Valerie Tarico has been at it again:
5 good reasons to think Jesus never existed
And the good five are?
1. No first century secular evidence whatsoever exists to support the actuality of Yeshua ben Yosef. . . .
Actually I think using the Jewish form of the name began among historical Jesus scholars who were attempting to recreate some distinctive “Jewishness” of the historical figure. On the other hand, the Greek form “Jesus” has its own unique message: See
Gospel Puns on the Name Above All Names
Creativity with the Name of Jesus the Healer in the Gospel of Mark
2. The earliest New Testament writers seem ignorant of the details of Jesus’ life, which become more crystalized in later texts.
3. Even the New Testament stories don’t claim to be first-hand accounts.
4. The gospels, our only accounts of a historical Jesus, contradict each other.
5. Modern scholars who claim to have uncovered the real historical Jesus depict wildly different persons.
Neil Godfrey
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and….most of the stories in the Gospels could not possibly be true.
For #2, the little information the early epistle writers have about Jesus can be found in the Hebrew scriptures of the day, ie, the Old Testament.
4. The gospels, our only accounts of a historical Jesus, contradict each other.
This isn’t a good reason to suspect Jesus didn’t exist.
You know that the gospel’s were written by disciples of Paul and Matthew. Luke and John were most likely written by their person. Also, John was a good friend of Jesus and knew him and wrote more humanly of him, that’s why it’s different. Mark is a very short and simple gospel because it was written while the writer(or writers) was on the run from prosecution. Matthew is a first hand account because Matthew was an Apostle and has the most descriptive gospel because of that. Luke was written by a physician so he had a very scientific and reasonable explanation for everything. The fact that you believe the largest religion in the world was based off of a fake person that somehow took over the largest empire ever, you are a sad person.
FYI, it may be worth mentioning that Valerie Tarico’s article is not new. It first appeared on her own blog in August 2014, and then on Salon/Alternet the following month. Curiously, the original title was “Five Reasons…”, without the word “good”.
The original blog article had the following postscript, which does not appear in the Salon/Alternet versions:
Thanks for reminding me. I thought it had a ring of deja vu.
All her reasons are valid, so not a bad effort but I would (writing quickly) put the following reasons front and centre
1) The earliest Christians don’t seem to know a Jesus of Nazareth and, it seems mostly likely they worship a celestial/heavenly Jesus
2) The first narrative we have about Jesus, the gospel of Mark, can be demonstrated to be – via analysis of intertexutuality – a work of theological allegorical fiction NOT an historical biography
3) ALL other information about Jesus post-Mark can be shown to be derived from Mark. Nobody else, whether Christian or non-Christian, has any other independent evidence. All rely on the first source Mark…which contain no reliable historical information.
Jonathan
Sounds interesting. Got an academic source?
Hi Bee,
I am a big fan of R.G Price’ work – his case stresses the above points. See link:
http://web.archive.org/web/20150218004315/http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/fictional_jesus.htm
J
The real significance of this article is not the details of the arguments themselves but the fact that it is published by Salon.com. And of course it has been published in other comparable online sites (eg Alternet), too. These are not the sorts of publishers who are noted for propagating anti-intellectual nonsense. On the contrary, they expose the nonsense of agenda driven conservative antipathy towards science, etc.
The only come-back hostile anti-mythicists have is to appeal to the authority of their profession.
Sure, the details of some of the arguments themselves can be debated. They are not all watertight under close scrutiny. But they do make sense enough to be put on the discussion table. That’s what the hostile anti-mythicists want to avoid — genuine debate and discussion. They want to close down any suggestion that their professional interests are based on questionable — debatable — assumptions.