. For example, the most famous of these writers, G.A. Wells, is a professor of German, and he consistently errs by imposing standards of proof that go far beyond what scholars of ancient history would use.
I never said that Plutarch was the only source, merely the most complete. And I admitted that his version is likely a compilation of earlier sources. You are forgetting that 2000 years ago we didn’t have *USA Today *and Headline News. So, sorry, it does make sense. Our best evidence of the life of Alexander occurs 400 years after his death.
And from what I’ve read, 40 years is actually a fairly generous number. But my (small) point remains: in the context of the times, the word got into print remarkably quickly. So if you’re going to use that fact as an argument that Jesus was a public relations stunt–as the film suggests–well, perhaps we should investigate Aristotle as well.
I take offense with your assertion that the best evidence of the life of Alexander occurs 400 years after his death. Most famous, yes. But I fail to see how you consider it ‘best’. That is sloppy scholarship.
My point: 40 years after His death, we get a fairly complete account of the life of Christ. More followed, John’s Gospel almost 70 years later. Sounds like a long time—the movie makes this it’s first provocative point. This, in the context of the times, is not significant when you consider that the first complete account of Alexander’s life appears 400 years after his death. It’s an example. Nothing more.
The question the OP is asking is an opinion of a particular argument and I believe one of the mail tenets of that argument sounds damning until you place it in context. I tried to do that.
If you want to define when Alexander’s life was completely documented, please do so. If you want to add to the actual discussion, please do so. But first refute the fact that 40 years was darned quick.
And just by the way, you take offense easily. Please feel free to clean up my sloppy scholarship. Livy?
It sure does… to laypeople who are used to modern technology and literacy levels. Things were way different back then. That’s why you’d be hardpressed to find any reputable professional historians – even skeptical ones – who think that this constitutes insufficient evidence for the existence of Jesus.
Not to mention that 40 years is on the liberal side of these estimates. Not to mention that we do have accounts that mention or allude to Jesus and that are dated much earlier than the gospels. Not to mention that we have reason to believe that the gospel accounts drew on earlier sources. And so forth. Even if we declare that these accounts are not entirely reliable, it would be a bit much to say that their writers invented this personage out of thin air – especially since there are no hostile accounts that say, “You liars! This Jesus of whom you speak never existed!”
That’s why these other discussion are not off-topic. They’re relevant to the question of how professional historians and other knowledgeable scholars would evaluate the historical evidence at hand. For further information, I offer the same secular source that I’ve recommended in times past: Justifying Historical Descriptions by historian-philosopher C. Behan McCullagh.
I’ve only watched that clip and read the description on Wikipedia, so that’s what I’m going on here. Here’s my commentary.
The Gospels. The movie says that Mark must have been written “later than 70 A.D., probably much later”. Ummm, no. The conventional dating for Mark is right at 70 A.D., meaning that scholars agree that it was probably written by then. Of course, it could have been written early. One archaeologist (name escapes me at the moment) claims to have found a fragment of the Gospel of Mark dating to 49 A.D., though his claim is not widely accepted.
As for the other Gospels, the conventional dates are Matthew and Luke at 80 A.D. and John at 90 A.D. Once again, though, these are really latest possible dates, and it could have been earlier. Dr. Craig Blomberg makes a case for putting Luke in the mid 60’s, based on the fact that Luke and Acts are really intended as one work, with Luke coming first, and Acts ends with Paul still alive. The author presumably would have included Paul’s death if he knew about it, and Paul died in 64. Obviously that’s not a proof, but it’s food for thought.
Lastly, the movie’s claim that the other three Gospels all certainly use Mark as source material would raise a few eyebrows among serious scholars. There is no consensus of any sort on that issue. Blomberg’s book The Historical Reliability of the Gospels explains the various different theories about which texts derived from which others. (Highly recommended book–a bit long and dry, but very thorough.)
Out of curiosity, how much of Christian myth relies on the miracles attributed to Joshua bar-Joseph rather than his more prosaic sermons? A lot of Christians seem to know he allegedly walked on water, but how many are familiar with the details of the Sermon on the Mount?
I’ve gone through at least 10 different commentaries on the Gospels and all the scholars I’ve been exposed to agree that Matthew and Luke use Mark as a source. So that’s 2 gospels out of 3. (Gospel of John is really a different piece of work which doesn’t sync up well with Mark, Matthew, and Luke.)
If we loosen the definition of “consensus” to mean “majority opinion” then I think it is fair to say that most “serious scholars” agree that Matthew/Luke both used Mark as a source.
I also define “serious scholars” as folks from academic institutions (colleges and universities.) It’s certainly possible to include airmchair Bible devotees as “serous scholars” but that’s not what I’m talking about here.
I think that’s the point. You HAVE to loosen the definition of “consensus” in order to make that claim.
Even if Matthew and Luke did use Mark as a source though (and I think that arguments can be made either way), that’s hardly a damning argument against Christ’s existence, especially since Matthew and Luke could not have relied exclusively on Mark for their content.
But your point is incorrect. There are at least five known accounts of Alexander’s life that appeared during or slightly after his lifetime. Further, coins, cities, and various other artifacts exist. Alexander’s corpse itself survived until at least 300 AD.
I do not argue that the 40 year gap makes it impossible for Jesus to have existed. I am pointing out that your argument by comparison is incredibly weak. Further, I should point out that while the artifacts that would be expected for Alexander exist… the artifacts and secondary documentation that would be expected for Jesus do not. Further, the historical confusion within those documents that do exist is troubling, as it is impossible to determine within a ten-plus year span when any event actually occurred. See: the date of the census, which is known, which must have happened after Herod died.
Well, Aristotle mentions him, though obliquely, in this section.
And here.
And here, he mentions the father.
Yes, that’s him talking about himself in the third person.
Admittedly, not all of Aristotle’s works survived, but that’s still a better contemporary reference, eg, a primary source. http://www.lib.washington.edu/uwill/research101/basic03.htm
Plutarch is a well written secondary source. As is Matthew, etc.
I fail to recall any primary sources of information about Jesus.
That is the distinction I am making.
The Gnostic Gospels. One of the speakers in the movie mentions other “ancient accounts” of the life of Jesus which contradict the gospels. Presumably this is the Gnostic gospels, though he only mentions the Gospel of Peter by name. The contradictions between the Gospel of Peter and the canonical gospels supposedly provide evidence that Jesus was strictly mythical.
There’s a straightforward reason why most people aren’t convinced by this. The four canonical gospels are canonical for a reason. They were written within living memory of Jesus. The Gnostic gospels were not. The Gospel of Peter appears to have been written around 190 A.D., a century and a half after the death of Jesus. Hence it was certainly not written by Peter, and there’s no way that the author could have had firsthand experience of the life of Jesus.
I note in passing that the movie glosses over the dating of the Gospel of Peter. It puts considerable emphasis on the gap between the life of Jesus and the appearance of the Gospel of Mark, a gap of not more than 40 years. Yet for some reason, the 150 years before the appearance of the Gospel of Peter isn’t worth mentioning at all.