{"id":846,"date":"2011-09-12T09:47:05","date_gmt":"2011-09-12T13:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/philosophicalfragments\/?p=846"},"modified":"2011-09-12T09:47:05","modified_gmt":"2011-09-12T13:47:05","slug":"is-the-jesus-story-a-myth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/philosophicalfragments\/2011\/09\/12\/is-the-jesus-story-a-myth\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the Jesus Story a Myth?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"Every now and then I\u2019ll hear from someone who has bought into the \u201cJesus Myth\u201d hypothesis. \u00a0You can find this in books like Jesus Potter, Harry Christ<\/em>, in the \u201chistorical\u201d studies of Acharya S., or from your neighborhood atheist who heard that there are some similarities between the stories of Jesus and Mithras, and who finds it expedient to believe that the Jesus narrative was fabricated like a patchwork quilt from various other stories that might have floated through Palestine two thousand years ago.<\/p>\n

Bart Ehrman is not at all a defender of the historically orthodox version of who Jesus Christ was and what he did and taught. \u00a0Our own Ben Witherington is a faithful documenter of the various things<\/a> Ehrman gets wrong. \u00a0Yet there is no doubt over the fact that Bart Ehrman is a respected scholar who does his homework. \u00a0And here is Dr. Ehrman confronted with the \u201cJesus Myth\u201d hypothesis on a radio program (HT Scott Rachui):<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=yRx0N4GF0AY<\/a>\n

If you\u2019re interested in learning more, I recommend the series from James Hannam which we published on the Evangelical Portal \u2013 in Part One<\/a>, Part Two<\/a>, Part Three<\/a> and Part Four<\/a>. \u00a0For other online sources of information on the pagan parallels theories, see this detailed examination<\/a> of various pagan deities and whether their stories coincide with that of Jesus, this note<\/a> from William Lane Craig, or (as a more specific example) this response<\/a> to the Jesus-as-Mithras claim, or this article<\/a> from Ronald Nash. For book-length responses, consult R. T. France\u2019s The Evidence for Jesus<\/em><\/a> or Nash\u2019s The Gospel and the Greeks<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult, of course, for a non-historian to know how to sort through these things. \u00a0If one historian (or at least a person who holds herself out as a historian) claims that the Jesus story is a composite of pagan myths while another historian says otherwise, how do you know whom to believe?<\/p>\n

This is why responses like this from Bart Ehrman are so difficult for the Jesus Mythers. \u00a0It\u2019s not as though the historians and New Testament scholars who affirm the existence of Jesus are ultra-conservative Christians who will defend their Jesus no matter what. \u00a0That\u2019s not the case at all. \u00a0I\u2019ve never met Ehrman, but I\u2019ve met plenty of people in the field, plenty of historians and biblical scholars who are eager \u2014 truly eager<\/em> \u2014 to overturn traditional views of Jesus. \u00a0They\u2019re also eager to publish books that make a splash, get on the cover of Time magazine, and sell like hotcakes. \u00a0The fact that even they cannot bring themselves to say that Jesus never existed is devastating to the Jesus Myth hypothesis.<\/p>\n

As Ehrman says, there is no serious historical scholar who believes that Jesus never existed. \u00a0In fact, for the longest time there was no scholarly response to the Jesus Myth hypothesis, just because there were no credible proponents of the hypothesis in scholarly circles. \u00a0Ehrman makes the reason plain. \u00a0We have more evidence for Jesus than we do for anyone else in the ancient world \u2014 and arguably (I would add) more than anyone up through the medieval period. \u00a0If the abundance of evidence for Jesus is insufficient, then the evidence for every other figure is even more insufficient and we might as well stop reading history books.<\/p>\n

Simply put, if you can\u2019t say that Jesus existed, then you can\u2019t do history at all. \u00a0Dismissals of the existence of Jesus are not historical. \u00a0They\u2019re ideological.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every now and then I\u2019ll hear from someone who has bought into the \u201cJesus Myth\u201d hypothesis. \u00a0You can find this in books like Jesus Potter, Harry Christ, in the \u201chistorical\u201d studies of Acharya S., or from your neighborhood atheist who heard that there are some similarities between the stories of Jesus and Mithras, and who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[89,99,123,125,176,1353,222,1359,241,242],"class_list":["post-846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biblical-scholarship","tag-apologetics","tag-bart-ehrman","tag-christian","tag-christianity","tag-evangelical","tag-evangelicalism","tag-historical-jesus","tag-jesus","tag-jesus-christ","tag-jesus-myth"],"yoast_head":"\nIs the Jesus Story a Myth? - Philosophical Fragments<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Every now and then I'll hear from someone who has bought into the "Jesus Myth" hypothesis. \u00a0You can find this in books like Jesus Potter, Harry Christ, in\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/philosophicalfragments\/2011\/09\/12\/is-the-jesus-story-a-myth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is the Jesus Story a Myth? 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