Falling Stars, Damnable Heresy, and the Spirit of Evolution

“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22).

“And the fifth angel sounded the trumpet, and I saw a star fall from heaven upon the earth, and there was given to him the key of the bottomless pit." (Rev. 9:1)

In his Concise Commentary Matthew Henry identifies falling stars as tepid, indecisive, weak or apostate clergy who,

"Having ceased to be a minister of Christ, he who is represented by this star becomes the minister of the devil; and lets loose the powers of hell against the churches of Christ."

John identifies antichrists, in this case clergy who serve the devil rather than Christ, sequentially. First, like Bultmann, Teilhard de Chardin, Robert Funk, Paul Tillich, and John Shelby Spong, they specifically deny the living, personal Holy Trinity in favor of Gnostic pagan, immanent or Eastern pantheist conceptions. Though God the Father Almighty in three Persons upholds the souls of men and maintains life and creation, His substance is not within nature (space-time dimension) as pantheism maintains, but outside of it. Sinful men live within nature and are burdened by time and mortality; God is not.

Second, the specific denial of the Father logically negates Jesus the Christ, the Word who was in the beginning (John 1), was with God, and is God from the creation of all things (1 John 1). In a pre-incarnate theophany, Jesus is the Angel who spoke “mouth to mouth” to Moses (Num. 12:6-9; John 9:20) and at sundry times and in many ways “spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all…” (Hebrews 1:1) Jesus the Christ is the incarnate Son of God who is the life and light of men, who by His shed blood on the Cross died for the remission of all sins and bestowed the privilege of adoption on all who put their faith in Him.

Therefore, to deny the Holy Father is to logically deny the deity of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, hence,

“…every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist . . . and even now already is it in the world” (1 John 4:3).

According to Peter (2 Peter 2:1), falling stars will work among the faithful, teaching damnable heresies that deny the Lord, cause the fall of men into unbelief, and bring destruction upon themselves:

“The natural parents of modern unbelief turn out to have been the guardians of belief.” Many thinking people came at last “to realize that it was religion, not science or social change that gave birth to unbelief. Having made God more and more like man---intellectually, morally, emotionally---the shapers of religion made it feasible to abandon God, to believe simply in man.” (James Turner of the University of Michigan in “American Babylon,” Richard John Neuhaus, p. 95)

Almost thirty years ago, two well-respected social science scholars, William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark found themselves alarmed by what they saw as a rising tide of irrationalism, superstition and occultism---channeling cults, spirit familiars, necromancers, Wiccans, Satanists, Luciferians, goddess worshippers, 'gay' shamans, Hermetic magicians and other occult madness at every level of society, particularly within the most influential--- Hollywood, academia and the highest corridors of political power.

Like many scientists, they were equally concerned by Christian opposition to naturalistic evolution. As is common in the science community, they assumed the cause of these social pathologies was somehow due to fundamentalism, their term for authentic Christian theism as opposed to liberalized Christianity. Yet to their credit, the research they undertook to discover the cause was conducted both scientifically and with great integrity. What they found was so startling it caused them to re-evaluate their attitude toward authentic Christian theism. Their findings led them to say:

"It would be a mistake to conclude that fundamentalists oppose all science (when in reality they but oppose) a single theory (that) directly contradicts the bible. But it would be an equally great mistake to conclude that religious liberals and the irreligious possess superior minds of great rationality, to see them as modern personalities who have no need of the supernatural or any propensity to believe unscientific superstitions. On the contrary...they are much more likely to accept the new superstitions. It is the fundamentalists who appear most virtuous according to scientific standards when we examine the cults and pseudo-sciences proliferating in our society today." ("Superstitions, Old and New," The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. IV, No. 4; summer, 1980)

In more detail they observed that authentic ‘born again’ Christians are far less likely to accept cults and pseudoscientific beliefs while the irreligious and liberalized Christians (i.e., progressive Catholics, Protestant emergent, NAR, word faith, prosperity gospel) are open to unscientific notions. In fact, these two groups are most disposed toward occultism.

As Bainbridge and Stark admitted, evolution directly contradicts the Bible, beginning with the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo. This means that evolution is the antithesis of the Genesis account. For this reason, discerning Christians refuse to submit to the evolutionary thinking that has swept Western and American society. Nor do they accept the evolutionary theism brought into the whole body of the Church by weak, tepid, indecisive, or apostate clergy.

Over eighty years ago, Rev. C. Leopold Clarke wrote that priests who embrace evolution (evolutionary theists) are apostates from the ‘Truth as it is in Jesus.’ (1 John2:2) Rev. Clarke, a lecturer at a London Bible college, discerned that evolution is the antithesis to the Revelation of God in the Deity of Jesus Christ, thus it is the greatest and most active agent of moral and spiritual disintegration:

“It is a battering-ram of unbelief---a sapping and mining operation that intends to blow Religion sky-high. The one thing which the human mind demands in its conception of God, is that, being Almighty, He works sovereignly and miraculously---and this is the thing with which Evolution dispenses….Already a tremendous effect, on a wide scale has been produced by the impact of this teaching---an effect which can only be likened to the…collapse of foundations…” (Evolution and the Break-Up of Christendom, Philip Bell, creation.com, Nov. 27, 2012)

The faith of the Christian Church and of the average Christian has had, and still has, its foundation as much in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis, the book of beginnings revealed ‘mouth to mouth’ by the Angel to Moses, as in that of the person and deity of Jesus Christ. But how horrible a travesty of the sacred office of the Christian Ministry to see church leaders more eager to be abreast of the times, than earnestly contending for the Faith once delivered unto the saints (Jude 1:3). It is high time, said Rev. Clarke, that the Church,

“…. separated herself from the humiliating entanglement attending her desire to be thought up to date…What, after all, have custodians of Divine Revelation to do making terms with speculative Biology, which has….no message of comfort or help to the soul?” (ibid)

The primary tactic employed by priests eager to accommodate themselves and the Church to modern science and evolutionary thinking is predictable. It is the argument that evolution is entirely compatible with the Bible when we see Genesis, especially the first three chapters, in a non-literal, non-historical context. This is the argument embraced and advanced by mega-church pastor Timothy J. Keller.

With a position paper Keller published with the theistic evolutionary organization Bio Logos he joined the ranks of falling stars (Catholic and Protestant priests) stretching back to the Renaissance. Their slippery-slide into apostasy began when they gave into the temptation to embrace a non-literal, non-historical view of Genesis. (A response to Timothy Keller’s ‘Creation, Evolution and Christian Laypeople,” Lita Cosner, Sept. 9, 2010, creation.com)

This is not a heresy unique to modern times. The early Church Fathers dealt with this damnable heresy as well, counting it among the heretical tendencies of the Origenists. Fourth-century Fathers such as John Chrysostom, Basil the Great and Ephraim the Syrian, all of whom wrote commentaries on Genesis, specifically warned against treating Genesis as an unhistorical myth or allegory. John Chrysostom strongly warned against paying heed to these heretics,

“…let us stop up our hearing against them, and let us believe the Divine Scripture, and following what is written in it, let us strive to preserve in our souls sound dogmas.” (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 31)

As St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote, higher theological, spiritual meaning is founded upon humble, simple faith in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis and one cannot apprehend rightly the Scriptures without believing in the historical reality of the events and people they describe. (ibid, Seraphim Rose, p. 40)

In the integral worldview teachings of the Fathers, neither the literal nor historical meaning of the Revelations of the pre-incarnate Jesus, the Angel who spoke to Moses, can be regarded as expendable. There are at least four critically important reasons why. First, to reduce the Revelation of God to allegory and myth is to contradict and usurp the authority of God, ultimately deny the deity of Jesus Christ; twist, distort, add to and subtract from the entire Bible and finally, to imperil the salvation of believers.

Scenarios commonly proposed by modern Origenists posit a cleverly disguised pantheist/immanent nature deity subject to the space-time dimension and forces of evolution. But as noted previously, it is sinful man who carries the burden of time, not God. This is a crucial point, for when evolutionary theists add millions and billions of zeros (time) to God they have transferred their own limitations onto Him. They have ‘limited’ God and made Him over in their own image. This is not only idolatrous but satanic.

Additionally, evolution inverts creation. In place of God’s good creation from which men fell there is an evolutionary escalator starting at the bottom with matter, then progressing upward toward life, then up and through the life and death of millions of evolved creatures that preceded humans by millions of years until at long last an apish humanoid emerges into which a deity that is always in a state of becoming (evolving) places a soul.

Evolution amputates the entire historical precedent from the Gospel and makes Jesus Christ unnecessary as the atheist Frank Zindler enthusiastically points out:

“The most devastating thing that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve, there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a saviour. And I submit that puts Jesus…into the ranks of the unemployed. I think evolution absolutely is the death knell of Christianity.” (“Atheism vs. Christianity,” 1996, Lita Cosner, creation.com, June 13, 2013)

None of this was lost on Darwin’s bulldog, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1985). Huxley was thoroughly familiar with the Bible, thus he understood that if Genesis is not the authoritative Word of God, is not historical and literal despite its’ symbolic and poetic elements, then the entirety of Scripture becomes a collection of fairytales resulting in tragic downward spiraling consequences as the Catholic Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation makes clear in part:

“By denying the historical truth of the first chapters of Genesis, theistic evolutionism has fostered a preoccupation with natural causes almost to the exclusion of supernatural ones. By denying the several supernatural creative acts of God in Genesis, and by downplaying the importance of the supernatural activity of Satan, theistic evolutionists slip into a naturalistic mentality which seeks to explain everything in terms of natural causes. Once this mentality takes hold, it is easy for men to regard the concept of spiritual warfare as a holdover from the days of primitive superstition. Diabolical activity is reduced to material or psychological causes. The devil and his demons come to be seen as irrelevant. Soon ‘hell’ joins the devil and his demons in the category of antiquated concepts. And the theistic evolutionist easily makes the fatal mistake of thinking that he has nothing more to fear from the devil and his angels. According to Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the chief exorcist of Rome, there is a tremendous increase in diabolical activity and influence in the formerly Christian world. And yet most of the bishops of Europe no longer believe in the existence of evil spirits….To the Fathers of the Church who believed in the truth of Genesis, this would be incredible. But in view of the almost universal acceptance of theistic evolution, it is hardly surprising.” (The Difference it makes: The Importance of the Traditional Doctrine of Creation, Hugh Owen, kolbecenter.org)

Huxley had ‘zero’ respect for modern Origenists and received enormous pleasure from heaping piles of hot coals and burning contempt upon them, thereby exposing their shallow-reasoning, hypocrisy, timidity, fear of non-acceptance, and unfaithfulness. With sarcasm dripping from his words he quipped,

“I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how any one, for a moment, can doubt that Christian theology must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures. The very conception of the Messiah, or Christ, is inextricably interwoven with Jewish history; the identification of Jesus of Nazareth with that Messiah rests upon the interpretation of passages of the Hebrew Scriptures which have no evidential value unless they possess the historical character assigned to them. If the covenant with Abraham was not made; if circumcision and sacrifices were not ordained by Jahveh; if the “ten words” were not written by God’s hand on the stone tables; if Abraham is more or less a mythical hero, such as Theseus; the story of the Deluge a fiction; that of the Fall a legend; and that of the creation the dream of a seer; if all these definite and detailed narratives of apparently real events have no more value as history than have the stories of the regal period of Rome—what is to be said about the Messianic doctrine, which is so much less clearly enunciated? And what about the authority of the writers of the books of the New Testament, who, on this theory, have not merely accepted flimsy fictions for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian dogma upon legendary quicksands?” (Darwin’s Bulldog---Thomas Huxley, Russell Grigg, creation.com, Oct. 14, 2008)

“When Jesus spoke, as of a matter of fact, that "the Flood came and destroyed them all," did he believe that the Deluge really took place, or not? It seems to me that, as the narrative mentions Noah’s wife, and his sons’ wives, there is good scriptural warranty for the statement that the antediluvians married and were given in marriage; and I should have thought that their eating and drinking might be assumed by the firmest believer in the literal truth of the story. Moreover, I venture to ask what sort of value, as an illustration of God’s methods of dealing with sin, has an account of an event that never happened? If no Flood swept the careless people away, how is the warning of more worth than the cry of “Wolf” when there is no wolf? If Jonah’s three days’ residence in the whale is not an “admitted reality,” how could it “warrant belief” in the “coming resurrection?” … Suppose that a Conservative orator warns his hearers to beware of great political and social changes, lest they end, as in France, in the domination of a Robespierre; what becomes, not only of his argument, but of his veracity, if he, personally, does not believe that Robespierre existed and did the deeds attributed to him?” (ibid)

“If divine authority is not here claimed for the twenty-fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis, what is the value of language? And again, I ask, if one may play fast and loose with the story of the Fall as a “type” or “allegory,” what becomes of the foundation of Pauline theology?” (ibid)

“If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and if the story of the Fall is merely an instructive “type,” comparable to the profound Promethean mythus, what value has Paul’s dialectic?” (ibid)

After much thought, C.S. Lewis concluded that evolution is the central, most radical lie at the center of a vast network of lies within which modern Westerners are entangled while Rev. Clarke identifies the central lie as the Gospel of another Spirit. The fiendish aim of this Spirit is to help men lose God, not find Him, and by contradicting the Divine Redeemer, compromising Priests are serving this Spirit and its’ diabolical purposes. To contradict the Divine Redeemer is the very essence of unfaithfulness, and that it should be done while reverence is professed,

“…. is an illustration of the intellectual and moral topsy-turvydom of Modernism…’He whom God hath sent speaketh the Words of God,’ claimed Christ of Himself (John 3:34), and no assumption of error can hold water in the face of that declaration, without blasphemy.” Evolutionary theists are serving the devil, therefore “no considerations of Christian charity, of tolerance, of policy, can exonerate Christian leaders or Churches who fail to condemn and to sever themselves from compromising, cowardly, shilly-shallying priests”---the falling stars who “challenge the Divine Authority of Jesus Christ.” (ibid)

The rebuttals, warnings and counsels of the Fathers against listening to Origenists (and their modern evolutionary counterparts) indicates that the spirit of antichrist operating through modern rationalistic criticism of the Revelation of God is not a heresy unique to our times but was inveighed against by early Church Fathers.

From the scholarly writings of the Eastern Orthodox priest, Fr. Seraphim Rose, to the incisive analysis, rebuttals and warnings of the Catholic Kolbe Center, creation.com, Creation Research Institute, Rev. Clarke, and many other stalwart defenders of the faith once delivered, all are a clear, compelling call to the whole body of the Church to hold fast to the traditional doctrine of creation as it was handed down from the Apostles, for as God spoke and Jesus is the Living Word incarnate, it is incumbent upon the faithful to submit their wills to the Divine Will and Authority of God rather than to the damnable heresy proffered by falling stars eager to embrace naturalistic science and the devil's antithesis--- evolution. But if it seem evil to you to serve the Lord,

“…you have your choice: choose this day that which pleases you, whom you would rather serve….but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15

for those who can see TL’s ridiculous lack of intellectual honesty...

http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/ShatteringChristMyth.htm

Shattering the Internet Mythicists
Review of Shattering the Christ Myth by J.P. Holding

Shattering the Christ Myth by J.P. Holding (Xulon Press, 2008)From a series of posts at “Internet Infidels” Biblical Criticism forum (July 2008)

Of course you want to see my review of the book, hopefully will appear on Amazon.com in a few days:

Shattering the Internet Mythicists (July 23, 2008)

by PhilVaz (St. Petersburg, FL United States)

Having been aware of this so-called “debate” on the Internet (please note: it is entirely an “online debate” not one advanced by serious NT or historical Jesus scholars) since the mid 1990s, I am glad that J.P. Holding has finally transcribed and edited some of his impressive “Tektonics” online articles for an entire book on “Shattering the Christ Myth.” He and his amateur scholar contributors have pulled together an excellent set of articles and chapters debunking both the “myth” hypothesis and the “copycat” or “pagan parallel” thesis presented by many an anti-Christian conspiracy buff and uninformed skeptic of historical Christianity.

Chapters include an introduction on the history and origin of the “Christ myth” claims dating from the early 1800s; detailed defenses of the standard non-biblical references to Jesus from the Jewish historian Josephus (his two passages), the Roman historian Tacitus, Lucian, Pliny the Younger, and Papias; responses to the various “silences” argued by “mythicists” from Remsburg to G.A. Wells to Earl Doherty; analysis of the supposed “pagan Christs” from Mithra to Krishna to Horus to Dionysos; reviews and refutations exposing the abysmal scholarship and poor arguments of recent “Christ myth” movies “The God Who Wasn’t There” and “Zeitgeist”; and additional material on the city of Nazareth, the academic and Internet mythicists, and more.

This book shows there is really nothing at all to the “mythicist” claims: they are groundless historically, poorly argued based on “silence” and refuted by numerous reliable witnesses to Jesus, and that includes the canonical Gospels and the earliest writings of St. Paul. The real debate among scholars is not whether there was a historical Jesus who was crucified under Pontius Pilate around 30 AD, but on Christ’s claims to divinity and being the unique Son of God, the miracles of the Gospels as signs of that divinity, and especially the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ — i.e. the whole “Jesus of history” vs. “Christ of faith” debate among conservative evangelical and more “liberal” scholarship.

Jeffery Jay Lowder of Internet Infidels: “There is simply nothing intrinsically improbable about a historical Jesus; the New Testament alone (or at least portions of it) are reliable enough to provide evidence of a historical Jesus. On this point, it is important to note that even G.A. Wells, who until recently was the champion of the christ-myth hypothesis, now accepts the historicity of Jesus on the basis of ‘Q’.” (”Josh McDowell’s ‘Evidence’ for Jesus”)

British historian Michael Grant: “...if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus’ existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned...To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has ‘again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars’. In recent years ‘no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus’ — or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.” (Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels [1977], pages 199, 200)

Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright: “It is quite difficult to know where to start, because actually the evidence for Jesus is so massive that, as a historian, I want to say we have got almost as much good evidence for Jesus as for anyone in the ancient world....the evidence fits so well with what we know of the Judaism of the period....that I think there are hardly any historians today, in fact I don’t know of any historians today, who doubt the existence of Jesus [aside from one or two]....It is quite clear that in fact Jesus is a very, very well documented character of real history. So I think that question can be put to rest.” (”The Self-Revelation of God in Human History” from There Is A God by Antony Flew and Roy Abraham Varghese [2007])

Robert Van Voorst: “Contemporary New Testament scholars have typically viewed their [i.e. Jesus-mythers] arguments as so weak or bizarre that they relegate them to footnotes, or often ignore them completely....The theory of Jesus’ nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question....Biblical scholars and classical historians now regard it as effectively refuted.” (Jesus Outside the New Testament [2000], pages 6, 14, 16)

Shattering the Christ Myth is a welcome addition to the many evangelical defenses of Jesus Christ by well-known scholars such as R.T. France (The Evidence for Jesus), Moreland/Wilkins (Jesus Under Fire), and recently Boyd/Eddy (The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition). As a Catholic apologist, I also appreciated the brief chapter on “Leo’s Line” explaining the “fable quote” sometimes attributed to Pope Leo X by mythicist skeptics.

My only complaint is the book is slightly “oversized” so it is not the size of your normal paperback and may not fit easily on your bookshelf. Nevertheless a definite 5-star effort from apologist J.P. Holding and company.

Phil Porvaznik

Annihilating the Christ Myth

aa << This does not make much sense. In 1977, Grant wrote Christ-myth theory annihilated by first rank scholars, now 30 years later, J P Holding writes that the Jesus-myth is shattered. >>

OK, I’ll try to explain, but I’m no expert on this topic. You should go ahead and get the J.P. Holding book, and write your own fair and detailed review.

Here’s my “story”....

In the mid-1990s I became aware of this whole “Jesus myth” thing from some radical skeptic forums I was involved with on Usenet and FidoNet (particularly the old obnoxious “HolySmoke” forum). At the time I was a beginning Internet “Catholic lay apologist” (mainly inspired by Karl Keating and Catholic Answers) trying to sort out the whole Catholic-Protestant “fundamentalist” debate thing (along with a few Greek/Eastern Orthodox Christians too), and occasionally ventured into the skeptic-Christian debate. At that time the 80-year-old essay by M. M. Mangasarian “The Truth about Jesus : Is He a Myth?” (orig 1909) I remember was regularly posted at HolySmoke and elsewhere. That was my introduction to the “Jesus myth” claims, and I found this very strange that someone would actually deny Jesus even existed. Sure atheists believed God didn’t exist, I knew that already. But that there was no historical Jesus? I never heard that before.

This was back in 1994-95 for me, before Earl Doherty went online, and slightly before the “Internet Infidels” became a site I believe. Other atheists I found online in various discussion forums recommended books by G.A. Wells who was the only well-known “Jesus myth” scholar. What I didn’t know, but later found out, was he was not really a credentialed or professional NT or Jesus scholar, but a teacher of German. Wells had also changed his mind about this time, and now writes in his 2004 book:

“Some recent scholars (such as Freke and Gandy in their 1999 book, and Earl Doherty, whose book was also published in 1999) hold that the earliest Christian writers did not believe Jesus to have come to Earth as a man at all. I have never maintained this view, although it has often been imputed to me by critics who have been anxious to dispose of my arguments without troubling to see wherein they consist.” (G.A. Wells, Can We Trust the New Testament [2004], page 4)

Wells is now saying he never really believed the “mythicist” claim. In the 1970s however, Wells had at least two books that many atheists and skeptics interpreted as arguing for the “Jesus myth” position, and these are probably the books that Michael Grant is referring to above in his 1977 book on Jesus, along with the earlier “Jesus myth” scholars (very few of them) dating back to the late 19th, early 20th century.

These are outlined in J.P. Holding’s book in the chapter by James Hannam “A Historical Introduction to the Myth that Jesus Never Existed.” So yes, the “Jesus myth” position had a very few adherents, beginning explicitly with Bruno Bauer (1809-1882), and later Arthur Drews The Christ Myth (1911), then John M. Robertson (1856-1933) The Historical Jesus (1916) and The Jesus Problem (1917) which argued Jesus was based on some sort of pre-Christian myth, and in the United States by John Remsburg The Christ (1909) that Jesus was a pagan god, and mathematician William B. Smith. However, Hannam writes:

“The generation of Jesus Mythologists represented by Smith and Robertson died out in the 1920s. They had based their work on theories about mythology from the ‘history of religions’ school but scholarship itself moved on, leaving the Jesus Mythologists high and dry....[but] a few amateurs trudged on....It was not until 1971 that the Jesus Myth burst back into life with the work of a polite and erudite Professor of German...George Albert Wells (1926- ).” (J.P. Holding, Shattering, chapter by Hannam, page xiv-xvi)

By the 1920s the earliest “mythicist” claims were answered, annihilated, shattered, and obliterated, and then later in the 1970s when they re-surfaced with G.A. Wells, his bogus claims were again answered, annihilated, shattered and obliterated by such historians as Michael Grant, once again in the 1980s (since Wells was still publishing his books) by the evangelical scholar R.T. France (The Evidence for Jesus), and then in the 1990s when Doherty replaced Wells as the primary “Jesus myth” scholar/historian for the skeptic/atheist community, the J.P. Holding online articles (and now his oversized book) answers, annihilates, shatters, and obliterates their claims all over again in excruciating detailed fashion (in my opinion, read the book for yourself).

Maybe when Doherty admits Jesus existed in a new edition of his book (like Wells did), then Richard Carrier will take over as the new “scholar/historian” for the “Jesus myth” claims and come up with new (or new and improved) arguments from silence for “mythicism.” You never know....

It is also true (just as I said) that this whole “debate” is limited to mainly online discussion forums (such as the Infidels.org) and web sites (and a couple of self-published books) and isn’t addressed by professionals anymore, and is simply ignored by mainstream biblical scholarship and modern historical Jesus studies. E.G. see the Crossans vs. the Craigs, the Borgs vs. the Wrights, the Jesus Seminar or more “liberal” types vs. the evangelicals, or traditional or moderate Catholic scholars like Raymond Brown or John P. Meier, etc. None of these guys are “mythicists” and they do not even address them or their “arguments.” Why? Because there is no real “debate” on the subject, never has been. That is my understanding after carefully studying this subject as an amateur the past 10+ years.

Historical Criteria

Steven << We shall never know, unless Phil reproduces the criteria that Grant used to definitely state that Jesus existed. >>

I have Michael Grant’s 1977 edition of his book, I might be able to type in some of his criteria. Also you are correct that R.T. France conceded the point to Wells on Tacitus, France says: “I find Wells’ argument entirely convincing. Tacitus’ reference to ‘Christus’ is evidence only for what was believed about Christian origins at the time he wrote, and there is plenty of other evidence for that.” (France, Evidence for Jesus, page 23 [1986 edition]). France concedes that Tacitus is not necessarily independent testimony. But on all other evidence, France argues against Wells. J.P. Holding’s book argues differently on Tacitus, citing various scholars.

Wells vs. France/Habermas/Boyd

Steven << Gosh. France agrees with Wells on Suetonius as well! Are you sure France demolished Wells? >>

BTW, Yes I am sure. Tacitus takes up 3 or 4 pages in France’s book, Suetonius a page, Pliny the Younger a page, Josephus 8 pages. The R.T. France book The Evidence for Jesus is 190+ pages so obviously there is more to the book than the non-biblical references to Jesus. He doesn’t concede everything to Wells, he simply agrees that Tacitus does not provide “independent testimony” and that Suetonius and Pliny the Younger give us no additional information about Jesus.

The chapters in the France book are “Non-Christian Evidence” (40 pages), “Christian Evidence Outside the NT” (about 30 pages), “Evidence of the NT” (55 pages), “Evidence of Archaeology” (18 pages), and “Jesus in History” (10 pages). The main G.A. Wells arguments to fall is the supposed “silence of Paul” about Jesus and the unreliability of the NT. Not only France The Evidence for Jesus (1986) demolishes Wells, but also Habermas The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (1996) demolishes Wells, and Boyd/Eddy The Jesus Legend (2007) demolishes both Wells and Doherty, and now J.P. Holding Shattering the Christ Myth also demolishes both Wells and Doherty (in my opinion). Remember G.A. Wells says he never held to the “mythicist position” in the first place! Although many scholars certainly have interpreted his first 2 or 3 books to teach just that.

As for Michael Grant’s historical criterion, although he does not directly address Wells or his arguments, I find him more believable than Wells. Grant is certainly more credentialed to write as a historian on the topic: Michael Grant has been a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Professor of Humanity at Edinburgh Univ, and President and Vice-Chan of the Queen’s Univ, Belfast. He holds Doctorates of Cambridge, Dublin, and Belfast. His books include The Twelve Caesars, The Army of the Caesars, The Annals of Imperial Rome, and Saint Paul. He is not a believer, but a skeptic.

Here is a summary from Grant’s Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels (1977 edition is what I have, it is also available used in the 1995 edition).

“Yet one large, nagging doubt may well still be lodged in the minds of some of those who have read the foregoing chapters. It is this: what reason have we for supposing that the facts as narrated by the Gospels, and presented — with such explanations as I have felt to be necessary — in the course of this book, deserve any degree of belief whatsoever, from the standpoint of historical accuracy?....[this] will require some explanation and justification. In particular, [we] want to have some account of the principles that need to be followed, and the methods that need to be adopted, in deciding which portions of the Gospels can be accepted as historical fact as they stand, or accepted with due reservations or interpretations, or rejected altogether as fictitious inventions by the evangelists or their sources. To offer an adequate answer to these demands is a notoriously hard and challenging task — as the discussions in the course of this book have already, surely, shown. But it must now, briefly, be attempted.” (Grant, Jesus: An Historian’s Review, page 195-196)

In the next appendix (page 197ff) “Attitudes to the Evidence” some points from Grant are:

there are three possible approaches: one can write as a believer, or as an unbeliever, or as Grant has attempted “as a student of history seeking...to employ methods that make belief or unbelief irrelevant.”
some partial measure of skepticism regarding the Gospel stories is inevitable, if historical standards are going to be applied; this started extremely early, and inside the Church itself as Origen (third century AD) conceded to his pagan opponents that some passages in the Gospels were by no means literal, and indeed absurd or impossible;
this skeptical approach reached its culmination in the argument that Jesus as a human being never existed at all and is a myth; convincing refutations of this “Christ-myth” hypothesis can be made from an appeal to method (backgrounds in Judaism; similar criteria applied to other ancient writings containing historical material; pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned; etc);
certainly there are discrepancies between one Gospel and another, and there was a growth of legend round Jesus, and it rose very quickly; but the same can be said for such figures as Alexander the Great yet nobody regards him as mythical and fictitious;
modern critical methods fail to support the “Christ-myth” theory; it has again and again been answered by first-rate scholars; in recent years (1977) no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus (except G.A. Wells two 1970s books which he mentions in a footnote);
the historian must first try to decide as best he can, what Jesus said and did, and to consider the significance of (including what Jesus himself attached to) those words and deeds;
the view an historian should take is that everything the evangelists say must be assumed correct until it is proved wrong; the opposite view, that all contents of the Gospels must be assumed fictitious until they are proved genuine is too extreme a viewpoint and would not be applied in other fields; for example: when one builds up facts derived from accounts by pagan historians, judgment often has to be given not in the light of any external confirmation, but on the basis of historical deductions and arguments which attain nothing better than probability — the same applies to the Gospels;
other criterion he mentions are “multiple attestation”; or “attestation by multiple forms” (if a motif is presented more than once in different literary forms, it is more likely genuine); a rejection from the lifetime of Jesus of all material which seems to be derived from the days of the Christian Church as it existed after his death (although difficult to apply this correctly, it provides “our principal valid method of research”); and “form criticism” to eliminate from the Gospels the accretions that were introduced after Jesus’ death; also to “look out for surprises” — anything “really surprising” in the Gospels is quite likely to be authentic (i.e. that which clashes with what we should expect to find in something written after the time of Jesus);

There’s more, but here is Grant’s conclusion: “The consistency, therefore, of the [Jesus] tradition in their [the Gospels] pages suggests that the picture they present is largely authentic. By such methods information about Jesus can be derived from the Gospels. And that is what this book has tried to do.” (page 204)

Special Pleading?

Steven << Grant’s methods are simply special pleading, as he has no real evidence for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth. >>

Read Grant’s book or the Boyd/Eddy book. The Gospels are the evidence you are looking for. Josephus also stands (both passages, one partially authentic), see the long detailed chapter on Josephus in J.P. Holding’s book. Did you forget that even G.A. Wells says he never fully believed the “Christ-myth” claim (see his 2004 book which I quoted) ? BTW, Judas is mentioned in all four Gospels (e.g. Matt 10:2ff) and Acts. So is Jesus of Nazareth, and in the Acts, and the NT letters. That’s enough for most historians (like Michael Grant).

1920 to 1970

Earl Doherty << And who are the “first-rank scholars” who have dealt out annihilation prior to Dunkerly’s and Betz’s claims? >>

You may be right on the “lack of annihilation” from “first-rank scholars” but of course there weren’t ever that many books and scholars on the “Jesus myth” claims to answer and/or annihilate in the first place. It looks like Dunkerly (Beyond the Gospels, 1957) and/or Betz (What Do We Know About Jesus, 1968) only had to annihilate the arguments from two or three “Jesus myth” books of their time period (A. Robertson, H. Cutner, and John Allegro, see titles/dates below). The opposite question might be posed:

Who are the first-rank scholars from 1920 to 1970 who even postulated the non-historicity of Jesus (that Jesus did not exist) ?

Apparently, according to the Hannam chapter in J.P. Holding’s book, after the few books that did postulate this in the early 20th century:

“The generation of Jesus Mythologists represented by [William B.] Smith and [John M.] Robertson died out in the 1920s. They had based their work on theories of mythology from the history of religions school but scholarship itself moved on, leaving the Jesus Mythologists high and dry....” (Holding, Shattering the Christ Myth, chapter by James Hannam, page xv)

On the whole “history of religions” approach to scholarship, Eddy/Boyd note:

“While the claim that aspects of the Christian view of Jesus parallel, even are indebted to, ancient pagan legends and myths has a long history, it gained prominence with the birth of the history of religions school (Religionsgeschichtliche Schule) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries....The history of religions school was extremely popular in academic circles for several decades, but owing to trenchant critiques by such scholars as Samuel Cheetham [1897], H.A.A. Kennedy [1913], J. Gresham Machen [1925], A.D. Nock [1964], Bruce Metzger [1968], and Gunter Wagner [1967], it eventually fell out of fashion.” (The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition [Baker Academic, 2007], pages 134,136).

They also mention a book by W.D. Davies and D. Daube [1956] with a chapter on the demise of the “history of religions” school.

Besides the first “Jesus mythers” from the early 20th century (e.g. Arthur Drews, who claimed all of Paul’s letters were forgeries), Hannam names P.L. Couchoud The Enigma of Jesus (1924) who was a medical doctor, not a biblical scholar, and a French book La Fable de Jesus Christ (1967) by G. Fan. Then there’s Archibald Robertson Jesus: Myth or History (1949) and Herbert Cutner Jesus: God, Man or Myth? (1950). In the 1960s there was John Allegro and his “sacred mushroom” hypothesis.

Was there anybody else?

Among the thousands upon thousands of books and journal articles published on the historical Jesus and Jesus-like topics by thousands of various biblical or classical scholars and historians, can you name any others from 1920 to 1970 (a period of 50 years), that accepted these “great arguments” of the “Jesus myth” types that supposedly weren’t rebutted (or annihilated) properly 100 years ago? Why did these “great arguments” for “Jesus mythicism” die out in mainstream scholarship in the 1920s? Why were these “great arguments” ignored for 50 years?

Maybe Hannam is leaving out a TON of “Jesus myth” scholars from 1920 to 1970 that you know about? Please tell me. BTW, here are the books I own on this topic so far:

Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels by Michael Grant (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1977)
The Evidence for Jesus by R.T. France (Intervarsity Press, 1986)
A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (volume 1) by John P. Meier (Anchor / Doubleday, 1991)
The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant by John Dominic Crossan (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991)
The Historical Figure of Jesus by E.P. Sanders (The Penguin Press, 1993)
Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus edited by Wilkins / Moreland (Zondervan, 1995)
The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels by L.T. Johnson (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996)
Jesus and the Victory of God by N. T. Wright (Fortress, 1996)
The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ by Gary Habermas (College Press, 1996)
Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? : A Debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan (Baker Academic, 1998)
The Jesus Puzzle by Earl Doherty (Age of Reason, 1999, 2005)
Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence by Robert van Voorst (Eerdmans, 2000)
The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable is the Gospel Tradition? by Robert M. Price (Prometheus, 2003)
What Have They Done With Jesus? by Ben Witherington III (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006)
Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels by Craig Evans (Intervarsity, 2006)
The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition by Eddy / Boyd (Baker Academic, 2007)
Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI (Doubleday, 2007)
Shattering the Christ Myth: Did Jesus Not Exist? edited by James Patrick Holding (Xulon Press, 2008)

I now own all of these books but it’s gonna take some time to read them all a couple times so I understand the arguments. Hope to finish Part 2 of my little “historical Jesus” project by Christmas 2008. Part 2 will summarize what I consider the best evidence for Jesus (arguments and data culled from the above books), a brief refutation of “The God Who Wasn’t There” DVD, and the best responses to Doherty’s book. Part 1 on “pagan parallels” is finished. I am an amateur, like most of us, and like Peter Kirby (thanks for his review of Habermas), but I do enjoy this “online debate” we have (even if it’s ignored by mainstream scholarship).

A Billion Believers

aa << You actually BELIEVE in your heart that Jesus ROSE from the DEAD, floated through the clouds and will come back for you when you DIE in Jesus Christ. >>

Yep, me and a billion other Catholics (according to World Christian Encyclopedia raw stats). Not sure about the floating part, but the ascension does require at least a “going up” and disappearing into the “dimension” of heaven. And yes Christ’s return is part of the classic Christian creeds. “He will return to judge the living and the dead.”

And I actively go out of my way to read the best stuff against my beliefs as well. I am unique like that. I have one Robert Price book, one G.A. Wells book, the Doherty book, several atheist books (Dan Barker, Vic Stenger, Richard Dawkins, David Mills, George Smith, etc), and I defend evolution often at the Catholic Answers boards. Hooray!

Real Debate

ChristMyth << The idea that this Jesus was “Christ” however is still something that needs to be shown to be valid. In my mind, it is his divinity that is in question. >>

That’s the “real” scholarly debate. The “historical Jesus didn’t exist” isn’t a valid debate in today’s NT or Jesus scholarship. The “Jesus of history” vs. the “Christ of faith” is what divides traditional Catholics and conservative evangelicals on the one side, from “Jesus Seminar” or more “liberal” branches of Christian scholars on the other. The Wrights vs. the Borgs (The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions), the Craigs vs. the Crossans (Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?), and that is a more “respectable” debate in my opinion since at least it represents a sizeable number of people on each side.

Craig vs. Crossan (mp3)
Craig vs. Borg (mp3)
Wright vs. Crossan (mp3)

This “historical Jesus didn’t exist” business is only found here on this site, other spin-off atheist or “freethought” sites, other eccentrics and cranks (Acharya S, Freke/Gandy), and one semi-scholarly book today: Earl Doherty’s. And J.P. Holding’s book does a number on all of these.

Please Make Sense

aa << You are just not making sense. You appear to just chatter about shatter. >>

I thought the message was clear and I’ve been consistent. Here it is again:

there are people on the Internet who “think” there is this “big debate” going on about whether an historical Jesus existed (these are people who ONLY read Internet Infidels, Rational Responders, and other atheist/skeptic/freethought sites, but ignore mainstream NT or Jesus scholarship);
J.P. Holding’s book was written for such people, or for other people (like myself) who know there is no real debate on this topic but would like the best arguments against “Jesus mythicism” anyway, so they can engage in this bogus “online debate”;
The truth in actual NT and Jesus scholarship is there is no debate on whether Jesus existed since it was shattered 100 years ago, again 50 years ago, again 30 years ago (e.g. Michael Grant), again 20 years ago (e.g. R.T. France), again 10 years ago (e.g. John P. Meier), again last year (e.g. Eddy/Boyd), and again a couple weeks ago by J.P. Holding and company (i.e. there wasn’t much shattering necessary, just the few cranks, eccentrics on “copycat” and “pagan parallel” conspiracies, and some “scholarly” arguments from silence that need answering);
The real debate is between more conservative or “traditional” biblical scholars (Catholic, or evangelical, or Orthodox) who affirm Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and those liberals or modernist scholars (Catholic, or Protestant, or Orthodox or skeptics) and others who reject that.

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