before we get to ahead of ourselves I want to introduce you the moderator of our Buzz belief debate
tonight Matt D Hunty is an atheist activist and public speaker being raised Southern Baptist he devoted Over 20 years to the church with intentions of becoming a minister today Matt travels the country participating in debates and giving talks relevant to religion and philosophy he's also host of the show The Atheist Experience and has a fantastic patreon project called atheist debates if you want to learn more about about how he dissects religious strategies and how to actually perform logic and reason well go to patreon.com atheist debates so before we get too sick of us let me actually introduce our debat Matt D Hunty you'll be happy to know I'm not giving a talk this evening I'm extremely thrilled to be here I was booked for another convention in Kansas when they asked me to do this and while I like to go to the entire convention whenever I can uh Skeptics of Oz in Kansas was willing despite the fact that I'm doing a keynote at 4:00 tomorrow to allow me to come up here and moderate this this evening and then fly out at the crack of dawn tomorrow because I really wanted to do this I've been wanting to see this debate and versions of it for ages I'm not a mythicist which is partly why I'm here I'm as close to the middle as you could possibly get but we're not here to hear my thoughts you can watch those on YouTube in a week or so instead I'm going to describe the format and introduce our speakers this evening I'm going to do my best to be the moderator that I've always wanted in all of my debates but when I fail which I will I will at least have more compassion for moderators in my debates as well the format for this evening begins with two 30 minute presentations we'll begin with Dr man and following him will be Dr Price then there will be a 10-minute break 10-minute breaks are 10 minutes not 15 or 20 then there will be a 40-minute period of directed questions Dr manman will have 10 minutes to ask Dr Price questions then Dr Price will have 10 minutes to ask questions and then ir and then price again for a total of 40 minutes and then we will open it up to audience questions I'll say this again perhaps later questions end in a question mark and do not begin with your life story in the history of everything you've ever done if you think for one moment that the guy who is famous for saying no no no no no you're done and hanging up on people people is not going to cut your ass off and make you ask a question you are at the wrong debate you can tell from the Applause that when I cut you off while you might hate me everybody else will love me so this was encouragement for me to do it more let me introduce our our uh speakers and presenters for tonight uh Dr Robert price is a former Baptist Minister who holds phds in systematic theology the New Testament Dr Price is a professor of biblical criticism at the center for inquiry Institute and will assert the Jesus myth Theory Viewpoint which holds that there are flaws with the evidence for a historical Jesus and will make the case that he is no more than a mythological figure Dr arbert Price our second presenter who I was pleased to meet yesterday for the first time is Dr Bart man he's the James a gray distinguished professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he has taught since 1988 Professor man has published extensively in the fields of new test and early Christianity and will support the stance that there is strong evidence for the existence of a historical Jesus ladies and gentlemen Dr Bart irman if our timekeeper is ready we will go ahead and begin with Dr er's 30-minute presentation supporting this Bart Ehrman well thank you very much thank you all for coming out it's a lively crowd I can tell so uh this is a uh definitely uh an unusual uh experience for me just a second let me get my timer going don't want Matt yelling at me uh right this is an unusual experience for me I I do a number of debates uh but uh normally I'm debating an Evangelical Christian or a fundamentalist uh about something of interest to fundamentalists uh such as uh you know whether the Bible is the gospels are completely accurate or not or uh whether the historian can prove that Jesus was raised from the dead uh normally when I do these debates I do them in front of a large fundamentalist or conservative Evangelical audience uh so the last one I did was was in the Deep South and there were like 600 people there and uh I started out the debate by uh we were debating on I don't know what we were debating on the resurrection or something and so we started out the debate and I I asked the audience I said so how many of you in here uh consider yourselves committed Christians Boom everybody raises their hand said okay how many of you are convinced that Jesus was physically raised from the dead Boom everybody raises their hand okay how many of you are here to see me get creamed Boom everybody raises their oh my God so uh yeah that's my that's my normal experience so uh I've never had the experience where I uh went in front of a crowd as the radical conservative well it's an honor it's a real honor to be here with you and it's a privilege to share a stage with uh with Bob price um uh but okay I do want to get the the lay of the land here how many of you would consider yourselves a committed Christian how many of you are mythicists how many of you are on the fence huh okay how many of you are open to changing your mind wow oh my God now look look you go to hell for lying okay well okay okay yeah just one other question how many of you are uh are going to vote for Hillary how many of you going to vote for Trump okay well this is I I I had a choice of jokes to tell so uh yeah so now now we know so uh uh I I I just do want you to know that whatever whatever happens tonight rigged well okay so this is uh this is obviously an important uh issue for uh for you and uh it should be an important issue for everybody I mean if Jesus didn't exist that would be a big deal uh there are two billion people in the world today who worship Jesus Christianity completely changed Western Civilization there has been nothing like Christianity that has affected such change in the history of the West nothing uh this is actually the topic of the book that I'm working on now is how Christianity took over the Roman Empire but uh realize if Christianity had not become the religion of the West we simply would not have the cultural history we've had whether you're thinking in terms of art or liter literature or music or architecture uh our lives would be incalculably different if Jesus never lived this is a religion based on a myth I myself am not a believer in Jesus but I do believe in history and I believe it's important to know what actually happened in the past even if we would prefer that something else had happened let me give you a brief synopsis of my position tonight my brief synopsis is this whatever else you want to say about Jesus of Nazareth I think you can say that he certainly existed in my talk I'm going to be mounting the positive Arguments for that some of the positive arguments and we have we have only 30 minutes uh if you've read uh Bob's works you know he could go for 30 days without repeating himself so uh we only have 30 minutes so I'm going to give you uh some of the stronger arguments that Jesus certainly existed I'm not going to be spending a lot of time on the arguments uh on the other side I'm not going to be spending times refuting mythicist Arguments for one thing in this debate you haven't heard any yet so I'm not going to be refuting them but I am I I did want to start out just by saying a couple of things just to give you a sense for what uh what I think uh it sometimes happens which is that sometimes mythicists Mount arguments that that for me at least are not very convincing and so I just want to give two of those before getting into the positive into the positive side uh again not not having a clue what Bob is going to say uh first thing I want to say is uh the the first argument that I find completely unconvincing that uh some of you uh have heard and maybe have found convincing is the idea that Jesus of Nazareth could not have uh existed because Nazareth did not exist there was no Nazareth I simply have never found this argument to be uh anywhere close to persuasive for two reasons one reason is archaeologists have dug where ancient Nazareth was and they've discover that it was there this is not a debated Point among Palestinian archaeologists several of which are good friends of mine they don't debate whether Nazareth existed because they have dug it and they found it there's they've uncovered a house there they've uncovered a farm there they've uncovered Pottery there they've uncovered coins there the pottery and the coins date to the days of Jesus certainly Nazareth did exist it's been shown to exist anyone who thinks otherwise simply doesn't know the archaeological record I'm afraid it's that simple the second reason for not being convinced by this though is this saying that Jesus did not exist because he could not have been born in Nazareth is like saying Barack Obama doesn't exist because he couldn't have been born in America what everyone thinks about the birther issue and judging from your show of hands I think most of you don't subscribe to it it's got nothing to do with whether Barack Obama actually exists or not same with Nazareth second uh second mythicist argument uh that people make is that if Jesus life as described in the gospels follows a certain set patterns that you can see in Old Testament stories or in myths about dying and Rising God or in uh Tales told about other religious figures that if there if these stories are in these set Traditions then probably Jesus didn't exist I've never found this persuasive either most historical figures that we have accounts of have legendary to Tales told about them and set patterns that was true for George Washington it's true for Julius Caesar it's Truth for the founder of uh hiic Judaism the Bal Shem to who allegedly could heal the sick and cast out demons and raise the dead and be transfigured before his his uh his followers uh does that mean he didn't exist no everybody knows that b sham to existed there's no doubt about that I could exist I I could illustrate this by giving point after Point let me just give you one one more detailed illustration Octavian Caesar Augustus the first Roman Emperor literally he was allegedly the son of God he was miraculously born he was revered by as the Son of God by his devotees he ascended to Heaven he is a Divine being worthy of worship there are all these Tales told about him does that mean he didn't exist no it means that when you tell stories about him you tell these stories in certain ways this is typically what happens with important figures uh from the past famous people are told in terms of stereotypes we have our own stereotypes we have the rags to riches story we have the politician sexual exploits story we have the divine Savior Story the fact that stories are molded to a model has no bearing on whether the person actually existed or not now let me get to my positive argument Jesus of Nazareth is one of the best attested Palestinian Jews of the entire first century from the year 1 of the Common Era 1 CE to the year 100 CE we know that there were hundreds of thousands of Jews living in Palestine how many of those Jews are better attested than Jesus one Josephus the historian he's attested better only because he left us multiple writings if you look only at external attestation for first century Palestinian Jews Jesus actually is much better than Josephus we have four gospels written about him these gospels come from the very next Generation after his life contrast that with Josephus we have zero negative accounts of the Jewish historian Josephus how many do how many uh narrative accounts do we have for the most powerful religious figure in Jesus day Caiaphas the high priest Caiaphas we have no narrative accounts how many narrative accounts do we have for pontious pilot the most powerful man in first century Palestine we have no narrative accounts how many accounts do we have for anyone else in first century Palestine we have no narrative accounts it's not even close I'm not saying that the gospel accounts are nonprotic as some of you know I've made I've made an entire career out of arguing that they're problematic they there are enormous problems with the gospels uh and so Bob and I are not going to be disagreeing about that they are absolutely problematic but they are four narratives about a person living in first century Palestine and they do give us a lot of real information these four gospels we have Matthew Mark Luke and John are not simply one gospel in four forms they are four gospels based on different literary and oral sources the gospel of Mark was probably written sometime around the year 70 of the com era Jesus died around the year 30 of the Common Era Mark is absolutely based on oral Traditions that the author had heard Matthew and Luke used Mark as one of their sources but they had other sources available to them Matthew and Luke had one other source that they shared together that no longer exists Scholars call it Q Matthew had other sources that Luke did not have Luke had other sources that Matthew did not have that means prior to the writing of the gospels You' got sources for Mark different sources for Matthew and Luke different sources for Matthew different sources for Luke and we're not even talking about John which didn't use Matthew Mark and Luke and had different sources of his own these are multiple independent sources from the first century how is it possible that you have so many sources about somebody who never existed these sources are independent of each other they're not copying one another you have independent sources from before the gospels some of these sources have traditions in them that almost certainly go back to Aramaic speaking Palestine some of these sources record sayings of Jesus in which he uses Aramaic words known only in Palestine some of the sources contain stories that make sense if you translate them back into Aramaic better sense than they make when they're given in Greek that shows the story started out as Aramaic stories you have Aramaic stories about Jesus from Palestine years before the gospels these are stories in Aramaic Palestine that almost certainly go back to the 30s of the Common Era multiple sources this is far better than anybody that we have in Palestine in the entire first century it's better than almost anybody we have in the ancient world with with exceptions that we all we all could probably cite uh sorry my timer just went off ah rats okay hold on a second yeah right you're just GNA tell me to shut up okay I'm on this uh right hold on sorry 13us thank you okay right um we have writings of Paul the Apostle Paul was not a follower of Jesus he was living in a later generation we have 13 letters that allegedly went under that that not allegedly went under Paul's name that we have 13 letters that do go under Paul's name of these 13 letters that the Apostle Paul wrote seven of them are letters that he actually wrote there are six of the letters that that Paul probably did not write seven letter letters that Paul really did write the reason this is important is because Paul was writing before the gospels the gospels were not the first books of the New Testament to be written they were relatively late Paul's writings were being produced in the 50s of the Common Era in other words about 25 years from the traditional date of jesus' death between 20 and 30 years of jesus' traditional death we can establish a relatively rough chronology for Paul's life this chronology is going to be important for a couple of points that I want to make the chronology of Paul's life is possible because in Paul's letters he'll sometimes make an off-the-cuff biographical comment uh three years ago I did this 14 years 14 years later I did this so you get these biographical statements with years and So based on that you can reconstruct a a chronology if you know when he was writing you can count backwards and figure out when what happened based on the chronology that is accept by virtually everybody Paul originally started out as a persecutor of Christians soon after Jesus death probably within two years of jesus' death Paul was a persecutor of the Christians the fact that he was a persecutor of the Christians is interesting and important if Paul converted in say the year 33 and he had been persecuting Christians based on what he heard about them in the year 30 32 that means Paul had heard about Christians and Christianity and about Jesus within two years of the traditional date of jesus' death probably about two years after Jesus had died if that's the case it would be worth knowing what does Paul know about the historical Jesus Paul's views of Jesus are really important as I think Bob and I would both agree Paul does not talk about a heavenly Cosmic figure Joshua or Jesus who was crucified by demons in outer space the way mythicists have often said Paul talks about a real historical figure Jesus a Jew among Jews a preacher teacher who was crucified by his Earthly opponents yes Paul thought that Jesus was a Divine being who was also a human being Paul does think that Jesus was a Divine being who was also a human being but he firmly believes that this Divine being became a human being Jesus was a Jew who lived taught and was crucified in Palestine Paul is often faulted for not saying more about Jesus than he says he doesn't talk about jesus' baptism his temptation his Sermon on the Mount his exorcisms his triumphal entry and lots of other things he's faulted for not saying more on the grounds that if he knew more he would have said more that's possible but it's not really probative if you take seven of my mother's letters my mother is a very very devout Christian if you take seven her of her letters about religion about her Christianity about her faith about her beliefs you will not find any references to Jesus baptism Temptation Sermon on the Mount exorcisms or triumphal entry she just doesn't talk about those things in her letters and either did Paul does it show that my mother didn't doesn't believe those things about Jesus life no it doesn't show that it's not what she is talking about these letters that we have of Paul are letters that Paul wrote to his congregations to deal with problems that they were having if they weren't having problems then he he didn't uh write about them in his letters what does Paul say Paul tells us a number of important things about the historical Jesus based on what he knew he indicates that Jesus was actually born physically that he had a woman as his mother that he came from the line of King David that he was born a Jew that he was a Jewish Messiah that he had Brothers one of them was named James he preached to other Jews he had 12 disciples one of them was Peter whom Paul knew Jesus was a teacher Paul explicitly cites several of jesus' teachings Jesus had a last supper with his disciples Jesus was crucified by the ruling authorities at the instigation of the Jewish authorities Paul tells us these things I want to focus on two points in particular that Paul Paul States about Jesus the first is one that is Central to uh of the debates uh about mythicism it comes in Galatians 1: 19 where Paul says that 3 years after his conversion so this would be by my chronology about the year 35 or 36 the Common Era he says after three years I went to Jerusalem to visit sephus I remained with him for 15 days sephus is Peter jesus' closest disciple but I saw none of the other Apostles except James the Lord's brother the brother of the Lord Paul knows Jesus brother and he knows Jesus closest disciple sephus the word brother in the New Testament always means one of two things a brother means a blood relative who's born to the same mother that's one of the things it means in other words it means what brother means the second thing it means is uh it it sometimes refers to often refers to members of the same believing Community who stand stand in close solidarity and so you can talk about your brothers Jewish brothers Christian Brothers depending what your faith commitments are those are the two things that brother means in unambiguous cases in the New Testament if anyone wants to claim that the word brother means something else in any context they're free to do that but they need to have clear and compelling reasons for thinking so other than the fact that they don't want to think that the word means what it means in Paul's case when he says that James was the brother of Jesus what does he mean he cannot mean simply that he was somebody who stood in close solidarity with Jesus because he's contrasting James with sephus he's explaining that he met with sephus and with the brother of the Lord James in other words sephus is not the brother of the Lord you get the same phenomenon in 1 Corinthians 9:5 where Paul says that other people are allowed to take their wives with them and so he too should be allowed to do so Paul should be allowed to do so because other people take wives with them on their missions and he says that sephus doesn't Apollos doesn't Paul himself doesn't but the brothers of the Lord do that means that none of the others are the brothers of the Lord Paul knew James he spent weeks with James he knew Peter jesus' closest disciple if Jesus didn't exist then surely his best friend and his brother would know about it they didn't they didn't know about because he did exist second point about Paul has to tell us Paul understands that Jesus was the crucified Messiah this is the important Point Paul understands Jesus as the crucified Messiah two things to say about that first if a first century Jew talked about someone who was crucified what do they have in mind Romans crucified people all the time when people talked about crucified people what did they mean you can read any ancient source read Josephus if you want to read any ancient source what do people mean when they talk about someone who's crucified they talk about the same thing Time After Time After Time they mean somebody that the Romans nailed or tied to a cross in order to publicly humiliate and torture to death that's what they mean if Paul said that Jesus got crucified what does he mean he means the same thing he doesn't mean that Jesus was killed in outer space by demonic power circling the globe he's referring to a death that the Romans inflicted on criminals that's what everybody means in the first century second if Jesus did not exist let's just say suppose he did not exist then necessarily the Christians invented him and so the big question if the Christians invented Jesus as the Jewish Messiah the the the Messiah the Christ would they invent the idea that as the crucified if you work hard enough at it you might be able to imagine inventing a God who got killed in raised from the dead as many mythicists say but that's not what Paul talks about Paul doesn't talk about God who was crucified God was crucified for you Paul talks about Christ who was crucified 1 Corinthians chap 2:2 we knew nothing among you except for Christ and him crucified 1 Corinthians chapter 15: 3 and following I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and was buried by the way he was buried it's a little hard to do in the outer space Christ was crucified would somebody make up a messiah specifically the Messiah who was crucified it's important to understand what Jews meant Paul was a Jew it's important to understand what Jews meant by the term Christ in the days of Paul there were some Jews who were expecting that a messiah was going to come to the Jewish people sent from God God would send a messiah the word Messiah actually comes from a Hebrew word MCH which means anointed one Messiah is the same word as the Greek word Christ Hebrews the Hebrew word is Messiah Greek word Christ I have to tell my students this because many of my students think that Jesus Christ Christ is his last name you know Jesus Christ born to Joseph and Mary Christ and it's doesn't mean it mean Jesus the Messiah Jews had various expectations of what this Messiah would be the anointed one this is a term that originally used in Jewish scriptures to refer to the king of Israel he was the anointed one when the King was anointed at his coronation ceremony like King David King Solomon this shows that God was putting his favor upon him in Jesus day there hadn't been a king on the throne for nearly 600 years some people thought there would be a king on the throne and they called him the anointed one the Messiah the Messiah was going to be a great warrior figure like David a great warrior who drove out the enemy and set up God's kingdom by establishing a throne in Jerusalem and Israel once more be a sovereign state that would rule over its enemies that's what the Messiah would do some Jews thought that the Messiah would be a cosmic figure who would destroy the forces of evil and set up God's Kingdom on earth a mighty Cosmic judge there were various expectations of what the Messiah would be but there was one thing that all of the expectations had in common Jews who expected a messiah expected a great powerful figure who would destroy the enemy and set up God's Kingdom and who was Jesus the Christians said that Jesus was a crucified criminal if you wanted to make up a story about the Messiah would you make up the story that the Messiah had been crucified that's the opposite of what the Messiah is supposed to be if you want to make up a story about a messiah you'd make up the story that well he actually drove out the Romans and sitting on the throne in Jerusalem why didn't they make up that story because it obviously wasn't true the early Christians were not going around saying that God had been crucified they were saying that Christ had been crucified well why did they do that if it didn't make any sense to expect a crucified Messiah it was because they believed that Jesus was the Messiah and they knew that he got crucified you can't explain the Cru crucified Messiah as something that was made up the crucified Messiah is because people thought Jesus was the Messiah and they knew that this man had been killed as a crucified criminal that's why Paul says that the crucifixion of Jesus was the greatest stumbling block for Jews it was the one reason most Jews rejected the Christian claim that Jesus was the Messiah most Jews thought the claim was crazy it was absurd the Messiah is crucified what I mean it's like a contradiction in terms of course it wasn't crucified so why did Christians say it they had no choice because they knew that the man Jesus had been crucified let me sum up Jesus is one of the best two best attested Palestinian Jews of the first century we have numerous sources that talk about him these sources give us valuable information the sources are problematic they are historically difficult historians spend their lives trying to figure out what in them is historical and what is not that does not mean that there's nothing historical in them there is historical information in them you have to find it included with the historical sources though are also the writings of the Apostle Paul Paul within two years of Jesus life absolutely knew that he was a historical figure that he was a Jewish preacher and teacher who ended up on the wrong side of the law and was crucified by the Roman authorities let me end with a final word something that I tell my students my Christian students in North Carolina but I think it would be appropriate here as well that is that on this or any other topic I hope you do not decide to believe only what's convenient I have to tell my students this only what you want to believe or what you would like to be right if you want to know if something is true you should look at the evidence and then decide if you decide that it's true you should accept it and deal with it it may change your broader perspective or it may not but in either case you will at least be basing your perspective on what you have reason to believe to be true thank you very [Applause] much all right and now Dr Bob Price will present the mythicist position is there a man behind the curtain I guess you might say that I think not only that there is no Great and Powerful Oz but that there's not even a man behind the curtain Bart on the other hand agrees Oz is an illusion but if you pull back the curtain you'll find the anticlimactic professor Marvel uh first is Christ mythicism some kind of novelty dreamed up by Skeptics living far enough after the events to be able to get away with it uh Bart and many others think so quote he says the idea that Jesus did not exist is a modern notion it has no ancient antic ancient pre precedence uh quote again even the enemies of the Jesus movement thought that Jesus had existed among their many slurs against the religion his non-existence is never one of them close quote I'm not so sure of that Justin Martyr ascribes to his dialogue partner Trio uh the uh allegation quote you have received a feudal rumor and have created some sort of Christ for yourselves end quote we always hear apologists explain this away as if it meant you Christians have nominated your own Christ or you Christians pretend your Jesus was the Christ but uh that's rather different uh would the rabbi have said that the partisans of Simon Barba had created their own Messiah I don't think so it seems less contrived to take Trio is charging that the Christian savior was a figment of Pious imagination Elis the second century critic of Christianity says according to origin it is clear to me that the writings of the Christians are a lie and that your fables have not been well enough constructed to conceal this monstrous fiction and then there's good old 2 Peter 1:1 16-18 we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we told you of the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ end quote now that's interesting some are alleging that we ostensibly Simeon Peter as the letter starts and his colleagues were devising myths about the coming of Jesus that sounds to me like an accusation uh that Christians had fabricated the whole business now of course that doesn't mean that's what happened right I'm just saying that that was an an ancient view well I picture the emergence of Jesus Christ like that moment when in the process of evolution enough small mut mutations accumulate to cross the taxonomical line to amount to a new species old myths mutated and morphed over a long time but uh Bart is attacking the committee invention model of Jesus uh and I think that's a straw man though it's one created by mythicists uh the well yeah I uh that they like Network execs sitting around you know what are we going to do with the Agonist of this show uh I think that is absurd and I believe I detect here however a fault line running beneath his whole argument uh at least uh 14 times that I counted in did Jesus exist Bart says we can trace traditions of Jesus back to within a very few years of Jesus supposed crucifixion uh for Bart mythicism assumes that schemers invented Jesus at the same point in history when the gospel have Jesus appear but if there was no historical Jesus as we Wildey tinf foil hat wearing mythicists I know I am anyway um suggest the bottom falls out of the whole thing there's no way to determine when the timeline began no way to say what or when counts as early to say for instance quote in nearly all our sources Peter was Jesus most intimate companion and Confidant for his entire public Ministry after his baptism end quote seems to presuppose the factual character of The Narrative which is just the pointed issue uh I think that's like invoking Dr Watson as a witness to a historical Sherlock Bart well expresses and then deconstructs a common mythicist objection to Jesus historical existence um how could non-Christian writers have ignored a man who performed Miracle after Miracle to Great public Acclaim but Bart replies the Contemporary writers would probably not have taken much notice of any historically plausible Jesus an itinerate sage and faith healer one who did not miraculously multiply food turn water into wine walk on water raise the rotting Dead uh banish storms at Sea and so forth isn't this like asking whether the historical Superman really had superhuman Powers Beyond those of ordinary men should we decide that there was indeed a historical Superman but that he was merely Clark Kent um Bart says you can shape a tradition about Jesus any way you want so that it looks highly legendary but that has no bearing on the question of whether the legendary shaping uh whether beneath the legendary shaping lies the core of the historical event well let's try to imagine what some of these hypothetical pre- legendary Original Stories might have looked like could this be the his the original core behind Mark 5 1-13 they came to the other side of the sea to the country of the gisin and a great herd of swine was grazing on the hillside but immediately some wild dogs began to bark and the swine took fright and stampeded down the Steep Hillside and they were drowned in the sea the end or how about the possible historical core of Mark 5:21 and following when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side a great crowd gathered about him he was beside the sea then came one of the rulers of the synagogue gyus by name and seeing him he fell at his feet and besought him saying my little daughter is at the point of death come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live while he was still speaking there came from the ruler's house some who said your daughter is dead why trouble the teacher any further and Jesus said to him my poor man you have my sympathies now who's up for lunch uh it could this be the historical core of Mark 6 32-44 as he went ashore he saw a great throng and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd and he began to teach them many things and when it grew late grew late his disciples came to him and said this is it's a lonely place and the hour is now late send them away to go into the country and the surrounding Villages and buy themselves something to eat and he answered them you have said it and he dispersed the crowd and they all ate and were satisfied or one more could this be the basis of Mark 6: 45-51 immediately he dismissed the crowd and he made his disciples get into the boat to go to the other side to Betha and he got into the boat with him and when evening came the boat was out on the um what's left uh who would even have remembered these unremarkable incidents if in fact they happened and why would it have occurred to anyone to embellish them in terms of evolution these tepid anecdotes would have had no survival value to treat such gospel episodes the way Bart suggests if I'm hearing them right is to trim away the element that would have caused the story to be passed on in the first place it sounds like the oldtime Protestant rationalism ridiculed by DF Strauss boiling the spectacular down to the mundane just to provide a tow hold on historical reality this is a modern version of ancient uer ISM the attempt to salvage the myths of the Gods and heroes by positing that they were mythologized versions of ancient celebrities Osiris was a king King Aries a mighty warrior asclepius a doctor Hercules a weightlifter Apollo the owner of a tanning salon um could the Christian religion have begun with the modest historical figure Bart and his colleagues have whittel from the oak of the gospels there was no such historical figure Jesus possesses the Grandeur of the mythical demigods because that's what he was that's why no contemporary historian mentions him uh section subheading testimonium flimsy onus did Jesus come in for mentioned by ancient historians Bart regards the well-known statements of plen the younger and Cornelius tacitus about Christos and cestos as textually authentic as they may well be but as he readily admits these writers quite likely learned what they said about Christ not Jesus interestingly from Christians uh here are multiple attestations of hearsay the weakness and scantiness of these attestations only accentuate the pity of the supposed non-Christian documentation of a historical Jesus and then we have to ask why are the gospels witnesses to Jesus any better founded Bart says that quotes stories about Jesus circulated widely throughout the major urban areas of the Mediterranean from a very early time our written sources are based on oral traditions in other words hearsay just like plenty in tacitus Thomas Arnold famously said that the resurrection of Jesus was the best attested fact in history but as RG Collingwood observed it's being well attested only proves that a lot of people believed it not that it happened did Josephus mentioned Jesus Bart says quote the majority of Scholars of early Judaism and experts on Josephus think that one or more Christian scribes touched up the passage a bit if one takes out the obviously Christian comments the passage may have been rather innocuous uh end of quote nothing like he was the Messiah right no Resurrection appearances which the you know standard text of Josephus mentions Bart Ventures that quote the paired down version of Josephus contains very little that could have been used by the early Christian writers to defend Jesus and his followers from attacks by Pagan intellectuals end quote his point is that the unspectacular version cannot have begun as a wholesale Christian interpolation so it must be genuine to Josephus right but my question would be why would Josephus mention such a non entity who does The Daily Planet report on Superman or Clark Kent uh no the scaled down version of the passage omitting he was the Christ and the resurrection appearances makes as little sense as the authentic words of Josephus as they do as a Christian interpolation Paul J Hopper an authority on the Linguistics of classical literature has in my opinion decisively refuted the scaled down non- interpolation theory he compares the testimonium treatment of pilate uh with the adjacent pilot episodes in the context in Josephus and concludes that the testimonium is after all a Christian interpolation intended to rehabilitate the image of Jesus and to shift the blame for his death from pilate to the Jews in the authentic pilot Stories the procurator initiates actions against the Jews but in the test testimonium he is manipulated by the Jewish leaders Jesus is no more of a protagonist everything said of him occurs by way of Illusions uh and and at arms length in summary fashion all aimed at vindicating the Christian Movement in The Writer's Day that is to say despite all this the faith goes on quote and up until this very day the tribe of Christians named after him has not died out out which is kind of interesting in the paired down version um the uh Christ doesn't occur he's Jesus so Christians couldn't have been named after another name than uh than Jesus I should think the testimonium first appears in eusebius's demonstration of the Gospel our copies of Josephus are centuries later than that and many scholars have suggested it was eusebius's writing falsely ascribed to Josephus that crept into our later copies of Josephus K Olsen shows how whereas the testimonium passage sticks out like a sore thumb in the text of the Antiquities where scribes inserted it thinking they were restoring an accidental scribal Omission the passage fits its ubian context so well that well you'd think it was made for the purpose and it was the particular things said about Jesus in the testimonium all address specific Pagan criticisms of Christan beliefs about Jesus current in eusebius's own day and which eus is pointedly discussing in the context Bart dismisses suggestions that this or that historical Jesus leaning passage in Paul's Epistles is a subsequent interpolation he says quote here we find textual studies driven by convenience if a passage contradicts your views simply claim that it was not written by the author end quote but aren't cons census Scholars doing the same darn thing with the testimonium flavianum they dearly want Josephus to have mentioned Jesus but the passage as it stands they admit cannot have been the work of a non-Christian Jew like Josephus it's a bad text for their purposes so they redact it as Matthew redacted Mark in order to make it suitable for their use just exercise the line item veto remove the offending passages now we can use it as evidence to establish a historical Jesus uh no no you can't uh subtitle Bridge to Nowhere most Jesus scholars believe one Can Build a Bridge from the canonical gospels over to the historical Jesus suppose the gospels themselves are based on prior gospels that helps but if we run out of planks maybe we can close the rest of the Distance by tossing sturdy ropes of oral tradition over to the other side Bart and Ates the prosel gospels the hypothetical sources used by Matthew and Luke namely Mark which of course we know exist q m and L Matthew and Luke each used both q and Mark where Matthew presents material not found in Mark or Q he got it from E from M uh in the same way stories and sayings unique to Luke must have been borrowed from L and for all we know Mark M and L like Q may be compilations of earlier oral or written sources but Walter schmidthals demonstrates to my satisfaction that all the uniquely lcan parables are either drawn from General helenistic Judaism or composed by Luke himself to serve his special interests in persecution prayer possessions Etc Schmid alss argues that all the uniquely matthean parables are his own Creations he Notes too that if Luke and Matthew were really drawing on streams of oral tradition it seems remarkable that we should find no overlaps between them that is no non verbatim parallels but in his gospel's preface doesn't Luke refer to numerous predecessors yes but I think Luke is trying to do what BART is trying to do to provide a possibly fictive paper trail back to Jesus the fabricator fabricor ERS of Islamic Hadith ostensible traditions of what the prophet Muhammad uh said and did always supplied an attestation chain or isnad for their Fabrications I heard this from Abdul alhazred who heard it from Raz Al Gul who heard it from Abu Becker who heard it from the prophet peace be upon Him Luke is supplying and is nood it is part and parcel of Luke's apologetic motif of eyewitness Apostolic guarantors there's a fine point in the apologetical exploitation of source criticism that we shouldn't skip over Q for instance is a helpful theoretical model for organizing the data of the gospels um others cut the pie in other ways uh uh qm and L are theoretical purely hypothetical not known but lost documents like The Gospel According to the Hebrew Bart also appeals to the gospels of Thomas and Peter and the so-called Edgerton gospel is independent witnesses to a recent and therefore historical Jesus but many think these texts are heavily dependent on the canonical gospels something that is itself a matter of intense debate can hardly be taken for granted as a building block for one's case subtitle oh isn't this is so clever risky patristics uh papius was a bishop of hierapolis in Asia Minor uh around 125 he wrote a work now lost except for several quotations by Church fathers called the exposition of the Oracles of Our Lord it is very difficult to Grant any credibility to a man who says he heard from the hearers of the Holy Apostles that judas's scariot had swollen up to the size of a parade balloon unable to squeeze between two street corners and urinated live maggots before he exploded I don't mean to suggest that Bart is willing to accept such nonsense he doesn't explicitly rejects it but the astonishing thing is that even in the face of this he still accepts papius as an important Source again to appeal to such a worthless Source only underlines the pity of the evidence did papus get this tradition from Associates to the apostles if he says he did then his claim to Apostolic hobnobbing must be considered just as fanciful skip comments on Ignatius of Antioch Paul's Jesus what do the Pauline Epistles tell us about Jesus Bart says quote he never mentions Pontius Pilate or the Romans but he may have had no need to do so his readers knew full well what he was talking about if they were already fully informed about Jesus then there was no need for Paul to remind them that Jesus walked on water raised gyrus his daughter from the dead and was executed in Jerusalem but so and a quote but suppose his readers were familiar with at least the first two stories Bart believes such stories are pure Legends if the Corinthians or the Thessalonians knew about these Miracles that doesn't mean they knew anything about a historical Jesus what is it issue in the question of Paul not mentioning pilot of the Sanhedrin as culprits in Jesus death Paul never describes the crucifixion as a mundane execution at the hands of Earthly governing authorities though of course nothing he says rules out that possibility what he does say is that Jesus was done to death by the rulers or archons of this ion uh the principalities and Powers methis infer that the author of these Epistles was writing at a time when Christians believe believed in a Celestial man of light who had not appeared on the earth to teach and heal and die on a Roman cross but who had been ambushed and slain by the Demonic entities inhabiting the lower Heavens as we read in various surviving Gnostic text this death would have occurred in the primordial past his Slayers harvested the Sparks of his light body and used them to see the inert mudpie creations of the Demi Earth imparting life and motion to them beginning with Adam thus the death of the Primal light man turned out to be a lifegiving sacrifice just like that of the viic perua eventually the revealer was sent forth from the Divine world of light to reather the Divine photons redeeming them from the imprisonment of this world of solid flesh the gnostics naturally consider themselves to be the elite lightbearers who ad heeded the C of the revealer Manifest among men in the form of Gnostic Apostles at some point some of these gnostics historicized their salvation myth envisioning the sacrificial death of the man of light is taking place down here in the sublunar world at first the coming of this Christ was understood as what we would call a hologram an illusion of physical presence among mortal men and women the enlightened could discern the purely spiritual character of the Savior while those mired in mundane Consciousness took him for a man of Flesh eventually this unenlightened genuinely incarnational christology became normative the Pauline literature would represent a prehistoric version of Gnostic Christian belief or a faction which retained the earlier version when others had adopted a historicized christology uh this is the model that makes most sense to me right a thing like this you as B Bart says this is not probative you can't prove this unless you got a time machine uh it's it's a it's a question of what Paradigm makes most sense of the evidence to to one and this is what makes the most sense to me Paul quote Bart says refers on several occasions to jesus' teachings and quote what where well of course Bart is referring to two passages from First Corinthians quote to the married I give charge not I but the Lord that the wife should not separate from her husband and that the husband should not divorce his wife 1 Corinthians 7:10 through1 are we so sure Paul is quoting a saying of the historical Jesus and not passing on a command vouch safe to him by the ascended Christ I think the latter is more likely we cannot be sure Paul does not mean he has a historical Jesus quote on hand but if this notion of Paul passing on private oracles is even a plausible suggestion then uh you can't just assert that he is quoting the historical Jesus the same applies to 1 Corinthians 11:23 through 26 where Paul quotes the words of institution of the Eucharist conservative apologists contend that the words I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you imply that Paul is repeating an account given him by his apost olic predecessors an account of Jesus last supper the received delivered language uh is familiar from rinic tradition but especially in Paul it can just as easily mean the opposite as in Galatians 1 I would have you know Brethren that the gospel that was preached by me is not according to men for I did not receive it from men nor was I taught it but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ note the similarity to I received from the Lord in 1 Corinthians 11:23 why doesn't it denote in 1 Corinthians what it most certainly does in Galatians we may also compare the situation of the gospels and the Pauline Epistles to that of the synoptics versus John as Mars Casey notes it is obvious that the unique and Powerful sayings and discourses attributed to Jesus in John's gospel cannot be authentic sayings of a historical Jes Jesus because no such materials the I am discourses and so on appear in the synoptics is it reasonable to argue that Jesus really said such things but that none of it had had reached the ears of the synops of course not as all critical Scholars admit these sayings did not exist hence were not circulating in the period when Q Mark and Matthew throw in M&L if you want were being written they arose within the sectarian community of the Beloved disciple later on shouldn't we understand the absence of Jesus sayings and stories from the Pauline literature in the same way it simply did not yet exist or we should be seeing some of it in the Epistles subtitled mythicist Mischief is it possible that any texts in the Pauline Epistles that imply belief in a recent historical Jesus might be secondary scribal insertions Bart does not suffer interpolation theories gladly quote it is only the mythicists who have a vested interest in claiming that Paul did not know of a historical Jesus who insists that these passages were not originally in Paul's writings one always needs to consider the source end quote the trouble is that these suggestions were not made by mythicists uh William O Walker Jr discusses a whole raft of proposed early interpolations not one of them the proposal of a mythicist each suggestion comes with its own reasoning ad howl Smith and his Jesus not a myth showed how Galatians 1:18-19 might have been interpolated he says unless the illusion is interpolated Paul had an interview with the brother of Jesus who was one of the three pillars of the church in Jerusalem Galatians 1:19 there is a critical case of some slight cency against the authenticity of Galatians 1:18 and 19 which was absent from Marion's Apostolic on his collection of paulan Epistles the word again in Galatians 2:1 which presupposes the earlier passage seems to have been interpolated as it is absent from irenaeus's full and accurate citation of this section of the epistle to the galations in his Treatise against Heretics JC O'Neal in the recovery of Paul's letter to the Galatians contended that Galatians 1 14-5 originally com comprised a short credal affirmation in Poetic form added by a scribe Jean mang if I'm saying that right in from Christianity to nosis and from nosis to Christianity argues at First Corinthians 11:23 through 26 was interpolated in order to authorize a certain Innovations in the Eucharistic service I have made a case that 1 Corinthians 15 3-11 was interpolated into its present context but then I don't count since I'm a crazy mythicist but little did I suspect that others not mythicists had beat me to the punch winom Monroe suspects uh 1 Corinthians 15 1-11 of belonging to a subsequent postp line stratum of the epistle while JC O'Neal also deems it most probable that 1 Corinthians 15 1-11 is a later creedal summary not written by Paul our Joseph Hoffman speaks of the interpolative character of 1 Corinthians 15 5-8 none of them mythicists oops 30 seconds okay well so much for the scandal of the Cross let me just say that uh I don't think they had to invent a a crucified Messiah because I believe that the righteous davidic King is a scaled down version of of what was originally in ancient Israel the myth of the Sacred King who was God's representative on Earth could even be called God and went through the annually the uh the uh myth of how yah became king of the Gods by killing the Chaos Dragons being devoured and and emerging alive again and then taking the Throne of of the Gods and uh creating the world so this uh Margaret Barker shows this kind of stuff is still around in the time of the book of ration and uh it wasn't Orthodox duter romic Judaism but probably provided the categories for early Christian christology so so we've shown that I am going to hold people to the clock you have 10 minutes for a break and we'll come back for questions if you come in after the 10-minute Mark please try and take your seat quietly because we're starting I've tried to change the nature of debates so that they are much more conversational and rather than joint press conferences and I'm happy for the cross-examination period it's the part where I get the most out of it is the part where I think the audience might get the boast out of it because you get to watch people think and that is always uh edifying in the 10 minutes it we'll start with uh Dr irman first he has 10 minutes to ask questions of Dr Price and please remember that the the question time belongs to the person asking the questions so please don't think it's rude if one whoever's the questioner is happens to interrupt to redirect if they think something's gone astray or they need to clarify a point this is their time to use and we'll do 10 minutes beginning now with Dr manman okay thank you is this on is this on you can hear me okay good okay great well thank you Bob for very uh very interesting uh and informative talk I appreciate it very much so I've got uh I I have 163 questions um so uh I think I think what I'm going to do is just kind of start where you started so I was a little surprised when you said that ancient people like Trio and celsus uh held to something like a mythis view um isn't it true that both Trio and celsus explicitly talk about jesus' birth and his baptism and his death by crucifixion in order to to show that these were natural events and not Supernatural events uh yeah can you hear me yeah I guess so uh yeah I noticed that and it seems to me that the only way to make sense out of this is that they're going on to say well this is your story let's see if it has any plausibility and so that he's uh uh elaborating on how it's it's incompetent as a myth okay well I you know I I don't read it that way at all I think I mean all these texts are readily available and they're very interesting texts I encourage everybody to read them the dialogue with Trio dialogue with Trio by Justin and the Contra the the against celsus that you'll find in origin where he quotes celsus as views and it's pretty clear that that celsus believes that Jesus was born and that he was baptized and he was tempted that he was crucified I mean he's quite explicit about I notice when you're talking about my view uh in that little segment you had first quoted uh trifo that the Christ you have created for yourself then later you quoted me is saying something about Traditions that uh from a few years within uh a few years before Jesus was supposedly crucified or before the supposed crucifix seems like you could take me to say well Jesus wasn't really crucified he was and I think you're reading Trio that way rather than because the these guys uh they they spend their treatises showing that that the Christian interpretation of the events is wrong but they never deny that Jesus was born or baptized or crucified well let me let me get to the next question uh several times you you uh expressed your uh surprise that contemporary authors did not mention Jesus if he you know was really a significant figure uh so these same contemporary authors how often do they mention the most powerful religious figure in Jesus day Caiaphas or how how often do they mention the most significant Jew of the first century Josephus well uh with I believe in somewhere in the mission they refer to the serpents of the House of Annis which I take it to mean uh that they uh knew about this whole bunch of people I always like to point that out because I have to defend the gospels uh with the idea that if you say that they say any Jews were involved in the death of Jesus's anti-Semitism and I point out well no Jews like the ones that eventually put the priesthood to the sword uh they they uh knew about him mentioned him didn't like him thought they were quizzing which they were um but I did did he uh well what I'm saying is if Jesus were merely on that level or like the Exorcist that Joseph Josephus mentions uh why would they come in why would Jesus come in for mention yeah yeah I understand that but I mean it's a myth this argument that that that Jesus is never mentioned in any Greek or Roman source of the first century and uh yeah I mean I understand the argument but I mean either as Caiaphas who is the most significant religious leader of the time and neither is Josephus who's the best documented figure of the first century he's never mentioned in any of these sources so why why would Jesus be well because he's a miracle working super no I'm I don't think he was a miracle worker that's but that's the kind that's what I mean by saying would they to the Daily Planet have reported on Clark Kent he's anic fact the fact that they don't mention a Jew from Palestine is not surprising that's right that's right but but it doesn't show he didn't exist no well the idea is no I I fully agree like you don't you don't think it's an argument that Caiaphas didn't exist yeah but there's no they wouldn't have been taken advantage of as a miracle working demigod but but I don't think he was a miracle working but then it's no surprise that it indeed is no surprise we don't have mentions of don't mention any first century Jew but if Jesus was that insignificant is that a sufficient cause forti that insignificant he's he's like every other Jew of the first century they don't mention them I okay let's let's move on because we only have a 10 minute but so okay so actually my next thing is about this point there where you you were saying that um that when you strip away the myth it's an interesting argument when you strip away the myth from these stories there's like nothing left it's kind of benol and uninteresting and so why would you even tell the story it's it's it's interesting point but the the examples you picked um let me see what do I can't even read my own you picked a couple examples for example the feeding of the 5,000 I think was one of your examples but I mean I don't think there was a feeding of the 5,000 so I don't see how this is an argument I mean I well what is it that got beefed up into these Miracle stories I don't think anything got beefed up into the miracle I don't think that what you do is you read the miracle stories and then you strip away a miracle and you say that's what happened that's not my method I've never used cameos of the whole idea that Jesus was just Joe Rabbi no I don't think it was Joe Rabbi look I wrote an entire book on what we can say about the historical Jesus so uh you know it's I don't know what it is 250 pages long so it's not as if there's nothing you can say there's a lot you can say without conceding a single Miracle but the way you get there is not by reading the miracle of the 5000 and saying that they just really just had a picnic I mean as you know I mean you you you know this as well as I do and in the 19th century there were um there were historians like uh Heinrich Palace who did just that that's what they did and Albert schwier showed you can't do it that way and today Nobody Does it that way so I think you're I think you're beating a straw man because that's not how any of us proceeds how are we supposed to know how much time we have by the way minutes I've got three minutes and 45 seconds okay okay uh uh so I mean as as you know the the way people go about it is not simply by stripping miraculous things out of the gospels what they do is they evaluate every story to see whether there's anything historical in it for example uh the the baptism you know is there anything historical in there or not the way you do it is not just by taking out the miracle bits the way you were saying it happens with Josephus so okay okay look I do need to get on Josephus yes okay I mention Josephus let me talk about Josephus for a second uh no I don't want to talk about Josephus I decided not to ask that one how much time do I have have three minutes not enough is the answer okay I can do this three minutes right okay uh right uh one of our big disagreements is about Paul's understanding of the death of Jesus when Paul says that the archons of this ion killed him you take this to mean that there are the celestial Powers up in the Heavenly places and you take it in a gnostic sense is that correct yes um so the question is what does Paul mean by the term archon and what does he mean by the term ion so Paul uses these terms in other places what does he mean when he says arone none of them seem to me to be references to Earthly rulers not even Romans uh it's Romans 133 it's quite clear he's talking about Earthly rulers uh I don't I mean I I don't think I know it's usually taken that way but I think the the tribute rendered unto the rul here's what he says he says be subject to every governing Authority for there is no Authority except from God therefore he who resists Authority resists what God has appointed for the archon are not a terror to Good Conduct but to bad who would you have no fear of him who is in Authority he's talking about ruling ath governing authorities well on the one hand if he does mean that uh we have the the odity of him saying the W it's only the wicked God punishes you mean like Jesus would a guy say that if he thought Jesus had been unjustly judicially murdered by the the authorities yes he apparently did say that so did first Peter I mean this is a common Trope it's a common Trope in early Christianity through after the New Testament period you have all sorts of authors who say uh that that Jesus was killed by the authorities and you should obey the authorities I mean it may not make sense to us but the reason they're saying this is because they don't want to cause any more problems they don't want Christians to be doing things against the law uh so and the idea that the ions are referring to Gnostic myths uh okay so I just encourage everybody to read up about gnosticism so what when do you date the Gnostic myths uh I think they go way back and uh evolved from Judaism though with some cross-pollination from other sources as you see in the nagamma Tex is already zoroastrian and platonic elements but I think Margaret Barker is right in that it comes from from Judaism well it may come from Judaism but Gnostic Gnostic Scholars today of course when you and I were back in graduate school back in the Pline age the uh you know people people did people did think that gnosticism was a pre-christian set of religions but gnosticism today is normally understood to be a second century phenomenon that it didn't pred predate Paul and so no nobody talks about gnosticism as a predecessor of Paul because these these texts that we have postate Paul the nagamati library is all second century stuff so I don't think can use second century texts in order to show that this is the background of letters written in the 50s so so my time is up thank you very much all right well I tend to go with uh uh with boltman and Rit andin and others their arguments persuade me that it was and schmalls that uh these things were pre-christian and non-Christian in 1950s that's what they thought but they don't we have now started Dr Price's 10 minutes I think my your but please it's your your first 10 question I don't know well I would like to ask one question um in I I'm pretty sure it's uh did Jes good God snap out of it price uh the uh how Jesus became God at one I think that's the book where you say that you changed your mind on whether the tomb of Joseph of arthia and the women disciples visiting the empty tomb that you you suspect now that that is is not historical am I misremembering that or if I'm not how did you make the transition uh yeah no I yeah uh so whenever I debate these uh Christian apologists which is what I'm usually doing with my life as you know uh they uh they always argue that there are two facts that everybody agrees on about the resurrection of Jesus that that uh the tomb is empty and uh and Jesus appeared to people and they say you have to explain these two facts and if you can't explain these two two facts then you have to agree that Jesus was raised from the dead so this is you you've heard this a trillion times so have I so um I actually do agree that uh the follower some of some of the followers of Jesus believe that he appeared to them I absolutely think that that's true I think they had some kind of Visions but I don't think I don't think Jesus appeared to them I don't think Jesus rose from the dead I think people people have visions of deceased loved ones it happens sometimes and some of them did so I think that's true I when I was writing that book I came to think uh something that before that I thought was crazy which is I I came to think there really was no empty tomb uh I don't I don't think the story about Joseph of arthea is a historical account um and the reason I came to that is this I I decided to look up every reference that I could find in every Greek and Latin author of antiquity uh who mentions crucifixion and to see what they say about crucifix and one of the Striking things is um that we have no literary descriptions of crucifixion in other words we don't have any text that tells us uh This Is How They did it you know they nailed them or they tied them or they did this this is how they set the cross up right there's no descriptions of this because apparently because everybody knew how it happened I would I suppose but they don't describe it one thing that does get described a lot though is or a relative amount I mean is that Romans left the bodies on the cross they did not take them down when they died uh part of the punishment of crucifixion was that the uh the body was left to decompose and to be subject to the Scavenging animals so you have references to this in our sources and so I came to think you know if that's if that was part of the punishment that you'd be humiliated even after death and would not be allowed a decent burial if that was part of the point of crucifixion in Roman in Roman circles then would they have made an exception in the case of Jesus and you know it's not like they would say well he's the son of God so let's give him a decent burial you know so uh so I I came to think that probably they did not give him a decent burial and so that the the story of Joseph of Vero was probably a later legend that was invented precisely so Christians could say there was an empty tomb but I don't think there was an empty tomb yeah because I don't think so my guess is what they did is they um they they crucified him they probably left him on the cross and then probably disposed of the remains probably just chucked him in a common grave like they do with most people be my guess um what do you think of uh Burton Mack's argument in a couple of his books that that Scholars should give up the idea of the Resurrection whatever it was as the big bang that started Christianity and he said perhaps there were all sorts of uh Christian and Jesus communities some of whom found it in their interest to use Resurrection uh imagery others didn't and that uh that we've been naive in assuming that oh yeah it all started with that explosion of those Visions whatever they were yeah well you know Burton Mack was obviously a very brilliant scholar still may be I don't know if he's still active or Alive even I don't know either yeah so um his tomb was found empty that's his tomb was empty yeah right yeah he uh he actually wasn't that good he was good he wasn't that good so uh so um I uh I used to be open to that idea but I don't really buy it anymore um so in my book um how Jesus became God uh I actually argue that that it was the resurrection that really mattered that that you know if you have I mean suppose you do have this group of people up in Galilee who really appreciate things like The Sermon on the Mount or something you know and and there're there's like alternative group um I just don't I don't see how you get Christianity out of that I mean basically you've got a Jewish teacher who's saying some you know some interesting things uh but you without a resurrection uh so I think without Christ without the resurrection you don't have what would start Christianity I I I think that's correct also but my the way I uh imagine it is that those types of Christianity like uh what Max says is the Q Community because of what you've just said they perished uh because there was no and like Jewish Christianity did later on they just had no more market share they were too Jewish for Gentiles and vice versa but that that it's still possible that there were and that's all I mean speculation any way you cut it but I if there's reason enough to think that Q implies a zsum laan of a non uh death and Resurrection christology uh they they could have existed because any way you cut it Constantine and the Gang pretty much squashed all the other early christianities I wonder if that happened before without even any intervention yeah it's just I don't think you would have any reason for people to be following Jesus in particular I mean he's not saying anything that's completely unlike what anyone else is saying so why so if he got crucified I mean you know it's not somebody you want to follow probably well that's my uh Clark K analogy like would he would you get Christianity out of a guy that was just a faith heal like is is Oral Roberts likely to give uh rise to a religion I hope not no maybe not but but but there are as you know I mean there there are people who do give rise to a religion who who are not uh to the rest of us are not particularly interesting people so yeah that's all right okay so we'll start another 10-minute segment U with Dr IR asking questions thank you okay good so uh oops so Bob um in your one of the one of the things I like about your uh your books on on all this is that you talk about the importance of establishing probabilities uh and um and you do that in a number of sophisticated ways I mean one of your books uh you talk about um the the the principle of analogy and things we don't we don't need to get in because but but you you know the idea of probabilities so um as you know uh as you as you know full well uh there are hundreds of references to things that Jesus said and did uh in our sources uh so the gospels are filled with stories about jesus' teachings and his deeds uh things that relate to a Man From Galilee who did these things we don't have any stories uh in our sources about the activities of a god Jes God Joshua who lived in outer space and so I'm just wondering why that's the more likely the more probable of the two well you do have theophanies in the Old Testament of the angel of Yahweh and I kind of like and I know this is all speculative uh you can't really get beyond that Margaret Barker says she thinks that the reason Jesus you know the old uh joke that well how could Jesus be God was he praying to himself in the Garden of Gethsemane well uh Barker says well you see it looks as if you have the survival of the pruter anomic Israelite polytheism just like you had uh farakhan carrying on the original version of the Nation of Islam you had Latin Mass Catholics who rejected uh the official Judgment of Vatican 2 well these these myths and beliefs don't die out and she said that Jesus she thinks is supposed to be Jehovah and that the name yahoshua yah saves that uh he was understood to be a theophany of yah and he was praying to his father Al Elan the most high God whom some still distinguish between and that the distinction survives in h Pho with the the two cherubims uh standing for the different Natures of God almost like I mean my point isn't so much about what's in the Old Testament but or Pho but uh the sources that talk about Jesus don't talk about a I mean we don't have we don't have stories about somebody who's who's up in the out Outer Space what you do if he's Jehovah in a theophany in the New Testament well that's the idea she's that that uh I'm I take seriously that bar all right well let me let me pursue it in a different way we have um we have we know of thousands of people who were crucified by Romans and uh certainly hundreds many hundreds of Jews in Palestine who were crucified by Romans we don't have any accounts of Jews being crucified in outer space by demons so why is it more probable that that's what what Jesus was originally thought to be why why is that more than just thinking there was a Jesus who was crucified by Romans like so many thousands of other people well it's who are you talking about uh this miracle working Superman who seems in many ways to be a classic Hercules I'm not talking about him I'm not talking about him I'm talking about the historical Jesus well if there there we go back to my Clark Kent thing I don't know why even such a crucified figure would have made a splash it's certainly not implausible that people got crucified that's for sure well I have no trouble believing the CLK Kent existed but I don't think Superman did that's right would there be issues of Superman comics if it was only Clark Kent I just don't think the like you say would a would a guy who was not thought to be raised from the dead have been an adequate cause for Christianity I think no and he was he was thought to be raised from the dead that's the whole point but you're saying the idea of the crucifixion in the the heavens is is the problem I'm saying that we know that Romans crucified thousands of people including hundreds of Jews and so there's nothing at all improbable that Jesus was a Jew who was crucified that's right except that we have a lot of uh Gnostic texts of redeemers who were somehow identified with the uh the man of light and they were done to death and I do think that's pre-christian stuff I I just because there's a more Chic uh in style opinion of gnosticism we don't have any of these Gnostic texts that predate Christianity well we don't have any copies of the New Testament I'm not talking about copies I'm not talking about copies I'm saying the texts themselves uh are the texts we have are written in the 4th Century so I'm not saying that I'm saying that the that the texts were composed in the second century so were the gospels in my Reckoning well but Paul was before that and Paul doesn't talk about uh doesn't talk about people out in outer space crucifying well he might depending on how you take the the Colossians and First Corinthians passages well okay but I mean virtually everybody dates the gospel of Mark to the year 70 I think they're wrong I always like to say you know the consensus of Scholars was that Jesus should be crucified uh it's the consensus means nothing to me because you never know why there's a consensus you can't take a nose count and determine well 20 million must it's not as if everybody it's not as if every scholar is maintaining this is a fundamentalist Christian I mean I mean you have agnostics and atheists and Jews and Al I mean basically and there are reasons for dating Mark to around the year 70 so okay we're not we we can't get into that so let let me ask another question how much time do I have four minutes okay so uh on to probability things another probability thing so um there are I mentioned earlier that there are events in the gospels that historians tend to think are contain a a historical kernel and one of them for example is the baptism as you know a lot of people think that uh Jesus really was baptized by John the Baptist and so I was rereading your book on uh the book on uh the Christ Smith theory and its problems and uh and you you go through the gospels to try to show that the events in the gospels in fact uh probably are not historical not referring to a historical figure and so on the baptism your view is um that this the baptism of Jesus where he is baptized and the heaven split open the dove descends upon him he hears a voice from Heaven your view is that this is not based on anything that happened that it's derived from the zoroastrian traditions of about Zoro zoroaster who is the son of a viic priest uh he he immerses himself in a river uh and when he comes up the Archangel Vu Mana appears to him and uh uh to Bear him Tidings from the one God Aura Mazda uh after which the evil one arimon tempts him to abandon this call and so I just I'm finding this a little puzzling why is it more probable that this account is based on a zoroastrian text that has to do with viic priests and Vu mana and auro Mazda and all mean instead of being based on something that of some person being baptized by John the Baptist we I mean we know that there was a John the Baptist Josephus talks about him we know that he was baptizing Jews uh Jesus was a Jew living at time so there's nothing implausible about Jesus being baptized by John but it doesn't seems to be implausible to me that Mark is being influenced by zoroastrian texts there's nothing implausible about that Judaism as it existed among the Pharisees uh was heavily borrowed from Mark was not Jewish what Mark is not Mark is not Jewish well if he he certainly is basing it on on what he understands to be J show no evidence of knowing anything about Zoroastrianism well it it's all over first century Judaism he's not a Jew Mark wasn't I I agree but uh was he not entitled to use the Old Testament either because uh no he did use the Old Testament that's my point he uses things like the Old Testament but he doesn't use zoroastrian Sac yeah but that was built into Judaism at the time in fact uh uh tww Manson argued that Pharisee originally meant Pary because the Sadducees said you guys are who've accepted all these beliefs from our Persian over Lords you're not real Jews you're pares one minute okay I've just got one minute um so when you when you don't think that Jesus existed I mean then you I'm sure you think that Jesus mother Mary didn't exist and so I'm just wondering about everyone else I mean did Mary Magdalene exist did Mary Bethany exist did Judas es scariot exist did the Apostle Peter exist did James and John the son of zebede exist or or are all of these people made up uh they're either made up or had different significances which I mean it's no surprise we hear nothing outside of these second and third Century apocryphal acts about the apostles other than Peter who's just a Dr Watson character like but we don't in these sources we don't hear anything about any first century Jews so it doesn't mean they didn't exist it just means they don't talk about them well if these characters are bit players in something that you have reason to think is fictitious and that's the case I make with examining all these these items then there's no particular reason to think that there was a a Peter especially since he appears well Peter does I mean Paul knows Peter Paul tells us okay we're time thank you very much all right so we're going to begin the final of the four 10 minute question period so you'll be able to continue that thought or whatever else uh comes to you and when it's over we'll start taking questions it's you each get two he's had one no he's had two oh yeah I I'm happy to go with audience questions I hope I haven't lost my mind but anyway after this 10-minute section then the audience will will we'll line up to take questions there and while you're lining up I'll exercise moderator privilege and ask a question or something but we'll we'll have the final 10-minute question period from Dr Price now well I would just like to clarify again that I don't think you I admit you cannot prove any of this it's just a question of what ursic model makes the most sense uh to you of the various data and it's of course self-evident that different people look at it differently so I'm simply arguing as I always say in the books this is what seems to me the most likely view but the it's all speculation in the beginning of one of my books I say if uh if somebody complains that this is speculation let me congratulate him on his grasp of the obvious we we cannot know this stuff and and a historian is always like Collingwood said assembling a kind of a Gestalt to impose on the evidence to see if it fits the the vision of the past he has sort of conjured from looking at the evidence it's the hermeneutical Circle kind of thing that boltman and heiger talk about but it's exactly what boltman says about the New Testament you approach it with questions and you find uh that the data does or does not address them and so you revise your questions if they don't that's why like among people that do believe there was a historical Jesus that's about where it stops who or what was he was he a um U an early feminist was he uh a vegetarian was he a socialist was he a community organizer was he a hdic magician uh was he a liberal Pharisee uh did he teach that he was the son of Dame wisdom I mean there are reputable Scholars who have all of these ways or was he a revolutionist I think it's a particularly good case to be made for that if I think if there was a historical Jesus that's him in my opinion the the uh sgf Brandon Jesus and the zealots thing but uh there's no uh agreement and why is that well because everybody is coming up with what seems to them a likely Paradigm and and it's not like there's some sort of Orthodoxy to be imposed I don't think it's desirable that everybody come to agreement about this and in fact I always say well actually about atheism but the same is true here it is of no interest to me whether any individual converts to mythicism as if you know I'm accepting the no Jesus is my personal savior I I do not I could not care less if uh you believe in God or not unless you're a Jihadi or something it's just none of my business why should I care but I happen to be interested in this topic for No Doubt for for biographical reasons I was a I was a teenage fundamentalist uh and so naturally I've never been able to shake the question uh and uh but historians don't dogmatize if they know what they're doing it's just a question of exploring alternative possible paradigms I make the case I try to explain what uh I think in fact I'm uh working on a book now called Bart ER interpreted and I ran this by Bart before I started it and explain the rationale in it I because I know a lot of people read both of our books and so forth and so I figured it would be it might do the such readers of service to explain what I think Bart is saying and where and why and how I disagree I'm not trying to refute him but I'm trying to clarify things and I think often these debates can get no farther than that because you cannot prove it and one last thing suppose tomorrow someone were to dig up a pyus scrap of a letter in Egypt where some uh traveling businessman wrote home to his wife and we do have such letters and said oh I happen to uh hear the uh the wise man Jesus and he's uh an impressive man suppose we found that and there was no question about the age of it that would be enough to drive the stake through the heart of mythicism right there and it may happen you know this is not a dogma and so I've just been trying to like contrast uh our views I don't think Bart's view is not viable I hope nobody takes me to be saying that uh it's just an exchange of different uh opinions and reasons we hold them so do you have any other questions for right all right okay he he's actually seating you a moment of his remaining time if you had a point I no I I I just want to agree that um that you really you have to figure out I agree with the thing about a gestal you've got you've got to figure out a paradigm and plug plug your data into the Paradigm and see which Paradigm makes the best sense and I would just like to say that for me uh as a historian of the ancient world the the best Paradigm for understanding somebody like the Jesus talked about in our early Christian sources the best paradigms are not provided through Zoroastrianism or through gnosticism because I don't think that Zoroastrianism was widely known the the gospel writers show no evidence of knowing gnosticism Zoroastrianism and and gnosticism we simply don't have the early materials that we would need for that to be the Paradigm because they we don't have evidence that it even existed yet the Gnostic writers themselves are being influenced by by the Christian tradition and so the idea that they provide the Paradigm for Paul doesn't make sense because Paul was writing in the 50s and we don't have evidence of these people until second century so that's all are we good all right so thank you we have time remaining for audience questions if you'd like to go ahead and line up please if you if you're have a question for both of them that's fine um if you have a question for one of the other uh let's not try to dog pile entirely on one of the two and while people are lining up I'd like to ask a similar question to each of you um it's there's no denying that the mythis position isn't considered serious scholarship generally by serious Scholars and so my question for Dr Price is why do you think that's the case and for Dr man what would it take to make you think this is deserving of serious scholar ship uh Michelle Fuko spoke about the areve or archive of uh accepted knowledge and assumptions in every generation whereby certain things can be considered others can't and like we say add nauseum these days it's a matter of can you think outside the box uh and I think that uh when the the mainstream say of the Society of biblical literature implicitly becomes a kind of magic miserium if you want to play the professional game uh you you're going You're welcome to do it only within certain parameters I I don't think I would be allowed if I tried to uh to uh make a statement of this I just even at the Jesus seminar I gave a similar presentation of the Pauline Epistles and even these supposed radicals said well now let's get back to sanity thanks uh there's uh it's just like certain things are Unthinkable I think and uh and there there I'm I don't care how many people think this or that I want to hear the arguments but I think that's kind of the way it is you you have to play the game that people are playing and I don't blame them because the kind of interaction they want to have is there's certain rules to a game uh and uh like for instance the Paul thing here it's difficult for me to get into that because I go along with the Dutch radicals of the 19th century that Paul wrote none of the Epistles attributed to them well that puts such a gulf between us and I think the gospels are written in the 2 Century it's hard to bridge that Gap or to find common ground so it's certainly understandable why people say let's draw these rules up for the game or we can't play it I understand that and I'm I'm not playing by those rules doesn't make me right or wrong and and Dr her on that question what do you think it would take to make this viable in serious scholarship right so uh I mean you're right it's not it's not uh it's not a question that's debated among Scholars uh most Scholars simply uh don't even think it's is worth debating because of the the overwhelming evidence and so um I think I'll tell you what I think needs to happen if I mean if if people really want to keep pursuing the mythicist issue I mean I I personally think it's a mistake to pursue pursue the issue I think that there might be better Avenues to take for people interested in these things but if you desperately want to pursue the Mythos this issue the only re way it's ever going to be taken seriously in the academy is by people establishing their credentials in the academy and showing that they have um that that they are published that they they publish books on topics not on mythicism but just publish books on topics with Oxford University press or Harvard University press or Yale University press and get positions in universities uh as professors in some cognate field uh ancient history uh Classics early Judaism early Christianity uh and on the basis of having some Authority argue the position uh because at present it's just L looked at as a as a view that that outli ERS have who are just trying who just think religion is nonsense and so they're coming up with these these arguments to show that religion is nonsense I'm not I'm not saying that that's necessarily the view people have but that is how it's perceived and uh you know and people think that the argument itself is just nonsense I mean people just think it's it's a laughable argument and so for it not to be a laughable argument I think it has to be Advanced by people who are recognized by the academic world as serious academicians okay thanks uh first question uh I'm Frank zindler from American atheist press you know it's both amusing and sobering to realize that if the docetists had won the wars of the 2 and third centuries we wouldn't be having this debate tonight would we we' we'd be debating something much more significant like was there a historical Tooth Fairy um my question actually I have two but but Matt told me that uh I can only ask one and then I've got to recyc I've got to go to the back of the line so I shall try to do that but my first question uh part um in your did Jesus exist you uh criticized books written by Bob and by me and various other Scholars and uh in response to your um criticisms we composed uh this 600 page Bart Erman and the quest of to the historical Jesus which we are selling at the back table in this we replied to all of your uh points in your book as well as all of the points you've made tonight uh in great detail um and as you know I re re reprinted our email correspondence that we conducted for about two and a half years uh and presented evidence that you said was not uh in existence um I have had the impression that you have never read this book to see what we had to say and I was listening very carefully tonight in in your comments for example on Nazareth and things like that uh to see whether there was any clue that you had in fact read this book and I couldn't hear any evidence that you had ever read this book and so I guess I'm my question is this then uh have you ever read this book or if not why not okay thank you uh so first let me say first of all if the Dost had won the Dost actually did not deny that there is a historical Jesus so we still could be having this argument uh the Dost thought that there was a person Jesus they simply thought that he wasn't a flesh and blood human being but they didn't deny that he did the things that are said about him in the gospels uh Frank I've read the book I've read it twice I haven't responded to it because I disagree with everything in it and um if I responded to the book it I would have to write an 800 page book and then you would write A600 page book and then I'd have to write a 3200 page book and frankly I'm just doing other things with my life all right next question hi my name is Tom Leeds uh this is for mostly for you Bart um the vast majority of Scholars just accept Jesus being real mythicism has been kind can you step up to the mic I'm I'm having a hard time hearing you and I don't know if anybody majority of Scholars have accepted that Jesus is real mythicism has been pretty much ignored uh at least for critical uh evaluation of of books and other research do you think mythicism has value uh adds to the conversation or do you think it is a distraction of whether or not uh well adds value to the conversation of whether or not Jesus was real or is it a distraction of whether or not Jesus was God or not and if Jesus wasn't real do you think that really matters uh okay I mean I'll be completely honest I don't think it's a valuable conversation I don't think that it's contributing anything um I think and it may be that I'm just reading my own agenda into what's going on with the mythis movement but my sense is and I know Bob disagrees with this so he he may want to say something about this because he he does talk about this in his book um he disagrees with my sense which is my sense is that mythicism is a way of showing uh the the the very deeply rooted problems in Christianity uh that if your Jesus didn't exist then you really have no basis for your faith uh I myself am an agnostic I identify as both as an agnostic and as an atheist I completely identify with the humanist agenda um uh I I don't hate Christians and I don't think they're foolish uh but and I don't think that what they're doing is nonsense I don't I don't think that but I do think that if you want to promote a humanist agenda um the best way to do that and the best way to promote conversation is not to advance a position that most people in the world either have never heard of or when they do hear of it they just think it's silly uh and so um I think that there are better ways to promote what I take to be the agenda lying beneath it all but again I know Bob doesn't think that's the agenda so well actually I just draw a distinction I do get the impression that very many people excite about mythicism are using it as a kind of part of a scorched Earth approach to U blow Christianity out of the water and so on and I I think that is um a mistake you you have to bracket any such motives and just consider uh the case in its own right like I I think I know what's motivating fundamentalist apologist like William Leen Craig but it really doesn't matter I need to address what he is saying and uh so I I suspect an awful lot of mythicists are motivated but I'm not that way but I'm not a mind reader and I always like to point out that uh there could be a God but no historical Jesus there could have been a historical Jesus and yet there is no God uh and uh that um the these questions have to be kept separate and uh it if depending on how one defines the humanist agenda I'm not so sure I'm promoting it next hey great debate uh this question is mostly for uh Dr er uh do you utilize the basian principles for the the basan principles the basian theorem yeah yeah no that Dr carrier utilizes in his books do do you utilize that principal Dr man uh no I don't know any historian except for I know two historians who employ the the basian principal um so uh most historians simply don't think you can do history that way uh the two historians that I the two people I know who employ it uh are Richard carrier uh and uh Richard swinburn Richard swinburn uses uh the basium theorum theorem in order to demonstrate that there is an extremely high level of probability that Jesus was physically raised from the dead now swinburn is a uh he's a Bonafide scholar he's a philosopher at Oxford University I think that argument is flat out crazy uh but it is interesting to me that the two people who employ the basian theorem one of them uses it to prove that Jesus was physically raised from the dead at a very high level of probability and the other uses it to prove at a very high level probability that Jesus never existed so I don't know I'm not a statistician myself I've had statis I've had statisticians who tell me that that both people are Mis employing it but I I have no way of evaluating it I don't have the uh so I so I don't use it myself and uh but I do think that's an interesting irony can I thank you very much great to be I just want to comment I I don't have a comment on basy and probability because I'm too stupid to understand what it is you and I read Richard's book at the same time uh next question please good evening it's a question for both speakers in Jesus before the gospels Bart talks about how people in the ancient world and even today misremember Jesus for example Pontius Pilate gets more innocent throughout the gospels or the Prosperity Gospel of today versus Jesus teachings and statements concerning giving away everything you own Bart has has said the historical Jesus did not make history the remember Jesus did and in his lecture subjective conscious and the historical Jesus Bob talks about how some of the stories Parables teachings and sayings of Jesus are later more modern myths for example the story of the woman taken in adultery or The Jock Jesus of the fellowship of Christian athletes so Bart says misremembering the historical Jesus mythologizes him and Bob says creating your own personal Jesus consumes the historical Jesus and my question for both of you is how exactly are those two things different at the end of the day isn't the Jesus of the gospels Jesus of Nazareth a fictional character thank you would you like to go first I do think it's it's the case and there's a great irony pointed out by the great 19th century liberal Protestant Theologian alre Rell who was much more optimistic about defining a historical Jesus uh than than I am he was sort of in the harach camp though actually harack based his view on ritel but he said that that uh he's about the only person I know of in scholarship that actually attacked this idea of uh Jesus as your personal savior he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I'm going to hell and all this kind of thing um he said look what you're doing you're subsuming the only Jesus we know we've got the one we can reconstruct historically uh to a an imaginary friend an imaginary Playmate he didn't put it that way but that's what it amounts to that so which is the important thing your the Christ of your faith or the only possible yard stick for measuring it the historical Jesus well I I don't think we can know what the historical Jesus was if there was one but he was highlighting exactly this point that the personal savior has this ironic implication my customized savior my Jesus the one on the the dashboard of my mind mind yeah I uh I mean I when you when you phrase the question the way you did it does sound like Bob and I are very close on the issue and in some ways we are because I you know I absolutely don't think that the that Jesus uh walked on the water and multiplied the loaves of bread and um and raised people from the dead I absolutely do not think that those stories are true but I absolutely think that there was a Jesus of Nazareth uh and I think we can say a lot of things about him the fact that he didn't do all those Miracles doesn't mean he didn't exist uh anymore than Caesar Augustus didn't exist because he didn't do all those things and he wasn't really the son of God and he wasn't really miraculously bored he didn't really Ascend to Heaven well of course he didn't but he but there still was a Caesar Augustus I think history really matters I mean I think it matters whether we we correctly know what happened in the past especially with important uh historical figures and I think um whatever else we might think about Jesus he's the most important historical figure in the history of the West and so it matters that we know something about him and I think we can say a good deal about him and so that's what I was saying I mean many years ago now I wrote a book on the historical Jesus where I lay out in uh you several hundred Pages what we can actually say about the man and I think it's important for us to know what we can say about him so about 30 minutes of questioning left expect more Crackdown on short questions please great debate thank you on the positive side uh B manman said quoted Galatians 1:18-19 where Paul meets cus and and James also 1 Corinthians 15 3-5 you are a textual critic on the negative side we have U are you scoring or did you have a question yeah it's coming Dr Price said it was an interpolation or text ual variant now I would like man to interact with that that consideration uh can you interact with that that assertion and also the Carmen Christie uh as evidence for the historical Jesus in passing Margaret Barker uh is mormonism's favorite non-mormon scholar okay I'm not going to deal with the last one because we have short short amount of time I'll just say that you know if you want to say that uh Galatians 1:19 is an interpolation 1 Corinthians 15 is an interpolation if you don't want to believe that Nazareth existed you say Mark 1:9 is a is an interpolation you just basically you you when you when you find verses that flat out contradict what you think then your response is well that wasn't originally there well Scholars have ways of knowing whether something was originally there or not they don't just guess at it and they don't just throw out things they don't like uh there is no manuscript of the the New Testament that omits Galatians 1:19 or 1 Corinthians 15 3-5 these passages are as textually secure as you can get we have hundreds of manuscripts of these passages and every manuscript has these passages the passages fit in with the uh the uh the style of Paul the Theology of Paul the views of Paul and so throwing them out Simply it for me is scholarship by convenience it's getting rid of something that doesn't agree with you because it doesn't agree with you in in in my opinion well it wasn't mythicist who made those suggestions uh and they they in fact one was an anti- mythicist but he says I have to admit that the the James thing in Galatians uh it's based on patristic evidence which is certainly invoked in textual criticism that irenaeus quotes uh the Galatians 2 thing about the what now reads as the the second visit to Jerusalem and the the the second again Etc isn't in there there though the rest of it is a a full quote and that uh Marion is said by the church fathers not to have had that and those are pretty early uh attestations keep in mind that we have no manuscripts uh from uh this tunnel period so you can't assume that there simply couldn't have been any interpolations agnosticism gets transformed into fism if we can't prove there were we can go ahead and assume there weren't and I think you may just have to be satisfied with agnosticism on the point yeah but Bob I mean you would agree no nobody would establish the text of Galatians or 1 Corinthians on the basis of the quotations of arus or marcian it just it is not it cannot be done what what do you mean by by establishing the text we as you've pointed out we don't really we can't claim we know what was in it originally okay well we can yes okay next question uh Dr man on your blog and in how Jesus became God uh you say that Paul believed uh quote that Christ was a great Angel who came into the world to uh fulfill God's plan or was a Divine being who came into the world and in the Philippian hymn you quote uh you talk about Paul quoting an quote ancient Creed so if Paul believed that Jesus was an angel or great angel or Divine being and that the Creed that he talks about in that he's quoting the Philippian him is ancient is that not putting the existence of Jesus far before the uh word um uh gospel documents are placing him and then Dr Price you quoted really quickly your belief in the the chaos dragon and the the metaphors what time frame would you put these early uh beliefs about Christ see now you're cheating and you got two questions I'm putting a time frame in so I'm surprising it differ so sorry about your Bob and I are going to agree Bob and I are going to agree on the time frame that these are early these are very early Traditions that you would agree they're PA prea line right the Philippians H uh yeah and uh however I couldn't put a date to it because I whoops sorry I uh think that um these things are in the works notice that Jesus comes up only at the very end of it that is the name that is given to the hitherto unnamed savior after he's ascended and uh and so forth as Paul Kush a mythicist pointed out that alone he thought was enough to destroy the story of the gospels with a guy named Jesus like EX for occurs verse five I'm sorry it occurs in verse 5 Jesus Christ have this mind in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus that's not part of the supposed text is it the Creed the hymn no the whole point is when when when the Creed is about Jesus Christ the Creed begins with the relative pronoun who yeah like the one in the pastorals and col so it's it's it's clearly talking about Jesus Christ well it is in its present context but if it is an early your text that's not quite clear like the cube material uh it's it's very likely it seems to me that Jesus said Jesus said Jesus said has been added by a Christian editor because the sounds uh pretty I know you don't buy the q1 thing but well we could we need to talk about this one over a beer so uh so uh Jesus an Ang at the first part I guess is let me answer your question quickly because we have a lot of people behind you so you you make a really good point that I I absolutely think that Paul thought that Jesus was a pre-existent Divine being uh he was an angel before he became a human being but Paul thinks he became a human being and there really was a man Jesus he he says that he was born of a woman he says that he was born as a Jew he says that he ministered to Jews he says that he has 12 disciples he said he has Brothers he the so there was a man Jesus it's just that he wasn't like the rest of us he was an angel who became a human being but he was a human being for Paul next question okay thank you oh floor yeah the there's a wire taped down on the floor there be careful as you walk up to the mic uh okay uh question for Robert Price you keep asking that uh somebody as mundane as Clark Kent would not inspire a gospel but perhaps the metaphor isn't Clark Kent perhaps a metaphor is someone like a modern rock star I mean look at all the many people who believe they've seen Elvis alive after his death in' 77 uh I remember seeing a documentary uh 20 years ago that said that the rock group The Moody Blues decided to stop touring when someone came backstage and asked them to bless their album uh although I did see on the Marquee out here the window that they are coming to Milwaukee in a week uh uh and maybe they'll have a question okay so I mean why why not just assume that the myth ACC accumulates around someone that's relatively charismatic and uh magnetic and that he's not a non- entity as as Clark hint is portrayed in at least the Christopher Reef movies I me well if Jesus is an itinerate teacher or even an exorcist as uh Josephus and Luc and of sasat say these people were a dime a dozen it would would be like uh almost like saying Kenneth Co was the son of God uh he has an avid group of fans that thinks he's teaching wisdom and and he's even supposedly healing people but I I don't know that that is an adequate foundation for uh Jesus Christ it's like uh Paul says in the movie version of The Last Temptation Of Christ he meets Jesus on the road because Jesus didn't die on the cross though Paul thinks he did and he says I'm glad I met you so I can forget you people don't need you they need my Jesus who died and rose from the dead who was born of a virgin and so on and that's kind of what I'm saying I I think that this is like saying uh that Hercules was just a weightlifter like he was the Schwarzenegger of the ancient world is that really going to give rise to the Hercules mythology it just seems to me was there an esus I mean there loads of healing stories uh about esus but there's no chance he existed or chrish did Krishna exist Moses highly unlikely there was ever a Moses yes but the the whole point is you don't have the kind of evidence for any of those figures that you have for Jesus you don't have gospels written about Hercules yes you do no Hercules you do not you do not have four gospels WR written within 40 years based on oral Traditions within 40 Years of what that's that's begs the question his reputed life but suppose I mean that's that's begging the question that we know mythicism is a true that it didn't just gradually evolve from other similar myths well you yourself would agree that if Jesus lived he he was known if Jesus didn't live that the Christ myth is referred to by Paul in the 50s right yeah uhhuh okay would you agree that Paul converted about 20 years before he wrote his letters I hate to tell you but I think the whole conversion thing is based on heliodorus is conversion and the bakai I mean in second mccabes and pantheus is conversion in the bakai I think it's all fiction you don't think Paul became a Christian uh I think that uh there are hints in Romans 16 for instance that he was from a family of people like andronicus and Junius his Kinsmen who were in Christ before him that he probably like Constantine there's a myth about his conversion but both may very likely have grown up Christians oh well Paul grew up a Christian uh could be when really because the stories of his conversion are well I guess himself says Paul himself says that he became if he actually wrote that that's why I say there's no Common Ground If he if he wrote you you think he didn't write Galatians that's right I think that uh wow okay well uh Since My Views are just laughably insane there's no point in going on with well but come on Bob Paul didn't write Galatians okay all right yes um I come at this from the standpoint that what's really being asked here is what are the origins of Christianity how does it relate to ancient Judaism and and how did the two become or how did the one become two I guess um and given the fact that you have all of these Clues within acknowledged Jewish documents the Dead Sea Scrolls the Apocrypha the wisdom of Solomon pho's writings um and Jewish angel angelology that was all going on at this time what is there that is implausible about that as an origin for the Christian Rel religion for the Christian belief you lost me the what was the origin that it was basically a natural metamorphosis from elements of Jewish thought that were already there you have you have the Jews telling the story that there was a Jesus but he lived 150 years before the turn of the uh Millennium you have many stories you have all of the references that the to pho's logos to uh the wisdom of Solomon that that contain very similar Concepts to the son of man the teacher of light all of these things why do you not consider that to be as plausible an explanation for the origin of Christianity thank you yeah I don't because the earliest attestation of what Christianity was was that it was the worship of a crucified Messiah and you don't get that in Jewish circles so uh it couldn't be just a kind of a Natural Evolution out of something that existed uh the other thing is that a lot of those sources you're talking about about Jesus living 150 years earlier or something those are those are way after way after Paul so you can't use sources from 2 third fourth Century to show what people were saying in the 20s any more than you could use something that's being said today say in uh in political discourse today you can't use what's going on in political discourse today to show what was happening in the 1750s okay I'm Not Gon to comment ask me question next question please okay uh I have one question for uh what is it uh both speakers I'm wondering if you've seen or have heard or read about a documentary by James Cameron called The Lost Tomb of Jesus and this is where uh uh they claim to have found Jesus's family tomb and the tomb contained like 12 aaries and five or six of them had names on it and Jesus was one name on one of the actuaries so was his brother James so was uh Mary's mother Mary Magdalene was there and I think uh there was one other name on Matthew which Joseph yeah Jo right and I'm wondering if you have uh viewed this documentary and and what both of your comments are on it thank you yeah yeah yeah yeah no I I mean I can give my opinion I mean uh I I don't think I don't think at all it was Jesus tomb um I think that uh there's no way that Jesus family would have had a family tomb in Jerusalem uh tombs like this only belong to extremely wealthy people uh upper class Elite people and Jesus uh Jesus came from very poor roots and his family didn't live in Jerusalem they wouldn't have had a tomb in Jerusalem his family was From Galilee uh and so I think that there there's almost no chance that this could be the Tomb of Jesus yeah I don't buy that either and the thing that really kills it for me is that the argument is fundamentally based on the idea that you have a particular constellation of names that appear in the gospels and uh that what are the chances of that it's not the same family constellation but the fact that there are other names in there just destroys that uh you you can't I mean if you could show it's the same names and only those names but you you're like I think these I think that uh uh what the heck J Jes tab yeah she what's the matter with me right uh if you're going to start out by saying you see it's this particular group and then you say well of course there were several others it's not the same uh particular group so that's it as far as I'm concerned thank you hello thank thank you all three of you for being here tonight I hope you're enjoying Milwaukee all right my question is uh I've I've heard of a few people spotting this at uh collect my thoughts here about a a theory that about like Jesus has uh been like a surname for a few Jews who had radical ideas and since uh in Roman times they were per they were basically a suppressed group uh maybe they used uh Jesus as a name to as a cover I was just wondering uh what your thoughts on that well it is true that uh there are people like theudas the magician and the unnamed Egyptian who seemed to be trying to repeat Deeds attributed to Joshua and and uh it makes you wonder though you you can't do more than that if they were trying to set themselves up as a kind of a new Joshua or yosua or Jesus uh and uh so that role model that might have existed but of course it was a common name too and Josephus mentions loads of them Jesus Son of safias who was a a a bandit and Jesus Ben ananas who was uh flogged by the Roman procurator after he was pronouncing doom on Jerusalem and all that it's so common a name it's difficult to say but there there is something to that in that you could read these stories as people posing as a new Joshua good yeah that's next question thank you hi guys thank you uh I just got a couple verses here I just want your comments about in the book of Hebrews um in chapter 4 of Hebrews uh Paul talks about the gospel that was preached to the uh people of the children of Moses he says the gospel was preached unto them as well as unto us also in First Corinthians he talks about that they drank speaking of Moses from the same spiritual drink for they drank of that spiritual Rock and that rock that follow him was Christ and the third comment is from Galatians 4 that uh Paul talks about he says that the scriptures for so that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and announce the gospel in advance to Abraham you also have in the Book of Revelation that he was crucified before the foundations of the world so my question to you is what is that gospel and who is that Christ well uh about uh the gospel and Abraham in the context the argument is that God will save you by the faith of Abraham who had never heard of the Torah since it hadn't been given yet and he said in the same way though of course you have to factor in Christ the the Salvation is still by faith so I think that's what he means by gospel there um the the stuff in Hebrews and also in Romans and 1 Corinthians that this stuff was written down for our benefit I I used to think that was an implausible double meaning thing ah they were really talking about Christians but no I mean it's obvious that uh of course the people that wrote down these Old Testament stories were writing them down as lessons for posterity so I don't see anything odd about that uh the one about Jesus being slain before the foundation of the world something like that and somewhere in Revelation also that does make me wonder if that's the uh the the celestial death of Jesus like perusia or the Gnostic uh redeemers but of course it's just a quick reference with no explanation we're in agreement uh my name is Bryce um thank you all for doing this is amazing oh wonderful debate um so I may divert from the consensus on the panel I don't think that Clark Kent or Superman were real people uh I think that sheel seagull and Schuster DC Comics were real people and they created them so um I'm I'm a Mormon history nerd I love Morman history and I believe that Joseph Smith was a real person but I don't think that the angel Moroni or the Nephi as some manuscripts have it were real people um people broke off with Mormon Joseph Smith that continued believing in the angel morona you have the brw rites parites the strangites the bites and moved out to Utah uh you even have Christopher Nela today who's published uh writings of the Angel Moroni very interesting 180 years after the Mormon church was founded my question is um Dr irman with so many parallels between uh Joseph Smith and Saul of Tarsus uh being real people um and Moroni and Jesus possibly being myth mythical people uh is it a case of special pleading saying that Jesus was a real person but Maroni was just an angel or just you know a imagination in Joseph Smith's mind and then on the same side of that same question Dr Price Is it considered false equivocation to draw parallels between these two people Joseph Smith and Sol Tarsus thank you yeah I I don't think the angel Moroni and Jesus are of the same kind I mean the angel Moroni was never presented as a as a human being who was uh about whom four gospels were written or about whom people he was pres presented as an angel Who Came From Heaven uh Jesus was a human being for Paul uh and for the gospel writers and so so it is I don't think it's the same thing it's not not an apt comparison I think well uh Mormon and Moroni were supposed to be ancient American Israelites and that they were uh transfigured and taken up um but of course they're supposed to be uh remote from the time of Joseph Smith but he thought they were actually historical figures we we don't um the thing with uh what makes Jesus different from Caesar Augustus for instance is precisely that you can't explain Roman history uh Western history without Caesar Augustus uh because he's just too closely woven in but Jesus it seems to me it's like Moses all the stories seem to be intended as as lessons and all that which seems to me there's no real reason to think they weren't fabricated as such in the few places Jesus appears to be tied into history with King Herod and uh Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate again non- mythicist have raised fatal objections to these stories being historical you don't have to you know be special pleading to say that uh that those things pilate would never have lifted a finger to to save Jesus the Herod stories borrowed from josephus's Moses Nativity the the Sanhedrin trial on Passover Eve written by somebody that doesn't know what the circumstances were at the time so if you take that away I Think Jesus is free floating you can insert him in history anywhere you want and people did in different places that's the difference between him and Augustus or Cyrus of Persia or so on thank you uh hello uh sorry uh first of all I just want to thank both of you for doing this uh unlike Dr Erman I do believe this is very important as a skeptic I think the search for truth is a very important thing for all of us sorry sorry for the language um anyway uh my my question is for Dr armman um boiling it down to to its uh you know base Point your your argument is based entirely on the fact that we should accept hearsay as a factual reference for believing in Jesus and I want to know at what point does hearsay become something that you can create a sharable position on that that you're completely sure on um when you have have so much other hearsay that you know we we could say that Noah existed or Abraham existed based on hearsay I mean we have all this hearsay and there there's no sure evidence of any of it so at what point yeah yeah no I'm happy to answer it's a good question thank you um what I would suggest is if you really want to pursue the question as you look at how historians do their work how do historians establish what problem happened in the past um unless somebody from the past left you writings then the only way you know about them is if somebody else told about them and so if you have a figure from the past uh that you have say one source for that is 400 years later who says incredible things and like that's all you have then that's a different situation from if you've got a figure about whom people uh independently of one another talk about this person and say similar things about this person uh and that you can date some of these sources actually within years of when this person lived that's better evidence so historians always are trying to establish probabilities of what happened and we can't have the kind of scientific certainty that you can have uh for example you can have in a chemistry laboratory where you can redo the experiment time and time again but when you're dealing with the past you're always dealing with oral traditions and so I think what you what histori what I can tell you what historians do is they they carefully examine every surviving source to see whether in fact it's just gossip and rumor or if in fact it's based on solid historical uh probability and so that that's what we have to do and that's what we do with Jesus thank you sir did you want to address the prob this is going to be the last question yes all right so one of the ladies could come up and be the last question after this guy you guys can fight it out in the back while we're taking this question this this question is mostly addressed to Dr man but by the way there there is an Afterparty afterwards and you may be able to ask questions then Dr Price is certainly I'd like to hear your view as well Dr man can you move up the mic a little B Dr man in your opening statement you seem to make a big deal about the crucifixion and as you were talking about that as you in your opening statement you were talking about the crucifixion a lot and and as I was you were talking I was thinking about Joseph Smith who damn well better have lost those golden Tablets before someone figured out they were just painted lead or something similarly because dead men tell no Tales the whether by Design or some organic evolution of the Jesus story they had to get rid of him before they figured out he was just a regular guy or he died a dissenter or something or you know drowned in the sea of G get rid of what Jesus they had to kill him and what better way to get rid of him than have him murdered by the dreaded Romans so I I didn't find that argument some of the other things you said were very convincing but but the argument that Messiah couldn't have you know they wouldn't have chosen him to be crucified just wasn't convincing to me so how else would they have handled that problem with Jesus who you know was not a miracle worker and just regular thank you the the issue I I I don't think I con conveyed my point very well which is uh typically what happens with me so what I was if they wanted to get rid of Jesus and they wanted to come up with an excuse to kill him they would have said Jesus was crucified that that's what you're saying what I'm saying is they wouldn't have said they crucified Christ the the idea of a Christ was a Jew there was a Jewish figure or there there are numerous different Jewish figures they considered to be the Christ the Christ was a title for the anointed one from God who was going to overthrow the enemy and set up a kingdom on Earth if they wanted to talk about getting rid of Jesus they would have simply said they killed Jesus they crucified Jesus but they said they crucified Christ and I'm saying they wouldn't have made that up because the Christ was not supposed to be crucified does that make sense do you understand what I'm trying to say I still don't buy it I'm not asking you to buy it but if you do want to buy it it's uh for sale in the lobby all right final question um Dr Erman you mentioned a lot that uh Paul said this and Paul said that and that's really your your kind of your basis for why we should trust that um the historicity of Christ I'm wondering if you can expand with a bit more detail on how we can know uh from a historical standpoint that a Paul you know this might take another debate but that Paul did actually exist and that what he wrote was actually a real person writing about real people and real events how do we really know that it wasn't just somebody writing a story okay thank you yeah how do we know that Paul lived and how do we know he wrote uh the things that we think he wrote yeah it's a good question so um you know it kind of goes down to the answer I was giving earlier like how do historians go about doing doing what they're doing how do you know that anybody lived I mean how do you know that Plutarch lived or how do you know suetonius lived or how do you know tacitus lived or how do you know Julius Caesar lived or how do how do you know somebody lived and you you you look to see if you have I mean you look for evidence and so with the Apostle Paul um how do we know he lived well we do have references to Paul from the first century in uh in several sources uh in the book of Acts uh he was a uh he's the main figure in the book of Acts which tells a lot about his life uh he's mentioned in the book of First Clement uh first Clement was almost certainly written around in the mid 90s of the Common Era they're they're very I mean you know I I could talk for 20 minutes but how we know first Clement was written in the 90s but it it almost certainly was and it mentions Paul having been killed in an earlier generation uh and so so we have external references to Paul we also have uh books that claimed to be written by Paul that we think Paul did not write well that meant that the authors of those books thought that Paul existed uh and they thought they knew something about him so we have in the New Testament we have um three we we have six letters that probably Paul did not write that claimed to be written by him three of those each has different a different author we know on the basis of linguistic analysis that these three authors were all different from one another the other three letters were probably all written by the same author so those are four authors who did not corroborate with one another who all thought that Paul existed along with first Clement and the book of Acts um in addition we have seven other letters that cohere with one another uh linguistically and in terms of their Theology and in terms of their preos historical situation so that people think they were written by the same author this author in each case claims to be Paul and so um when historians look at that there seems to be zero reason to think that Paul did not exist so uh I I don't think that any I mean I don't I don't know you know why anybody would say Paul didn't exist when you have this kind of evidence that kind of evidence for the existence of Paul is it's not as good as Caesar Augustus uh the uh you know Caesar Augustus there you know you'd have to be like you just have to I mean to deny that Caesar Augustus existed would be like you know denying that Bill Clinton existed I mean it's like he did exist I mean so uh so Paul's not at that level but but there are substantial evidence uh and so um you know it's possible that it's all a hoax I mean it's possible that somebody in the 12th century like made all this up and and forged manuscripts and made them look like they were 800 years old I mean it's it's it's possible but what you know the question would be what would make you think so and so uh for historians to deny the that kind of evidence they have to have some compelling reason other than the fact that they'd prefer it with some other way thank you well to me it's not a question of whether Paul existed but who was he may maybe he was he known by other names and so on uh the question is do we know who wrote These Epistles and starting right off uh like there's a truckload of stuff attributed to Peter that no scholar thinks he wrote including first and second Peter also third and fourth Peter didn't make it into the cannon and uh the uh The Apocalypse of Peter the gospel of Peter etc etc nobody thinks Peter wrote that uh with the the stuff attributed to Paul already over half of it is discredited by uh critical Scholars and to my satisfaction uh WC van manin and others used the same sort of criteria to show that the same person whoever it was did not write uh any of them that's they're filled with anachronisms and contradictions implying that what we have here are Patchwork quilts written by different pists as if you had uh Lutheran of different Stripes uh writing phony Letters by Martin Luther I mean I don't think anybody did with Luther but they sure did with the ancient cynic philosophers and so on I think it is not at uh in the least implausible that uh with the Pauline writing it's just like the petrine writings there's no reason to accept any of them and uh let me refer you to my book um the amazing colossal Apostle the search for the historical Paul and the introductions to the Pauline Epistles in my preyen new testament crazy though it may be there you'll find some of the arguments set thank you so much can we have one more large round of applause there's going to be a few of them so uh quickly again a reminder that uh there's an Afterparty starts at 10:00 at the Aloft it's two blocks Northeast tickets will be available for $100 uh we want to keep bringing these types of things to Milwaukee uh so we'll sending a survey an email survey so filling those out uh helps us make better events um also you can uh join as a member which also helps to uh maintain this in Milwaukee so some thank yous so uh thank you uh thank you everyone for making this possible uh pulling an event of this magnitude takes a dedicated staff uh first off thank you to Miguel Connor and thank you to our Master for moderator Matt dillah Hunty thank you to our guest speakers Rob Moore Ali Jackson uh Thomas Smith Dan Barker and of course Robert price and Bart Orman for their incredible performance tonight perhaps the greatest occurred I want to especially thank the mythicist Milwaukee team who down dedication uh have made mythis Milwaukee team officially in League with some of the greatest secular organizations in the world thank you to Jason Adam Kyle Joanne Nolan Chris Lawrence Orlando Grace Joe Sandra Melissa Brian Andrew Jim Melanie Sarah Mike Bob Rob and Kristen obviously takes a huge team to make this possible and thank you to mythicist Milwaukee president uh Sean Fric and the biggest thank you of all goes to Mario Quadra whose funding and belief in this team made to night's event possible thank you Mario so with that I'll uh give uh I'll be giving the uh mic back to uh Matt uh dillah Hunty and then we're going to be showing our Batman and Jesus trailer and then our evening is over so they uh they gave me the mic to so that I could close it out but he just thanked everybody except we should also thank all of you for coming and the people who are watching online and the people who will watch the recording of this at a later time thank you so much Dr man Dr Price mythis Milwaukee thank you for inviting me out enjoy your evening Miguel and Thomas Thomas Smith still in the house Miguel Thomas Smith come on Mario you come up and take this picture Mario come on up last call looking for Thomas and Miguel do you think that it's necessary with comic books for the author to deliberately state that it's fiction no why not CU I think everybody knows that it's uh cartoon and Ence so what is it about these comic book characters or superheroes that puts them in that category for you abilities that are way be Way Beyond what uh normal average U human can you know realistically do but in confs they just take that ability and they just multiply it so many times um I think the vast majority of people already know uh that the characters aren't real just from the history they've been around for so long that I think people are aware that characters just or pretend but what if everybody told you your whole life that they were real could you still tell the [Music] difference a reading from the book of Nolan he was the hero Gotham deserved but not the one it needed right then and so he was hunted because he could take it he is not our hero he's a silent Guardian a watchful protector a dark knight the word of Gordon
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