![\"Nailed:](\"http:\/\/ws.amazon.com\/widgets\/q?MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=0557709911&tag=jamefmcgrshom-20\")
<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jamefmcgrshom-20&l=bil&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0557709911\")
<\/span>I became aware<\/a> of David Fitzgerald\u2019s book Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All<\/a>\u00a0as a result of Hemant Mehta holding a giveaway on his blog<\/a>. Later, Answers in Genesis Busted<\/a> pointed out that there is a video of Fitzgerald speaking at Skepticon<\/a>.![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jamefmcgrshom-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0557709911\")
<\/div>\nIn his talk, Fitzgerald says that if you don\u2019t like the talk, you won\u2019t like the book. And so rather than looking at it as having wasted an hour from my life listening to the talk, I have saved myself the longer amount of time I would have wasted reading the book.<\/p>\n
Let me sum up the essence of my criticism, before elaborating in detail. Fitzgerald makes frequent errors of fact, and when he doesn\u2019t, he is largely presenting information that is common knowledge to scholars and those who read their works. And so he is very much like a creationist \u2013 not having any expertise in the area in question, utterly dependent on experts for the information that he does have, misunderstanding some of it, and ridiculing experts when he thinks he has reached a more plausible conclusion. And so, in a nutshell, this is a work of pseudoscholarly apologetics (or counter-apologetics) and not something that will consistently provide accurate information, much less offer plausible interpretations of that data.<\/p>\n
On to the details. But first, let me share the video, lest it be said that I am not giving you a chance to hear Fitzgerald\u2019s own perspective. <\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=MvleOBYTrDE?fs=1<\/a>\n Fitzgerald gets off to a rough start. He indicates that he previously assumed that we have eyewitness accounts of Jesus. He then proposes asking what \u201chistory\u201d says \u2013 and immediately mentions apologists. He regularly lumps scholars, apologists and Christians together. <\/p>\n When he asks about history, he turns to the census, and points out the discrepancy of dates. He discusses Matthew\u2019s account of Herod\u2019s slaughter of the innocents. When he discusses the \u201ctriumphal entry\u201d he understands it as an account in which the \u201centire city welcomes him as their king\u201d and yet somehow the Romans don\u2019t notice. He amusingly whether Jesus was a \u201cone man kung fu army of death\u201d to be able to occupy the temple. He mentions upernatural events that supposedly happened in conjunction with or after the crucifixion. He gets a lot of laughs from the audience, but what he doesn\u2019t say is that these are not dirty little secrets that scholars are hiding. He presumably is dependent, whether directly or indirectly, on scholars for this information. Josephus tells of miraculous signs preceding the destruction of the temple. We do not discount the historicity of that destruction simply because an author connects miracles with it, and so historians of antiquity learn to discard miracles, not simply dismiss an author because of such content if other factors suggest that there may also be useful historical data present. <\/p>\n Fitzgerald\u2019s all-or-nothing approach is a major issue as well. He jumps quickly from one extreme to the other, making the basic mistake of the excluded middle. If some things didn\u2019t happen, none did. If an event didn\u2019t happen on as large a scale as depicted, it didn\u2019t happen at all. Sometimes it does indeed turn out that there is nothing historical, but it requires better reasoning to reach that conclusion.<\/p>\n Fitzgerald then goes on to categorize the first century as one of the best-documented periods in history. He starts with a list of Roman authors, and claims they are writers who should have been interested in Jesus, if he lived. But as he mentions Epictetus, Martial, and Juvenal he admits that it is not in fact particularly problematic that they do not mention Jesus. He mentions Seneca, but as far as I\u2019m aware Seneca doesn\u2019t talk about Jewish ethicists, and so it is unsurprising that Jesus gets no mention. Pliny the Elder, Seneca the younger, and Gallio (who says nothing about Jesus or Paul) are also mentioned by Fitzgerald. But as he acknowledges that this may not be significant, we can turn, as he does, to Jewish sources. <\/p>\n Fitzgerald pays particular attention to Justus of Tiberias<\/a>, the first-century Jewish historian from Galilee. Fitzgerald does not explicitly mention an important point, which is that Justus\u2019 writings have not survived. Fitzgerald makes much of the fact that later church fathers are annoyed at Justus\u2019 lack of reference to Jesus, but doesn\u2019t explain that the church father in question is Photius of Constantinople<\/a> in the mid-to-late 9th century CE! If it is possible that the text of Josephus was tampered with before the 4th century, is it not entirely possible that whatever Christian scribes preserved Justus\u2019 writings may have removed offensive and insulting mentions of Jesus? We simply do not know, but cannot make much of Justus\u2019 alleged silence when we do not have Justus\u2019 writing, do not know how it may have been edited or redacted, and do not even know for certain how thoroughly Photius read him. <\/p>\n Since the Talmud is late, and Fitzgerald\u2019s discussion of it short, I will move on to Philo of Alexandria. Philo doesn\u2019t mention the high priest in Jesus\u2019 time, Caiaphas, nor does he mention that most famous of rabbis Hillel, as far as I am aware. And so I\u2019m not at all surprised that he doesn\u2019t mention Jesus. <\/p>\n When he gets to Josephus, Fitzgerald makes some serious errors. At first, he only offers two options: the Testimonium Flavianum was either written by \u201corthodox Jew\u201d or by a later forger. In the process, Fitzgerald makes a telling admission. He says that Christianity was not \u201ctribe-sized\u201d until later. If so, then lack of reference to them in earlier sources is not surprising. Fitzgerald then goes on to say that Christians try to insist that it is only a half forgery, and some monk in the Middle Ages made it up. Although he backtracks on the botched dating in his reference to the Middle Ages, his attribution of this conclusion to \u201cChristians\u201d rather than scholars is misleading. The point is not what atheists or Christians say, but what results from careful study of the text by experts in the original language, the author\u2019s style, and other relevant factors. And the paraphrase by Agapius ought not to be ignored when considering this subject. <\/p>\n Fitzgerald goes on to say that Origen criticized Josephus for \u201cnever mentioning Jesus.\u201d But that is mistaken. In fact, Origen states that Josephus did not accept Jesus as the Messiah, which suggests not a complete absence of the Testimonium but rather the presence of some less complimentary reference, or at least one that does not reflect a Christian perspective. And so Origen\u2019s evidence fits best with the scholarly consensus.<\/p>\n Fitzgerald also muddles the other reference to Jesus by Josephus, which he accepts as authentic, but says referred to another Jesus that Christians later confused with their own. But the idea that \u201cJesus called Christ\u201d was a reference to some other figure is highly improbable, and Origen provides evidence that the reference to James the brother of Jesus called Christ was in the writings of Josephus as he knew them.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-4467947377827846868?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\")
<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"