Answering "Jesus is a Myth" video, part I

Answering "Jesus is a Myth" video part I · part II

Jesus is a myth
randy7845 | 26.V.2009
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mx3un_AzZI

I

0:26 "Mark was the first written one"

No, Matthew was.

Church Tradition has St Matthew first write a Gospel in Hebrew and then translate it into Greek before any other NT Gospel.

One version has St Luke ignoring the Gospel of St Matthew, doing an independent work and then going to Rome to get approval for it by St Peter, who, in his enthusiasm, was reading part from Luke, part from Matthew, and adding some, while St Mark thought St Peter was dictating a Gospel and took it down.

This has all the synoptics between 33 and 64 (which I think is the accepted death year of Sts Peter and Paul).

Another version omits (perhaps from forgetfulness) this connection between Luke and Mark and has Mark not just published but also written before Luke. We have St Clement of Alexandria for first version and St Augustine for second version.

Either way, Mark is not earlier written than Matthew.

0:33 "Mark mentions the destruction of the Temple in year 70, so the Gospels all came later than that"

So, all prophecies that are fulfilled are vaticinia post eventum, are they?

No, that is not reasonable but non-partial reasoning on when the Gospels are from, it is a plea against God and therefore partisan.

Just as preferring to explain likenesses in Synoptics by "Markan priority" is a partisan preference of reconstruction over tradition of authorship, and therefore a partisan plea against Catholic Tradition.

II

2:05 "decades long gap" ...

From the first year of Tiberius to the last breath of Domitian, there is a decades long gap about most events in Roman history.

Sure, Pliny in Naturalis historia was not purely into the scientific side, he was into the sensational side and he leaves us some insights on the foibles of Caligula. Probably after Caligula died. When it was safe to speak of the foibles of Caligula.

There are four books from 30 to 96, apart from Jewish War by Josephus, which do deal in contemporary events.

One by St Matthew, one by St Mark, two by St Luke. And to parts of Acts, he is an eyewitness.

Christians were better at preserving that for posterity, than Roman Patriots were at preserving Gaius Licinius Mucianus for posterity.

2:19 "Paul never heard of Mary, Joseph, Bethlehem, Herod"

That's forgetting he was not a historian, he touched very briefly on historic matters (and on very many ones), when saying sth else, just as Pliny could briefly touch on historic matters when discussing pearls.

I was going to say Pliny hadn't heard of Actium, but he does mention it: book 3 chapter 30 being first mention of fourteen. But he apparently hadn't heard of Alesia or Vercingetorix.

Or he had, but as he was not making a continuous narrative, his take on what he was talking about was not apt for mentioning Alesia.

Plus, there already was the Gospel of St Matthew to do the narrative.

III

2:55 "just like the other saviour gods of the time, Paul's Christ Jesus died, rose and ascended all in a mythical realm."

Which other "saviour gods" of the time?

And a bit disingenious to use Hebrews 8:4 as the one "smoking gun" for that claim to, in face of many claims Jesus came in the flesh.

4 εἰ μὲν οὖν ἦν ἐπὶ γῆς, οὐδ’ ἂν ἦν ἱερεύς, ὄντων τῶν προσφερόντων κατὰ νόμον τὰ δῶρα

The verb form "en" is imperfect, not pluperfect.

Douay Rheims is correct and your version is incorrect, the translation is not "if Jesus had been on earth", but

If then he were on earth, he would not be a priest: seeing that there would be others to offer gifts according to the law,

While there is a comment on "epi ges" being circumlocution for "earthly", one can also consider it as Him becoming priest by ascension and therefore being priest now. In theology it is inexact, He was already priest at the Last Supper, soon about to leave Earth, but in history it offers an alternative to the "had been on earth" translation.

It can also be mentioned, some early doubts were there about Pauline authorship of Hebrews, some Christians (I think Tertullian or he mentioned them) thought St Barnabas was a possible candidate.

IV

3:11 - 3:12 "Paul doesn't believe Jesus was ever a human being, he's not even aware of the idea"

"But not as the offence, so also the gift. For if by the offence of one, many died; much more the grace of God, and the gift, by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many."
[Romans 5:15]

"For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus:"
[1 Timothy 2:5]

An indirect smoking gun that he was aware the beginnings of Judaism were anathematising Our Lord:

"Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man, speaking by the Spirit of God, saith Anathema to Jesus. And no man can say the Lord Jesus, but by the Holy Ghost."
[1 Corinthians 12:3]

It's neither a Jewish nor a palaeo-Hebrew custom to anathematise, that is excommunicate pagan gods from the synagogue or from the people of Israel.

3:20 And no, despite about a century of near consensus in the academia considered as "non partisan" (in reality anything but) Markan priority or Synoptics after 70 have no ground, the opposite, Matthean priority and Synoptics all before 70 is well grounded in tradition.

V

3:47 "allegorical literature was extremely common"

As C. S. Lewis did a study both of pre-history of "allegory" as a genre and of "romantic love" as a "status" or "must" type of emotional / social state before they met in the "allegory of love" which he dedicated his work on, I can very confidently say that, no, allegories were not very common in 1 C.

The genre was not even invented yet.

Allegorical reading of older texts was already common, but this does not warrant these older texts were really written as allegories.

A Platonist would not take Olympian events in Homer literally, he would take them allegorically. But taking a talk between dad and dot, Zeus and Athena, as an allegory doesn't mean the return of Ulysses to Ithaca was taken as an allegory.

It can be taken as having also an allegorical sense, about the return of Our Lord (feat. Penelope as Church, Telemachus as individual Christians, suitors as "many antichrists", Antinoos as "the beast"), but this doesn't mean Homer was intending that when writing it.

So, while Servius (actually from later on, 4th / 5th CC) can say sth of Olympian gods in Virgil being allegory, he doesn't really try to exclude the Trojan War happened or Ulysses came back, nor that - more to the point - Rome began indirectly with Aeneas and his son Iulus, as Livy also said.

The claim "allegorical literature was extremely common" is balderdash. Some these days would prefer the word abbreviated as BS.

It is a claim out of thin air. It needs backing not given here.

The Allegory of Love: A Study In Medieval Tradition
(Canto Classics) Paperback – November 18, 2013 [first published 1936]
by C. S. Lewis (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Allegory-Love-Medieval-Tradition-Classics/dp/1107659434

While the subtitle calls the book "a study in Medieval tradition" C. S. Lewis does not spurn going to Antiquity for examples and was not unread in Classic antiquities.

VI

4:07 Carrier's "Mark himself probably didn't believe" is totally disingenious.

First, bc it presupposes the already called out bluff "allegorical literature was extremely common".

Second, bc it introduces a fictitious opposition between history and Gospel.

Tacitus certainly believed he was writing an eulogy of Agricola, this doesn't mean that he didn't believe Agricola was history.

And third, bc it involves a kind of psychoanalytic reconstruction of what things really meant back then, flying in the face of statements from both then and very little later and all the time up to basically Carrier or not many centuries before.

VII

4:26 No, Dundes is / was wrong on motives for throwing out Gospel of St Thomas, it was definitely not about "too folkloristic".

That was not even a term back then.

And insofar as anything similar was, it was a partisan term, sth Cicero would be more likely to use than a Platonist.

Answering "Jesus is a Myth" video, part II

Answering "Jesus is a Myth" video part I · part II

VIII

4:49 Look, a modern Jesuit getting upset over folklore in 20th C doesn't reflect why the Church said no in 1st C.

A modern Jesuit could certainly use "folkloristic" about a thing he disapproved of, but he would be anachronistic or imprecise if attributing an identic / near identic motive to the bishops of the 1st C.

Jesus saying to Mary Magdalene she could become a man in the next world is not folkloristic, it is a wrong theology of the body.

IX

5:19 How about rewriting history without Caligula?

I wouldn't, but with your methodology, you would.

He's not many decades after Jesus, but then Tacitus is not many decades after your take on when Mark wrote.

You have a lot of mentions in Pliny Naturalis historia, but those could be folkloristic.

You have a lot of coins, but unlike stories back then, art works were in fact made to be allegorical at times.

X

5:44 "improbabilities, like the Jewish supreme council meeting on passover"

Good Friday was the parascheve. The day of preparation.

It seems, the day of Maundy Thursday, Jesus told disciples to do the preparation for a particular house. It seems Our Lord celebrated the Seder 24 h earlier than Jews that year.

See John 19:14.

Now, Matthew 27:62 says Jews were having what they would probably have considered as "informal chats" with Pilate, due to the necessity of preventing a resurrection story. But this was after the day of preparation, on passover itself.

6:02 "just defies any kind of historical verisimilitude"

Not really, probable or improbable depends on how the acute situation was then and there.

XI

6:14 "under Alexander Jannaeus"

Probably Jews mixing up Our Lord with someone else, plus Jewish sources are credited in blanco as bona fide, no check up when they are actually from (Talmud is from later than NT).

6:18 "Gospel of Peter says Herod had Jesus killed"

Supposing it wasn't by St Peter or supposing he disowned it by better research pointing to Pilate, Herod Antipas was at least in part involved.

If Pilate and Herod Antipas meet and become friends over the killing of Jesus, obviously in the realm of speculation as opposed to known witnessed facts, both could be guesses about who did what.

XII

7:28 "as true stories as this really happened tales and [are] believed [as] such"

Picture shows a google seach "death of a spammer"

I do one.

First hit:

Anatomy of Melancholy : Death of a Spammer
Friday, August 12, 2005 by Thomas
https://anatomyofmelancholy.wordpress.com/2005/08/12/death-of-a-spammer/

It links to a news story in Moscow Times.

A couple of weeks ago, a little buzz ran through the internet when it was announced that the famous Russian spammer Vardan Kushnir had been found murdered in his Moscow apartment. It was initially believed that the murder was in retaliation to the millions of spam emails he sent out each day, but the latest news has it that he was murdered by robbers.

The words "Vardan Kushnir had been found murdered" link to:

503 Service Unavailable
No server is available to handle this request.
http://moscowtimes.ru/stories/2005/07/26/003.html

The words "murdered by robbers" link to:

503 Service Unavailable
No server is available to handle this request.
http://moscowtimes.ru/stories/2005/07/27/013.html

7:33 The stories you link to are about Mojave.

Now, supposing this story, fictional, from January 2005 was later believed to be history, the fact that there was a similar story with links to Moscow news outlets, from August 2005, may have helped in the confusion.

No, normally a story which is first told as fictional will not gain credibility as actual. And I had already said so on internet, on my older site and on debating sites, before 2005.

Even more, I get to one where we are dealing with the fictional story about Mojave.

I found this little site:

Death of a Spammer, in a Place Called Hope
Posted by Michael Hanscom January 20, 2005
https://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2005/01/20/death-of-a-spammer-in-a-place-called-hope/

It links to two earlier sites.

“Slumdance: Please help me spread this urban legend”
http://www.slumdance.com/blogs/brian_flemming/archives/001422.html

“John P. Hoke’s Asylum: This is pure fiction”
http://john.hoke.org/index/asylum/comments/this_is_pure_fiction/

The first of which is pretty much an attempt to produce the effect we Christians have been denying exists, and both this video and this comment of mine shows a possibility of such things clearing up very quickly.

Anyone interviewed as having actually believed the story could in fact have been responding to Brian Flemming's appeal to spread an urban legend.

XIII

Robin Hood who gets ninth place with 13 Raglan points may be fiction, but may also be a conglomerate of actual noble robbers.

Or some of the versions are anachronistic (he's been described as under more than one king, not just the ones in Howard Pyle Henry II through Richard Lionheart)

Apollo at number 10 gets 11 points, and he is arguably a demon, except in the case of Apollo as father of Asklepios. Here we could be dealing with two definite people at the beginning of medicine.

All the first 8 are on my view real people, including Zeus insofar as he was a King of Crete who banished his father Kronos or Saturnus to Italy where he became ancestor of King Latinus.

In other words, Raglan points are NOT a good indication of fictionality.

Taking Oedipus, Theseus, Romulus, Hercules, Perseus and Jason as non-historical is in fact a very recent "ideologeme" if you will excuse this neologism.

The Roman Martyrology for Christmas day states Our Lord was born so many years after such and such an event, and in earliest version of this entry, 1490's, 1498 I think, martyrology by one Bellini (not the sculptor), we find this sequence of dates:

A Moyse & egressu populi Israel de Egypto, anno millesimo quingentesimo decimo. Ab excidio Troiae, anno millesimo centesimo septuagesimo nono. Ab unctione David in regem, anno millesimo trigesimo secundo.

Note, in the martyrology I use as a trad, I find this:

a Moyse et egressu populi Israel de Aegypto, anno millesimo quingentesimo decimo; ab unctione David in Regem, anno millesimo trigesimo secundo;

OK, what happened to "Ab excidio Troiae, anno millesimo centesimo septuagesimo nono"?

Now, let's look at the title:

MARTYROLOGIUM ROMANUM
GREGORII XIII JUSSU EDITUM, URBANI VIII ET CLEMENTIS X AUCTORITATE RECOGNITUM AC DEINDE ANNO MDCCXLIX BENEDICTI XIV LABORE ET STUDIO AUCTUM ET CASTIGATUM
http://www.liturgialatina.org/martyrologium/35.htm

So Benedict XIV ordered the martyrology both "increased" (with more saints, updating for more canonisations after the time of Bellini), but also "chastised" ...

He was one Pope of the Enlightenment era, to whom erasing the mention of the fall of Troy might have seemed as a reasonable chastising of contents. He was the same Pope who in response to Enlightened Despots demanding it dissolved the Jesuit order.

So, up to Enlightenment, the part of Greek "myth" which can also be labelled as "heroic legend" was commonly taken as history.

When we find a sceptic in antiquity, one of them said Trojans couldn't have been that gullible about the horse, but that was about the acceptable level of Criticism. Eratosthenes enumerates Trojan War or Fall of Troy in a series of chronologically related events leading up to Pelopponesian War or to Alexander the Great.

Here is the post where I cite the martyrology of Bellini:

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Background to Christmas Martyrology
https://filolohika.blogspot.com/2019/02/background-to-christmas-martyrology.html

And here my reference for Eratosthenes is Jean-Claude Poursat:

New blog on the kid : Comment les anciens pensaient ...
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2019/01/comment-les-anciens-pensaient.html

Je vais vous citer une citation d'Ératosthène, un fragment, notamment via Jean-Claude Poursat, page 111 de son livre La Grèce préclassique.

I cite him:

"De la chute de Troie au retour des Héraclides, 80 ans; de là à la migration ionienne, 60 ans; jusqu'à la tutelle de Lycurgue, 159 an; de là au début des Olympiades, 108 ans; de la 1e Olympiade à la campagne de Xerxès, 297 ans; de là au début de la guerre du Péloponnèse, 48 ans; à la fin de l'hégémonie athénienne, 27 ans; jusqu'à la bataille de Leucres, 34 ans; de là à la mort de Philippe, 35 ans, puis à la mort d'Alexandre, 12 ans."

So, a timespan from fall of Troy to return of Heraclids of 80 years is as historical as a span from death of Philip to death of Alexander of 12 years.

You can disagree with Eratosthenes, but you cannot argue the disagreement is what was always considered as common sense, and even Plutarch who considers times earlier than Trojan war "mythical" does not consider Theseus ahistorical.

Raglan scale is useless to define historicity of lack thereof.

Eben335

History and science have vindicated the Religion of ancient Greece.

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Yet, astronomy based on Homer confirms that the Trojan wars may have happened - albeit likely embellished. We also find artifacts depicting Hercules throughout the Middle-East and Asia etc. Meanwhile, the history of the Abrahamic faiths can only be taken as Iron Age myth emerging much later in the scene linguistically, culturally and as a means for interpreting the old world myths of Babylon, Egypt, Israel and Greece.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Eben335 I have no doubt Hercules existed - and very little that he's the model for Baal (in some versions) and that his resurrecting Alkestis by fighting Thanatos is a rip off of Elijah resurrecting a Canaanite boy.

If you like more on Trojan War, see here:

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Homeric Truth (Homer vs Dickinson)
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2019/03/homeric-truth-homer-vs-dickinson.html

Not so much "embellished" as mixed with other periods, like Mycenae before its palace was burned or battle of Kadesh, since some nobles would descend from Hittite nobility and there would have been an agreement not to mention Hittites.

Probably "ethos" was originally "Hethos" - the Hittite, the tax, the duty, the custom.

And their taxation would have been one reason to want to forget Hittites very badly. At Kadesh, Hittites fought Egypt and were allied to Aethiopia, hence the Trojan War misplaced references to Egypt and Aethiopia.

XIV

9:53 "Mithras, Atys, Adonis, Osiris, Tammuz ..."

Mithras we know little of. Especially as worshipped in Roman Empire.

Adonis was not a saviour god. Nor is Tammuz an example of such. You can take them as examples of "dying and rising" which is another thing. Not only other thing than Our Lord as Our Saviour, but even than Our Lord as dying and rising. Since He rose and dies not again, they rise and die annually, with vegetation.

Osiris kind of is, precisely because still in the netherworld, because not risen, precisely as Baldr in Norse myth.

(I consider Odin, if originating the cult of himself as creator and as supreme god in Uppsala to gullible Swedes needs to have been drawing on Hebrew, Zuist / Chaldanist and Kemetist sources).

While they were worshipped, they were also not considered even by the most superstitious followers as having lived recently, under a government people could remember.

They were also not credited with having founded a Church recently emerging in one corner of Roman Empire.

They were also not credited with having four Gospels or even one history written of them soon after.

"and nobody thinks these characters are anything but mythical"

Suppose everyone considered Robin Hood as mythical. I don't think that is quite the case, but suppose.

Would you consider the Robin Hood battallion as mythical because it was from Nottingham, served in Green and wore the name of the "mythical" hero?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood_Battalion

I would obviously not. So, x has parallels with "myth accepted as such" does not equal "x is myth".

Also, people like Peter Goodgame and Rob Skiba and David Rohl will not consider Osiris as a myth, they will consider him as the Egyptian name for Nimrod.

So, Price is even wrong on observable matter of fact. Unless he's willing to pretend Goodgame and Rohl are mythical ...