{"id":26251,"date":"2014-09-23T07:49:10","date_gmt":"2014-09-23T11:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=26251"},"modified":"2014-09-23T07:49:10","modified_gmt":"2014-09-23T11:49:10","slug":"the-jesus-birther-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/09\/the-jesus-birther-movement.html","title":{"rendered":"The Jesus Birther Movement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I recently had my attention drawn to a rather bizarre web page,\u00a0connected with the \u201cJesus Birther Movement.\u201d<\/a> They oddly dismiss sources like Josephus because they were written somewhat later than Jesus\u2019 time, as though that is uncommon, or normally means that an author writing slightly after a person\u2019s own time\u00a0is unlikely to be able to figure out whether a person existed. More telling, however, is that they also skip over Paul, who had met Jesus\u2019 brother, and was alive at the time of Jesus.\u00a0Although we have no evidence that Paul had ever met Jesus, there\u2019s no particularly good reason to think he had never caught a glimpse of\u00a0him. But be that as it may, Paul isn\u2019t even mentioned, even though he was a contemporary source, well poised to know whether or not Jesus existed. Even if he only wrote about Jesus\u00a0after Jesus\u00a0had died, we may point out once again that\u00a0that is not at all uncommon.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Paul is ignored because he is a Christian \u2013 mythicists regularly dismiss Christian sources, as though people who followed an individual are not typically\u00a0the best witnesses to\u00a0that figure\u2019s existence. People connected with a particular religion, region, nation, or anything else are precisely the ones that are most likely to give us first-hand evidence. We definitely should expect Americans to be biased about the character of their own country and its politicians. We do not therefore distrust them about the existence<\/em> of their country or its politicians.<\/p>\n

And so here\u2019s my comment on this, summed up in an image:<\/p>\n

\"Dismissing<\/p>\n

Of related interest, a classic study \u201cproving\u201d\u00a0that Napoleon never existed, as a way of exposing the problems with mythicist methods, is available online for free via Project Gutenberg<\/a>. HT Jonathan Bernier<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently had my attention drawn to a rather bizarre web page,\u00a0connected with the \u201cJesus Birther Movement.\u201d They oddly dismiss sources like Josephus because they were written somewhat later than Jesus\u2019 time, as though that is uncommon, or normally means that an author writing slightly after a person\u2019s own time\u00a0is unlikely to be able to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":26252,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[1214,1497,3215,4656,5677,7853,7856],"class_list":["post-26251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mythicism","tag-birther","tag-caesar","tag-evidence","tag-historicity","tag-jesus","tag-mythicism","tag-mythicists"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Jesus Birther Movement<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I recently had my attention drawn to a rather bizarre web page,\u00a0connected with the "Jesus Birther Movement." 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