When discussing the historicity of Jesus and debating the claims of Jesus Mythicists I often come across people who take the view that there may be at least some historical basis for Jesus, but there was no single historical person. They claim he was an amalgam of many different figures from the time, not one man. These people rarely back this idea up with evidence-based argument, but when they do, it does not stand up to critical scrutiny. The “Amalgam…
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Since we are now a few days into the new year, I have been looking at the statistics for this blog over the last twelve months and thought I would post a short summary, with a few comments. History for Atheists has been running since October 2015, and so is now into its fourth year of operation. In that time, I am happy to say, it has built up a solid following and has gone some way toward its objective…
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History for Atheists regularly features responses to and critiques of Jesus Mythicism – the idea that not only was Jesus not what Christianity claims, but also that there was no historical Jesus at all. Despite this being a thesis with little academic support and accepted by no more than a handful of fringe scholars, it is enthusiastically supported by many atheists, particularly of the New Atheist variety. The Jesus Mythicism Series (Ongoing) Did Jesus Exist? The Jesus Myth Theory, Again…
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My fourth appearance on the Non Sequitur Show was by request and I strove to explain why Jesus Mythicism is not parsimonious and why the majority of scholars conclude a historical Jesus most likely existed. We ran out of time before I could get through all I wanted to present, but judging from the irrational reactions of the show’s resident Mythicists, it would not have mattered what I said anyway. Indeed, online Mythicism seems to be rapidly becoming like a…
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New Atheist blogger and biologist, PZ Myers is an honest guy. He admits he finds the issue of the historicity of Jesus baffling and knows this is largely because he has no training in history. As a result, he declares himself to be “agnostic” about the existence of Jesus, but what does “Jesus agnosticism” actually mean? Not all “Jesus agnostics” are taking Myers’ modest and circumspect approach and some just seem to be trying to avoid Mythicism’s critical flaws. …
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It makes sense that the sect which survived Jesus’ execution would be more likely to leave an early historical trace than Jesus himself, given his relative obscurity in his lifetime. Seeing that this sect seems to have been led initially by his brother James, it also makes sense that we would get early historical references to James. This is why two references to Jesus’ brother, one contemporary and one by a non-Christian historian, represent a crucial flaw in the claim…
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New Atheist discussions of the history of science are almost always based on some form of the Conflict Thesis. Despite the fact this conception of an eternal “warfare between science and religion” has long since been rejected by historians of science, anti-theists have an emotional commitment to this dusty nineteenth century idea, with most naively accepting it without question while a few struggle to prop it up in the face of the consensus of modern historians that it is simplistic,…
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Publius Cornelius Tacitus was one of the most reliable of all Roman historians and many first century figures are known to us solely through his mention of them. This means his passing reference to Jesus in Annals XV.44 remains an fly in the ointment of the Jesus Myth hypothesis. Despite Tacitus’ reliability and the scholarly agreement that the reference is genuine, Mythicist ideologues have several ways by which they try to dismiss this reference; all of them characteristically weak. The…
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If there is a story that forms the heart of New Atheist bad history, it’s the tale of the Great Library of Alexandria and its destruction by a Christian mob. It’s the central moral fable of the Draper-White Thesis, where wise and rational Greeks and Romans store up all the wisdom of the pre-Christian ancient world in a single library, treasuring science and reason and bringing western civilisation to the brink of a technological and industrial revolution. But then a…
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The consensus of scholars, including non-Christian scholars, is that a historical Jesus most likely existed and the later stories about “Jesus Christ” were told about him. The idea that there was no such historical person at all and that “Jesus Christ” was a purely mythical figure has been posited in one form or another since the eighteenth century, but is not taken seriously by anyone but a tiny handful of fringe scholars and amateurs. Despite this, the Jesus Myth thesis…
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