Bart Ehrman hits a foul ball with rise of Christianity book

Type your summary here Type rest of the post hereThe Triumph of Christianity: How a Small Band of Outcasts Conquered an Empire by Bart D. Ehrman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Nice try in theory, falls well short in reality

This was a book tough to rate.

I generally like Ehrman. I generally think that mythicists unfairly belittie him, though I disagree with some specifics of his own supporting material offered for a historic Jesus.

The idea of the book isn’t new, but presented in popularizing form from a knowledgable New Testament scholar, promised to be good, possibly very good.

But, it fell short. Short enough in some ways that I took fairly detailed notes at chapter breaks.

Without explicitly saying so, Ehrman seems to indicate that Christian evangelism and Christian miracle-working both had modest-to-moderate boosts for the early decades of Christianity, but no more than that, and then it was primarily word-of-mouth, just like you and I buy a car or toothpaste today.

However …

First, the evangelism issue is nowhere near as simple as Ehrman paints.

First of all, we know that Christianity was NOT the only evangelistic religion of antiquity, contra what Ehrman implies, and even semi-directly says.

Ashoka’s Buddhist missionaries to the West went as far as Macedonia and Cyrenaica circa 200 BCE. Four hundred years later, Clement of Alexandria and other Christian fathers knew about ongoing Buddhist proselytizing. And, Will Durant even speculated it may have been an element in Christian missions. See more here.

Either Ehrman is surprisingly uninformed here. Or else, Ehrman’s definition of antiquity is narrow. Neither speaks well for this book.

That said, per reading between the lines in Acts, and in some of Paul’s letters, and my take on J. Massyngberde Ford’s Anchor Bible volume on who wrote the original core of Revelation, we know that at least a few followers of John the Baptist evangelized.

Paul himself mentions Apollos and Peter, even talking about Peter getting paid to take his wife with him.

So, Ehrman has a foul ball here.

On the miracle working, whether real or not, Ehrman doesn’t mention that this was common outside Christianity. Indeed, Jewish charismatics such as Honi the Circle Drawer come to mind. Or Morton Smith’s “Jesus the Magician.” Or the name Simon Magus. Ehrman doesn’t go into a lot of depth here. He even mentions Apollonius of Tyana, the contemporary of Jesus, but never goes into detail about his own reported miracle-working.

So, if Christian miracles were more powerful than Jewish, Greek philosophical, or pagan religious ones, why? They were all common. Ehrman doesn't discuss why Xn magic was considered more powerful, whether it had a big effect on recruiting or not.

And Ehrman knows "winners write history" on this just as much as anything else. The Old Testament illustrates that with the famous, and surely legendary, battle between Elijah and the prophets of Baal.

It’s true that no ancient author writes an unbiased account of this in detail. But Ehrman, while noting that no actual such miracles likely happened, doesn’t explain why Christians were perceived to be (as he would seemingly have us believe) better miracle-workers or magicians.

The real issue is that, in the Greek world, outside of Apollonius and presumably other neo-Pythagoreans, plus healing miracles claimed at the temples of Asclepius, miracles weren't a big part of the religious framework. Outside of shape-shifting and adopting human guise, the Olympians have no preachers to even perform miracles. And, the likes of Honi aside, this wasn't a big deal in much of Judaism, either.

So, to the degree Christians performed sleight-of-hand, they had relatively minimal competition. To the degree they performed faith healings, they did it away from temples.

Beyond the miracles issue?

If evangelism were as low as Ehrman thinks it was after Paul, and pagans and philosophers did magic, too, then why was word-of-mouth as successful as Ehrman thinks it was? Word of mouth 2,000 yrs ago presumably was based on testimonials just as much as today.

Reality is that, with people like Polycarp, or Clement of Rome, their letters to other churches were surely part of an ongoing program not just of church maintenance but church planting and spreading. Look at the pseudo-Pauline letter to “Ephesians.” Originally a circular letter, it probably was written in similar spirit.

This may not have been as big a deal as modern Christians sending missionaries to New Guinea, but it wasn't nothing. I see it as more than Ehrman implies.

And, the third failing, a partial one.

I agree with Ehrman that many of the details of Rodney Stark’s projected growth rates of Christianity don’t withstand scrutiny.

However, even though Decius’ persecution wasn’t specifically against Christianity, Diocletian’s was. In a sort of analogy, American whites will start to flee suburban neighborhoods and even whole communities when an influx of minority population, and above all, African-American population, hits a certain percentage, usually around 10 percent.

Ehrman doesn’t ask if a similar phenomenon were in play here. If it was, his believed population percentage of Christians, empire-wide, was too low at the time of Diocletian to be such a trigger. Now, the persecutions were carried out most commonly in the eastern half of the empire, and we have some fairly good indications Christianity was stronger there.

Nonetheless, Ehrman doesn’t follow up.

A fourth problem? Per a commenter to my review?

Of course it was "word of mouth" how Christianity spread. There were no newspapers then, let alone radio, TV or Facebook. Handwritten books were expensive and time-consuming to produce. Ehrman does note that in a early Christian worship service, the leader might be reading from a copy of a letter of Paul or a gospel to an audience that was mostly illiterate and thus couldn't check the book themselves, either.

But, why would one pagan trust another who had joined not the "nutty enough" (from many pagans' point of view) Judaism, but a "nuttier yet" derivative of Judaism? Being someone's neighbor, or coworker at work outside of home, didn't necessarily mean trusting them that much. How much would a neighbor believe a neighbor who said something like "But THIS miracle was REAL!"?

So why WERE Christian "magoi" believed more than pagan ones at Asclepian shrines, similar ones from followers of John the Baptizer, or philosophical wonder-workers?

A fifth partial failing, in my opinion?

Ehrman seems to believe Christianity was not just majority-gentile, but strongly so, by circa 100 CE.

Yet, he fails to mention the “desynagoging” that happened circa 100 CE, per John. If this really did happen, it undercuts Ehrman’s thesis. If it didn’t, he should have offered a bit of exegesis on John here to explain this.

Despite John speaking bluntly of “the Jews,” I think something did happen.

I mean, in "Zealot," Reza Aslan appears to get this more correct! (He later goes on to get it incorrect, despite evidence he presents; but, that's Aslan in a nutshell.)

My personal guesstimate? At 100 CE, overall, Christianity was 25 percent Jewish, 65 percent "godfearer" Gentiles, and 10 percent Gentiles with little to no previous contact with Judaism. In a place like Corinth, I believe Paul had already been bringing people like this in, and that scared Jerusalem far more than godfearers being considered their equals.

Finally, Ehrman makes a partial version of the same error Stark does on population growth, and it’s connected to his overlooking or ignoring Buddhist evangelism.

He focuses on growth within the Roman Empire.

Armenia became officially Christian in 301 CE, nearly a century before Theodosius so proclaimed Rome. Various kingdoms that today make up Georgia became officially Christian before that time. Ulfilias proselityzed Goths, presumably with some Goths previously Christian, before Theodosius. Legends of Thomas Christians aside, there were Christians in India before this time. Ditto for ancient Nubia, beyond Rome’s Nile frontier.

In critiquing and criticizing Stark, I have noted all of this and said that at least 10 percent of Christians at the time of Constantine were outside imperial borders.

And, of course, by the period that closes Ehrman’s book, Christianity had not swept “the world.” It probably hadn't swept the Eastern Roman Empire; I suspect it had many closet pagans still. That's true in spades for the Western Empire.

Finishing up this last section of the notes as I got ready to post this led me to take Ehrman down from three to two stars. Several three-star readers seemed too kind in their detailed reviews.

Ehrman – and his agent who suggested this – should either have committed to an additional 20-30 pages and more rigor, or else suggested this as a series of magazine essays only, or similar.

Sixth and in brief? Christianity had the upper hand on established paganism in being able to mutilate statues of Zeus, etc., and say, "Look, nothing happened." That said, yes, Christians did the same to more rustic pagan icons among the Germans, etc. On the other hand, Joe Stalin could have said the same after shuttering churches across the USSR.

That said, this not the only clunker, in my opinion, that Ehrman has wrote. I didn't care for "Jesus, Interrupted" either.


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Why aren't "we" Mardukites or Baalists instead of Jews or Christians?

I'm none of the four, of course, but, per this post from his new blog by philosopher friend Dan Kaufman, it's a legitimate question.

Here's an edited version of my comment on there to both Dan and Peter Smith, a former secularist now Catholic, who, after his conversion has become quite ardent in his Catholicism. As you can see on this blog post, his ardency is against Protestants, as well as against atheists, all of whom he has repeatedly stereotyped on Massimo Pigliucci's Scientia Salon as New Atheists. (As a sidebar, to be honest, I question Massimo using him as an editor for book reviews, because of this and other things, but, it's Massimo's place, not mine.)

Dan asked, rhetorically, what justification was there for Christianity if one got rid of (western) Christianity's idea of original sin, and the need for a substitutory atonement for that by a "divine man."

First, the Eastern Orthodox tradition disagrees with both Catholicism and Protestantism, and doesn't believe in original sin the way either of them do, because it rejects Augustine on this issue. It does believe, though, in an idea of "ancestral sin."

That said, as I told Dan in a follow-up, one can reject original sin, and even Orthodoxy's idea of ancestral guilt, and still see the need for Jesus, if one believes in the need for sacrificial expiation. One simply believes that Temple sacrifices, or the scapegoat of Leviticus, weren't enough.

That gets to the big issue: Supersessionism. Starting with Paul in the book of Romans, then amplified more after the Bar Kochba revolt in the second century CE, and culminating after the legalization, then establishment of Christianity, the idea is that Christianity essentially replaced Judaism, a new covenant, or new testament. Some evangelicals today try to soft-pedal that, especially many who like waving the "Judeo-Christian" fig leaf in the US that Dan rightly decries, claiming Israel is our best ally, etc., all while looking for that magical red heifer.

I, as part of my journey to secularism, of course rejected original sin, even before completing that journey. I also rejected the idea that a god would be so angry that he'd kill his own son, who later Christian theologians say is part of himself, for a sacrifice for original sin, let alone just for actual original sin.

Of course, many more liberal Christians don't stop to ask Dan's (and my) rhetorical question about "Why Jesus."

That said, this is part of why I didn't stop at liberal versions of Christianity when moving away from the conservative wing of Lutheranism.

As for Peter ... even if he  and other more modern, theoretically more modern Xns, interpret Genesis that way, Paul did not. Aquinas did not. Augustine did not. So, per Dan:
A. Why is your version correct?
B. If it is correct, why is something more "liberal" than it, like Geza Vermes' Jesus as Jewish faith healer (or Crossan's Jesus as Jewish Cynic) not even more correct yet?

That said, as a former Protestant, I can wrong-foot Catholics on issues of narrow selectivity. I won't go into details, speaking of mountains of writing, but I can. (This is a bit off topic, but Peter explicitly used the phrase "narrow selectivity" for Protestants. On things like an unmarried priesthood, an all-male priesthood, and claiming that birth control kills life, no, Peter, your church has plenty of narrow selectivity.)

But, back to my header, and a rhetorical question of my own.

That said, since the B'reshit (Genesis) story itself comes from earlier myth, why Judaism, Dan?

Why aren't we all Mardukites, per Enuma Elish, or whatever term you would use? Per the Elijah cycle of stories in 1 Kings, Ba'alism might be better term yet.

Dan puts it off, saying that he is a non-proselytizer.

The reality, though, is that Judaism, via its pre-Ezra Israelitism roots, was also supersessionist. (It's only proper, academically, to use "Judaism" to talk about the religion after Judahites from the "southern kingdom" returned from their exile in Babylon, and Ezra knocked four strands of writing and tradition, plus editing, into the five books of the Torah.) Israelite religion replaced a polytheism of sorts of the Canaanites with first a henotheism (arguably Ba'alism was the same), then a monotheism, mainly in the southern kingdom of Judah. (I'm not getting into a discussion of some historical details, such as whether David and Solomon existed or not, and how much land any putative united kingdom controlled.)

As many a "good" secularist — especially of New Atheist stripe — knows, with the Amalekites, Israelitism even had its own small-h holocaust. (Should we small-h it?)

It's very arguable that Israelitism is supersessionist, and that it presented itself as such. I mean, that's the whole theme, the whole core theme, of the entire Elijah cycle, at least as edited today. Per my reply to his comment, is this exactly the same as Christian supersessionism? No. Is it entirely different? Also, no.

I'm not here to proselytize Dan out of his modern liberal secular Judaism. However, I do invite him, and others, to look at its own history of supersessionism. That plus a bit of luck against the decaying, semi-collapsing empire of Antiochus IV, i.e., Antiochus Epiphanes, still echo around the Middle East today.

Beyond that, his Judaism is too narrow. Yes, he's a professional philosopher and I'm not, but I once was on track to being a professional theologian and he wasn't.

First, Judaism of the era of Jesus can't be limited to the Tanakh. On the one hand, you have the Sadducees, who accepted only the Torah, not the whole Tanakh. On the other, you have the folks at Qumran, accepting all sorts of extrabiblical literature, a fair chunk of which at least somewhat parallels later Xn beliefs.

As for the idea that Christians "misquote," many people still assume the text of the Tanakh was more static at this time than in actuality. Fair parts of Joshua and Judges, and smaller parts of 1-IV Kingdoms (1-2 Samuel/1-2 Kings) are different in Qumran texts, or other non-Masoretic ones, by a non-insignificant degree, than in the Masoretic version. The Septuagint of Jeremiah is 1/8 shorter than the Masoretic version, and in drastically different order. (It's a different order that reflects the normal order of other prophetic books, though.) And, that too is partially reflected at Qumran. The text of other books, cited in targums at Qumran, also differs from the Masoretic text.

These last two issues get to a bigger point. Judaism of circa 0 BCE/0 CE was far more varied and dynamic than something we might call "proto-rabbinic Judaism."

Meanwhile, back to supersessionism.

Religions have long claimed to be replacing others. Arguably, Protestantism, within Christianity, has a supersessionist angle toward Catholicism. Atheism of the Gnu Atheism stripe has the same toward religion in general.

As for Peter, beyond his thinking that Catholicism's shit doesn't stink, compared to Protestantism, and that all atheists are New Atheists? He seems to think that Christianity has unique moral insights.

Well, no.

The Torah scribe cited Leviticus 19:18, "Love your neighbor as yourself," as one half of the fulfillment of the Torah. Jesus, of course, responded with the story of the Good Samaritan, which seems to have its general ideas translate today, though some details are still problematic and situational.

And?

Yahweh himself showed Jonah that Ninevites, and by extension, Assyrians in general, were his neighbors.

As for the Golden Rule? The so-called Silver Rule, that says, "Do NOT do to your neighbor what you do NOT want done to yourself," is both morally superior in that it doesn't presume to know what's best for our neighbor, and is older.

Within Judaism, Hillel uttered it a century before Jesus. Beyond Judaism, Confucius said it 400 years before Hillel.

This is nothing personal against Peter. It's just that he is a known example of an enthusiastic convert to a non-fundamentalist type of Christianity who thinks he has all the bases covered. (That said, Peter never responded to any of my comments over there. I'm not at all shocked.)

Ditto, my noting that Israelitism is supersessionist is nothing personal against Dan. Jews theologically liberal (or nonobservant), moderate, and conservative alike abound who likely have never even thought about this.

Nor is this personal against New Atheists, who are also, of course, supersessionist and often vocally so.

1,000-plus years of Christian Crusades

President Barack Obama has been raked over the coals recently for his mentioning that the Christian Crusades, as well as Islam at times, had their history of brutality.

That said, Obama cut short the history of crusading.

The first crusade wasn't in 1095 but more than 300 years earlier ...

You heard me right.

The wars of Charlemagne against the pagan Saxons to the northeast and Avars to the east, as well as against the Muslims in Spain, were all to some degree Crusades. And bloody, including the killing of nearly 5,000 surrendered Saxon prisoners. After this massacre, Charlemagne promulgated a new law code for dealing with Saxons, that made failure to convert a death penalty offense.

That said, we shouldn't forget that in what is called the First Crusade, as in others, often it was Jews at crusading sword-point, as in 1095, before any other religion.

Speaking of that, though, let's also not overlook that the crusaders of the First Crusade committed cannibalism at the end of one siege in Syria.

After the end of the Crusades as conventionally understood, folks like the Knights of the Sword and Teutonic Knights decided they would convert Baltic peoples — Lithuanians, Letts, Estonians, etc. — with that same point of a sword. Then, just 100 years after, peacefully, a Grand Duke of Lithuania, Vytautas, for the crown of Poland, peacefully took the pledge of Christianity, a whole new vista opened.

American Indians, in the Caribbean, North America and South America, were converted at the point of a sword. African enslaved captives were converted in the grasp of coffles and shackles.

Considering that Ferdinand and Isabella bade Christopher Columbus "godspeed" with the mission of extending Christianity as well as finding riches, and, without a Pope or Inquisition, the British further north in America felt the same, calling this another set of Crusades isn't a stretching of the truth.

If we extend this to the end of the Indian Wars, against Geronimo in the Sonoran Desert and the Sioux at Wounded Knee, it's more like 1,100 years, not 1,000.

And, I've not even mentioned Christians killing Muslims in the name of religion, as well as vice versa, in today's sub-Saharan Africa.

In other words, about as often as church has been associated with state in Christianity as in Islam, there's been religious coercion of some sort.

Where are the moderate Muslims? About everywhere but in the #TxLege

They're all around. Contra people who claim they're not.

But, that's not stopping wingnuts, in the general public, in the media, and in the Modern Wingnut Hall of Fame Texas Legislature, above all, Molly White, per my Tweet, from continuing to see Sharia Agenda 21 everywhere. (Doorknob, I love being snarky.)

@MollyWhiteTX Last I checked, Israel's not part of the United States.
— SocraticGadfly (@SocraticGadfly) January 29, 2015

First, have a certain percentage of Muslims committed vicious attacks, sometimes against other people for their religion, and claiming the reasons for their attacks are based on Islam?

Absolutely.

Besides those Muslims, there's plenty other people who are, or claim to be, motivated by religion for gruesome behavior.

So are people, in part motivated by Hinduism, who invented the practice of suicide bombing in Sri Lanka.

So are "good Jews" like Meir Kahane, and the Dr. Baruch Goldstein he inspired to massacre Muslims.

So are allegedly peaceful Buddhists killing Muslims in Burma.

So, too, were the Christians of the Crusades, including those that committed cannibalism. (No, not an urban legend.) And, I could dig up white nationalism groups in America that have claimed Christian impetus, too.

Or, just mention the Ku Klux Klan.

As I have emailed and Facebooked various people, multiple websites recounted all sorts of moderate Muslims condemning the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

Like here, and here.

Going beyond one email I sent out?

A number of Texas media outlets are in or near what the New York Times, the Houston Chronicle (warning — autoplay video) and other media have called the most ethnically diverse county in Texas, if not the nation, too, I'm sure there's plenty of Muslims in a county 19 percent Asian and 21 percent African, with a few of those being modern African immigrants, too. City-Data, which is usually out of date on some such things, lists two Muslim worship centers in the county. There's probably more than two.

And, the media, and and viewers, listeners adn readers in greater Houston, and to its immediate west-southwest, could probably find plenty of moderate Muslims within them.

That said, this attitude is by no means isolated.

All you have to do is look at those in attendance at Texas Muslim Capitol Day. Like the Muslims that wingnut state Rep. Molly White wanted to take an oath of allegiance to the US Constitution, when she obviously is violating the spirit of her own oath of allegiance, running over the First Amendment like fishwrap.

As well as seeming to think that Israel is part of the United States.

It's clear that a lot of people like to wear blinders.

Did you know, Molly or others, in your fearmongering about Sharia, that in Kiryas Joel, New York, since you're so Israelophilic, ultraorthodox Jews have been allowed to do the Jewish equivalent of Sharia?

It should also be noted, per the relevant link, that this year was the seventh such Texas Muslim Capitol Day. It's not like this is a "Sharia Surprise" sprung out of nowhere.

Oh, and like the Christian activist from Michigan who proclaimed Jesus' name over the Capitol as though conducting an exorcism, and now wants Franklin Graham to ... well, to kidnap a mosque, there's plenty of immoderate Christians around, too.

That said, as I Tweeted, doesn't Christine Weick seem vaguely like Sarah Palin after dipping into the meth jar?

As for CAIR? No, it's not perfect. It has, in the past, skirted at the edges of terrorist related connections, but it is not a terrorist group, and eventual sealing of documents in the Holy Land Foundation legal case means the US government doesn't see it as such.

And, I'll take Wikipedia on CAIR over ultrazionist Jews or teaparty fundamentalist Christians trying to redefine it.

Jesus reality and Jesus mythicism — moved back a century

Seeing how uncritically accepting many Gnu Atheists are of Joseph Atwill's claim, recently doubled down on with this non-academic press release, that the Flavian dynasty of Roman emperors invented Jesus and Christianity, I decided to throw my semi-academic hat (see near the bottom for how I make that claim) about the Jesus of history or the Jesus of mythicism here.

That said, let's jump in.

Despite what the new round of mythicists like Robert M. Price and Richard Carrier say, I can't accept mythicism, though, per Wikipedia, I do support those like R. Joseph Hoffmann who say it deserves academic discussion. Bart Ehrman, insightful as he may be otherwise, is simply wrong here.

The earthly Jesus of Paul

On Price, I believe he's  wrong when he says Paul didn't believe in an earthly Jesus. The "born of a woman" in Galatians 4:4 contradicts him and others. I take this as a straightforward passage. Yes, his larger thrust is the Law as a curse, as in "born under the Law." But, within that context, its clear that he is talking about a normal human being whom he understands to have had a normal birth and life.

But, at least for some other mythicists, it ain't. For example, Earl Doherty engages in seeming verbal flim-flammery here, to try to talk around the passage. Some of it is just laughable, like claiming, based on the Old Testament, that "exapostello" can only be used for sending forth "spiritual beings." I don't know that Price has even tried to do that much ersatz heavy lifting.

The only way I see for true mythicists to get around this is to claim that Paul was either accidentally mistaken, wrong, or telling a mythmaking lie in the name of an anti-Docetic stance.

None of those seem likely. On Docetic or anti-Docetic issues, Paul splits the difference in 1 Corinthians with his "spiritual body." Plain wrong? If you're a mythicist and you believe the mythic Jesus began with Paul, then "wrong" isn't an option; you have to fall back on "mythmaking lie," as I see it. Accidentally mistaken? Assuming there was a Jerusalem community of James, Peter and others, how do you mistake them talking about a physical human being? (You could mistake when they said he lived, but that's a different story.) I suppose mythicists could punt "mythmaking lie" back on James and/or Peter. However, in the case of James, I then contend that you have to believe that about everything Josephus writes about him is also part of the mythmaking.

What about James?

And, the mythicists also, by and large, don't seem to me to address Josephus' discussion of lynching of James the brother of Jesus. James (Ya'akov) was a hugely common Jewish name, of course, but so was Jesus (Yeshua). So, Josephus seems to recognize that this James needed to be identified. He does so by calling him the brother of Jesus. But, that presumes that this Jesus is so well-known as to not need identifying. (Note; I do not see this as a Christian interpolation, certainly not the "brother of Jesus"; I am still undecided on the "who was called Christ.")

Carrier does address this, saying this was the brother of a Jesus who was high priest in the year 63. But, to follow Carrier, you have to hold the "who was called Christ" as an interpolation. You also have to assume an audience 30 years later was familiar enough with THAT Jesus for Josephus to not need to identify him further, and I'm not ready to commit to that. Per Wikipedia, Josephus' audience was Gentiles; unless you narrowly restrict that audience to "friends of the Flavian imperial dynasty," they probably wouldn't know who this Jesus was.

So, I stand by some sort of non-mythical Jesus. And, I'll deal with Josephus myself, below.

Early Christian growth rates: One view

This leads to Christianist sociologist Rodney Stark. (I use that moniker because, like Samuel Huntington, he believes in a "clash of civilizations," but he's not a religious Christian, though he is a nutter in other ways.)

Stark postulated that, with a start point of 5,000 believers in the year 50 CE, and a growth rate of 40 percent per decade, we get Christians up to being half the Roman Empire by the time of the Council of Nicea.

I think that end number is too high, and I'm far from alone. I think Christians at that time were higher than a Robin Lane Fox thinks (more below) but not that high.

Anyway, how did Stark get there?

His 40 percent per decade comes from historic growth rates of Moonies and Mormons. However, there's several problems. Moonies moved their base from small South Korea to the US, and the Mormons recruited immigrants, especially in Scandinavia, before they emigrated, for one thing. Also, he fails to allow for Christians outside the empire, who may have been as high as 15 percent of the total by the time of Constantine. And, he doesn't try to fit this growth into a bell curve, especially given that total population in the ancient world remained almost flat, and indeed did so, over longer periods, until about 1700 CE.

All of these issues are problematic for Stark, or, I think, for anybody who believes in either a traditionally-dated historical Jesus or a mythical Jesus who was "hatched" at about the same time, and who believes Christians were more than 5 percent of the Empire at the time of Constantine.

Now: My alternative

So, what if we "move Jesus back"?

Why not? G.R.S. Mead, and others, either entirely on their own, or influenced by the Jesus Pandera tales from pre-Rabbinic Judaism, postulate a Jesus who lived circa 100 BCE, possibly a Jesus who was among the Pharisees executed by Hasmonean king Alexander Jannai. (Here's Mead on this.)

This idea has long appealed to me. Mead and former mythicist G.A. Wells (I consider him to be a recanted mythicist, not a "soft" one) were two major influences on me in my late 20s, beyond modern historical criticism, as I did intellectual judo on what I was being taught in conservative Lutheran divinity school as well as what I had been taught to avoid.

The idea still appeals today, maybe even more so, and for two main reasons.

We get a slower, easier-to-believe growth rate, and a longer period for development of Christian traditions and their move from oral to written forms.

First, my take on the growth rate issue

I see two "hinge points" in the growth of the Jesus movement, later Christianity. (Dating Acts to 115 CE or so, it wasn't "Christianity" before 100 CE.)

The first one is for there to be at least 5,000 Jesus followers by 50 CE. Even with allowing for uneven distribution, the number of Jews in Rome, and the religious inquisitiveness within Rome (the city, not the empire), I think this is the minimum number for a "Jesus community" to be in place for Paul, never having been there, to address in his Epistle to the Romans.

The second? Per the likes of Nassim Nicholas Taleb and other professional and amateur social theorists, is a "tipping point" that led Diocletian to start serious persecution of Christians. (Per my review of Candida Moss' "The Myth of Persecution," I don't think there was serious, imperially-directed persecution of Christians before Diocletian, but there certainly was then.)

Such sociological tipping points are very serious. Urban sociologists have shown that when an all-white, or nearly so, neighborhood, gets X percent African-Americans, the rate of moving out picks up. When it hits Y percent, the rate increases.

I see a similar "tipping point" behind Diocletian. What might it be?

I started playing around on a simple computer-based 10-key calculator. I started with a much earlier time frame, which allowed lower growth rates over a longer period, but also gradually accelerated growth rates as Christianity got larger mass.

And, I came out with approximately 1.25 million Christians in the year 285. If I assume an imperial population of 50 million, and act like Stark and assume all these Christians were inside imperial boundaries, that's 2.5 percent. Given Christianity's strength in the east, maybe 3 percent or a little bit more, counting Italy and Roman Africa (today's Tunisia) as part of the east. And, about 4 percent Empire-wide when Diocletian ramps up the persecution.

And there you go.

Details?

I assume 1,000 "Christians" in the year 70 BCE.

From there, I assume a growth rate of 10 percent per decade  until 30 BCE. (Again, I'm assuming flat population rates, in part for simplicity but in larger part because, over the longer term, that's the simple reality of the ancient world.)

That gives us about 1,460 "Christians" in 30 BCE.

For the next six decades, I up the growth rate to 15 percent, starting a bell curve. (The proclivities of Herod, followed by direct Roman control of Judea, are assumed as "stimulators" for this higher growth rate.)

At 30 CE, that gets us to about 3,380 "Christians."

I then ratchet the bell curve up a bit, to 20 percent growth over the next 70 years. Worsening Roman action in Judea and the first revolt, plus the work of a man named Paul, are taken as "stimulators."

That gets us to 12,130 "Christians" (per above on the book of Acts, the scare quotes will be dropped from here on out) at 100 CE.

I next ramp up the bell curve a bit more.

For the next 80 years, I assume 25 percent growth per decade. This gets us to about 72,300 Christians by the death of Marcus Aurelius. Still a tiny minority, not much more than 1/10 of 1 percent of the Empire. The myth of Paul before Felix and Festus aside, we now, with people like Justin Martyr, see the first interactions of Christians with Roman officialdom. Somebody is noticing them. That's a "stimulator" of growth.

But now, the growth rate is going to pick up again. No external stimulator, just a larger semi-critical mass, more publicity in non-Christian circles, and social and economic decay in Rome making some people look more favorably on Christianity. (The movement, also, now has no scare quotes, as first attempts at doctrinal organization begin.)

So, for the next 90 years, I put the growth rate at 30 percent.

That gets us to 453,000 by 250 CE, which would be 3/4 of a percent or more; enough to catch Decius' attention. And 767,000 by 270 CE, comfortably above 1 percent.

So, I turn the bell curve higher. To 35 percent.

That gets us to 1.89 million by 300 (and about 1.25 million in 285, the year after Diocletian assumed the throne).

If I keep that same growth rate for 25 more years, we're at around 4 million by the time of Constantine calling the Council of Nicaea. That's 8 percent of a population of 50 million. (And on tipping points, for Constantine, we're at around 2.75 million  Christians, or 5.5 percent of the population, by the time of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.)

(Ehrman agrees, putting Christians at about 7 percent of the population by the time of Nicaea. However, with a traditional dating for Jesus birth, you have to expect growth rates close to Stark's for much of Christianity's lifespan.)

I don't ever need to go to Stark's 40 percent. And, I don't even see that happening. Due to "backsliding" and the "leisure" of Christianity being legalized, the growth rate probably plateaued until Theodosius made it the state religion of Rome.

That said, I hold that the growth rate issue is another challenge for mythicists if they believe that the myth started at about the time the traditional dating says Jesus lived. That is, if they think Paul started the myth, or somebody no more than one generation before him, they've got trouble.

Now, the development of Christian tradition

Different ideas of Jesus, such as a teacher of wisdom, allegedly reflected by the hypothetical Q document and the Gospel of Thomas, a faith healer/wonder worker with parallels in some Jewish holy men of the era, and a "divine man" of some metaphysical import with possible soteriological import, would all have longer to ferment, and more under any communal "radar screens," with an extra century of development time, and with a slower growth rate to bring less attention to any perceived need for uniformity.

We can postulate brief written bits being put down by the second generation after the death of this Jesus, around 30 BCE, when I see the growth rate tick up a bit, or maybe after 30 CE, when I see the growth rate tick up a bit more.

We can then simply put the first Jewish Revolt against Rome, and the destruction of the Second Temple, on top of this as a motivator to record the first unified "gospel" of Jesus in light of similar gospels of wonder-workers both before and after this time that floated around the Mediterranean world.

More on and from Paul

That still leaves connecting Paul to all of this.

He claims to be a Pharisee himself in Philippians. I accept this as true. I reject that he was a Roman citizen, as he never claims that about himself. He could well have come across the "Jesus movement" as part of a trip to Jerusalem or something.

If his "thorn in the flesh" was temporal lobe epilepsy, or whatever led him to his visions and revelations, his version of Christianity took off from there. And, if he did die in Rome, or nearby, we can perhaps peg the first Gospel, Mark, to there, in part based on the "Latinisms" in its Greek. But, that's aside from the main focus of this argument.

That said, now I, in a different way than Carrier, have a problem with Josephus' statement above. And, I also have a "problem" with the thinking of the likes of Robert Eisenman on the history of Jewish Christianity. And, on the issue of James as a historic person. (That said, Eisenman takes Acts as being WAY too historic. Example: He thinks the phrase that people of the "Way" were first called Christians in Antioch first dates to the 50s CE.)

Paul and James

Of course, Mead potentially founders on this, too. Paul talks about meeting James, and Paul in his own writings, not Luke's "Paul" in Acts. (It's been a long, long time since I read Mead; I don't know how he addressed this issue.)

But there's a way around what Paul says in Galatians 1:

Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days. But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother. Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not.

Note he says "the Lord," not Jesus. This is usually means the risen Christ, not the earthly Jesus. Hence, not to sound like a Catholic protecting Mary's perpetual virginity, but, there's no reason this has to be read as James being the earthly brother of an earthly Jesus.

So, let's then go back to Josephus. And, let me one-up Carrier.

Perhaps EVERYTHING after "James" is a Christian interpolation. There may have been an earlier identifier of James, rather than just his bare name, in Josephus' autograph. (I admit I'm unaware of textual variants on this.) But, maybe an early copy got edited for this interpolation. In fact, if Luke borrowed from the Antiquities, he could have made that interpolation himself.

In for a penny, in for a pound on interpolations. But, that's the only one I need to get past the issue of a historic James at the time of Josephus and a historic Jesus of nearly 150 years earlier.

World religious history

I'm going to briefly morph over to other world religions, then.

The late-Victorian England original "surge" in mythicism wasn't about Jesus, alone. As the British Raj expanded in India, the historicity of the Buddha was questioned, too.

There's both similarities and differences. The early Buddhist writings might be compared to the hypothetical early Q strand, if there was a written Q. The Buddha as a teacher of wisdom, occasionally esoteric, just like Jesus in this tradition. The difference is that the idea of the Buddha as a divinity didn't develop until later, so no textual fusions were needed. But, if we push back Jesus, we have about the same gap between his life and the first writings about him as we do the Buddha and the first writings about him.

Islam is a tougher nut, with so little textual criticism so far. But, it's possible we didn't have a finalized version of the Quran until a century after his death or so.

Finally, to tackle one other "hard mythicist" counter-thrust.

Now, I've seen one mythicist (sorry, no link, can't remember where it was) cite the Micronesian cargo cults, specifically noting that in one place, two different deities or whatever were being venerated in less than 20 years.

However, on the typical Micronesian or New Guinean site, the issues that started the cargo cult were HUGELY intrusive. British or American military, occasionally civilians, with modern technology, setting up an outpost out of nowhere just before or during World War II into the middle of a dark-skinned, often Stone Age, society. Occasionally, even , a white man crashing an airplane on an island. And then leaving as soon as the war is done, or the crashed person is rescued.

Whereas, a messianic movement starting in late Second Temple Judaism? With all the other messianic claimant that Josephus documents in his time and others probably earlier? Hardly intrusive at all.

So, contra the one person's who's commented already trying to claim just the opposite? Don't. I'll laugh in your cyberface.

Meanwhile, per a discussion on a blog post by Dan Fincke, I will reiterate what should be obvious. Just because certain events of a person's life are fictitious doesn't mean the person is. (A disputant said the fiction of the Buddha's enlightenment meant the Buddha was mythical.) Honi the Circle Drawer almost surely existed, myths about his rain miracles aside. If mythicist claims here were true? Well, millions of people long believed the Parson Weems myth that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree. Millions still believe myths about his wooden dentures today.

Also, don't be like D.M. Murdock (Acharya) who outdoes even American Gnu Atheists in claiming that religious personages are myths, making puns as bad or worse than those in the Tanakh, and otherwise promoting anti-intellectual stupidity, as I've noted here.

My academic and personal background

Who am I to be laying this scenario out with any presumption to credibility?

I'm a "semi-academic," in case any scholars noted in this post, or friends or followers of theirs, question my presumption.

I have an undergraduate degree in classical languages, part of spending most of my time in a pre-divinity program. (I also read Hebrew as part of that, though not enough to get a biblical languages degree.)

I also have a "professional / terminal" masters, a master of divinity degree. Being at a conservative Lutheran seminary, we weren't taught too much about the critical theological method, but we were taught a little. And, from there, I did a lot of reading on my own, eventually doing intellectual judo to refute what I was being taught there and had been raised to believe.

That said, I had several classes in exegesis of particular biblical books. I audited a class on introductory Aramaic. I took a class on the Greek of the Septuagint and also did readings in patristic Greek. And I took an upper-level graduate course on textual criticism. And, in English, I've read much of the Dead Sea Scrolls, most of the Nag Hammadi finds and more.

And, in the years since graduation, I have kept up with a fair amount of biblical studies on both testaments.

So, I feel comfortable calling myself a semi-academic.

And, I feel quite comfortable, as a semi-academic, and as an atheist who's not a Gnu Atheist, telling the mythicists they're wrong, and how and why.

Anyway, this isn't an overarching redaction criticism of any specific New Testament book, or some other detailed academic exercise. For example, I'm not going to try to tackle how a Mark relocated Jesus 100 years earlier. Suffice it to say that, albeit with a mythical leader, we historically had "early" and "late" dates for the Jewish exodus from Egypt, and the certainly mythical Zoroaster has had floruits dated as much as 1,000 years apart.

Don't make me hang here, either

I'm hoping for some critique. I'll even take some less-than-totally-friendly criticism. This is a serious bit of work and it didn't pop into my head overnight.

Also, just because I think Jesus mythicism doesn't have legs to fully stand on doesn't mean that I don't question the likelihood of literal existence of all ancient religious figures. In fact, with the Tanakh/Old Testament and "minimalists" there, I believe it's quite possible a historic David never existed; at best, I think his "vita" has been overstated at least as much as the historic Jesus.

This week in religion: real and fake martyrs, real and fake Lents

Candida Moss' book abot the myth vs reality of martyrdom among Christians in pre-Constantinian rome is getting a lot of play. See my review of what I'm reading about it, here, including why such a book is highly relevant today.

Among fake martyrs? He may not be Bill O'Reilly with a "War on Christmas," but ex-pope Benedict XVI had no problem regularly insinuating there was a War on Catholicism. My "fond farewell" is here.

And, then there's "faitheists," celebrating a fake Lent and coming close to being fake atheists in the process. See my takedown here. 

And Alternet and nonreligious actors/actresses don't know what atheism actually is, as detailed here.

Looking ahead on all issues? Christian conservatives will continue to promote teh "war" idea, complete with hand-to-forehead fake martyrdom. Due to Benedict and John Paul II totally stacking the College of Cardinals, American Catholics should not expect a liberalizer. Nor should non-Europeans expect a person of color, though that will happen before 2050. "Faitheists" will continue their "branding" ideas. Many people will continue to confuse irreligious with atheist and vice versa; professional Gnu Atheists have practically made a career out of it.

Are we seeing the end of a Fourth Great Awakening?

Per discussion with friends on Facebook, over the book "The Rocks Don't Lie," I'd say the answer is yes. (Partial review of the book below, followed by a jump into discussion.)



The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood by David R. Montgomery

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A genial refutation of young-earth creationism

Montgomery generally keeps this story about how the earth's geology refutes any version of a literal Noahic flood light on detailed scientific language. And, it is written as a story.

He takes the reader to various geological formations in the world thatr have been key to the development of geology as a science, while narrating how key figures from geology's history have studied and analyzed such formations. At the same time, he narrates the history of Christian theological thought on literal vs non-literal biblical interpretation in general, and specifically on the Noahic flood. He intertwines the two in discussing how different strands of Christian thought reacted to these scientific findings.

Basically, by the end of the 19th century, a literal or semi-literal young-earth creationism (if not 10,000 years or less, certainly no more than 100,000 years) had fallen out of favor with the great majority of theologians in most of the Western world.

With the exception of the United States.

Montgomery puts YEC developments in the historic context of:
1. Anti-evolutionism and the Scopes trial of the 1920s and
2. Anti-communism and the Cold War, etc., of the late 1940s and beyond.

As talk of "culture wars" continues, and as Montgomery stretches YEC roots back to the Second Great Awakening, this is good to remember.

And now, to tie this to a "Fourth Great Awakening."

First, unlike the First Great Awakening. the Second Great Awakening, or the Third Great Awakening, this "Fourth Great Awakening" has a much more political component.

To explain, for people not very familiar with the history of Christianity in America:

The First Great Awakening was Jonathan Edwards, and others, attempting to revitalize the Puritan Calivinist beliefs of New England and the Middle Atlantic colonies in the first half of the 1700s. It was also was intertwined with the growth of Methodism and Baptist denominations. The Second started to battle deism and skepticism, and at its tail end, was connected to the start of sects such as Mormonism and Seventh-Day Adventism. The Third was connected with the late 19th century Social Gospel and reform movements such as the temperance issue.

The First one may have had some connection to the American Revolution; Wiki's entry claims that, but I think it overstates the case. The Second spawned the short-lived Anti-Masonic Party, but was not directly connected to abolitionism. The Third  (I partially accept there was one, but definite more narrowly in time than Wiki) had a bit of a political angle, more in the "Social Gospel" of mainline Protestantism, though, than in the rising Holiness Movement. was a bit more political, but not extremely so.

I also accept the idea of a Fourth Great Awakening, but while I disagree with Wiki that its timeframe for the Third is too long, I think it's too short for the Fourth.

The Fourth relates to the rise of literalism in biblical interpretation and much more. It's definitely the most anti-intellectual of the Great Awakenings.

Evidence for one starting includes that the National Council of Churches "peaked" in the late 50s/early 60s, mainline Protestantism had clergy/laity separating more at that time, and fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism grew rapidly.

That said, previous "Great Awakenings" shot their Roman candle in 35-45 years, really. (Which is part of why I think Wiki is too long on the Third and too short on the Fourth.)  So ... W's two elections aside, is the Third Awakening pretty much dying? And, does that in part explain some of the vitriol? Angry death spasms?

We're at about the right time frame. Each previous Great Awakening died differently.

The First petered out, as much as anything. The fervor of the Second got a nurture in sects such as Mormonism, Adventism, etc., that got new life in the Third, which also faced American industrialization.

The Fourth had a start, if you will, and was almost stillborn, in the Scopes trial. Not all conservative Christians were young-earth creationists, and so, while they may not have been fully reconciled to Darwinian ideas about evolution, many probably could have halfway accepted a "tamer" version of evolution if combined with old-earth creationism.

But, the Second Red Scare ( the first being after World War I) changed everything. But not by itself. The Civil Rights Movement added a "second stage" to this rocket. (Although black megachurches have grown recently, the Fourth Great Awakening is much more a white Christian phenomenon.)

Because the Fourth Great Awakening tied with this, not just the Second Red Square, it naturally became more political. Non-Catholic parochial schools, battles over school prayer, tax exemptions and more, as well as political appeals, both open and coded, by both Democrats and Republicans, became part of this.

But, now, has it shot its bolt?

It may have. One sign? Per a new Wall Street Journal poll, almost 70 percent of Americans want to keep Roe v. Wade. Gay relationships, if not gay marriage, are also getting more support among centrist Americans.

That said, as I noted, the First Great Awakening pretty much faded out. The Second created the "burned over district," but eventually died down smoothly enough. The Third definitely faded out, after the passage of Prohibition and the fading of political Progressivism.

I don't think the Fourth will end the same way. To riff on T.S. Eliot, if it doesn't end with a bang instead of a whimper, its demise will be more emotionally violent. And, because it's more political, that emotionally violent denouement, which I believe we're seeing now, will have political fallout which none of us can probably fully see at this time.

That depends in part on how much the Democratic party tries to stay progressive on social issues while remaining conservative on financial ones, and even more if some conservative Christian laity become disgusted with a Republican party that panders even more to the rich.

Could we see the Constitution party, which is the closest thing the US has to a Religious Right party, move more fully that way?

It wouldn't surprise me. If a Ron Paul type were to temper his financial libertarianism with a heavier dollop of William Jennings Bryan type populism, that person could indeed lead such a "movement."

If we had parliamentary government, this would be a no-brainer. That said, countries like France, which has a modified presidential-parliamentary hybrid, but more power with the president than the leader of parliament, have multiparty government. The problem here in the US is, of course, the Electoral College system. One could have a spectrum of parties in Congress without it, and lesser parties focusing on Congressional elections.

Early Christian evidence or puffery?

The earliest-ever archaeological evidence for Christianity has allegedly been uncovered in Jerusalem. But, the "allegedly" is very, very important; the report comes from the same folks who are behind the claims of finding an alleged "Jesus Tomb."

The newly discovered ossuary carries a Greek inscription calling on God to "raise up" someone, which is being interpreted as an early reference to the biblical resurrection of Jesus.


A second limestone box appears to show the carved image of a fish, which may be a reference to the biblical prophet Jonah. This would be a historical first, as references to the resurrection had not previously been discovered before the 2^nd century.


"If anyone had claimed to find either a statement about resurrection or a Jonah image in a Jewish tomb of this period I would have said impossible -- until now," University of North Carolina scholar James Tabor said in a statement....


As significant as this discovery is, it may itself be buried under renewed discussion over the potential discovery of a tomb inscribed with the names of the biblical Jesus and his family. The investigators, lead by University of North Carolina scholar Tabor, are the same team who five years ago claimed to have made "The Jesus Discovery." ... He (also) contributed to a controversial TV documentary called, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," which received significant attention at the time of its release, since it was produced in partnership with Academy Award winning director James Cameron. ...


"This inscription has something to do with resurrection of the dead, either of the deceased in the ossuary, or perhaps, given the Jonah image nearby, an expression of faith in Jesus' resurrection," Tabor said in the statement, referring to the "raise up" inscription on the ossuary.


"We now have the new archaeological evidence, literally written in stone, that can guide us in properly understanding what Jesus' earliest followers meant by their faith in Jesus' resurrection from the dead — with his earthly remains, and those of his family, peacefully interred just yards away," Tabor and (a collaborator) wrote.

First, the fish iconography may or may not be linked to Jonah.

Second, the "raise up" could refer to someone else. The Mandeans are a "world religion" technically a few years older than Christianity; Mandeans view John the Baptizer  as a metaphysical, messianic-type savior in the way Christians view Jesus. Related to that, if the fish does refer to Jonah, who's to say that imagery is Christian? Or, the "raise up" may not refer to resurrection from the dead. So, who's to say this is Christian overall?

No healing in Chimayo? Not even for the priest?

On a recent vacation, I happened to stop at and visit, for the first time, the world-famous El Santuario de Chimayo in New Mexico.

For those not familiar, the unincorporated community, and the Catholic sanctuary, are on the back road connection between Santa Fe and Taos, N.M.

For those unfamiliar with why it can be called world-famous, it is the second-most-popular Catholic pilgrimage site in the United States, and unarguably the top Catholic healing pilgrimage site.

In short, El Santuario de Chimayo is the Lourdes of the United States. Except at Chimayo, it's dirt, not water, that's supposed to have the healing properties.

Like Lourdes, it has an anteroom, to the side of the actual sanctuary but under the same roof, lined with dozens or more crutches. (There is a no-photo policy inside the sanctuary, which I respected.)

The parish priest at Chimayo, with cane.

The details of how this rural Spanish-American Catholic parish came to be a healing pilgrimage site are described at the top link.

That said, at such a place, like Lourdes, wouldn't you find it interesting, at least for the parish priest to be walking with a cane? Well, I did and he was. (Apologies for photo quality.)

I did a little journaling after I got to Taos, putting down some thoughts about how I felt about the priest, the church, and more.

1. Part of me was cynical, not just skeptical, after seeing not just the parish priest, but also an apparent parishioner, accompanied by a daughter or granddaughter, also on a cane. Now, the parishioner could perhaps be "excused" as elderly, but the priest was no older than I am. So, why did he still have the cane?

2. Part of me felt a bit sad for him. I looked at a bulletin, and saw that he did multiple Masses there and at nearby rural Truchas, as well as possibly at Espinola. And, he himself — had he ever tried the holy dirt or not? Was he a bit skeptical himself? Had anybody ever asked him about the cane? Even if not, he has to know that there are people like me. What's his attitude toward people like me in his mind — defensive? Apologetic?

A parishioner at Chimayo, also using a cane.

3. And what about his parishioners, even? Do any of them, even regular ones, wonder? How many of them eschew doctors entirely? How many, like among the world of New Agers and others, decry those who "just don't believe enough" as being the cause of their own lack of healing?

4. Part of me was cynical about the Catholic Church — starting with this parish, and not Benedict XVI in Rome or the soon-to-be beatified future patron saint of child molesters, John Paul II. The entire back page of the Santuario's bulletin was covered with ads for local businesses. To be snarky, I was kind of wondering if the Bingo sheet was missing from the inside of the bulletin. In the anteroom, along with crutches, were a variety of votary objects. I assumed they were all for sale, but didn't check on prices.

5. A skeptical part of me says, how can the dirt be so holy if it constantly has to be replaced? What would happen if we dug a second hole and did a double-blinded set of tests? A skeptical part of me also knows from Catholic history in the new world, Christian history in general, etc., that it's likely the Church appropriated a former Tewa shrine, just as did the particular appearance of Jesus in Guatemala with which the Santuario de Chimayo is connected. Meanwhile, a more cynical part of me notes that the Roman Catholic Church, as with Lourdes, takes no position on the actual occurrence of miracles. Perhaps the College of Cardinals doesn't want to be tested on the depth of its faith, either.

Douthat hits yet another new low in idiocy

In a post-Easter column, Ross Douthat tries to defend the need for hell as well as in heaven in the Christian canon of beliefs. (He theoretically talks about religion in general, but it's clear he's talking about monotheism with a one-shot afterlife, which, for all practical purposes with a conservative columnists in the US, really means Christianity. And, of course, even if he's right about hell's need in monotheisms, he could at least be honest that it's limited to there, and not Hinduism, etc. But, when has intellectual honesty ever stopped Douthat before?)

That said, he goes from dishonesty to worse dishonesty quickly enough.
(A) doctrine of universal salvation turns out to be as deterministic as the more strident forms of scientific materialism. Instead of making us prisoners of our glands and genes, it makes us prisoners of God himself. We can check out any time we want, but we can never really leave.
I had no idea "scientific materialism" was so deterministic.

He then goes on to say hell gives meaning to life. No really!
As Anthony Esolen writes, in the introduction to his translation of Dante’s “Inferno,” the idea of hell is crucial to Western humanism. It’s a way of asserting that “things have meaning.”
In a weird sense, he's right. The belief in hell does give meaning to life for many Christians, including Dante. The Inferno is exciting, bloody and vengeance-filled. The Purgatorio is kind of bland and the Paradiso is positively insipid.

In short, for conservative Christians, hell is the ultimate revenge fantasy.

Getting Gospel sychronization wrong - Templeton-worthy?

Or, why an academic expert in engineering should NOT stick his head into New Testament studies.

Colin Humphreys, a professor of materials sciences at Cambridge, claims to have "reconciled" John and the Synoptic Gospels' different datings of Maundy Thursday and the Lord's Supper, among other Passiontime events

The Telegraph explains the work of the professor:

Matthew, Mark and Luke say that it was at the start of the Jewish feast of Passover. John writes that it happened before Passover. In his new book, The Mystery of the Last Supper, Sir Colin deploys the full gamut of biblical, historical and astronomical sources to iron out the contradiction. The first three gospel writers – known collectively as the Synoptics because they largely tell the same stories, in the same sequence, of Jesus’s life – were, he suggests, using an old-fashioned Jewish calendar, whereas John was basing his timescale on the lunar calendar in official use back then, as now. Once you take this into account, he claims, all four writers were actually referring to the same date – April 1, 33AD. This was a Wednesday, rather than a day later, marked as Maundy Thursday by Christians. Because he can pinpoint the date, Sir Colin argues, Easter should move to a fixed time each year – the first Sunday in April – rather than being the current moveable feast.

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

Humphreys ignores that Mark ("father" to Luke and Matthew's accounts on the Two-Source Hypothesis) had good reason for dating the Last Supper differently in relation to Passover. He also presumes that the four "canonical" gospels are writing historically, should be considered as historical documents and, I guess, that they should be considered as accurate ones unless clearly not.

He's clueless, and Telegraph reporter Peter Stanford, who fairly gushes over Humphreys, is no better.

Of course, with the blathering of Cambridge University Press about his book, "The Mystery of the Last Supper," Humphreys is surely in the running for a Templeton Prize

Christians? You got an Obamacare loophole — if you want it

You don't have to have health insurance coverage if you sign up for a dubious alternative called a health sharing program.

How dubious? This dubious:

Although they have procedures for dealing with coverage disputes, they're largely unregulated by state insurance departments that oversee private carriers.

And this dubious:

If Medi-Share is an insurance alternative, its guidelines carry an eye-catching disclaimer:

"The payment of your medical bills through Medi-Share or otherwise is not guaranteed in any fashion." Members remain solely responsible for payment.

Indeed, the main part of the story, the hook, is about Medi-Share refusing to pay for brain tumor surgery, and even eventually winning an arbitrator's decision on the matter based on its claimed inability to pay.

And this dubious, in terms of Christian brotherly love:

Nevada pastor Michael Rowden sued Medi-Share over its refusal to pay for treatment of a heart condition. He eventually reached a settlement. "I was actually embarrassed to be associated with them," he said.

So, how does it "work," using that word theoretically? Here's how:
Every month, they pay a fixed "share" to cover the medical expenses of members in need. The cost usually is less than private insurance, but it's not tax deductible. Members use a network of medical providers.
OK, so .... being a hypothetical devil's advocate here ...

What if Muslims, especially based on their history of nonbank lending networks and such, started something similar and got an exemption from Obamacare?

Conservatives would go apeshit. They would probably claim the exemption was because Obama was indeed a Muslim himself. The practice would be touted as proof of sharia law in America.

And, tell me again, how Christians are being "persecuted"?

That said, I seriously expect about the same number of Christians to sign up for this as who drive without auto insurance or who own homes without insurance (or without lightning rods).

The sad part, per my "persecution" crack, is the pandering involved by Members of Congress (and, indirectly, the "Muslim" Obama Administration). That said, by not supporting a single-payer system, or at least making it an option, Team Obama opened itself up to loopholes like that. And, because the Obama Administration has trumped BushCo on faith-based initiative spending and indulgence, I bet Preznit Kumbaya actually isn't at all saddened by the existence of this loophole.

Atheists know the bible better than Christians

Nope, no joke. (And, like other atheists, no, I'm not surprised, either.)

And, some of the results are just sad, for the people involved, that is. 45 percent of American Catholics, on the Eucharist, apparently think their church is Reformed, for example.

Here's why I think this is like this. Usually a convert has fuller knowledge than a lifelong adherent. Since Christians are a much bigger pool than atheists and agnostics, and also atheists and agnostics who "convert" to that want to know what they're converting from ...

Sully insists Islam religion of peace – wrong

Well, Andrew Sullivan got that one wrong in his Iran live-blogging round-up. He gets something else half-right, noting Tweets are provisional, but without saying Tweets can be rumor-mongering, ether unwittingly or wittingly spreading urban legends, etc.

Point is, Islam, Christianity and Judaism, all three are neither “religions of war” or “religions of peace.”

Beyond finding admonitions to both war and peace in the Quran, we can do the same in the other two world religions.

The Tanakh has Isaiah talking about “bending swords into plowshares,” but another prophet later talks about “bending plowshares into swords.” Per a quote by Jesus, the temple is allegedly a “house for all nations,” but, earlier, King Saul is told to till all the Amalekites — men, women, children and even livestock.

In the Christian New Testament, Jesus, in one Gospel, tells Peter to put his sword away at the Garden of Gethsemane, after he cut off the ear of a servant of the high priest. But, earlier in that same account, he asked his disciples how many swords they had.

Elsewhere, he tells his listeners, “I came not to bring peace but division.”

And, as Islam had its jihad, Christianity had its Crusades. And Israel has religious Jews pushing settlements with new vigor, like Avigdor Lieberman.

Bottom line?

The three simply are religions, the youngest of them 1,500 years old, all coming from tribalist roots whose values systems almost make Pop Evolutionary Psychology sound true.

And they, and their Kool-Aid drinkers, label them as “religions of peace” as needed for external public relations, while not-insignificant minorities in all three push the “religions of war” side externally against the other two, or internally about their own “crusades” for “religious corporate communications,” also as needed.

Oh, and you bet your ass I'll be using the fake Photoshopped book cover in the future.

Paul, Passover, Jesus, Gnosticism

In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul gives us the first extant written account of the Lord’s Supper.

He starts with the well-known phrase, “On the night our Lord Jesus was betrayed…”

But, “betrayed” may well not be the right translation.

Many Greek verbs have three voices — the active and passive ones we know in English, and a “middle” voice, a sort of reflexive voice.

Now, the Greek verb παραδίδωμι looks the same in middle and passive voice. But, it has different meanings. looks the same in middle and passive voice. But, it has different meanings.

In the passive, it does mean “betray.” But, in the middle, it normally means “hand over,” as in hand over someone to authorities. A similar meaning is “hand up.”

Critical New Testament scholarship believe this is what Paul means. He never, in the epistles he clearly wrote, talks about a Passion Plot, a Roman arrest, or the melodramatic literary angle of a turncoat named Judas.

That gets us to the first “pseudo-Paul.” In addition to it being quite certain that Paul never wrote the “Pastoral Epistles” of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus, which weren’t written until the end of the first century CE, or even early in the second, an earlier pseudo-Paul (or two) is believed to have written Colossians and Ephesians. Relations between these two books are unclear, but both likely were written no later than 30 years after Paul’s genuine books, by someone closer to the Pauline mileau than the Pastoralist of another 20-40 years later.

Well, both Colossians and Ephesians discuss what can certainly be called “esoterica,” whether they are talking about issues that can clearly be labeled Gnostic or not.

In Colossians 2:20, “Paul” tells his readers, “Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world….” The word in Greek, στοιχειον, is a word with plenty of use in Gnosticism, although it has plenty of pre-Gnostic use as well. As an “elemental principle,” it can be understood as a stage to be overcome by the Gnostic initiate’s battle to return to the All.

So, tying together Colossians and 1 Corinthans, did Paul mean that Jesus was actually “handed up” to the “elemental powers”? In other words rather than the soteriology of the Pastoral Epistles, themselves connected with similar soteriology stances of dying-and-rising eastern Mediterranean savior gods, was Paul instead talking about Jesus as a sacrifice to Gnostic powers?

How, then, did we get to Mark,. the first Gospeller, creating the "betrayal" story?

A combination of misreading Paul plus creative reading of the Old Testament, namely something like Psalm 69:22-28, and Psalm 109:6-12.

Peter allegedly took these verses that way in Acts 1.

In Gnostic and semi-Gnostic Christianity, the idea of Judas as Jesus' twin, as in Judas Thomas (Aramaic for "twin") certainly added to Gnosticizing takes on the idea of Jesus' betrayal.

It seems likely. Mystery religions, after all, we know had their own mystery-fellowship dinners, from which it is believed Paul borrowed ideas that he fused into Passover concepts to produce his “Last Supper.”

If that’s the case, the genuine Paul was more a proto-Gnostic than later followers, let alone conservative Christians today, might want to accept.

Also, if that’s the case, pseudo-Paul of Colossians either didn’t understand the genuine article that well, or else thought that others’ interpretation of him had gone too far, or else did understand him well and deliberately reinterpreted him.

As for "who was Judas"? Well, his second name, "Iscariot," has caused critical scholars puzzlement as well. It has sometimes been considered to be "Ish Kerioth," or "man of Kerioth." Problem — that is a village in what is today the Kingdom of Jordan, or biblical Transjordan, and all of Jesus' other disciples are described as coming from Galilee. Others claim it derives from the Latin "sicarius," which in the plural came to be used for dirk-wielding Jews knocking off Romans and collaborators and hoping to start the revolution. After all, all three Synoptics have Simon the Zealot as a follower, one of the Twelve. ("Cananaean" in Mark is simply the Aramaic word for the Greek "Zealot," and either an indication that Mark was trying to hide something, or, along with some of his geographical befuddlement, an indication of how clueless he was.) Problem — Josephus says the Sicarii didn't arise until the late 50s CE. However, Mark could have used it anachronistically.

In any case, it should also be noted that Paul created the Eucharist. And, he had no Judas in it. And, Jesus likely wasn't betrayed.

Outcasts in the name of gOd

The Hindus took racism
Against natives of darker hue
And made it a religious crime.
Their four-tiered socio-religious totem pole
Had the grunts of manual labor at the bottom,
But, left without even a pole to pose on
Were, and still are today,
The shittiest workers of Indian society,
Pun intended –
Out-castes.
Untouchables in their alleged contamination,
Calling them harijan, or the lOrd’s children
As a Gandhian absolution
Is no absolution for a stain, a blot,
On the very core of Hindu thought.

God told Saul, “Kill the Amalekites!”
And not just the adults, but the seven children
That went along with each adult family,
And not just the children,
But the seven livestock the adults had
For each of their children.
No Amalekites would be allowed to go to St. Ives,
Or Hebron, or Shechem, or Shiloh,
As the world’s first recorded Holocaust
Was perpetuated by Jews and not against them.

In the American South, in the land of cotton,
Old bible passages were not forgotten
But were twisted, to look away from the evil
Of black slavery in Dixie land.
No, no, worse than that;
Twisted to justify slavery as a redeeming,
Christianizing uplift,
For alleged children of Canaan,
Smitten by the curse of Ham.
People who wished they had not been born in Dixie
Were told it was for their own good,
And in fulfillment of the word of gOd.
Oh, ye cursed of Ham!

No wonder that Sunday morning
Is still the most segregated hour in America;
No wonder that Indian outcastes
Have their own political party;
No wonder that right-wing Israeli Jews
Talk of an Arab-rein Eretz Yisrael.
The real wonder is that blacks didn’t become atheists
Long before the Nation of Islam,
Or that the Dalits, oppressed outcastes, aren’t all Buddhist, or Christian,
Or that some Arabs still participate in Israeli political life.

Were a god actually to exist, he would be mocked by his own alleged words.

Hindus persecute Christians — fundamentalism in ‘tolerant’ Eastern religion

In India, Hindu fundamentalists are forcing Christian conversions.

So much for lies about tolerant Eastern religions.

Dying-and-rising savior-god an ancient Jewish tenet

Or so a brief tablet, with 87 lines of Hebrew text, pictured by the New York Times at right, would indicate.

We’re only eight years into the 21st century, but this may last the next 92 as the most significant find in biblical archaeology.

Daniel Boyarin, a professor of Talmudic culture at the University of California at Berkeley, said that the stone was part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that Jesus could be best understood through a close reading of the Jewish history of his day.

“Some Christians will find it shocking — a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology — while others will be comforted by the idea of it being a traditional part of Judaism,” Mr. Boyarin said.

As the story notes, nobody has yet challenged the authenticity of the tablet, dated so far to the late first century BCE. (Why does the NYT use the anachronistic, for academia, and for New York City’s large Jewish population, for that matter, of “BC”?) Chemical analysis, though not yet released, appears to confirm that.

If so, it would be the first pre-Jesus (assuming that such a person as Yeshua bar Yusuf actually existed) text to speak of a dying-and-rising Jewish messianic figure.

As the article notes, modern critical New Testament scholarship assumes that Jesus’ own statements about dying and rising in three days are later additions. Maybe they’re not.

That then said, what’s the provenance of this text, other than starting as some sort of gloss on passages from Zechariah and Daniel? Can it be connected to any particular movement in Second Temple Judaism at that time?

It would seem to fit with scrolls associated with Qumran, as this “Dead Sea scroll on stone,” from what is extant, takes the form of an apocalypse revealed by the angel Gabriel.

Other questions abound, too.

Why was the Simon of this scroll supposed to die? His death, at least from the story, isn’t mentioned as atoning, unlike Jesus claimed for himself.

And, despite the efforts of Jewish leaders from Ezra through the Pharisees, and of course running through the Maccabees, to “purify” Judaism, what does this say about other “outside” ideas running around Judea at this time?

This MSNBC article does a good job of listing all the caveats about this stone, as well as further explicating how a number of “Christian” Messianic ideas (though NOT the dying-and-rising savior god of Judea’s pagan neighbors) have already been documented as being present elsewhere in Judaism.

If ‘first church’ dating is correct …

Theories of Christian origins get thrown in a cocked hat.

Jordanian archaeologists are claiming they have found a church that dates back to the purported lifedate of Jesus himself.

“We have uncovered what we believe to be the first church in the world, dating from 33 AD to 70 AD,” the head of Jordan’s Rihab Centre for Archaeological Studies, Abdul Qader al-Husan, said.

He said it was uncovered under Saint Georgeous Church, which itself dates back to 230 AD, in Rihab in northern Jordan near the Syrian border.

“We have evidence to believe this church sheltered the early Christians — the 70 disciples of Jesus Christ,” Husan said.

These Christians, who are described in a mosaic as “the 70 beloved by God and Divine,” are said to have fled persecution in Jerusalem and founded churches in northern Jordan, Husan added.

Before we let fundies go all ga-ga, a couple of caveats.

One, Jordanian archaeologists are surely seeing American tourist dollar signs in their eyeballs. I want more research, and by other archaeologists, before I come close to accepting those dates for this church.

Two, what if they’re correct?

For Jesus’ followers to be big enough to have had one subgroup of them big enough to start a church in 33 AD, the moment of Jesus’ death would have had to been long before that.

And that’s not just SocraticGadfly, atheist, speaking.

Per religious sociologist Rodney Stark, a 40 percent growth rate per decade for Christianity, with nothing more miraculous than that, would have gotten Christianity from a population of 1,000 in the year 50 to a slight majority in the Roman Empire at the time of the Council of Nicaea. (Stark gets the 40 percent growth rate from the 160-plus year history of the Mormons, bolstered by observations of the shorter history of the Moonies.)

Backtrack that 40 percent two decades from 50 AD and you have 500 faithful (ironic coincidence with Paul’s statement in I Corinthians 15 about resurrection appearances) in the year 30.

Take the book of Acts as having a grain or two of fact, that early Christians had some sort of diaspora beyond Jerusalem. Would there have been enough of them to have started a church in an out-of-the-way part of today’s Jordan?

I say no.

So, either the Jordanians are trying to blow smoke up tourists’ skirts, or else Christianity started earlier than the Christian Bible’s accounts claim. That, then, means either dates for Jesus’ life are wrong or he didn’t exist.

Beyond the fact that Yeshua bar Yusuf may not have existed, the rest of the story makes clear that the Jordanian archaeological institute is peddling a boatload of early Christian myth.