The Jesus Myth - Why Many Biblical Scholars Cannot Be Objective.
A few days ago I did an introduction post to my series on why I believe that the figure of Jesus Christ beloved by Christians today is based on a myth (see the link at the end of this post if you wish to have a read)
Before delving deeper into my reasons for believing this, I want to first deal with the issue of scholarship bias in the field of biblical studies.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” - Upton Sinclair [1]
One of the most common arguments used to defend Christianity is that most historians believe that the Jesus of the bible existed and that the evidence exists to prove it. This may be true on one level – that of most historians believe that Jesus existed – but there is a major problem. Many of the historians often quoted are Christian biblical scholars who bring Christian bias and presuppositions to their work.
As one example of the kind of non-objectivity of the current crop of leading biblical scholars, Richard Burridge, whose book, ‘Introduction to the History of Christianity’ has the following remarkable statement concerning miracles and fulfilled Old Testament prophecies:-
“Some people say we cannot be expected to believe this in our rational world; actually, such stories are very common in all forms of ancient literature, including their history books, as well as in other cultures. It really depends on our prior assumptions: if we rule such things out as impossible in advance, then they have no place in a historical account today. On the other hand, if we accept and believe in Jesus as the Son of God who was raised from the dead, then it should not be surprising that he could do extraordinary things.”[2]
Right from the get-go, Mr Burridge lays out how keen he is to forgo any form of critical analysis of the Bible by immediately accepting that everything in it is true – “if we accept and believe in Jesus as the Son of God who was raised from the dead, then it should not be surprising that he could do extraordinary things”. This cannot in anyway be called an objective statement.
Historian and biblical researcher Richard Carrier also lays into Bruce Chilton, a well known American scholar of early Christianity and Judaism. He cites Chilton as saying ‘Jesus is acknowledged as a figure of history’ due to ‘the unearthing of new information’ consisting of ‘both literary documentation and archaeological evidence’. Carrier then points out that almost none of this ‘new information’ mentions or attests to Jesus or even early Christianity while that which does mention Jesus is nothing more than late fictions about him. He then accuses Chilton of being ‘disingenuous at best, and deceitful at worst’.[3]
Another major problem we come across with biblical scholarship is that many biblical scholars are employed by theological or denominational dominated institutions. This may not be too bad if those institutions allowed scholarship to exist that went against their ethos, but in many cases, they don’t.
Of these employing institutions, at least 41% require that their employee's sign or verbally confirm a statement of faith or similar religious commitment. One University has this to say about the consequences for failure to adhere to their faith statement
“Whenever a member of the Board of Trustees, administrative officer, professor, teacher or instructor is not in complete accord with the foregoing Doctrinal Statement, he or she shall forthwith withdraw from all connections with the University, and his or her failure to do so shall constitute grounds for immediate removal from such positions by the Trustees”[4]
This kind of theological dictatorship has implications. There have been many cases where well-meaning Christian biblical scholars have lost their jobs or been seriously hampered by saying something that supposedly goes against their institution’s constraints. In his book ‘Jesus: Mything in Action, Vol. 1’ David Fitzgerald looks at the cases of six scholars who have suffered because of this. They are Mike Licona, Peter Enns, Bruce Waltke and Anthony Le Donne who lost their jobs, Christopher Rollston who lost his tenured position and Tom Thompson who suffered years of harassment.[5]
Because of this poisonous atmosphere, the level of critical scholarship in biblical studies is extremely poor. As Raphael Lataster notes;
“There is not much more that needs to be said about the methods of mainstream Historical Jesus researchers at this point; they’re terrible.” [6]
As a final point, it is interesting to note that all scholars who advocate a historical Jesus have access to the same sources yet draw a wealth of widely differing conclusions. As the Jesus historicist John Dominic Crossan has acknowledged:-
But that stunning diversity is an academic embarrassment. It is impossible to avoid the suspicion that historical Jesus research is a very safe place to do theology and call it history, to do autobiography and call it biography [7]
So, it is against this background that Richard Carrier has undertaken a completely new and probability-based approach to the question of whether a historical Jesus existed. We shall start examining the evidence in the next post.
Sources
[1] Upton Sinclair. I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked, Berkely; CA: University of California Press, 1994, p. 109)
[2] Richard Burridge. 'Introduction to the History of Christianity'. Minneapolis MN: Fortress Press, 2013. P31.
[3] ‘On The Historicity of Jesus; Why We Might Have Reason For Doubt’. by Richard Carrier. Chapter 2. The Hypothesis of Historicity. Section 2. 'The Basic Problem'. 2014 Sheffield Phoenix Press.
[4] Jesus: Mything in Action by David Fitzerald. Volume 1. Chapter two: Bias Cut.
[5] Jesus: Mything in Action by David Fitzerald. Volume 1. Chapter two: Bias Cut.
[6] ‘Jesus Did Not Exist – A Debate Among Atheists’ by Raphael Lataster with Richard Carrier. 2015. Chapter 3, The case for agnosticism.
[7] Jesus: Mything in Action by David Fitzerald. Volume 1. Chapter three: Who Do Men Say that I am? citing from John Crossan’s book ‘The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (1993)
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