{"id":14035,"date":"2013-04-15T12:44:16","date_gmt":"2013-04-15T16:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=14035"},"modified":"2013-04-15T12:44:16","modified_gmt":"2013-04-15T16:44:16","slug":"the-historicity-of-jesus-around-the-blogosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/04\/the-historicity-of-jesus-around-the-blogosphere.html","title":{"rendered":"The Historicity of Jesus around the Blogosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-14045\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2013\/04\/bibleFiction-290x290.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"209\" height=\"209\">Here are some mentions of the issue of Jesus\u2019 historicity and related topics from around the blogosphere:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com\/2013\/04\/alexander-great-jesus-and-david.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Hector Avalos points out<\/a> that the evidence for Alexander the Great is (not surprisingly to anyone who\u2019s thought about it) more substantial than the evidence for Jesus. In the process, he discusses a number of aspects of how historians address questions, and how that is different than the approach of apologists. A key question I would have liked for him to address, however, is whether a denialist approach of the sort that mythicism represents could deny the historicity of Alexander the Great any less effectively than that approach manages to deny the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2013\/04\/15\/the-skeptical-believer\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">Scot McKnight<\/a> quoted from Daniel Taylor:\u00a0\u201cAll evidence is resistible. All arguments are assailable. \u2026 All Arguments\u2026 leak\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tillhecomes.org\/what-if-the-bible-was-fiction\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Jeremy Myers has proposed a syncroblog<\/a> on \u201cWhat if the Bible was fiction?\u201d which I find problematic, because the Bible is a collection of literature, including fiction, myth, parable, letter, history, and many other sorts of things. Even as a thought experiment, I find it problematic to treat it as though it were a unified whole.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/revelation4-11.blogspot.com\/2013\/04\/did-jesus-ever-live.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Ross McKenzie<\/a> linked to John Dickson\u2019s article, in which he says things like this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u2026if anyone can find a full professor of Classics, Ancient History or New Testament in any accredited university in the world who thinks Jesus never lived, I will eat a page of my Bible, probably Matthew chapter 1. It\u2019s been a year since I first tweeted the challenge and religious critic John Safran retweeted it to his 60,000 followers. My Bible remains safe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/friendlyatheist\/2013\/04\/13\/why-jesus-didnt-exist\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">Hemant Mehta shared a video by Richard Carrier<\/a>, and it is generating interesting discussion in the comments.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here are some mentions of the issue of Jesus\u2019 historicity and related topics from around the blogosphere: Hector Avalos points out that the evidence for Alexander the Great is (not surprisingly to anyone who\u2019s thought about it) more substantial than the evidence for Jesus. In the process, he discusses a number of aspects of how [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":14045,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,39,40,64],"tags":[494,1140,2592,3406,4493,4646,4656,4660,5677,7845,7853,10359],"class_list":["post-14035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","category-historical-jesus","category-history","category-mythicism","tag-alexander-the-great","tag-bible","tag-denialism","tag-fiction","tag-hector-avalos","tag-historical","tag-historicity","tag-history","tag-jesus","tag-myth","tag-mythicism","tag-richard-carrier"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Historicity of Jesus around the Blogosphere<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Here are some mentions of the issue of Jesus&#039; historicity and related topics from around the blogosphere: Hector Avalos points out that the evidence for\" \/>\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\/religionprof\/2013\/04\/the-historicity-of-jesus-around-the-blogosphere.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Historicity of Jesus around the Blogosphere\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here are some mentions of the issue of Jesus&#039; historicity and related topics from around the blogosphere: Hector Avalos points out that the evidence for\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/04\/the-historicity-of-jesus-around-the-blogosphere.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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