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Tag: Gospels

Review – Catherine Nixey “Heresy – Jesus Christ and Other Sons of God”

Review – Catherine Nixey “Heresy – Jesus Christ and Other Sons of God”

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Catherine Nixey, Heresy – Jesus Christ and Other Sons of God (Picador, 2024) 365 pp. British journalist Catherine Nixey’s first foray into popular history, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, (Macmillan, 2017) received enthusiastic praise by many non-specialist reviewers and an even more rapturous reception by certain polemicists, who relished its fundamentally anti-Christian thesis. It was far less well-regarded by historians who are expert in the periods and topics it covers, who condemned it as biased,…

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Interview Dr Philipp Nothaft
Interview – Dr. Philipp Nothaft on the Date of Christmas

Interview – Dr. Philipp Nothaft on the Date of Christmas

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My guest today is Dr Philipp Nothaft. Philipp is a Fellow of All Souls Oxford and a historian specializing in astronomy, astrology and calendars in late antiquity, the Middle Ages and early modern Europe. He’s also the author of a key paper on the question of why Christmas falls on December 25th, which is our main topic today. It’s often claimed in pop history that Christians stole a pagan feast day and made it into Christmas, and this is a…

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Is Easter Pagan?
Is Easter Pagan?

Is Easter Pagan?

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Every year fundamentalist Christians, New Agers, neo-pagans and many atheists loudly agree that Easter was not originally a Christian feast and was a pagan fertility festival stolen by Christianity. Unfortunately, despite what endless memes and pop history articles claim, this idea is complete nonsense. So is the claim that Easter eggs and the Easter Bunny are also originally pagan. It is rather ironic that a set of false historical claims about the origin of Easter and its customs are propagated…

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Constantine
Constantine and the Bible

Constantine and the Bible

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The historical myths surrounding the emperor Constantine, his conversion to Christianity and the claim he created the Bible at the Council of Nicaea are persistent and continue to be propagated in popular culture, despite being total nonsense. Unfortunately, leading atheists also perpetuate these silly ideas, with everyone from Richard Dawkins to Joe Rogan insisting that Constantine was not really a Christian, that he pretended to convert for political reasons and that it was he who set the canon of the…

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Biblical Literalism
The Great Myths 11: Biblical Literalism

The Great Myths 11: Biblical Literalism

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It is assumed in much anti-theistic polemic that the Bible has traditionally always been interpreted literally. A lot of criticism of believers is based on how irrational, impossible and anti-scientific such a reading of the Bible has to be and how the current literalism of many fundamentalist Christians simply reflects how the Bible has always been read, with non-literal interpretations simply a modern rear-guard attempt to reconcile the Bible with current understandings of the world. But this is not true….

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Richard Dawkins Teaches the Children

Richard Dawkins Teaches the Children

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In his latest book, Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide (Random House, 2019), Richard Dawkins sets out to give older children and teens an introduction to reasons to doubt religion. Unfortunately he manages to perpetuate a series of historical myths in the process and the book is characteristic of prominent New Atheists’ careless attitude toward history. Most atheists come to that position more or less on their own. For me, being raised by a scientist in a family of scientists and…

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Jesus Mythicism 5: The Nazareth “Myth”

Jesus Mythicism 5: The Nazareth “Myth”

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Not only is the idea that Jesus came from Nazareth a common element in all four canonical gospels, it also seems to have been an awkward fact that did not fit well with the gospel writers’ claim he was the Messiah. This indicates it is likely his origin in this small village was a historical fact. Jesus Mythicists often deal with this by removing Nazareth from the story and some even claim all the archaeologists are wrong and Nazareth did…

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Jesus Mythicism 3: “No Contemporary References to Jesus”

Jesus Mythicism 3: “No Contemporary References to Jesus”

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One of the more common arguments among online supporters of the Jesus Myth thesis is an argument from silence: “There are no contemporary references to Jesus, therefore he did not exist”. Unfortunately this naïve argument is based on an ignorance of the nature of ancient source material and of how an argument from silence is sustained. As a result, while it may initially seem to have some rhetorical force, it is not an argument that would be accepted by historians….

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Did Jesus Exist? The Jesus Myth Theory, Again.

Did Jesus Exist? The Jesus Myth Theory, Again.

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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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The Great Myths 4: Constantine, Nicaea and the Bible

The Great Myths 4: Constantine, Nicaea and the Bible

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It seems the “Philosophical Atheism” group on Facebook is going to be the New Atheist bad history gift that just keeps on giving.  No anti-Christian snippet or meme seems to be able to get by this group without it being posted as factual, without any hint of checking its claims.  So the gloriously stupid (and grammatically bizarre) pastiche of nonsense above was posted to “Philosophical Atheism” yesterday, with the group’s followers reverently genuflecting to its mighty historical truth and insight.  The…

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