Exploring the Historicity of the Bible and Jesus

I think I met Nicholas Bruzzese on Facebook, but now I can't remember. Not that it matters as much as the fact that I now call him a friend. Awhile ago he and his friends down in Melbourne Australia started a podcast called The Skeptic's Testament. As you know, I have a thing for podcasts because I can do mundane tasks while learning about new things from interesting people.

And Nicholas and his friends are very interesting. They tackle the bible from a scholarly perspective and I always learn something from every episode.

One thing that seems to be a big controversy is the historicity of Jesus. Did he exist? Before I heard the Skeptic's Testament, I had met another biblical scholar who told me that the consensus among the people who study biblical history is that he did. But he never really explained.

I used to believe that Jesus didn't exist. I know a lot of atheists hold to this belief, and while I don't have the tools to prove them wrong, when it comes to issues that I am not an expert in (most things, actually) I look to see what the consensus is, as that's a pretty good starting point. What do most experts say? We all have to do this in different areas of our lives. That's the nature of being interdependent as social creatures. I defer to my husband when it comes to cars and mechanical things, I listen to my doctor (and maybe get a second opinion) because she knows more than me about the human body, etc. We get to stand on the shoulders of giants.

So after listening to all of the episodes of The Skeptic's Testament, I asked Nicholas if he would mind answering some questions about this issue that is so contentious among atheists, yet pretty much agreed upon by scholars. The following are my initial questions and Nicholas' answers. This is part 1 of 2.

Q: Please introduce yourself. What are your credentials in talking about the bible?

Even though I grew up a Christian attending Church with my grandma as a youngster, it wasn’t until my teens that I began to take religion seriously, which began my fundamental literal approach to the Bible. If nothing else all that Bible reading and apologetic research built endurance. I am half way through a formal degree in Divinity, so in other words I haven’t any credentials worth talking about. Some may find it strange, an atheist taking ministry courses which are a part of MDiv, the only two points I will make about this are many of these subjects are interesting in their own right and many would be utterly surprised at just how skeptical such a course can be. It is so rigid in its skepticism, the disconnect we see between pastor and parishioner on biblical fundamentals, such as ‘who are the authors of the four canonical Gospels’ becomes bewilderingly odd. So I hope to bridge the gap among atheists and Christians alike.

Q: In conversations and in listening to your podcast, I've learned that you agree with the critical scholarly consensus that Jesus existed. Can you explain?

The Jesus Horus Link Revisited For Christmas

Quite awhile ago, I shared some information I had found through American Atheists. It was titled What Other Deities Were Born On Jesus' Birthday? I realized after I published it that it might not have been sourced well, but I left it up because it's an example of how even skeptics and atheists trying to disseminate good information can make mistakes. I fell into the trap of an Appeal to Authority when I wrote it. The original information came from American Atheists, and why wouldn't they always be accurate, right? Well, even people or organizations with the best intentions are human and make mistakes.

I listened to The Skeptic's Testament yesterday and they talked about the Jesus/Horus link and myths borrowing from each other in general. I transcribed that part of the podcast for you (the whole episode is great, so if you can, give it a listen):

The Jesus Horus Link is complete rubbish made up by the movie Zeitgeist. Brian Dunning explains in Skeptoid Episode 196 why it's just fabricated conspiracy mongering.

The following is from The Skeptic's Testament, episode 24:

3:27: With the work of people like Robert Price, which many skeptics have read, they

unjustly make the case that all of the Jesus traditions were borrowed from previous sources. Price doesn't even argue that.

It is incorrect to say that one borrowed from the other. Christianity borrowed from Hinduism or Mithraism or vice versa, simply because the nature of history as a forensic science cannot say anything other than that one came after the other.

To establish sharing like that, or borrowing, and taking, would require something very astounding, something that doesn't fossilize. It would require something that history has never dished up to us before.

This is one example of what we're up against.

Firstly, you would have to establish a trade route between the two factions. Then one would have to show that they swapped stories about their holy men, and furthermore, one party or both went home, conflated the information he just learned about the other faction's holy man or men, and then spread that in the community, only about their own holy men.