In the closing stages of writing my latest book, The Resurrection: A Critical Examination of the Easter Story [UK], I had a few test readers. One was David Austin, down in Australia, who has provided a few guest articles for your delectation. Here is another one – thanks muchly to him: The Anointing of Jesus – Fact or Fiction? This bizarre event is recorded in all four Gospels, as detailed below:- Mark 14:3-9 3 While he was at Bethany in the house of… Read more
June 16, 2021
Exodus Sidebar: The Final Pitch Battle
June 16, 2021 By Jonathan MS Pearce
0 Comments
As part of my debunking the Exodus series, I’ve been involved in a prolonged debate with Dave Armstrong, in particular, regarding…pretty much everything I have stated. Let me give you a super-quick synopsis of where we are at. One of my arguments was that the Moses birth story was appropriated from the surrounding culture when the Torah was originally written in the exilic period in the 500s BCE. The Sargon birth myth predates the Moses birth myth on account of Sargon being… Read more
June 15, 2021
Exodus Sidebar: Sargon and Moses – the Final Word…?
June 15, 2021 By Jonathan MS Pearce
0 Comments
There has been a back and forth between myself and Catholic apologist (with a bent for biblical literalism) Dave Armstrong on the subject of the Exodus account from the Bible, and specifically recently on Moses’ birth story and its dependence on the pre-existing Sargon birth myth (in itself, a tropey affair). Theist Verbose Stoic (VS) commented as follows, and I will say my last words on this for now, to get onto other Exodus topics. Hopefully, there is enough content… Read more
June 14, 2021
Big Lies
June 14, 2021 By Bert Bigelow
0 Comments
There have been countless Big Lies spread by individuals and groups throughout human history. Our species seems to have a proclivity for prevarication. Some of the biggest ones in the last couple millennia were intended to promote religious belief, because that was a powerful lever to gain political power. Lies committed to gain political power must go back to the days when men wore loincloths and carried clubs…and women tried to avoid the threats of both. The current Big Lie… Read more
June 14, 2021
What Is the Evidence for Jesus?
June 14, 2021 By Jonathan MS Pearce
0 Comments
I am presently grappling with Jesus mythicism. I am, at present, a historicist in terms of whether Jesus existed or not. My evaluation is somewhat intuitive, believing to the confidence of about two-thirds that a real Jesus existed under all the mythological overlay as opposed to one-third confidence in a completely mythological Jesus. Richard Carrier, on the other hand, has a more technically derived probability that is the reverse of this. The thing is, I don’t really care either way. I don’t have… Read more
June 13, 2021
What’s More Likely: Snake or Stake?
June 13, 2021 By Jonathan MS Pearce
0 Comments
A recent comment by WCB on a thread today reminded me of the Exodus claim of Moses’ staff: The Staff of Moses is a staff mentioned in the Bible and Quran as a walking stick used by Moses. According to the Book of Exodus in the Bible, the staff (Hebrew: מַטֶּה matteh, translated “rod” in the King James Bible) was used to produce water from a rock, was transformed into a snake and back, and was used at the parting of the Red Sea.[1] Whether or not Moses’ staff was the same as that used by… Read more
June 12, 2021
Exodus Sidebar: More on Moses and Sargon
June 12, 2021 By Jonathan MS Pearce
0 Comments
I think that Dave Armstrong believes that the purpose of my existence is merely to answer his articles that he writes against me. I hate to burst his bubble, but I have other things to do with my life that take something of a priority over responding to him. On the rare occasion that I do read his articles, I will respond. To give you the context for this piece, I am reposting a series debunking the Exodus account and I wrote… Read more
June 12, 2021
Who Was Nicodemus?
June 12, 2021 By Jonathan MS Pearce
0 Comments
In the closing stages of writing my latest book, The Resurrection: A Critical Examination of the Easter Story [UK], I had a few test readers. One was David Austin, down in Australia, who has provided a few guest articles for your delectation. Here is another one – thanks muchly to him: Quoting Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mystery “The Silver Blaze”:- Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” Holmes: “To the curious… Read more
June 11, 2021
Exodus Sidebar: Refuting Armstrong’s “Refutation” on Pitch (but Oddly Not Sargon…)
June 11, 2021 By Jonathan MS Pearce
0 Comments
Oh David, David, David. David “I love science as much as any atheist” Armstrong likes to see himself as the white knight, tackling my “screeds” articles and refuting them. Except, this is rarely what actually happens. He recently claimed to have refuted me on camels but after further inspection, er, hadn’t. In my last piece on Moses, I carefully recount how the Moses story is based on the pre-existing Mesopotamian Sargon of Akkad myth, where the baby Sargon is placed… Read more
June 11, 2021
Quote of the Day: Jesus, the Gospels, Paul and His Letters, and so on…
June 11, 2021 By Jonathan MS Pearce
0 Comments
Here is a comment to get your teeth into from the other day. The article was about the minimal facts thesis concerning the Resurrection accounts of Jesus. They come from commenter BensNewLogin: The following may not be as linear as I would like. Please bear with me. There was a time when I was intensely interested in these questions, and I read a lot of books. I’m not so interested in it anymore. I would never describe myself as a… Read more
get the latest from
A Tippling Philosopher
Sign up for our newsletter
Browse Our Archives
TRENDING AT PATHEOS Nonreligious
