ApostateAbe

To conservative Christians, the relevant question of debate is whether or not Jesus performed miracles, rose from the dead, and is the way, the truth and the life. If they have evidence that Jesus existed, that is like playing the lottery and winning $2.75. It does very little to support their faith.

Toto

Campus Crusade for Christ starts out its propaganda with the proposition that all historians consider that Jesus existed. (They then go on to ask = what if he's really your Lord?)

The mere existence of Jesus has become a primary foundation of Christian faith.

andrewcriddle

To clarify: IIUC Craig misunderstood what Ehrman said.

Andrew Criddle

ApostateAbe

I went to some CRU meetings in college, and I have not heard that line, though I do not doubt that it is used elsewhere. That line can be used in recruitment, but it does not follow that they would buy a book on the subject, nor does it follow that it has become a primary foundation of Christian faith. The primary foundation of their faith is that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, along with the rest of the Nicene Creed.

EarlDoherty

I suspect that Van Voorst, and others, feel that way because they realize in their heart of hearts that they would be taking on a difficult if not impossible job. The quality of Van Voorst’s argumentation in defense of an HJ is appallingly poor in his book, and frequently fallacious. In my treatment of the “non-Christian witness to Jesus” in Jesus: Neither God Nor Man I address many of Van Voorst’s arguments. Here are a couple of samples:

In summing up his survey of Jewish sources on Jesus, Van Voorst (p.129-34) attempts to address the silence in the Jewish record, particularly in the early period. He asks, “Why are the references we have to Jesus in Jewish literature not more contemporary to him?” His explanations are far from convincing. Since he has no evidence of any attention paid to Jesus in the 1st century among the rabbis, he interprets this as an attempt by them “to squelch contact with Christianity and discussion about Christ—in other words, to fight what appeal Christianity might still have to Jews with silence.” Apparently the rabbis adopted a policy of ‘ignore them and they’ll go away.’ In the 2nd century, since Christians were identified as ‘heretics,’ this too meant that they had to be ignored. Then in the 3rd century, the rabbis were now preoccupied with religious law, not history, and so there was a further ignoring of Jesus. Yet somehow, after three centuries of ignoring Christianity and its founder, the later rabbis still managed to supply “more information than from classical sources to corroborate the main lines of the traditions about Jesus found in the New Testament.” Considering that the classical sources (and these unreliable) have supplied only the barest minimum of information about Jesus, one supposes that the scraps from the later rabbis—which built upon earlier material that had nothing to do with him—amount to a feast of plenty, even though they have completely garbled anything that might resemble, let alone “corroborate,” the “main lines” of New Testament tradition.

Finally, Van Voorst indulges in an old chestnut directed “to those few who still argue that Jesus never existed.” He claims that “the references to Jesus in Jewish tradition provide an even stronger case than those in classical literature that he did indeed exist, and did the main things that the church said about him.” The principal pillar in this picture is, of course, Josephus, whom we are about to examine; but the rabbis are included for corroboration. Even though Van Voorst has himself demonstrated that nothing from the early period was preserved by them, and that Christianity was virtually ignored in rabbinic tradition for two to three centuries, still, the rabbis are witness to an historical Jesus because they failed to appeal to “the most effective polemic against Christianity,” namely, that he never existed. Thus the Talmud becomes a witness to an historical Jesus: “All Jewish sources treated Jesus as a fully historical person.” Considering that those sources, outside of Josephus, come from at least the 3rd century and beyond, and that most of them place their Jesus of history as much as a century before or after the usual time and cannot even remember that he had been crucified by the Romans, such a testimony from the witness box would be thrown out of court.

It is too often on reasoning such as this that traditional scholarship maintains that the historicity of Jesus has been confirmed and mythicism discredited.

Or this gem:

Despite Van Voorst’s admission that “Some fog of uncertainty still surrounds Thallos’s statement,” he can nevertheless go on to say that “a tradition about Jesus’ death is probably present,” and “We can conclude that this element of Christian tradition was known outside of Christian circles and that Thallos felt it necessary to refute it.” Now firmly entrenched in the position that Thallus did indeed mention the eclipse with reference to Jesus, Van Voorst further surmises that “Thallos may have been knowledgeable about other elements of the Christian tradition of Jesus’ death.” When one adopts an unfounded conclusion to begin with, it seems there is little limit to the unfounded conclusions that may proceed from the first one.

Incidentally, I have clearly shown in that chapter that neither Thallos nor his Siamese twin Phlegon gives the slightest evidence that they were “refuting” any Christian claim in talking about an eclipse of the sun, let alone that they made any reference to Jesus. The Christian references themselves definitively show that, and for someone like Van Voorst, or any other apologist, not to recognize that from the texts, is a measure of their biased scholarly integrity.

Even where Van Voorst, and others like Eddy and Boyd, come up with arguments that are not inherently lame, they are easily deflected. For example:

If Tacitus had consulted an archive and found there a report about the crucifixion, it would hardly have failed to contain the name “Jesus.” Yet in 15:44 he offers only the term “Christ,” treating it as though it were the man’s name.

Christus, from whom the name [i.e., of the ‘Christianos—or rather of the ‘Chrestianos’—just referred to] had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty…

The standard rejoinder, as exemplified by Eddy and Boyd (op.cit., p.182-3), is that “Tacitus only mentions ‘Christ’ in order to explain the origin of the term ‘Christians.’ A reference to ‘Jesus’ at this point would not have explained the term ‘Christian’ and thus would have been completely beside the point.”

Yes, it would have been beside the point in regard to explaining the origin of the name (a point which is only subsidiary), but it would hardly have been beside the point in regard to the sentence as a whole. In fact, without it, the principal point of his statement is undeniably misleading. It implies, “A man named Christ was executed by Pontius Pilate,” which is something he would hardly have said or risked implying if he had read an archived report, one that would certainly have given the man’s personal name. To avoid this, Tacitus—“careful historian that he was”—should have given the man’s name to make his main point, but as well mentioned the title “Christ” in order to explain the Christian name.

Robert Van Voorst (Jesus Outside the New Testament, p.46) is another who tries to rationalize this mistake: “even if Tacitus did know the name ‘Jesus’ he presumably would not have used it in this context, because it would have interfered with his explanation of the origin of Christianoi in Christus, confusing his readers.” That ‘interference’ could easily have been remedied by a mention of both names, which would also have avoided the confusion he ended up creating over the crucified man’s personal name.

Van Voorst is not much better than your average apologist, and I would not place him on a much higher level than Eddy and Boyd or even Lee Strobel. Yet he is the only one in the last two decades (since R. T. France in the 80s) who has even partially attempted a defense of the HJ against mythicism. Something is truly amiss in mainstream scholarship which simply buries its head in the sand and appeals solely to its blindered mantra of wishful thinking that the case is so open and shut it’s not worth bothering with. Van Voorst, inadvertently, puts the lie to that claim.

I find it hard to believe that a scholar like Ehrman—who, as reported here, is so besieged by questions about Jesus’ existence that he felt constrained to attempt a comment in a recent interview—is not aware of the legs which this question now possesses and the public’s interest in it. I am also sure he is aware of the pathetic nature of attempts like Van Voorst’s to counter the no-Jesus theory. And that is probably the case with many mainstream scholars who have not lived under a rock for the last dozen years and know the strength which mythicism has taken on. They can no longer hide from the necessity to seriously address it. That they steadfastly refuse to do so—with the failed Jesus Project being a good example—is not a vote of confidence but one of fear and the realization of inadequacy.

By the way, my new book is now in stock and available at Amazon.com. I once again urge people like Abe, who have amply demonstrated their ignorance on the subject, to read my case for the non-existence of Jesus rather than continue to egg their own faces or leave it up to others to try to stop today’s mythicist juggernaut.

Earl Doherty

Doug Shaver

Sure, but they're not the only people with some interest in Jesus, and they're not the majority, either.