In a Facebook debate over the past few days with an intelligent interlocutor over my disagreements with the claims of the Jesus Mythicists, I was yet again accused as an "irresponsible and unreasonable (not to mention immoral and questionable)" debater. The attacks were sustained throughout our exchange in a variety of barbs.
Of particular interest to me, once he defined what he meant by this term, was that I was guilty of "special pleading" (in the sense of ignoring counterevidence). At that time, I was accused of laying vague claims against the Christ mythers without offering substantial argument against their claims, betraying the fact that I hadn't read and understood their argument.
Most of our debate was my interlocutor's attempt to justify those claims. I found his overblown rhetoric offensive, so I didn't mind calling him on it. I don't want to devote more attention to an exchange of wits, because that's not a genuine debate. Instead, I want to focus on the issues of the claims themselves.
I'm going to let this blog be the final response to these folks. They simply aren't worth the intellectual energy necessary to debate. That said, here goes.
I want to deal specifically with David Fitzgerald's Nailed, because that's the book that was initially mentioned as part of the conversation. (I could just as easily mention the power-house behind the movement, Richard Carrier's Proving History. I may attempt this later. Then, on second thought, probably not. It's not worth the attention.)
1. Fitzgerald's False Dichotomy
Let me be abundantly obvious: Sure, the material about Jesus is ambiguous. It's uncertain in lots of places. It's open to all sorts of interpretations. And that includes the evidence of his existence. So, sure, it's perfectly valid to ask whether Jesus existed. But just because a question is valid, doesn't mean it's an open-and-shut case. The way Fitzgerald even frames the debate is too stark for my logical tastes. He pits the conflict between "Christian apologists" and those who are critics. As if those are the only two interested parties in the debate. In Fitzgerald's mind, there's the likes of FF Bruce and Josh McDowell (both of whom are very different and make very different claims), and dismisses them as "biblical preachers".
At this point, Fitzgerald is glib and too simplistic. Sure, scholars working in the relevant fields can be devoted Christians (I'm one of them), but that's not all those scholars are. Bart Ehrman, Maurice Casey, Paula Fredriksen, Mark Goodacre and Gerd Ludemann are all non-Christians. Then there's Jewish scholars like Mark Nanos, Alan Segal, Jacob Neusner, Hyam Maccoby and Geza Vermes.
Again, I'm a Christian, but I doubt the way I talk about Jesus is the same way that lots of other church-going, pew-sitting brothers and sisters talk about Jesus.
But in Fitzgerald's book, it's two classes of folks: The biblical preachers and the critics. I doubt EP Saunders (one of my profs from school) or John Dominic Crossan would appreciate that simplicity.
So, from the very first pages, Fitzgerald's set up a false dichotomy. Conservative Christians vs. Intellectual Critics. No middle area. No grey zone. No dealing with the genuine complexities of the research. It's nonsense, of course, because it ignores so much that takes place in the field of Jesus research. Christian, Jewish, agnostic and even atheist scholars who devote their lives and careers in the field. So it's intellectually dishonest of Fitzgerald to paint such a stark picture.
And that's one of the problems of my interlocutor. Sure, I'm a Christian. And, as far as New Testament studies goes, I'm an amateur. But that doesn't make me an "apologist" as Fitzgerald conceives of that.
It's just as easy for someone to conclude that there was a human, Jewish, historical first-century preacher as the point of origin for the later stories of "Jesus Christ". That is, after all, the claims of Crossan and Ehrman, for example (I know Ehrman personally, and he's an agnostic). They're most certainly not on the same page as I am.
2. Fitzgerald's Argument from Silence
Fitzgerald's second myth insists that there are elements in the story of Jesus which should have been noticed by historians of the time and insists that there is no shortage of writers then who should have recorded some mention of them. In his own words:
Sure, it has all the appearance of a solid argument. But it's a fallacy. Here's why. If we did indeed have "scores of writers" from Jesus' time with such an interest in Jesus' region and who wrote about "failed Messiahs" then it would certainly be very strange that we have no contemporary mentions of Jesus. Unfortunately, as I want to demonstrate, that's one of several places where Fitzgerald lets his overblown rhetoric run well ahead of what he can then actually substantiate.
He starts his next sentence: "If the Gospels were true". That's where Fitzgerald gets himself tangled. He keeps saying he's arguing against any Jesus at all, but what he's arguing against a conservative reading of the Gospels. He thinks the only way to read those stories is the way Josh McDowell reads those stories.
I say he gets tripped up here, because the way McDowell reads those stories is a way I -- and so many other serious scholars -- reject!
Thus Fitzgerald goes on to detail things in the Gospels which he argues should have been noticed by writers of the time: The taxing of the whole Roman Empire, the massacre in Bethlehem by Herod the Great, Jesus' ministry generally, his miracles, his entry into Jerusalem, his trial and his execution. For anyone other than a fundamentalist, this argument has zero force. Critical scholars -- including this Christian one -- chuckle at the idea that things like the story of an Empire-wide census or the massacre of the innocents are historical, so arguing they didn't happen counts for nothing much when it comes to arguing against the existence of a historical Jesus. Fitzgerald even seems to think that the fact the "Star of Bethlehem" and the darkness on Jesus' death are unattested and therefore most likely did not happen (which is true) is somehow a blow against the existence of a historical Jesus (which is not).
That said, let me lay out some potential historical explanations to two of the things in his list, in order to illustrate that any serious reader in ancient history knows you have to take these Gospels seriously, even if you don't read them literally.
First, there's the "census" that's mentioned Lk 2.1-3. A contemporary Jewish historian, Josephus mentions in three different locations (Antiquities 17.342-344, 355; Antiquities 18.1-4; and Wars 2.117-118) censuses and taxes that are called for collection under Quinirius. In the passage from Wars, that tax compels someone named "Judas" to revolt. (The revolution itself is mentioned in Acts 5.37, with "Judas the Galilean" named.) Josephus links the origin of the Zealots to the Judas revolt, even though Acts has no mention of the Zealots. Josephus describes the census "in Syria and Judea", even though Luke describes it as an "Empire wide" census; so we could just as easily be dealing with a local census that is an enactment of an empire-wide policy. Josephus mentions no displacement, while Luke has Rome requiring Jews to return to their home-land. Thing is, we know that Rome made concessions to Jewish observants that often resulted in additional taxes. It seems to me that's what we could be dealing with, here. Finally, we know from Josephus that Quinirius's rule began around 6 CE (Ant 18.1), but he has no mention of earlier assignments. Luke seems to imply that Quinirius's rule overlapped (somehow) of Herod (who died around 4 BC, according to Lk 1.5). If we take Lk 3 seriously, Jesus would have been born around 4 BC, so, there are a few historical questions to be asked about Luke's account:
Those are all questions we can't answer with any full historical certainty, but they do leave open the possibility that we're dealing with an historically accurate account in Luke. I'm saying possibility, because that at least leaves the question open.
Additionally, there's the account of the slaughter of the innocents in Matthew's account (Mt 2.16-18). Vermes and Saunders both reject the historicity of the account as literary flourishes in order to depict Jesus as the New Israel. We do, however, know from Josephus (Ant 15) how ruthless Herod could be. There's even notice taken in Josephus that Herod had killed his own sons. Sure, the passage intends to paint Jesus as a "fulfillment" of Old Testament prophecy (though I don't think that means what McDowell thinks that means), but the background just as easily rings historically plausible. Palestine was the hot-bed of political revolt against Roman rule ("Judas the Galilean", remember?), so it wouldn't be unheard of for Herod to be fearful of a challenge to his rule, and seek to end the life of any challenger. As Palestine was the rural areas of the Roman Empire, though, any deaths of children 2 and under would go unnoticed, particularly because we're dealing with smaller populations. The account itself would be an unremarkable account of Herod's rule, with inconsequential numbers of dead babies.
So, at least to me, it's hard to see why any mention of Jesus would be made at all in contemporary sources. He wasn't unique as a Messiah figure in Palestine. He wasn't the first revolutionary to challenge Roman authority. (Maccabean revolt, anyone?) His death wasn't the only crucifixion under Roman rule (Romans rarely kept records of such things, but we do have other accounts, for example, in the Babylonian Talmud). Any claims to his resurrection would be unnoticed, particularly in a culture that believed folks would come back from the dead. (Nero comes immediately to mind.) As a miracle-worker, Jesus wasn't unique, either. (Mithras as petra genetix is one example.)
Any far off Roman or Greek historian has bigger fish to fry. Given that these historians had nearly nothing to say about any wonder-worker or would-be-Jewish-Messiah, I have to ask why Fitzgerald wants to single out Jesus. As far as events like Jesus' entry into Jerusalem or his trial and crucifixion, locally there's no reason to take account of them, either. As far as the whole Roman Empire goes, we're dealing with back-water Jewish inter-politics. Inconsequential stuff.
But, again, Fitzgerald wants to say that "scores of writers" had such burning desires about this region and the claims of Jewish Messiahs. He even claims that these writers dealt in the minutia of these various would-be-Messiahs, but make no mention of Jesus. Which he then uses as evidence that there was no Jesus.
Strange, it seems to me, that we have just one writer who deals with these would-be-Messiahs and their failures, and that's Josephus. So surely we have to take Josephus seriously when it comes to talking about Messiahs. What exactly, then, does Josephus claim about these guys?
First, there's a bandit-rebel who declared himself a Jewish king called Athronges. He not only gathered enough armed followers to tackle Roman troops but for a while he was able to inflict military defeats on them, until he was defeated about 4 BC. Or, there's an unnamed Samaritan prophet led a "great multitude"to the holy mountain of Gerizim, promising them a mystical revelation, around 36 AD. He and his followers were so numerous they had to be attacked by the Romans and dispersed using units of both infantry and cavalry. Or, about ten years later a prophet called Theudas led "a great part of the people" into the desert, promising to miraculously part the River Jordan and had to be dealt with by Roman cavalry in the same way. And, then again, another unnamed Jewish prophet, this one from Egypt, led an estimated (though unlikely) "30,000 men" to Jerusalem, telling them its walls would miraculously fall so he could lead them into the city. Again, Roman troops had to be called out to deal with them, leaving hundreds dead and causing the prophet to run away.
Those are "lesser exploits" to the Gospels' claims about Jesus? Even if we take their accounts at face value, a chanting crowd greeting his entrance to Jerusalem, a trial that no one witnessed and a run-of-the-mill execution are hardly big news compared to mass movements that required the mobilization of troops and pitched battles. Yet how many other historians so much as mention Athronges, the Samaritan, Theudas or the Egyptian? None. Apart from Josephus, no writer so much as gives them a sentence's worth of attention. So somehow Fitzgerald thinks these minor events in the Jesus story should be mentioned when far bigger, more significant events are not. He wildly misrepresents the evidence ("scores of writers") and his attempted argument from silence clearly fails dismally.
So let's turn to whether these writers "should" have given attention to Jesus. Fitzgerald lists eleven who are contemporaries of Jesus. Like many Mythers, he seems to think that the lack of any contemporary reference to Jesus is somehow a particularly telling point, since the few extra-Biblical references to Jesus are in writings dating almost a century after his time. This would come as no surprise to anyone actually familiar with the nature of ancient source material, however.
For example, there's Hannibal. He was one of the greatest and justifiably famous generals of ancient times. Yet, despite his fame then and now, we have precisely one contemporary references to Hannibal. If we have no contemporary mentions of the man who almost destroyed the Roman Republic at the height of its power, the idea that we should expect any for an obscure peasant preacher in the backwoods of Galilee is patently absurd.
(As an aside: When I used this claim against my interlocutor, he called me a liar. He then cited Polybius and Livy. Both of whom were not contemporaries of Hannibal, but wrote much later [in the same way that Paul and Tacitus did about Jesus]. The only contemporary source to mention Hannibal are a few lines from Sosylus' "Deeds of Hannibal" that survive. If we're going to apply a strict historical positivism to Jesus claims, why not enforce those same rigid distinctions against others in the ancient world? Let's not play favorites against Jesus.)
If we have just a few lines about Hannibal, and we take those seriously, why not take seriously what Josephus has to say about the nature of would-be-claimants to Messiah in Palestine? Or, to drive home this point: What about Icenian warrior queen Boudicca or the Germanic warlord Arminius? We have no contemporary literary accounts of them, but we still take them seriously as historical figures.
Fitzgerald devotes a great deal of attention to those writers he thinks "should" have devoted attention to Jesus. But in every case his argument suffers from the same fatal flaw: Given that none of these writers mention any other Jewish preachers, prophets and Messianic claimants, there's absolutely no reason to think they "should" have mentioned Jesus. Athronges, the Sarmatian, Theudas and the Egyptian prophet were actually far more prominent and significant locally than Jesus was -- even according to the most naive, face value fundamentalist's reading of the Gospels. Yet not one of them is mentioned by any of Fitzgerald's list of "should" writers either. Nor are any other comparable Jewish figures of the time -- such as Hillel, Shammai, Choni Ha Ma'agel, John the Baptist or Gamaliel.
Thing is, Fitzgerald claims that these writers do mention other figures like Jesus.
Which cases? He doesn't say. Others messiahs are mentioned? Which ones, by whom, and when? This is where his argument takes a very weak turn, because he doesn't provide that evidence. I'm hard-pressed, in any ancient historical writer, to know of even one case, and yet Fitzgerald here claims that "many cases" are the reality.
Despite his bold rhetoric and claims, it's here that Fitzgerald's argument comes crashing down under its own weight.
3. What about Josephus?
Fitzgerald completely dismisses what Josephus has to say about these matters. And that's his real argument from silence. In fact, it's the case that Fitzgerald stacks his own cards in his argument. Because Josephus mentions Jesus twice!
On to the first reference in Josephus: Antiquities 18.3-4. I'll grant that the textus receptus of this passage appears to have been tampered with. This leads Fitzgerald to dismiss the whole passage out of hand, but I don't think that holds up to historical scrutiny. In 1970, Schlomo Pines of Hebrew University in Jerusalem unearthed a "pre-interpolation" of the passage. What's more, we have an Arabic paraphrase of the tenth century historian Agapius which quotes Josephus' passage, but not in the form we have it today. Both the 1970 and the Agapius text speak of Jesus "as believed by his followers" to have been Messiah and raised from the dead. So, sure, Josephus is reporting early Christian beliefs, but they point to an authenticity of at least part of the passage. What's even more, we have a Syriac version cited by Michael the Syrian which also has the passage saying "he was believed to be the Messiah". So what does Fitzgerald do with this evidence? Nothing. Nada. Talk about "special pleading".
What's worse, not just ignoring inconvenient evidence, Fitzgerald makes a few things up. He talks about how the second-century Christian apologist Origen doesn't mention the Antiquities 17.3.4 reference to Jesus (which is true, but not surprising) and then claims "Origen even quotes from Antiquities of the Jews in order to prove the historical existence of John the Baptist, then adds that Josephus didn't believe in Jesus, and criticizes him for failing to mention Jesus in that book!"
Whoa, there. Sounds good, right? But when you check his sources (namely, Contra Celsum 1.4), you find this:
So Origen doesn't say that Josephus "didn't believe in Jesus". Just that he didn't believe in Jesus as the Messiah. (Which isn't a problem, if you take the Syriac and Arabic evidence above seriously.) And far from criticizing Josephus "for failing to mention Jesus in that book", Origen actually quotes Josephus directly doing exactly that -- the phrase "αδελφος Ιησου του λεγομενου Χριστου" (the brother of that Jesus who was called Messiah") is word-for-word the phrase used by Josephus in his other mention of Jesus, found at Antiquities 20.9.1. And he doesn't refer to and quote Josephus mentioning Jesus just in Contra Celsum 1.4, but he also does so twice more: In Contra Celsum 2.13 and in Commentarium in evangelium Matthaei 10.17. It's hard to say if this nonsense claim of Fitzgerald's is mere incompetence or simply a lie. I'm far more charitable than my interlocutor, so I'll say it's an historical amateur's blunder.
4. Well, what about James?
Fitzgerald loves to harp on the second mention of Jesus in Josephus, because it brings up a sore spot for the Jesus Mythers. Dismissing it as a Christian interpolation doesn't work, because why mention the disposition of the High Priest in 62 AD just to slip in a mention of Jesus? It's here that Fitzgerald goes to great intellectual gymnastics to try to get around this mention of Jesus.
He notes that Josephus tells us the successor of the deposed High Priest was one "Jesus, son of Damneus" and then triumphantly concludes that the "Jesus, who was called Messiah" is not a reference to Jesus of Nazareth at all, but actually a reference to this "Jesus, son of Damneus" instead.
He further thinks "this is the only explanation that makes sense". But does it?
Fitzgerald claims that the words -- "who was called Messiah" -- were tacked on and that the Jesus mentioned as the brother of the executed James was this "Jesus, son of Damneus". But this doesn't explain why Josephus would identify one son (James) by reference to his brother and the other (Jesus) by reference to their father. Josephus does this nowhere else in his works. It also doesn't explain why when he does say "Jesus, son of Damneus" was made High Priest, he doesn't mention that this was the unidentified "Jesus" mentioned earlier and that the executed James was his brother, since that relevant detail would be worth noting.
But the big question I have for Fitzgerald: Why? Why make the "tack on"? The motive behind the clumsy interpolations in Antiquities 17.3.4 is clear: The idea that Jesus was the Messiah and that he rose from the dead was disputed by non-Christians, especially by Jews, so to have the Jewish historian Josephus apparently attest to these Christian claims turned this passage that simply mentions Jesus into a powerful rhetorical tool in defense of these Christian claims. But simply adding "who was called Messiah" to this other text supports no Christian claim at all. If anyone prior to the 19th century was arguing Jesus didn't exist, then it would make sense that such an interpolation might be needed, but that's a purely modern phenomenon. So Fitzgerald's contrived argument is not only clumsy, it is also supposing something for which there was no motive at all. Then, yet again, there is the fact that Origen quotes this passage three separate times with the "who was called Messiah" element in it. This was in the mid-third century and long before Christians were in any position to be "tacking on" anything to copies of Josephus.
"Jesus" was a common name in Josephus' day. So he was merely trying to distinguish between well-known individuals in the Jewish community of his day.
The rest of Fitzgerald's book betrays a real misunderstanding of the way in which the Gospels were composed and read in the Christian communities. There's this humorous passage that stands out:
The Greek word for "church" there (ἐκκλησίαν) actually means "assembly or gathering". So I doubt this would have been as difficult for Peter to understand as does Fitzgerald. In fact, it could just as easily be an understanding of a new Synagogue in Jewish terms. His comment betrays a simple fundamentalist reading of the text.
And that's the big issue I have with his account in the latter part of the book. He's simply too naive with the Gospels.
Then there's this claim:
The claim itself is far from relevant to his overall thesis. Sure, the faithful have lots to answer for when it comes to the cult of relics, but that's a far cry from demonstrating that an historical figure named Jesus never existed. There's little archaeological evidence for most folks to have existed. Particularly if they're poor and live in the hinter-land of an Empire. For Fitzgerald to think this gives us any indication about the historical nature of Jesus demonstrates his own intellectual naivete, comparable to the Shroud of Turin crowd.
5. So What about Paul?
As my interlocutor understands the counter-evidence I allegedly ignored -- as is true of Fitzgerald -- Paul never cited "a single event from the 'still breathing' life of Jesus". This represents a claim made by Fitzgerald himself:
This is, of course, factually nonsense. While Paul's main focus in his letters is answering questions on issues about his preaching of Jesus as a risen Messiah, he actually does talk about Jesus' earthly life and career at many points. He says he was born as a human, of a human mother and born a Jew (Gal 4.4). (Paul therefore seems very aware of the Mary traditions contained in Luke, that focus on Jesus having an earthly mother, but a father whose paternity is suspect [Lk 1].) He repeats that he had a "human nature" and that he was a human descendant of King David (Rom 1.3 -- both claims that hint at familiarity with the Matthean birth narratives of Jesus). Contrary to Fitzgerald's claim, Paul refers to teachings Jesus made during his earthly ministry on divorce (1 Cor 7.10), on preachers (1 Cor 9.14) and on the coming apocalypse (1 Thess 4.15). He mentions how he was executed by earthly rulers (1 Cor 2.8) and that he died and was buried (1 Cor 15.3-4). And he says he had a earthly, physical brother called James who Paul himself had met (Gal 1.19). Of course, the Jesus Mythers have explanations for those citations that amount to "stacking the deck" (again, a charge interestingly leveled at me). Fitzgerald makes a great deal out of the fact that a lot of the Gospels' details are not found in Paul. This is partly because of Paul's theological focus on the risen Jesus, partly because of the incidental nature of the letters he was writing and the concerns they were addressing, and partly because some of those Gospel elements (for example, again, the various infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke) almost certainly developed from a shared memory of the earliest followers of Jesus in Palestine. But to pretend that Paul did not believe in an earthly Jesus at all requires some contorted hoop jumping of a most dubious and unconvincing nature.
Naturally, Fitzgerald wants to believe -- as does Carrier -- that Jesus was just a mythical, mystical person. It's their conclusion, after all. But you have to strain at the actual texts of the New Testament -- and of ancient texts in general -- to reach that conclusion.
Particularly, to pretend that Paul didn't believe in an earthly Jesus is to deny the evidence even within Paul himself.
Then there's the beloved connection of Jesus to James, his brother, that's mentioned by Paul in Galatians 1. As my interlocutor put it:
There's a consistent tradition that Jesus had a brother named James and that this James became a leader of the Christian Jewish community at Jerusalem. Even Josephus mentioned as much. So we have a confluence of evidence, both Christian and non-Christian, that Jesus had a brother called James who was a leader in Jerusalem and here we have Paul mentioning, in passing, meeting this very same James. This poses a thorny problem for the Mythers. And it's one they like to get around in interesting ways.
They'll usually say that James wasn't Jesus' literal brother or that there was a sub-group of Christians called "the brothers of Jesus" (we have absolutely no evidence for this -- literary or otherwise). Fitzgerald himself, though, wants to claim this is an interpolation:
He goes on to offer this support: "[J]ust a few verses later (Paul) disdainfully dismiss(es) James as though he was a nobody (Gal. 2:6)". So is that what Paul does in 2.6? Paul does describe "those who were held in high esteem" (that is, the Jerusalem assembly generally) and says "they added nothing to my message". But he goes on to note: "On the contrary, they recognized that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised". He then talks about how this mission to the Gentiles was given to him by "James, Cephas (Peter) and John, those esteemed as pillars" and holds this up as a ringing endorsement of his authority. How Fitzgerald reads that as disdainfully dismissing James "as though he was a nobody" is beyond me. And how he could use this to posit an interpolation simply as a way of getting rid of an inconvenient piece of evidence and prop up his thesis even more so.
When it comes to whether, as my interlocutor claimed against me, that Paul never dealt with a single "still breathing" event of Jesus, I've already dealt with that above. What I do want to point out, however, is that there's a rich connection between James and Paul at this point. If it's true that, as Paul claimed, "they [including James!] recognized that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised", there's at least an historical possibility that Paul had intimate first-hand involvement with close members of Jesus' first, intimate following, including his family.
(This is borne out by the discovery of the James Ossuary, though it's still disputed as a genuine archaeological artifact. I think, ultimately, the historical evidence comes down in favor of the object.)
I was accused, by my interlocutor, of "crass supposition". That seems, at least to me, to be exactly what Fitzgerald is up to in the last four chapters of his book. It's a weak argument, at best.
I began this Facebook debate with this person by saying I was unconvinced by Fitzgerald's arguments. And I've attempted to lay out here, finally, why that's the case.
So why waste so much time and attention dismantling this book? Again, because I was accused of concocting my own facts. I was accused of irresponsible historical enquiry. I was accused of exercising "noxious" logical fallacies in support of my argument. I was accused of "fallacious pseudo-arguments". According to my interlocutor, I couldn't (or wouldn't) offer specifics concerning the arguments of Jesus Mythers. In that way, I'm dishonest, irresponsible and unreasonable.
In short, I'm a "concern troll". Well, I wasn't the one to introduce Fitzgerald's book into an already-present discussion. I wasn't the concern troll in that conversation. Instead, I became the straw man, the recipient of a lot of projection.
So, I want to establish here and now: I'll have no more of it. This is the last I'll spill any ink on the subject. If you want me to go on record about the Jesus Myth, fine -- here it is. And with that, dear interlocutor, please refrain from attacking me simply because there's a weakness in your own argument.
I also want to go on record to say that I'll comment on no items on Facebook without invitation from that page's owner. I've grown tired of these sorts of intellectual attacks. They're a further sign of the demise of our intellectual ability to sustain difference and genuine debate.
Of particular interest to me, once he defined what he meant by this term, was that I was guilty of "special pleading" (in the sense of ignoring counterevidence). At that time, I was accused of laying vague claims against the Christ mythers without offering substantial argument against their claims, betraying the fact that I hadn't read and understood their argument.
Most of our debate was my interlocutor's attempt to justify those claims. I found his overblown rhetoric offensive, so I didn't mind calling him on it. I don't want to devote more attention to an exchange of wits, because that's not a genuine debate. Instead, I want to focus on the issues of the claims themselves.
I'm going to let this blog be the final response to these folks. They simply aren't worth the intellectual energy necessary to debate. That said, here goes.
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| Popular Mechanic's computer generation of the possible image of Jesus from 2002 |
I want to deal specifically with David Fitzgerald's Nailed, because that's the book that was initially mentioned as part of the conversation. (I could just as easily mention the power-house behind the movement, Richard Carrier's Proving History. I may attempt this later. Then, on second thought, probably not. It's not worth the attention.)
1. Fitzgerald's False Dichotomy
Let me be abundantly obvious: Sure, the material about Jesus is ambiguous. It's uncertain in lots of places. It's open to all sorts of interpretations. And that includes the evidence of his existence. So, sure, it's perfectly valid to ask whether Jesus existed. But just because a question is valid, doesn't mean it's an open-and-shut case. The way Fitzgerald even frames the debate is too stark for my logical tastes. He pits the conflict between "Christian apologists" and those who are critics. As if those are the only two interested parties in the debate. In Fitzgerald's mind, there's the likes of FF Bruce and Josh McDowell (both of whom are very different and make very different claims), and dismisses them as "biblical preachers".
At this point, Fitzgerald is glib and too simplistic. Sure, scholars working in the relevant fields can be devoted Christians (I'm one of them), but that's not all those scholars are. Bart Ehrman, Maurice Casey, Paula Fredriksen, Mark Goodacre and Gerd Ludemann are all non-Christians. Then there's Jewish scholars like Mark Nanos, Alan Segal, Jacob Neusner, Hyam Maccoby and Geza Vermes.
Again, I'm a Christian, but I doubt the way I talk about Jesus is the same way that lots of other church-going, pew-sitting brothers and sisters talk about Jesus.
But in Fitzgerald's book, it's two classes of folks: The biblical preachers and the critics. I doubt EP Saunders (one of my profs from school) or John Dominic Crossan would appreciate that simplicity.
So, from the very first pages, Fitzgerald's set up a false dichotomy. Conservative Christians vs. Intellectual Critics. No middle area. No grey zone. No dealing with the genuine complexities of the research. It's nonsense, of course, because it ignores so much that takes place in the field of Jesus research. Christian, Jewish, agnostic and even atheist scholars who devote their lives and careers in the field. So it's intellectually dishonest of Fitzgerald to paint such a stark picture.
And that's one of the problems of my interlocutor. Sure, I'm a Christian. And, as far as New Testament studies goes, I'm an amateur. But that doesn't make me an "apologist" as Fitzgerald conceives of that.
It's just as easy for someone to conclude that there was a human, Jewish, historical first-century preacher as the point of origin for the later stories of "Jesus Christ". That is, after all, the claims of Crossan and Ehrman, for example (I know Ehrman personally, and he's an agnostic). They're most certainly not on the same page as I am.
2. Fitzgerald's Argument from Silence
Fitzgerald's second myth insists that there are elements in the story of Jesus which should have been noticed by historians of the time and insists that there is no shortage of writers then who should have recorded some mention of them. In his own words:
There were plenty writers, both Roman and Jewish, who had great interest in and much to say about (Jesus') region and its happenings .... We still have many of their writings today: volumes and volumes from scores of writers detailing humdrum events and lesser exploits of much more mundane figures in Roman Palestine, including several failed Messiahs.
Sure, it has all the appearance of a solid argument. But it's a fallacy. Here's why. If we did indeed have "scores of writers" from Jesus' time with such an interest in Jesus' region and who wrote about "failed Messiahs" then it would certainly be very strange that we have no contemporary mentions of Jesus. Unfortunately, as I want to demonstrate, that's one of several places where Fitzgerald lets his overblown rhetoric run well ahead of what he can then actually substantiate.
He starts his next sentence: "If the Gospels were true". That's where Fitzgerald gets himself tangled. He keeps saying he's arguing against any Jesus at all, but what he's arguing against a conservative reading of the Gospels. He thinks the only way to read those stories is the way Josh McDowell reads those stories.
I say he gets tripped up here, because the way McDowell reads those stories is a way I -- and so many other serious scholars -- reject!
Thus Fitzgerald goes on to detail things in the Gospels which he argues should have been noticed by writers of the time: The taxing of the whole Roman Empire, the massacre in Bethlehem by Herod the Great, Jesus' ministry generally, his miracles, his entry into Jerusalem, his trial and his execution. For anyone other than a fundamentalist, this argument has zero force. Critical scholars -- including this Christian one -- chuckle at the idea that things like the story of an Empire-wide census or the massacre of the innocents are historical, so arguing they didn't happen counts for nothing much when it comes to arguing against the existence of a historical Jesus. Fitzgerald even seems to think that the fact the "Star of Bethlehem" and the darkness on Jesus' death are unattested and therefore most likely did not happen (which is true) is somehow a blow against the existence of a historical Jesus (which is not).
That said, let me lay out some potential historical explanations to two of the things in his list, in order to illustrate that any serious reader in ancient history knows you have to take these Gospels seriously, even if you don't read them literally.
First, there's the "census" that's mentioned Lk 2.1-3. A contemporary Jewish historian, Josephus mentions in three different locations (Antiquities 17.342-344, 355; Antiquities 18.1-4; and Wars 2.117-118) censuses and taxes that are called for collection under Quinirius. In the passage from Wars, that tax compels someone named "Judas" to revolt. (The revolution itself is mentioned in Acts 5.37, with "Judas the Galilean" named.) Josephus links the origin of the Zealots to the Judas revolt, even though Acts has no mention of the Zealots. Josephus describes the census "in Syria and Judea", even though Luke describes it as an "Empire wide" census; so we could just as easily be dealing with a local census that is an enactment of an empire-wide policy. Josephus mentions no displacement, while Luke has Rome requiring Jews to return to their home-land. Thing is, we know that Rome made concessions to Jewish observants that often resulted in additional taxes. It seems to me that's what we could be dealing with, here. Finally, we know from Josephus that Quinirius's rule began around 6 CE (Ant 18.1), but he has no mention of earlier assignments. Luke seems to imply that Quinirius's rule overlapped (somehow) of Herod (who died around 4 BC, according to Lk 1.5). If we take Lk 3 seriously, Jesus would have been born around 4 BC, so, there are a few historical questions to be asked about Luke's account:
- Was the census mentioned in Luke the first (in Greek: protos) during the reign of Quinirius?
- Did the census happen before Quinirius became governor?
- Was there a broad census policy that came into play locally under Quinirius?
Those are all questions we can't answer with any full historical certainty, but they do leave open the possibility that we're dealing with an historically accurate account in Luke. I'm saying possibility, because that at least leaves the question open.
Additionally, there's the account of the slaughter of the innocents in Matthew's account (Mt 2.16-18). Vermes and Saunders both reject the historicity of the account as literary flourishes in order to depict Jesus as the New Israel. We do, however, know from Josephus (Ant 15) how ruthless Herod could be. There's even notice taken in Josephus that Herod had killed his own sons. Sure, the passage intends to paint Jesus as a "fulfillment" of Old Testament prophecy (though I don't think that means what McDowell thinks that means), but the background just as easily rings historically plausible. Palestine was the hot-bed of political revolt against Roman rule ("Judas the Galilean", remember?), so it wouldn't be unheard of for Herod to be fearful of a challenge to his rule, and seek to end the life of any challenger. As Palestine was the rural areas of the Roman Empire, though, any deaths of children 2 and under would go unnoticed, particularly because we're dealing with smaller populations. The account itself would be an unremarkable account of Herod's rule, with inconsequential numbers of dead babies.
So, at least to me, it's hard to see why any mention of Jesus would be made at all in contemporary sources. He wasn't unique as a Messiah figure in Palestine. He wasn't the first revolutionary to challenge Roman authority. (Maccabean revolt, anyone?) His death wasn't the only crucifixion under Roman rule (Romans rarely kept records of such things, but we do have other accounts, for example, in the Babylonian Talmud). Any claims to his resurrection would be unnoticed, particularly in a culture that believed folks would come back from the dead. (Nero comes immediately to mind.) As a miracle-worker, Jesus wasn't unique, either. (Mithras as petra genetix is one example.)
Any far off Roman or Greek historian has bigger fish to fry. Given that these historians had nearly nothing to say about any wonder-worker or would-be-Jewish-Messiah, I have to ask why Fitzgerald wants to single out Jesus. As far as events like Jesus' entry into Jerusalem or his trial and crucifixion, locally there's no reason to take account of them, either. As far as the whole Roman Empire goes, we're dealing with back-water Jewish inter-politics. Inconsequential stuff.
But, again, Fitzgerald wants to say that "scores of writers" had such burning desires about this region and the claims of Jewish Messiahs. He even claims that these writers dealt in the minutia of these various would-be-Messiahs, but make no mention of Jesus. Which he then uses as evidence that there was no Jesus.
Strange, it seems to me, that we have just one writer who deals with these would-be-Messiahs and their failures, and that's Josephus. So surely we have to take Josephus seriously when it comes to talking about Messiahs. What exactly, then, does Josephus claim about these guys?
First, there's a bandit-rebel who declared himself a Jewish king called Athronges. He not only gathered enough armed followers to tackle Roman troops but for a while he was able to inflict military defeats on them, until he was defeated about 4 BC. Or, there's an unnamed Samaritan prophet led a "great multitude"to the holy mountain of Gerizim, promising them a mystical revelation, around 36 AD. He and his followers were so numerous they had to be attacked by the Romans and dispersed using units of both infantry and cavalry. Or, about ten years later a prophet called Theudas led "a great part of the people" into the desert, promising to miraculously part the River Jordan and had to be dealt with by Roman cavalry in the same way. And, then again, another unnamed Jewish prophet, this one from Egypt, led an estimated (though unlikely) "30,000 men" to Jerusalem, telling them its walls would miraculously fall so he could lead them into the city. Again, Roman troops had to be called out to deal with them, leaving hundreds dead and causing the prophet to run away.
Those are "lesser exploits" to the Gospels' claims about Jesus? Even if we take their accounts at face value, a chanting crowd greeting his entrance to Jerusalem, a trial that no one witnessed and a run-of-the-mill execution are hardly big news compared to mass movements that required the mobilization of troops and pitched battles. Yet how many other historians so much as mention Athronges, the Samaritan, Theudas or the Egyptian? None. Apart from Josephus, no writer so much as gives them a sentence's worth of attention. So somehow Fitzgerald thinks these minor events in the Jesus story should be mentioned when far bigger, more significant events are not. He wildly misrepresents the evidence ("scores of writers") and his attempted argument from silence clearly fails dismally.
So let's turn to whether these writers "should" have given attention to Jesus. Fitzgerald lists eleven who are contemporaries of Jesus. Like many Mythers, he seems to think that the lack of any contemporary reference to Jesus is somehow a particularly telling point, since the few extra-Biblical references to Jesus are in writings dating almost a century after his time. This would come as no surprise to anyone actually familiar with the nature of ancient source material, however.
For example, there's Hannibal. He was one of the greatest and justifiably famous generals of ancient times. Yet, despite his fame then and now, we have precisely one contemporary references to Hannibal. If we have no contemporary mentions of the man who almost destroyed the Roman Republic at the height of its power, the idea that we should expect any for an obscure peasant preacher in the backwoods of Galilee is patently absurd.
(As an aside: When I used this claim against my interlocutor, he called me a liar. He then cited Polybius and Livy. Both of whom were not contemporaries of Hannibal, but wrote much later [in the same way that Paul and Tacitus did about Jesus]. The only contemporary source to mention Hannibal are a few lines from Sosylus' "Deeds of Hannibal" that survive. If we're going to apply a strict historical positivism to Jesus claims, why not enforce those same rigid distinctions against others in the ancient world? Let's not play favorites against Jesus.)
If we have just a few lines about Hannibal, and we take those seriously, why not take seriously what Josephus has to say about the nature of would-be-claimants to Messiah in Palestine? Or, to drive home this point: What about Icenian warrior queen Boudicca or the Germanic warlord Arminius? We have no contemporary literary accounts of them, but we still take them seriously as historical figures.
Fitzgerald devotes a great deal of attention to those writers he thinks "should" have devoted attention to Jesus. But in every case his argument suffers from the same fatal flaw: Given that none of these writers mention any other Jewish preachers, prophets and Messianic claimants, there's absolutely no reason to think they "should" have mentioned Jesus. Athronges, the Sarmatian, Theudas and the Egyptian prophet were actually far more prominent and significant locally than Jesus was -- even according to the most naive, face value fundamentalist's reading of the Gospels. Yet not one of them is mentioned by any of Fitzgerald's list of "should" writers either. Nor are any other comparable Jewish figures of the time -- such as Hillel, Shammai, Choni Ha Ma'agel, John the Baptist or Gamaliel.
Thing is, Fitzgerald claims that these writers do mention other figures like Jesus.
In many cases, these same writers have much to say about other much less interesting messiahs -- but not Jesus.
Which cases? He doesn't say. Others messiahs are mentioned? Which ones, by whom, and when? This is where his argument takes a very weak turn, because he doesn't provide that evidence. I'm hard-pressed, in any ancient historical writer, to know of even one case, and yet Fitzgerald here claims that "many cases" are the reality.
Despite his bold rhetoric and claims, it's here that Fitzgerald's argument comes crashing down under its own weight.
3. What about Josephus?
Fitzgerald completely dismisses what Josephus has to say about these matters. And that's his real argument from silence. In fact, it's the case that Fitzgerald stacks his own cards in his argument. Because Josephus mentions Jesus twice!
On to the first reference in Josephus: Antiquities 18.3-4. I'll grant that the textus receptus of this passage appears to have been tampered with. This leads Fitzgerald to dismiss the whole passage out of hand, but I don't think that holds up to historical scrutiny. In 1970, Schlomo Pines of Hebrew University in Jerusalem unearthed a "pre-interpolation" of the passage. What's more, we have an Arabic paraphrase of the tenth century historian Agapius which quotes Josephus' passage, but not in the form we have it today. Both the 1970 and the Agapius text speak of Jesus "as believed by his followers" to have been Messiah and raised from the dead. So, sure, Josephus is reporting early Christian beliefs, but they point to an authenticity of at least part of the passage. What's even more, we have a Syriac version cited by Michael the Syrian which also has the passage saying "he was believed to be the Messiah". So what does Fitzgerald do with this evidence? Nothing. Nada. Talk about "special pleading".
What's worse, not just ignoring inconvenient evidence, Fitzgerald makes a few things up. He talks about how the second-century Christian apologist Origen doesn't mention the Antiquities 17.3.4 reference to Jesus (which is true, but not surprising) and then claims "Origen even quotes from Antiquities of the Jews in order to prove the historical existence of John the Baptist, then adds that Josephus didn't believe in Jesus, and criticizes him for failing to mention Jesus in that book!"
Whoa, there. Sounds good, right? But when you check his sources (namely, Contra Celsum 1.4), you find this:
Now this writer [Josephus], although not believing in Jesus as the Messiah, in seeking after the cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, whereas he ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities befalling the people, since they put to death Christ, who was a prophet, says nevertheless -- being, although against his will, not far from the truth -- that these disasters happened to the Jews as a punishment for the death of James the Just, who was "the brother of that Jesus who was called Messiah", -- the Jews having put him to death, although he was a man most distinguished for his justice.
So Origen doesn't say that Josephus "didn't believe in Jesus". Just that he didn't believe in Jesus as the Messiah. (Which isn't a problem, if you take the Syriac and Arabic evidence above seriously.) And far from criticizing Josephus "for failing to mention Jesus in that book", Origen actually quotes Josephus directly doing exactly that -- the phrase "αδελφος Ιησου του λεγομενου Χριστου" (the brother of that Jesus who was called Messiah") is word-for-word the phrase used by Josephus in his other mention of Jesus, found at Antiquities 20.9.1. And he doesn't refer to and quote Josephus mentioning Jesus just in Contra Celsum 1.4, but he also does so twice more: In Contra Celsum 2.13 and in Commentarium in evangelium Matthaei 10.17. It's hard to say if this nonsense claim of Fitzgerald's is mere incompetence or simply a lie. I'm far more charitable than my interlocutor, so I'll say it's an historical amateur's blunder.
4. Well, what about James?
Fitzgerald loves to harp on the second mention of Jesus in Josephus, because it brings up a sore spot for the Jesus Mythers. Dismissing it as a Christian interpolation doesn't work, because why mention the disposition of the High Priest in 62 AD just to slip in a mention of Jesus? It's here that Fitzgerald goes to great intellectual gymnastics to try to get around this mention of Jesus.
He notes that Josephus tells us the successor of the deposed High Priest was one "Jesus, son of Damneus" and then triumphantly concludes that the "Jesus, who was called Messiah" is not a reference to Jesus of Nazareth at all, but actually a reference to this "Jesus, son of Damneus" instead.
He further thinks "this is the only explanation that makes sense". But does it?
Fitzgerald claims that the words -- "who was called Messiah" -- were tacked on and that the Jesus mentioned as the brother of the executed James was this "Jesus, son of Damneus". But this doesn't explain why Josephus would identify one son (James) by reference to his brother and the other (Jesus) by reference to their father. Josephus does this nowhere else in his works. It also doesn't explain why when he does say "Jesus, son of Damneus" was made High Priest, he doesn't mention that this was the unidentified "Jesus" mentioned earlier and that the executed James was his brother, since that relevant detail would be worth noting.
But the big question I have for Fitzgerald: Why? Why make the "tack on"? The motive behind the clumsy interpolations in Antiquities 17.3.4 is clear: The idea that Jesus was the Messiah and that he rose from the dead was disputed by non-Christians, especially by Jews, so to have the Jewish historian Josephus apparently attest to these Christian claims turned this passage that simply mentions Jesus into a powerful rhetorical tool in defense of these Christian claims. But simply adding "who was called Messiah" to this other text supports no Christian claim at all. If anyone prior to the 19th century was arguing Jesus didn't exist, then it would make sense that such an interpolation might be needed, but that's a purely modern phenomenon. So Fitzgerald's contrived argument is not only clumsy, it is also supposing something for which there was no motive at all. Then, yet again, there is the fact that Origen quotes this passage three separate times with the "who was called Messiah" element in it. This was in the mid-third century and long before Christians were in any position to be "tacking on" anything to copies of Josephus.
"Jesus" was a common name in Josephus' day. So he was merely trying to distinguish between well-known individuals in the Jewish community of his day.
The rest of Fitzgerald's book betrays a real misunderstanding of the way in which the Gospels were composed and read in the Christian communities. There's this humorous passage that stands out:
Matthew has Jesus making a pun where he tells Peter "upon this rock I will build my church" (Matt. 16:18). Though if this had happened in reality, Peter would have scratched his head and asked, "Say Jesus -- what's a church?" since churches hadn't been invented yet, and wouldn't be developed until many decades later.
The Greek word for "church" there (ἐκκλησίαν) actually means "assembly or gathering". So I doubt this would have been as difficult for Peter to understand as does Fitzgerald. In fact, it could just as easily be an understanding of a new Synagogue in Jewish terms. His comment betrays a simple fundamentalist reading of the text.
And that's the big issue I have with his account in the latter part of the book. He's simply too naive with the Gospels.
Then there's this claim:
At the risk of being redundant, we should remember that there has never been a trace of physical archaeological evidence for Jesus, despite centuries of infamous hoaxes such as the Shroud of Turin.
The claim itself is far from relevant to his overall thesis. Sure, the faithful have lots to answer for when it comes to the cult of relics, but that's a far cry from demonstrating that an historical figure named Jesus never existed. There's little archaeological evidence for most folks to have existed. Particularly if they're poor and live in the hinter-land of an Empire. For Fitzgerald to think this gives us any indication about the historical nature of Jesus demonstrates his own intellectual naivete, comparable to the Shroud of Turin crowd.
5. So What about Paul?
As my interlocutor understands the counter-evidence I allegedly ignored -- as is true of Fitzgerald -- Paul never cited "a single event from the 'still breathing' life of Jesus". This represents a claim made by Fitzgerald himself:
Paul never talks about Jesus' death as though it actually happened to a real man from Galilee who lived on earth a few years before. Nor does hie give any details about the events of Jesus' life: not the places he travelled, not the miracles he performed, not the parables he told, not even the teachings or instructions he gave. ... Paul never says anything about Jesus being an earthly teacher at all.
This is, of course, factually nonsense. While Paul's main focus in his letters is answering questions on issues about his preaching of Jesus as a risen Messiah, he actually does talk about Jesus' earthly life and career at many points. He says he was born as a human, of a human mother and born a Jew (Gal 4.4). (Paul therefore seems very aware of the Mary traditions contained in Luke, that focus on Jesus having an earthly mother, but a father whose paternity is suspect [Lk 1].) He repeats that he had a "human nature" and that he was a human descendant of King David (Rom 1.3 -- both claims that hint at familiarity with the Matthean birth narratives of Jesus). Contrary to Fitzgerald's claim, Paul refers to teachings Jesus made during his earthly ministry on divorce (1 Cor 7.10), on preachers (1 Cor 9.14) and on the coming apocalypse (1 Thess 4.15). He mentions how he was executed by earthly rulers (1 Cor 2.8) and that he died and was buried (1 Cor 15.3-4). And he says he had a earthly, physical brother called James who Paul himself had met (Gal 1.19). Of course, the Jesus Mythers have explanations for those citations that amount to "stacking the deck" (again, a charge interestingly leveled at me). Fitzgerald makes a great deal out of the fact that a lot of the Gospels' details are not found in Paul. This is partly because of Paul's theological focus on the risen Jesus, partly because of the incidental nature of the letters he was writing and the concerns they were addressing, and partly because some of those Gospel elements (for example, again, the various infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke) almost certainly developed from a shared memory of the earliest followers of Jesus in Palestine. But to pretend that Paul did not believe in an earthly Jesus at all requires some contorted hoop jumping of a most dubious and unconvincing nature.
Naturally, Fitzgerald wants to believe -- as does Carrier -- that Jesus was just a mythical, mystical person. It's their conclusion, after all. But you have to strain at the actual texts of the New Testament -- and of ancient texts in general -- to reach that conclusion.
Particularly, to pretend that Paul didn't believe in an earthly Jesus is to deny the evidence even within Paul himself.
Then there's the beloved connection of Jesus to James, his brother, that's mentioned by Paul in Galatians 1. As my interlocutor put it:
If Paul knew the actual *brother* of Jesus--as apologists have always claimed--then why doesn't Paul cite a single event from the "still breathing" life of Jesus?
There's a consistent tradition that Jesus had a brother named James and that this James became a leader of the Christian Jewish community at Jerusalem. Even Josephus mentioned as much. So we have a confluence of evidence, both Christian and non-Christian, that Jesus had a brother called James who was a leader in Jerusalem and here we have Paul mentioning, in passing, meeting this very same James. This poses a thorny problem for the Mythers. And it's one they like to get around in interesting ways.
They'll usually say that James wasn't Jesus' literal brother or that there was a sub-group of Christians called "the brothers of Jesus" (we have absolutely no evidence for this -- literary or otherwise). Fitzgerald himself, though, wants to claim this is an interpolation:
Though Christians seize on the one and only verse (Gal. 1:19) that has Paul refer to James in passing as "the Brother of the Lord" it seems more likely that this was a marginal note inserted by a later scribe, whether by accident or deliberately.
He goes on to offer this support: "[J]ust a few verses later (Paul) disdainfully dismiss(es) James as though he was a nobody (Gal. 2:6)". So is that what Paul does in 2.6? Paul does describe "those who were held in high esteem" (that is, the Jerusalem assembly generally) and says "they added nothing to my message". But he goes on to note: "On the contrary, they recognized that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised". He then talks about how this mission to the Gentiles was given to him by "James, Cephas (Peter) and John, those esteemed as pillars" and holds this up as a ringing endorsement of his authority. How Fitzgerald reads that as disdainfully dismissing James "as though he was a nobody" is beyond me. And how he could use this to posit an interpolation simply as a way of getting rid of an inconvenient piece of evidence and prop up his thesis even more so.
When it comes to whether, as my interlocutor claimed against me, that Paul never dealt with a single "still breathing" event of Jesus, I've already dealt with that above. What I do want to point out, however, is that there's a rich connection between James and Paul at this point. If it's true that, as Paul claimed, "they [including James!] recognized that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised", there's at least an historical possibility that Paul had intimate first-hand involvement with close members of Jesus' first, intimate following, including his family.
(This is borne out by the discovery of the James Ossuary, though it's still disputed as a genuine archaeological artifact. I think, ultimately, the historical evidence comes down in favor of the object.)
I was accused, by my interlocutor, of "crass supposition". That seems, at least to me, to be exactly what Fitzgerald is up to in the last four chapters of his book. It's a weak argument, at best.
I began this Facebook debate with this person by saying I was unconvinced by Fitzgerald's arguments. And I've attempted to lay out here, finally, why that's the case.
So why waste so much time and attention dismantling this book? Again, because I was accused of concocting my own facts. I was accused of irresponsible historical enquiry. I was accused of exercising "noxious" logical fallacies in support of my argument. I was accused of "fallacious pseudo-arguments". According to my interlocutor, I couldn't (or wouldn't) offer specifics concerning the arguments of Jesus Mythers. In that way, I'm dishonest, irresponsible and unreasonable.
In short, I'm a "concern troll". Well, I wasn't the one to introduce Fitzgerald's book into an already-present discussion. I wasn't the concern troll in that conversation. Instead, I became the straw man, the recipient of a lot of projection.
So, I want to establish here and now: I'll have no more of it. This is the last I'll spill any ink on the subject. If you want me to go on record about the Jesus Myth, fine -- here it is. And with that, dear interlocutor, please refrain from attacking me simply because there's a weakness in your own argument.
I also want to go on record to say that I'll comment on no items on Facebook without invitation from that page's owner. I've grown tired of these sorts of intellectual attacks. They're a further sign of the demise of our intellectual ability to sustain difference and genuine debate.