Dontcha love the patronizing tone of the header? “Five Reasons Why Mythicism is Disappointing”. Our author was SO hoping for such good things to emerge from mythicism, now, wasn’t he. How mythicism has disappointed him!
The post is a response to Valerie Tarico’s Here are 5 reasons to suspect Jesus never existed
Our disappointed scholar explains why Valerie only has 5 “really bad reasons” for even raising the question of the historical existence of Jesus.
1) She says that there are no secular sources about Jesus, neglecting to mention that the notion of secularism did not exist in that time . . .
In fact Valerie Tarico explains exactly what she means by “secular sources” by quoting 171 words from the historicist scholar Bart Ehrman.
“What sorts of things do pagan authors from the time of Jesus have to say about him? Nothing. As odd as it may seem, there is no mention of Jesus at all by any of his pagan contemporaries. There are no birth records, no trial transcripts, no death certificates; there are no expressions of interest, no heated slanders, no passing references – nothing. In fact, if we broaden our field of concern to the years after his death – even if we include the entire first century of the Common Era – there is not so much as a solitary reference to Jesus in any non-Christian, non-Jewish source of any kind. I should stress that we do have a large number of documents from the time – the writings of poets, philosophers, historians, scientists, and government officials, for example, not to mention the large collection of surviving inscriptions on stone and private letters and legal documents on papyrus. In none of this vast array of surviving writings is Jesus’ name ever so much as mentioned.”
Really bad reason #2:
2) She points out that things like the virgin birth only appear late, as though that is evidence against the historical value of our earliest sources.
That’s odd. Valerie’s original point was “details of Jesus’ life”, “the most basic biographical facts and teachings of Jesus”, the twelve apostles of disciples of Jesus, the ministry and miracles of Jesus — and oh yes, the virgin birth, too. Continue reading ““Five Reasons Why Mythicism is Disappointing””