{"id":26458,"date":"2014-10-06T10:17:21","date_gmt":"2014-10-06T14:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=26458"},"modified":"2014-10-06T10:17:21","modified_gmt":"2014-10-06T14:17:21","slug":"moss-and-baden-on-the-lastest-mythicist-nonsense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/10\/moss-and-baden-on-the-lastest-mythicist-nonsense.html","title":{"rendered":"Moss and Baden on the Lastest Mythicist Nonsense"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Via Candida Moss, I learned that she and Joel Baden have responded to \u2013 and appropriate poked fun at \u2013 the latest mythicist volume to appear<\/a>, Michael Paulkovich\u2019s No Meek Messiah: Christianity\u2019s Lies, Laws and Legacy<\/a>\"\"<\/i>.<\/p>\n

After showing that Paulkovich\u2019s list of 126 ancient authors he thinks should have mentioned Jesus, the list includes people who lived before Jesus, doctors, and various other kinds of authors who rarely mention their contemporaries of any sort. They do so with much humor, and so you should read the article<\/a>. Here is the conclusion:<\/p>\n

\n

It is safe to say that there are no historians that have, to this point, included Paulkovich in their writings (and let\u2019s be honest, the chances going forward aren\u2019t great). What\u2019s more, not a single mathematician, poet, philosopher, or gynecologist (probably\u2014stupid HIPAA) refers to him even a single time.<\/p>\n

Paulkovich has written nothing about himself\u2014we have no biographical data on him. (In truth, it is hard to find almost anyone with less of a web presence than Michael Paulkovich\u2014including, for the record, no Twitter account.) Though his name is on a couple of books and articles, someone else probably wrote those. At least, that\u2019s undoubtedly what \u201cPaulkovich\u201d would say if we suddenly discovered a text claiming to have been written by Jesus, right?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The failure of Paulkovich to even Google subjects that he wrote about, as well as his inability to reflect on the relationship between various assertions he made, is evident from this part of the book description on Amazon<\/a>:<\/p>\n

No Meek Messiah<\/i>\u00a0exposes that Jesus\u00a0believed in Noah\u2019s Ark,\u00a0Adam & Eve, Jonah living in a fish or whale, and Lot\u2019s wife turning into salt. (Historian Josephus, often cited by Christians as proof of the historicity of Jesus, also claims that he as actually seen the \u201cpillar of salt\u201d that Lot\u2019s wife turned into; \u201cfor I have seen it, and it remains at this day,\u201d Josephus lied.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jesus didn\u2019t exist, but believed in things?<\/p>\n

If you Google the subject of Lot\u2019s Wife, you quickly learn that there is a mineral formation, Jebel Usdum, which is traditionally known as \u201cLot\u2019s Wife.\u201d It is obviously not a person turned to salt \u2013 the Biblical tale is an aetiological explanation of the origin of the formation \u2013 but Josephus wasn\u2019t lying when he said he had seen it.<\/p>\n

Jerry Coyne<\/a>, unsurprisingly, finds him completely credible.\u00a0By way of contrast, another atheist blogger<\/a>, Steven Bollinger,\u00a0has tackled the topic<\/a>, and concludes, \u201cAs an atheist, I long for a much better class of atheists, atheists writing about history who are not historically illiterate.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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

Via Candida Moss, I learned that she and Joel Baden have responded to \u2013 and appropriate poked fun at \u2013 the latest mythicist volume to appear, Michael Paulkovich\u2019s No Meek Messiah: Christianity\u2019s Lies, Laws and Legacy. After showing that Paulkovich\u2019s list of 126 ancient authors he thinks should have mentioned Jesus, the list includes people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":23039,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[595,1541,4643,4660,5662,5677,5768,7368,7853,7856],"class_list":["post-26458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mythicism","tag-ancient","tag-candida-moss","tag-historians","tag-history","tag-jerry-coyne","tag-jesus","tag-joel-biden","tag-michael-paulkovich","tag-mythicism","tag-mythicists"],"yoast_head":"\nMoss and Baden on the Lastest Mythicist Nonsense<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Via Candida Moss, I learned that she and Joel Baden have responded to - and appropriate poked fun at - the latest mythicist volume to appear, Michael\" \/>\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\/10\/moss-and-baden-on-the-lastest-mythicist-nonsense.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Moss and Baden on the Lastest Mythicist Nonsense\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Via Candida Moss, I learned that she and Joel Baden have responded to - and appropriate poked fun at - the latest mythicist volume to appear, Michael\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/10\/moss-and-baden-on-the-lastest-mythicist-nonsense.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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