Valerie Tarico's Historical Denialism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In a recent online article, Valerie Tarico suggests that "a growing number of scholars" are concluding that there was no historical Jesus. It isn't clear\" \/>\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\/2014\/08\/valerie-taricos-historical-denialism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Valerie Tarico's Historical Denialism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In a recent online article, Valerie Tarico suggests that "a growing number of scholars" are concluding that there was no historical Jesus. 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{"id":25951,"date":"2014-08-30T13:39:40","date_gmt":"2014-08-30T17:39:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=25951"},"modified":"2014-08-30T13:39:40","modified_gmt":"2014-08-30T17:39:40","slug":"valerie-taricos-historical-denialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/08\/valerie-taricos-historical-denialism.html","title":{"rendered":"Valerie Tarico’s Historical Denialism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In a recent online article<\/a>, Valerie Tarico suggests that \u201ca growing number of scholars\u201d are concluding that there was no historical Jesus.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t clear to me that Richard Carrier, Robert Price, and Thomas Brodie represent a \u201cgrowing number\u201d compared to past generations. If one goes back half a century or more, the idea had more credence than it does now, because we had less evidence about ancient Judaism than we do now, not to mention rampant antisemitism that\u00a0preferred a Jesus borrowed from non-Jewish deities, to a Jesus who was a real Jewish human being.<\/p>\n

Some of her claims are unsurprising \u2013 which other messianic claimants in the Judaism of this period are mentioned by non-Jewish\u00a0historians?<\/p>\n

And some are bogus \u2013 she claims that the story gets more and more detailed as time goes on, but what she points to are\u00a0mythical\u00a0<\/em>additions such as the virgin birth, which indicates (against Carrier) that Jesus\u00a0appears in the relevant sources to be a historical figure being mythologized, rather than the reverse.<\/p>\n

That scholars make very different proposals about\u00a0aspects of Jesus shows that this is a vibrant field. That\u2019s what scholars do \u2013 make different proposals.<\/p>\n

Nothing in the article justifies the overall impression Tarico gives. But by jumping on\u00a0the fringe bandwagon known as Jesus mythicism, she certainly undermines\u00a0her claim to be a freethinker<\/a>, if by that she means someone who can see through bogus claims, rather than the sort of people who \u201cthink freely\u201d by denying scientific and historical consensus.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"