Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 05-03-2006, 01:48 PM

Tim Callahan will be lecturing at the Skeptics Society on May 7 at 2 pm, Baxter Hall on the Caltech Campus.

Quote:

On May 19th, the film version of the wildly popular book by Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (over 40 million copies in 25 languages sold), will be released to considerable fanfare and media hype. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, head of doctrinal orthodoxy for the Vatican, issued an official statement on behalf of the Catholic Church, calling the novel “a sack full of lies” and urging Christians not to read the book or see the movie. Even though the book is a novel, Brown claims that it is based on historical facts that, if true (and many people believe that they are true), would revolutionize not only all of the Christian religion, but much of history as well. The central claims is that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and sired a royal bloodline that continues to this day, and that a secret society of some of history’s most famous scientists and artists has been dedicated to preserving these ancient secrets for almost a thousand years. If ever there were an extraordinary historical claim that requires extraordinary historical evidence, this is it. How good is the evidence?

Tim Callahan, Skeptic magazine religion editor and author of the books Bible Prophecy (or via: amazon.co.uk) and The Secret Origins of the Bible (or via: amazon.co.uk), will explore these and other biblical mysteries recently in the news, such as the “Gospel of Judas” (in which Jesus’ disciple is not a traitor) and other extra-biblical gospels that portray Jesus in a different light. Callahan will review biblical scholarship and show how we know who wrote the Bible and why they wrote it.

This is a last minute replacement for a lecture on Genetics, but could be of interest.

Toto · 05-08-2006, 01:34 PM

I got to the lecture a little late. Callahan was not very dynamic, presented some history of the Holy Grail, relating it to pagan Celtic rituals. I got the impression that he really couldn't take the Da Vinci Code very seriously, for which I don't blame him. He got a little more animated when he talked about the Gospel of Judas - he had written a decent piece on it which was printed in the e-Skeptic newsletter available here.

He floated the interesting interpretation of Mark - that when Jesus predicted that "one of you will betray me" he was in fact commanding someone to "hand him over." Judas was the one who drew the short straw, in effect.

But then he gave a short, unsatisfactory defense of the historical Jesus. (In his last lecture on his book The Secret Origins of the Bible, someone had asked him about whether Jesus actually existed, and he was floored by the question. So this time he said that there was not a lot of evidence for a historical Jesus, but on balance he thought that there was, based on 1) the hostile witness Tacitus, who refers to a Christ crucified under Pontius Pilate (although this could have been hearsay) ; 2) the reference to James the brother of Jesus called Christ, which he claimed should be translated as the "so-called" Christ; 3) the criteria of embarrassment and dissimilarity - in particular, why would Jesus in Mark claim to be hiding his message from people? If you were going to make up a savior, you could do better.

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05-08-2006, 01:34 PM	#2
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	I got to the lecture a little late. Callahan was not very dynamic, presented some history of the Holy Grail, relating it to pagan Celtic rituals. I got the impression that he really couldn't take the Da Vinci Code very seriously, for which I don't blame him. He got a little more animated when he talked about the Gospel of Judas - he had written a decent piece on it which was printed in the e-Skeptic newsletter available here. He floated the interesting interpretation of Mark - that when Jesus predicted that "one of you will betray me" he was in fact commanding someone to "hand him over." Judas was the one who drew the short straw, in effect. But then he gave a short, unsatisfactory defense of the historical Jesus. (In his last lecture on his book The Secret Origins of the Bible, someone had asked him about whether Jesus actually existed, and he was floored by the question. So this time he said that there was not a lot of evidence for a historical Jesus, but on balance he thought that there was, based on 1) the hostile witness Tacitus, who refers to a Christ crucified under Pontius Pilate (although this could have been hearsay) ; 2) the reference to James the brother of Jesus called Christ, which he claimed should be translated as the "so-called" Christ; 3) the criteria of embarrassment and dissimilarity - in particular, why would Jesus in Mark claim to be hiding his message from people? If you were going to make up a savior, you could do better.

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