The NYT “opinion” piece below is very long, and is in fact a transcript of a discussion of Christianity pitting Biblical scholar and atheist Bart Ehrman against dyed-in-the-wool Catholic Ross Douthat. If you’ve read this website lately, you’ll know that Douthat is all over the place touting Jesus: he’s published a new book, he’s debated Steve Pinker on God, he’s written a gazillion columns highlighting his book and its reasons why we should be Christians, and in today’s piece he and Ehrman discusses the “truth” of the New Testament.
I have little respect for Douthat because his case for a divine being in general, and for Christianity in particular, simply involves the same tired old (and not dispositive) assertions, many of them based on science (e.g. the “fine-tuned” universe, the mystery of consciousness, etc.). Douthat’s drunk the whole chalice of Kool-Aid, and is not self-critical.
Ehrman, on the other hand, is an impressive guy. He started out as a Biblical literalist and practicing fundamentalist Christian, eventually becoming a Baptist preacher. Then he realized, based on the existence of inexplicable evil in the world, that the whole Jesus-and-God story was largely bushwa, and he wrote a bunch of books showing why. He knows his Bible better than does Douthat, and can quote chapter and verse without even looking at the book.
Now Ehrman does think that there’s a factual core of the New Testament, in that he thinks the evidence for the existence of a Jesus person who taught disciples is an absolutely secure historical fact. So, he thinks, is the Crucifixion, though not the Resurrection: Ehrman has no truck with miracles, adhering to Hume’s argument that unless they are more probable than the reliability of their witnesses, they shouldn’t be accepted. Ehrman also has no truck with mythicists (I flirt with such a position) who aren’t convinced that there was a real Jesus person. Ehrman thinks that historical-Jesus believers, who are indeed in the majority among Biblical scholars, have a solid case. (The evidence for that, though, is based largely on what’s written in the Bible.)
[UPDATE: See comment 3 below by Roger Lambert, citing Richard Carrier’s critique of Ehrman’s view that a Jesus person absolutely existed. Carrier is a “mythicist” who doubts the existence of a Jesus person. You can see more of Carrier’s arguments here.]
At any rate, you can either hear the discussion (82 minutes) or read it (the latter is a lot faster for me) at the NYT link below. It is an object lesson (from Ehrman) on how to assess the Bible as “truth”, and also how a historian uses evidence when confronting Scripture. Ehrman spends a lot of time schooling Douthat on these issues, and Douthat comes off as a credulous schoolboy.
The main point that Ehrman wants to make in this discussion is that Jesus and then Christianity introduced to the world the idea that we should love people whom we don’t know, a view that has led to good things like hospitals and orphanages. Ehrman has just published a new book on this thesis: Love Thy Stranger: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West.
I have a few doubts about that, including the fact that Ehrman takes it for granted that this was one of Jesus’s teachings without good evidence for that claim, and that the idea of loving others whom you don’t know was not invented by Christians. Ehrman may be right with respect to the West, so his book (which I haven’t read) at least has the geography of love correct, but he’s on shakier ground saying that loving strangers was indeed a teaching of Jesus. Ehrman even notes that Jesus didn’t say to love everyone, only the members of one’s tribe—Israelites. And of course some of Jesus’s teachings, like “take no thought for the morrow” or “abandoning your family and loved ones to follow me”, aren’t ones we should follow. After all, Jesus did also say that the end of the Earth and his return was nigh:
Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. (Matthew 16:28).
Ehrman would surely argue that the last verse, while Jesus may have said it, was simply untrue. But if Jesus did say it, Christians have to explain it. The fact is that, as even Ehrman admits, we have no idea what Jesus said. Ehrman sort of admits that, but then apparently has some secret way to separate what Jesus really said versus what people made up about him later.
Click the screenshot below to read, or see the article archived here. If you have some time, I think it’s worth hearing or reading.
I’ll give a few quotes from the discussion, most of them from Ehrman (indicated with an “E”; Douthat’s quotes are prefaced with a “D”). These quotes are indented, while my comments are flush left.
Ehrman’s argument:
I am absolutely not arguing that Jesus introduced the idea of love or the idea of altruism into the world. What I am arguing is that we, today, almost all of us — whether we’re Christian, agnostic, atheists, whatever we are in the West — when there’s a disaster that happens, we feel like we ought to do something about it. There’s a hurricane, there’s wildfires, there’s an earthquake, and we feel like we ought to do something. We might send a check, for example, or we retire and we decide to volunteer in a soup kitchen. We’re helping people we don’t know and probably never will know, and who we may not like if we did get to know them.
So why do we help them? My argument in the book is that sense, that we should help people in need, even if we don’t know them, ultimately derives from the teachings of Jesus. In Greek and Roman moral philosophy at the time, this was not an issue at all — you were not supposed to be helping people just because they were in need. Jesus based it in large part on his Jewish background, but with some transformations of what he himself knew growing up. He is the one who made this part of our conscience.
. . .The idea is that if you’re going to love your neighbor, it doesn’t just mean somebody who’s within your own religion or your own ethnicity or your own nation. It means, if somebody’s in need, that’s your neighbor. That’s what it means to love your neighbor as yourself.
So Jesus is getting the idea of love your neighbor and even love your stranger as yourself from his Jewish heritage. But within Israel, it’s “Love your fellow Israelite as yourself.” And Jesus is now universalizing it.
Part of the thesis of my book is that that mentality is what led to huge institutional changes in the West, including the invention of public hospitals — orphanages, old people’s homes, private charities dealing with hunger and homelessness, governmental assistance to those who are poor — all of those are Christian innovations you can establish historically.
. . . What I am saying is that if people claim to be followers of Jesus, they ought to follow his teachings. And his teachings are quite clear that you should care for people who are not like you — the other. You’re not supposed to bomb them back to the Stone Age, and you’re not supposed to make them suffer because you don’t like them or you don’t want them among you. You’re supposed to take care of them.
(Ehrman is referring at least in part to recent wars, and he admits that he’s a political liberal, but denies that his argument is in any way political. I believe him.) But yes, if you claim to follow Jesus’s teachings, you should follow Jesus’s teachings. And then you should leave your family and give away everything you have.
But of course the argument that The Love Everyone Idea came from Jesus is an untestable assertion, since we can’t repeat history without a Jesus person. But if Jesus didn’t teach that, then it came from somewhere else and can be attributed simply to humanism and not credited to Christianity. It could have simply been one of the many things made up by people who wrote the Bible. After all, Ehrman claims that much of the Bible is false.
How about these teachings of Jesus?
From Matthew 6 (King James version, which is the version I’ll use): take no thought for the morrow:
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? 26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? 27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? 28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: 29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? 31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? 32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. 33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Follow me, not your family or loved ones (Luke 14:25-27):
25 And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them, 26 If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. 27 And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.
Why are Christians supposed to follow the love commandment but not the others? I don’t know, nor does Ehrman tell us.
A further problem with Ehrman’s claim is, as he says below, to Jesus “your neighbor” doesn’t just mean anybody, but apparently only fellow Israelites— members of your tribe. But that’s not what Ehrman thinks we should do today; he think we need a new interpretation of Jesus’s words to fit the 21st century. And that means loving everyone:
E: You can’t simply take the teachings of the New Testament and transplant them into the 21st century. If any government tried to institute, as their governmental policy, the Sermon on the Mount, they’d last about two days, period.
I’m not saying that it’s this kind of simplistic equivalent. What I am saying is that if people in power claim to be Christian, they ought to take very seriously what that means. I’m not saying that it’s going to necessarily affect immigration policy, for example. But the Bible is quite clear, even in the New Testament, that “Love your neighbor as yourself” meant your fellow Israelite, or it explicitly states that anybody who immigrates into Israel is to be treated like an Israelite.
This baffles me. He is updating Jesus’s words here, and so we should follow Ehrman’s interpretation, not Jesus’s supposed teachings themselves. How do we know what, according to Ehrman, Jesus really said or taught, and what words were put into his mouth later? We don’t know from this interview, though perhaps it’s in Ehrman’s new book.
Ehrman: Well, I think there are credible historical narratives in the Gospels. I think we can find things that Jesus really did say and really did do. But I don’t think that you can simply read the Gospels and think: Oh, that’s what Jesus really said and did.
There are a lot of reasons for that.
Douthat: Give me three reasons.
Ehrman: They are contradictory to each other, describing the same event, where they both can’t be right because they’re contradictory. They are written by people who were not there at the time, who didn’t live in the Jewish homeland, who did not speak Aramaic. They’re living decades later and are recording accounts that they’ve heard. So that’s two things: The authors living much later, and the contradiction.
The third thing is: These authors got their stories from somewhere. We don’t know where the authors lived and we don’t know who the authors were. The Gospels circulated anonymously before they had names attached to them. So we don’t know. We call them Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. But we don’t ——
All true. But note Ehrman’s statement, “I don’t think that you can simply read the Gospels and think: Oh, that’s what Jesus really said and did.” He may think that the consistency of Jesus’s “love” message indicates that a Jesus person really taught that, but there’s also a consistency in Jesus saying that he was the son of God. Yet Ehrman believes the former but not the latter.
Here’s Ehrman explaining why he became an atheist: he couldn’t accept theodicy:
E: I taught at Rutgers for a few years, and when I was there, I was asked to teach a class called The Problem of Suffering in the Biblical Tradition. And when I got asked to teach the class, I thought it would be a great idea because I had long thought that every author of the Bible in one way or another is trying to wrestle with the problem of, especially, why the people of God suffer.
And I had realized by this time that there’s not an answer in the Bible — there are lots of different answers. And some of these answers are in conflict with each other.
. . .I came to think that the idea that any monotheistic religion has a problem with the existence of God, given the state of suffering in the world.
And I’m not a radical atheist who insists there is no God, but I don’t think there is. I don’t think there’s any kind of supernatural power that’s overseeing the world, that is active in people’s lives, that actually answers prayer. I don’t believe a God like that exists.
Douthat doesn’t have an answer for that.
Finally, is it true that Jesus did introduce the idea of loving your neighbor to the West? Well, my friend the philosopher Maarten Boudry, discussing this with me via email, decided to ask the bot Claude. Here’s the question (in bold) and Claude’s answer:
Is it true that there were a lot of Axial Age religions that promoted counterintuitive and challenging moral codes, like loving your enemy and turning the other cheek, apart from Christianity?
Yes, this is a well-documented observation among historians of religion and philosophy. The Axial Age (roughly 800–200 BCE, a term coined by Karl Jaspers) saw a remarkable convergence across several civilizations, where thinkers independently developed moral and ethical frameworks that challenged conventional human instincts like tribalism, revenge, and self-interest.
Here are some notable parallels:
Buddhism (5th century BCE) is perhaps the most striking example. The Buddha taught mettā (loving-kindness) toward all beings, including those who harm you. The Dhammapada contains passages urging practitioners to overcome hatred with love and to respond to anger with calm — very close in spirit to “love your enemy.”
Confucianism and Mohism in China offered related ideas. While Confucius was more measured (when asked about repaying injury with kindness, he replied “repay injury with justice”), Mozi (5th century BCE) went further with his doctrine of jiān ài (universal or impartial love), arguing that people should care for strangers and even rival states as much as their own — a radically counterintuitive position that was widely debated precisely because it cut against natural partiality.
Jainism developed ahimsa (non-violence) to an extreme degree, extending compassion and non-harm to all living creatures, including insects. This demanded extraordinary self-discipline and restraint even toward those who might threaten you.
Stoicism in Greece taught that all human beings share in a universal rational nature, and that anger and vengeance are failures of reason. Marcus Aurelius (though later than the Axial Age proper) wrote extensively about responding to hostility with understanding rather than retaliation, building on earlier Stoic foundations.
Zoroastrianism emphasized the moral duty to actively choose good over evil, framing ethics as a cosmic struggle that required personal sacrifice and integrity beyond mere self-interest.
The Hebrew prophetic tradition — figures like Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah — challenged their own society with demands for justice toward the poor, the stranger, and the marginalized, often at great personal cost.
What makes the Axial Age so fascinating to scholars is that these developments happened largely independently across cultures that had little or no contact with each other. The common thread seems to be that as societies grew more complex and urbanized, thinkers began reflecting more deeply on the gap between how people naturally behave and how they ought to behave — and many of them arrived at strikingly similar conclusions about the need to extend moral concern beyond one’s in-group.
So Christianity’s ethic of enemy-love, while distinctive in its specific theological framing, was part of a broader human pattern of moral discovery during this period. That doesn’t diminish its significance, but it does place it in a richer historical context.
Even in the West, then, there were antecedents to Jesus’s message of love.
While I have a lot of respect for Ehrman, I don’t understand how he managed to separate the wheat of “love they neighbor” from the chaff of “follow me and neglect your family and friends”. I do think, though, that the message of treating everyone with respect (I can’t bring myself to love everyone!) would have come from humanism as a guideline equal in force to that of “love thy neighbor.” Would we lack hospitals and orphanages if Christianity didn’t exist? (Go read about what Catholic Ireland did to orphanages!) Steve Pinker has pointed out the reason for this in recent years: we have no special privilege simply by being us. And remember that although love may have been the Christian message, for two millennia avowed Christians have flouted that dictum. It doesn’t, then have any pride of place over the similar dictum of humanism.
According to the Gospels, Jesus fed a few, healed a few, a forgave a few despite having the power to feed all, heal all, and forgive all. Instead, he did a few magic tricks for the locals and then abandoned all. This makes him a moral monster in my book. It also explains modern Christian behaviors. They’re doing what Jesus did, taking care of a few and ignoring most. Their behavior is consistent with Christ’s, not un-Christian as many critics claim.
A few times I’ve heard the phrase, “he Jewed them”, meaning, as best as I could ascertain, “he cheated them”. I’ve even heard my dad use that phrase. Knowing what I do of history, I could’t help but think if not outright say, “don’t you mean ‘he Christianed’ them? After all, some of the biggest cheaters in the world were avowed Christians.” Same goes for the phrase “Indian giver”. Americans of European descent knowingly and purposely reneged on many treaties they made with American Indians. As far as I’m concerned, when someone tells me, “you can trust him — he’s a good Christian”, I’d be far more inclined to not trust that person at all.
I wonder if “But of course the argument that The Love Everyone Idea came from Jesus is an untestable assertion, since we can’t repeat history without a Jesus person” isn’t too strong? It describes a human tendency and behaviour that we should ultimately be able to explain based on observation and theory.
Evolutionary theory might have some alternative explanations for emergence of “altruism” as a desirable human (animal?) trait and the two could lead to different predictions. Evolution theory suggests widespread evidence should be found in all cultures and traditional practices (e.g., religions, spiritual practices), as Claude reported. Do anthropologists and archeologists find evidence for the trait long before Jesus? Biologists … any similar behavior in animal species other than humans? Any genetic differences between people with the trait and without (psychopaths?)?
Ehrman says “that we should help people in need, even if we don’t know them, ultimately derives from the teachings of Jesus. In Greek and Roman moral philosophy at the time, this was not an issue at all — you were not supposed to be helping people just because they were in need.”
But the Greeks and Romans did just that. The Greeks placed a high value on treating guests and travelers well, even if they were strangers. When Pompeii was destroyed by Vesuvius, the Roman Emperor sent aid to the survivors. Ehrman might argue that this was merely generosity to one’s people, but it’s more that the world was a smaller place. Today we can instantly hear of a disaster across the world and instantly send money there, but that was hardly the case in ancient times. The shrinking of the world, thanks to increasingly fast methods of communication and travel, better explains our modern willingness to help people far away and different from us.
The idea of helping somebody in need by treating them as your neighbor is common sense. If you do so and help perpetuate it a custom, you will ultimately benefit from that custom, since you’ll probably need help yourself one day. It’s enlightened self-interest, the sort that benefits one’s greater community. Had Jesus never existed many societies in Europe and the middle east would still be generous to guests and strangers. It’s good policy and makes everyone who practices it feel good too.
The story about Sodom and Gomorrah is not about the populace being gay, but not being good hosts to strangers. It appears Jesus missed that part with his divine knowledge.
…unless the recipients of your charity decide to stick around instead of movin’ on down the road somewhere else.
” Ehrman also has no truck with mythicists”
My opinion of Bart Ehrman is a lot lower than that of our esteemed host. He evidently refuses to read even peer-reviewed articles by mythicists and admits it:
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/36444
Thanks; I hadn’t seen that. In fact, I’d forgotten about Richard Carrier!
Any relation to Derek Lambert from the Mythvision Youtube Channel ???
I think Richard Carrier’s “Bayesian” argument is sophistry. At that stage of the Roman Empire, Judea was rife with apocalyptic prophets, as Carrier himself has noted. It would not be at all surprising that one of them was named Jesus and had some loyal followers. There are a couple of (debatable) extra-Biblical references to Jesus. Also, some of the New Testament makes so little sense that it looks like the authors were trying, and not quite succeeding, to justify actual historic events like the crucifixion. The bit about dying for our sins makes no sense at all, but if Jesus was historic and really was crucified, then his followers had to construct a reason.
I think one is unnecessarily going very far out on a limb to make a positive claim that Jesus did not exist. Of course whoever the stories are based on was not divine, but most contemporary cults have actual founders (one or more), and I think this should be the default belief about Christianity. It is hard to imagine how the contrary could be established.
You’re misunderstanding mythicism. It is not about claiming that there were no apocalyptic preachers running around, or that none of them were called Jesus/Yeshua/Joshua.
Instead, it’s about analysing the earliest Christian writings to try to understand how they thought.
The earliest writings are Paul’s letters (pretty much the only stuff that likely predates the AD71 war, and the only stuff where we have some idea who wrote it).
So, the crucial question is did Paul think of “Jesus” as a recently lived human? Or did Paul think of Jesus as a divine being in heaven known from scripture and visions? The evidence of his letters says the latter. (Just for example, he explicitly said that he got none of his teachings from any person, but instead got them direct from Jesus in visions.) And if that is the case, then Jesus was indeed mythical (regardless of how many apocalyptic preachers named Jeshua there were running around).
The next crucial question is about “Mark” (we don’t know who he was) and the gospel that bears his name. Did he think that he was writing a historical account of a recently lived person? Or did he think that he was writing a theological allegory, combining the theology of a heavenly Jesus with reflections on the AD71 destruction of the Jewish Temple? Again, there’s a good case to be made for the latter.
And did “Matthew” and “Luke” then run with Mark’s allegory, and embellish the story further for theological reasons (and not by adding in oral history)?
Those are the crucial questions. Yes, there are actual founders to religions, but there are also mytholgical entities. For Mormonism, Joseph Smith was the founder but the Angel Moroni is mythical. For Islam, Mohammed was the founder, but the Angel Gabriel is mythical. For Christianity, perhaps Paul was the de facto founder (of a sect splitting from Judaism) and “Jesus” was their mythical deity.
Paul was the de facto founder and didn’t much care about the historical person. But I specialized a bit in hagiography and how it develops over time, there are lots of regularities even between religions, and from my experience of the genre I find it improbable that there wasn’t a charismatic wandering rabbi probably by the name of Yeshua from the Galilee with pieist tendencies who got crucified and among whose disciples in Jerusalem after his death was his own brother and a guy called Shimon who at some point called himself Kepha (Petrus). Mark thought he was writing about a real person and some of the material he and the other evangelists used was oral tradition relatively close to what people who had actually known the guy had transmitted. We can be certain all of the birth story is legend, but the crucifixion most probably isn’t. Like the conversion of Shabbetai Tsvi, it was far too much of a burden for any incipient new movement, especially a Messianic one, for it to have been a deliberate mythical or sensational invention. We can’t be certain he pretended to be the Messiah, but neither did the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and many of his disciples still think he was. In the case of Shabbetai Tsvi, too, the message and the movement were in many ways formed by a disciple (Nathan of Gaza), but the guy was real enough.
This is the “standard” account but how do you know it? How do you know that Mark thought he was writing a biography of a recently lived person? How do you know he used oral history? As for the crucifixion, the idea of a dying messiah (who then rose) was already in the scriptures (OT). It’s a repeated theological motif that pre-dates the Jesus stories. The motif fits the trauma of the times, with the loss of the AD71 war and the destruction of the temple (when Mark was likely written).
I think you misinterpreted me, and the mythicist argument, Coel. My point was not only that there were a lot of prophets at that time, but rather than one (or perhaps more than one) of those many prophets really was the inspiration for at least some parts of the Gospels. Likewise the mythicist position is not merely about how some early Christians thought of Jesus, but rather the stronger statement that Christianity was not actually inspired by a real person.
I think the case of the Lubavitcher Rebbe provides a revealing analogy to the events that started Christianity.
Turns out that the era and area where Jesus Christ supposedly did his preaching is quite well historically documented. IIRC, there are 17 notable preachers/rabblerousers/prophets named Jesus at that time – but none of them are the Jesus of the Bible. And even if there was such a mortal man, unless he could legitimately perform miracles, the Jews would not have followed him. It’s a problem.
I was fascinated by the Historicity/Mythicism debate at one time. Richard Carrier wrote a book on the topic: “On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt”. I read about 2/3rds of it, but my mind was already made up. It’s a very good read – Carrier writes logically and clearly, and the Bayesian analysis is explained and justified in detail. He knows a lot about the era, reads both Latin and Greek, and has read everyone.
If you are interested in the topic, it’s not a bad place to start, and you can buy a used copy on Ebay for under $18.00 here:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/298183526810?_skw=carrier+historicity&epid=220750138&itmmeta=01KNAJ7QRKD86407CK74GPRA8D&hash=item456d1f899a:g:HMQAAOSwgiRZxH-v&itmprp=enc%3AAQALAAAA8GfYFPkwiKCW4ZNSs2u11xBT5ouVlPetruLgsYwn9GmooBdqbmxCezEs%2FS8FVdGMWDKkyWtaAA%2Fh14a1bvuGiOdhdGnNVH35tNjrmf5kCk%2FWK0XOe8n1IeJvqG4lrDaK%2BtfbXktcjfytZJkJjsxqnHWpJUhC7QUi6fU4%2Bm5nk03RpoMwEUzBr5TVXXWNPmtWZ7anSdvoWXdwO76qWQpgycDu1wygAw3GDxUkX1CHI8FxfYqtT0VD6ROfyCe9nzK0BhMFD08cSNUc5jXoFzOQNwppTTcoffi%2FUNXw4SPOfjhZft4EabcXSwPeKwAVbIKL%2Fg%3D%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR9T8ntKqZw
I read all of Carrier’s work, and was very open to his arguments, but in retrospect he was constantly straining to expain away obvious references to Jesus as a real person. The Bayesian analysis seems to me just a post-hoc artifice to give the impression of objectivity.
This is my last entry so as not to violate Da Roolz.
Thanks for the heads up Jerry! Love Bart Ehrman. If you’re at all interested in reality-based analysis and historical research on the Bible, check out Bart Ehrman’s website and books. Incredibly readable. Any podcast he’s on, worth a listen. He’s on the most recent Sam Harris podcast and others now because he has a new book out. I don’t judge Ehrman for not reading “mythicists” because you could spend your life reading the spectrum of religious beliefs out there. None of those beliefs have anything to do with what evidence can tell us about the reality of Biblical times and the Bible–when it was written, by whom, the circumstances of the times in which sections were written, etc.
Atheists never seem to notice that the resurrection story is not hugely problematic compared to the other miracle stories of the NT. IF, I repeat if, there was a historical Jesus who got on the wrong side of Roman authorities and got crucified, it is not impossible that Roman executioners prematurely judged him dead and he revived later after being taken down from the cross. If such an event happened, it would have seemed like a divine miracle. I point out that in modern hospitals people have occasionally been wrongly declared dead and later revived. And Roman executioners would not have had the advantage of EKGs and EEGs and other high tech stuff available to modern doctors. People sometimes speak of a patient as coming back from death. If divine agency is required for a dead person to come back to life, then divine agency sometimes happens at Brooklyn General Hospital. It is rare, but it happens.
I am not particularly arguing for this theory, just pointing out that it is possible. I am happy with the likely theory that ancient BS artists made stuff up. But it would not rock my world view if it could be proven that there is some historicity to the resurrection. It would, however, shatter my understanding of the world if it could be proved that Jesus walked on water, or fed a multitude with two fish and five loaves, or inherited his SRY gene from a supernatural being rather than a male human.
Well, what ie more probable: that Jesus wasn’t really dead and came back to life, or that the story was made up? Go with the odds here.
And of course the other miracles you describe WERE made up, increasing the probability that the Resurrection story is bogus.
The funniest of the Gospel myths is the ascension story. Ancients thought that going up into the sky would take you to a supernatural realm called Heaven populated with God and angels and ghosts and stuff. But nowadays we know that the earth is a ball surrounded by near perfect vacuum. There are people who watch the discovery channel and feel avid interest about a discussion of the moons of Saturn, yet will sit in church on Ascension Sunday nodding along to the gospel reading. Do they believe that Jesus ascended into the sky, passed through layers of atmosphere, and then went into vacuum where he did a spacewalk without a spacesuit? Or do they believe that Yuri Gagarin and John Glenn rode their rockets to a supernatural realm? It is odd the way human minds can compartmentalize their understanding of reality.
I think there is a body of opinion among some evolutionary psychologists that compartmentalized understanding of reality is the natural pattern for the consciousness created by a brain evolved by natural selection, but complex enough to host what we would dignify by the term “mind”, and that it is a distinctive oddity of Homo sapiens to be able to break through the compartment boundaries to a degree sufficient to boost their inclusive fitness.
After I read Bart Ehrman’s
Book “Did Jesus Exist” I recall thinking if that is the best case that can be made for his existence then the Jesus of the gospels truly is a made up story. None of the evidence he cited would be admissible in an American court.
That said I strongly recommend Catherine Nixey’s recent book Heretic ( entitled Heresy in England). There were many tales of a Jesus ( or many Jesuses) in that time period that many including myself did not know about. A fascinating read.
I would remind all of the maxim, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
The claims that some dude preached a bunch of religious flapdoodle and got crucified for pissing people off in 1st cent. Judah are not extraordinary claims and thus do not require extraordinary evidence. There are no good reasons to doubt such unremarkable claims.
All the supernatural accretions, of course, can and should be doubted.
Our religion professors back in my day told us that there was a person named Joshua ben Joseph (English gloss, obviously) who live, taught, and died around the time the Romans would have called 753–783 ab urbe condita (from the founding of the city). And that there seems to be a repository of stories and sayings that can be attributed to his teaching.
One of the finer points of the story is that there was no PUBLIC ministry of this individual after the crucifixion; he never appeared to anyone other than a few of his closest followers.
Brings to mind the conversation between Jesus and the evangelist Paul (Sual of Tarsus) in the Kazantzakis novel, “The Last Temptation of Christ” captured in Scorsese’s movie of the same name. In it, Christ did not die on the cross, and disappeared from public life, but his disciples are spreading the “standard” account (the book is better!).
Jesus: Did you ever see this Jesus of Nazareth after he came back from the dead?
I mean, with your own eyes?
Paul: No, but I saw a light that blinded me, and I heard his voice.
Jesus: You’re a liar.
Paul: His disciples saw him. They were hiding in an attic with the doors locked, and he appeared to them.
Jesus: I was never crucified. I never came back from the dead. I’m a man, like everybody else.
Paul: Quiet!
Jesus: Why are you telling these lies?
Paul: What’s the matter with you? Look around you. Look at all these people. Do you see how unhappy they are, how much they’re suffering?
Their only hope is the resurrected Jesus. I don’t care whether you’re Jesus or not.
The resurrected Jesus will save the world, and that’s what matters.
From WIKI: Upon its publication, the book was condemned by the Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church; it has since been challenged by numerous Christian groups and conservative organizations.
And, as you intimated, Jesus at one point says love your enemies, but in the next breath says your enemies shall be barbequed in eternal hell fire. So, it’s not really (or not consistently) love everyone, it’s — again — love your tribe.
I think any such idea is pretty preposterous, since human nature is simply not that malleable and instructable, but is instead deep within us.
If we take Robert Trivers seriously (and we should!), then the idea of “help people in need, even if we don’t know them” arose deep in our evolutionary past. (As did the rest of human nature.)
Did the differences between the Catholic and Protestant Bible come up in the interview? Can Douthat explain how his faith is correctly detecting that the deuterocanonical books are divinely inspired and why the Protestant’s faith is wrong on this very important point?
If this is faith vs. faith, how does Douthat know that he has the more accurate one?
Catholics are taught that they have the true faith and other ‘Christians’ are in error.
I read the transcript of this interview last night and drew a different conclusion than many here. Most commenters understandably focus on the content, but what stood out to me was the process. Douthat was playing the role of interviewer rather than debater and did not grant himself anywhere near equal time. He leaves most of the content to Ehrman, while largely restricting himself to questions, brief follow-ups, and interjections rather than lengthy monologues. It was clear to me that Douthat had read Ehrman’s books and, with maybe an exception or two, already knew the answers he would get to his questions. Sure, he tried some gotchas that were of varying quality; most interviewers do. But that he granted a platform for over an hour to a man whose views are well known to be in stark disagreement with his own is laudatory. I welcome more of this willingness to platform disagreement in politics and religion, along with the discipline to keep it civil.
You should read the book “Heretic.” It provides an excellent exposition on Jesus being only one of many saviors/sons of god that existed at the time, and that what he said and the miracles he performed were no more noteworthy than theirs. Christians, according to the author, gained legitimacy only when Emperor Constantine claimed to have seen a vision of a cross and words that guaranteed victory in a battle, and converted after he won. What is not normally mentioned is that he saw religious, but non-Christian, visions before other battles; some of which he won and some he lost. Why seeing a cross inspired a change in him is unknown.
AIUI, politics. There were enough Christians around then to make it worthwhile for him to (consciously or not) pander to them. And initially the toleration of Christians was not a problem for the majority — what’s one god more or less? Only later did they realise the the toleration was not mutual and was leading to trouble. Emperor Julian the Philosopher (aka Julian the Apostate¹) tried to to bring back the old time state religion, but it was too late.
…………
¹ A bum rap, since he was never a Christian so could not have apostatised even if he wanted to. Julian the Last Pagan would have been more appropriate.
The quote
put me in mind of Zack Polanski, the current leader of the UK Green Party. Before politics he had a lucrative Harley Street practice as a hypnotherapist who told his patients he could increase their breast size by hypnosis. He is often referred to as the Breast Whisperer!
As has frequently been observed, you can find support for whatever proposition you want — noble or cruel — in the text of the bible. A couple of my favorite examples of the latter:
Jesus initially refused a gentile woman’s request that he heal her daughter, saying that “it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” He relented only after the woman conceded that she and her daughter were no better than dogs, and responded that “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” [See Matthew 15:21-28]
While Jesus preached that everyone should care for one another and help alleviate the suffering of the poor, he himself never actually did anything to help the poor other than preach at them. Why, for example, didn’t he tell people that it was actually tiny organisms in contaminated water sources that caused their cholera epidemics, instead of actually preaching against washing one’s hands and food (Mark 7:1-8). In fact, despite Jesus’ admonition to “give everything you own to the poor” (Matthew 19:21), on the one occasion when he had anything of value (some expensive perfume that was gifted to him) he elected to have it poured over him rather than – as his apostles urged – selling it and giving the money to the poor. Jesus even rebuked his apostles for their suggestion, callously remarking that: “you will always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish.” [Mark 14:3-9]
All the above is a wonderful piece. I’ve read some of Bart Ehrman’s books, and think he’s very perceptive. My attitude about Jesus ( who was likely not called that during his lifetime) is that he probably existed as a person, was an itinerant Jewish preacher, and his crucifixion likely happened (like hundreds of thousands or millions of other people. He was not “Christian’, and that religion was invented after his death (by people like Paul/Saul, Peter, etc., with the idea of Jesus’ “resurrection” as the main enticement to belief.