Toto

"Night of the Living Savior" is the title of a talk that Robert Price will deliver Saturday night in Los Angeles to the AAI convention, which is where I will be this weekend.

So Happy Easter to western Christians (Eastern Orthodox Christians are still sacrificing for Lent, and believe that Christ is not scheduled to be raised until May 1 of this year.)

I will report back.

Steven Carr

Such is the unanimity of Christians, all inspired by the same Holy Spirit and the same God, who is not the author of confusion.

ArchAngel

Correct. Satan is the author of confusion. He made all of these fake forms of Christianity to keep as many people away from God as possible.

Steven Carr

For all we know, he may have succeeded and all the current forms of Christianity are fake.

lpetrich

This is in part because they prefer the calendar of a pagan, Julius Caesar, to that of a Pope. The Julian calendar is now 13 days behind the Gregorian one, which we use, meaning that the Eastern Orthodox holidays have been pushed ahead 13 days relative to our calendar.

And adding to that, the Eastern Orthodox calculation of Easter's date is somewhat different from the Western churches' calculation.

Toto

It was a great convention, and when I find my notes, I will write up what I remember of Price's talk. It will probably be published in Secular Nation.

Toto

Here are some notes on Price's speech. Any errors are undoubtedly my transcription errors; the speech will probably be published in Secular Nation.

Price's speech was an after dinner speech, after we had sung Happy Birthday to Richard Dawkins and eaten cake, and following Michael Newdow. I don't know if it was intentional, but Newdow provided an interesting segway into Price's speech. Newdow has been researching whether George Washington ever added "so help me God" to the oath of office when he was inaugurated, and his conclusion was that Washington never said it. He said, it's one thing to wonder about the historical basis of Jesus, 2000 years ago, but Washington's inauguration was only a few centuries ago, and the event was attended by newspaper reporters and many others, but has still become encrusted with myth to the point that practically everyone believes something happened that never did.

Price started by noting that when William Lane Craig and other apologists argue for the historicity of the Resurrection against all naturalistic explanations of the event, they are actually having an argument with a defunct school of Christians known as Protestant Rationalists. Protestant Rationalists were quasi-Deists. They thought that God must have created a perfect universe that did not require divine intervention to keep things running the way God intended, so they did not believe in miracles. But they also believed that the Bible contained solid history. So they spent their time trying to figure out how the miracles in the Bible could be explained as naturalistic phenomena.

The last Protestant Rationalist was Hugh J. Schonfield of the Passover Plot.

However, the basic premise that the gospels contain history is flawed. The gospel writers left many clues in the text, like hidden colorful Easter eggs, that show that the gospels were written as fiction or theology, not as an account of events. For example, at the end of Mark, (excluding the obvious add-on) the women leave and tell no one. So how did Mark know what happened? And how did he know what Jesus was thinking in the garden of Gethsemene? Obviously, he made it up.

Or Luke's story about the road to Emmaus, which repeats a common Hellenistic theme, of gods testing mortals by appearing to them as ordinary humans.

But still we can play the game with apologists of following their rules and showing that there are better explanations of the Empty Tomb than a supernatural resurrection. Because there is no way to convince an inerrantist that the Bible could be wrong.

For instance, take the saints who came out of the graves in Matt 27. With so many reports of the dead rising, perhaps the alleged appearance of Jesus was just part of a local wave of mass religious hysteria.

Or take the many references to people not recognizing Jesus after he appeared to them. Mary thought it was the gardener, etc. Obviously, Jesus did not rise from the dead, and all these people were mistaken, but grasped at straws because they needed to believe.

Or the tomb was empty because Joseph of Arithmea only put Jesus' body there temporarily until it could be reburied in a family tomb (a common practice.)

Or consider that there are several references to people assuming that Jesus was John the Baptist raised from the dead. Since JtB had been beheaded, "raised from the dead" could not refer to a reanimated corpse - since John no longer had a head. This means that if Jesus was seen as raised from the dead, something other than a corpse regaining life was meant. ("So much for NT Wrong" said Price.)

In the Q&A, Price said that he is in contact with Wells, who is in bad health but still mentally sharp. He spoke well of Doherty. He said that he suspects that Secret Mark is a hoax (in spite of its acceptance by many reputable scholars).

He said that he leans toward thinking that Jesus was a mythical being from the start, like Osiris or Dionysios, but he doesn't have the evidence to prove it. Someone from the audience mentioned a recent National Geographic note on the Tomb of Osiris as a possible model for the Empty Tomb of Jesus.

Ted Hoffman

Thanks Toto for that rundown. Wish I was there.

S.C.Carlson

Some of his thoughts have been published: Robert M. Price, "Second Thoughts about the Secret Gospel," Institute for Biblical Research 14 (2004): 127-132.

Price got really suspicious about it when he happened to find an evangelical thriller by James H. Hunter, published in 1940 called The Mystery of Mar Saba and involved a forgery of an ancient document planted at the monastery to discredit Christianity. The rest of his points are rather impressionistic, though.

Price concluded (p. 132): That should do it.

S.C.Carlson

Just to be crystal clear, "Protestant Rationalist" refers a particular historical-critical approach; it does not mean a Rationalist who happens to be a Protestant. In fact, Schonfield was Jewish.

Here is a brief bio for him: http://www.schonfield.org/Schonfield-org-28.htm

Stephen