{"id":16529,"date":"2013-08-09T09:19:57","date_gmt":"2013-08-09T13:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=16529"},"modified":"2013-08-09T09:19:57","modified_gmt":"2013-08-09T13:19:57","slug":"jesus-the-gospels-and-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/08\/jesus-the-gospels-and-history.html","title":{"rendered":"Jesus, the Gospels and History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Amanda Witmer has written an article for\u00a0The Bible and Interpretation<\/em><\/a> about mythicism. Here\u2019s how it begins:<\/p>\n

In some quarters it is now fashionable to argue that Jesus did not exist! At the opposite end of the spectrum we find the position that every word of the Bible is literally true and that the gospels provide us with an unfiltered historical account of Jesus\u2019 life. This is a false dichotomy rooted in our human tendency to insist on absolutes and true or false claims. Neither position takes the evidence seriously. As it turns out, historical information about Jesus can be found, but sifting through the data requires some work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Click through<\/a> to read the rest. For those who may not be familiar with mythicism, there\u2019s the Jesus Birther Movement on Facebook<\/a>. The comparison between Jesus and birthers (i.e. those who claim that Barack Obama was not born in the United States) is apt, and I am surprised that it was adopted willingly. But as Poe\u2019s Law says, when you get to the kooky fringes of pseudoknowledge, any attempt at parody will probably closely resemble something that someone actually admits to thinking.<\/p>\n

See also the excellent post at Unreasonable Faith<\/a> about storytelling and how stories which may not be factual can still tell us something about how a real, historical figure was perceived, the impression that they made.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amanda Witmer has written an article for\u00a0The Bible and Interpretation about mythicism. Here\u2019s how it begins: In some quarters it is now fashionable to argue that Jesus did not exist! At the opposite end of the spectrum we find the position that every word of the Bible is literally true and that the gospels provide […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,64],"tags":[1010,1140,1214,1215,4646,4660,5309,5677,7853],"class_list":["post-16529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical-jesus","category-mythicism","tag-barack-obama","tag-bible","tag-birther","tag-birtherism","tag-historical","tag-history","tag-interpretation","tag-jesus","tag-mythicism"],"yoast_head":"\nJesus, the Gospels and History<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Amanda Witmer has written an article for\u00a0The Bible and Interpretation about mythicism. 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