The Secular Frontier

Jacob Berman and Godless engineer debated the historicity of Jesus tonight regarding Paul and other things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgEcgOzkOiU&t I'm mentioning this because the passage in Paul of The Jews killing Jesus (which I first talked about following Benjamin White HERE) came up, as well as Paul's claim that the archons of this aion (rulers of this age) killed Jesus (which I look at in my mythicism essay), meaning the evil spirits controlling the rulers, like the gospels saying Satan entered Judas. This must be the case because for Paul the rulers of this age who killed Jesus were evil, and Paul elsewhere says we should obey our human leaders because they are good and chosen by God (Romans 13:1-7). Of course, these good leaders can do evil, but this is because they can be under the influence of evil spiritual forces. This is why the resurrected Christ indwelling in you and possessing you as a spirit is so important because it sanctifies and purges you of evil influence. In other ... Read Article

In 2011 I was searching for scholarship engaging Christ Myth Theorist Earl Doherty, who argued Jesus never existed, and I found Prof James McGrath’s blog where he was critically blogging through Doherty’s book.  For example: Chapter 1 of Earl Doherty’s Jesus: Neither God Nor Man This year as Public Theology/Philosophy, I tried blogging through “The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus (2024).”  I took 1 to a few excerpts from each chapter and did a little commentary.  Hopefully people will be inspired to read this great book: Complete Index Blogging The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus Anthology Of Essays I'll leave you with a puzzle. You may ask, what of the armless Jesus spoke of in the title?  What good is a Jesus who can’t be crucified?  Star Wars also has the idea of a chosen one, but unlike Jesus he is persuaded by the devil-like Sidious and turns to the dark side.  Arguing against Jesus is like a back and forth light saber fight that you can’t win because Jesus is al ... Read Article

Check out our 3 Mythmas posts for this year: Christmas and Genealogies: The Adoption of Jesus by Joseph in Matthew and Luke Merry Midrash: A Late Christmas Present with Dr Robert M Price Did Jesus Have a Wife? Artificial Intelligence and the Virgin Birth And, from Secular Web Kids, Darth Harley, Bark Lord of the Sith wants to wish everyone a Merry Sithmas: ... Read Article

When we think about Jesus as the Messiah / King of the Jews, if we think of the virgin birth and Jesus being distanced there from the impurity of the sexual, I wondered what Grok 2 AI might say about sexuality and purity of such kings in the bible. Here's the response I got: The Bible provides several insights into the sexual purity expected of kings, though it often does so through narratives and laws that apply broadly to all Israelites, with specific examples and consequences for kings: General Teachings on Sexual Purity: The Bible emphasizes that sexual purity is part of God's will for all His people. For instance, 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 states, "For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God." This principle of purity extends to everyone, including kings, as they are expected to be exemplars of moral behavior. ... Read Article

It is generally accepted by scholars that the New Testament is in part imitative in nature (see The Jewish Annotated New Testament, for instance).  This reflects the practice of mimesis from the Greeks (as Dennis MacDonald and Robyn Faith Walsh show, the New Testament being written in Greek), and Haggadic Midrash for the Hebrew tradition.  For example, Dennis MacDonald makes a compelling case that the earliest stratum of the Gospel of John imitates Euripides’s “Bacchae.”  And so for instance regarding the Jewish tradition, Mark constructs his crucifixion narrative by rewriting Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, Matthew adds recapitulating the Wisdom of Solomon, and Matthew constructs Jesus’s portrait by framing him as the new and greater Moses.    Why were the writers doing this?  We do the same thing today when we say someone is the same as or greater than a famous figure in history.  Here are 2 examples along the lines of the recent election propaganda I created: ... Read Article

So often when we consider the Christmas story we think of the Virgin Birth, but often overlook the bloodline genealogies. And this makes sense because if Jesus is not Joseph's blood child, why should we care about Joseph's genealogy in Matthew or Luke. But, there may be more going on than meets the eye. I'll recapitulate what I said last time about Matthew's genealogy: (1) With Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus (really of Joseph) we see Joseph adopted Jesus into a family with a Davidic royal bloodline. This fits in with the idea that Jesus was to restore the Davidic throne. God, after all, had promised the Davidic throne would be reestablished. Yet in Jesus’s time, there was little chance of that happening with Imperial Rome. But here’s a further problem. Rich Robinson notes: According to the genealogy in Matthew 1:12, Jesus is a descendant of Jeconiah. But Jeconiah was cursed in Jeremiah 22:24 and 22:30: As surely as I live,” declares the LORD, “even if you, Jehoiachin son of Jehoiaki ... Read Article

PREVIOUSLY: Merry Christmas! Jesus’s Bloodline in Matthew NOW: There's another interesting feature of Matthew's genealogy. There are women in it who are associated with sexual immorality in the Old Testament, who Spong labeled the Shady Ladies: The incest of Tamar, the prostitution of Rahab, the seduction of Ruth and the adultery of Bathsheba were the experiences in his ancestry through which Jesus came to be born, as shown in the story of Matthew’s genealogy. All of these women were foreign, and by the standards of that day, all of these women were sexually compromised. This is the way Matthew introduces the story of Jesus’ birth. Sexual immorality in the bible basically suggests that you defile yourself so you can't come into the presence of God. Interestingly, if you look at these women apart from the sexual sense that follows them, they are quite heroic. The symbolism seems to make the obvious connection that Jesus who is born of a mother that knew no sexuality and was only ad ... Read Article

Want to know a fun fact? In Matthew's genealogy of Jesus (really of Joseph) we see Joseph adopted Jesus into a family with a Davidic royal bloodline. This fits in with the idea that Jesus was to restore the Davidic throne. God, after all, had promised the Davidic throne would be reestablished. Yet in Jesus's time, there was little chance of that happening with Imperial Rome. But here's a further problem. Rich Robinson notes: According to the genealogy in Matthew 1:12, Jesus is a descendant of Jeconiah. But Jeconiah was cursed in Jeremiah 22:24 and 22:30: As surely as I live,” declares the LORD, “even if you, Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, were a signet ring on my right hand, I would still pull you off. This is what the LORD says: “Record this man as if childless, a man who will not prosper in his lifetime, for none of his offspring will prosper, none will sit on the throne of David or rule any more in Judah.” Since no descendant of Jeconiah could ever sit on the throne, ... Read Article

Appendix: Response to Richard Carrier’s Review (2024) In the few years since I wrote this essay there have been developments in what scholars call ‘the quest for the historical Jesus.’ One of the main contentions is that if we do not get more rigorous in uncovering the Jesus of history, the idea that Jesus never existed or that we can say nothing about him reliably will become the default position. Justin Meggitt, who has been a target of mythicists, writes: First, even if denial of the historicity of Jesus is rarely found among scholars within the field, the increasing popularity of this position in wider culture is unavoidable. While I won’t rehearse arguments I have made elsewhere about this phenomenon, unless those working in New Testament and Christian origins continue to think critically and publicly about what can be said about Jesus, it is likely that the denial of the historicity of Jesus will very soon become the de facto position in wider popular and academic discourse. Th ... Read Article

A couple of years ago I published a critique of the Christ Myth Theory, which Richard Carrier responded to. Well, hit the refresh button because I've updated the essay with an Appendix that responds to Carrier. Check it out HERE! ... Read Article

WHERE WE ARE In a series of posts about the Hallucination Theory (the view that Jesus' disciples had experiences of the risen Jesus because they had hallucinations of Jesus), one key point that I argued for is that eyewitness testimony is unreliable. This point is also of general relevance to the question: Did God raise Jesus from the dead? That is because the evidence for the claim that God raised Jesus from the dead comes mainly from the Gospels, and the historical reliability of the Gospels is usually supported by the claim that the Gospels contain, or are based upon, eyewitness testimony. So, if eyewitness testimony is unreliable, then this common argument for the historical reliability of the Gospels FAILS. SUMMARIES OF THE RELEVANT POSTS In some of my posts about the Hallucination Theory, I have provided empirical evidence in support of two important factual claims: Human memory is unreliable. Humans are dishonest. In Part 13 of this series, I provided evidence showing tha ... Read Article

Over the last few days, these two debates on the historicity of Jesus have popped up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ick9jHp846Y&t https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7XLQN67Pto&t I just watched Richard Carrier's friend Godless Engineer interview Jacob Berman on the Christ Myth theory.  I liked it very much and Berman said he thought some of the best evidence for the historical Jesus is 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 where Paul says: 14 For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews 15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out; they displease God and oppose everyone 16 by hindering us from speaking to the gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins, but wrath has overtaken them at last. Clearly if Paul thought the Jews killed Jesus then Paul thought Jesus was a hi ... Read Article

In my initial post on the word "miracle", I analyzed eight different definitions of the word “miracle” into seven different elements: IMPACT  GENUS  SPECIES  AGENT/CAUSE  EXCEPTION  BASELINE  PURPOSE  In Part 1 of this series of posts, I argued that the element of IMPACT should be eliminated from definitions of “miracle”. I also suggested that the requirements in the GENUS and SPECIES elements of the definition by Habermas were the best, and that the requirement in the SPECIES element of the definition by Evans was also very good and should be a requirement added to the requirement in the SPECIES element of the definition by Habermas. In Part 2, I argued that the AGENT/CAUSE element should be very broad in terms of a definition that captures the ordinary meaning of the word “miracle” (i.e. the very broad requirement in the definition by Habermas), but that in the context of miracles being put forward as evide ... Read Article

WHERE WE ARE In my initial post on miracles, I analyzed eight different definitions of the word "miracle" into seven different elements: IMPACT – the emotional or psychological effect of a miracle GENUS – the most general category to which a miracle belongs SPECIES – the sub-category (of the most general category) to which a miracle belongs AGENT/CAUSE – the person(s) or kind of being(s) or kind of thing(s) that brings about a miracle EXCEPTION – the way in which a miracle departs from ordinary or normal circumstances BASELINE – the ordinary or normal circumstances from which a miracle departs PURPOSE – the goal or intention behind the making of a miracle In Part 1 of this series of posts, I argued that the element of IMPACT should be eliminated from definitions of "miracle". I also suggested that the GENUS and SPECIES elements of the definition by Habermas were the best, and that the SPECIES element in the definition by Evans was a ... Read Article

WHERE WE ARE I have previously analyzed eight different definitions of the word "miracle" into seven different elements: In Part 1, I examined the elements of Impact, Genus, and Species. In Part 2, I examined the elements of Cause/Agent, Exception, and Baseline. In Part 3, I argued that we should eliminate the Exception and Baseline elements from the definition of the word "miracle" in order to avoid importing questionable or controversial philosophical assumptions into the definition. THE ELEMENT OF PURPOSE In this current post, I will examine Purpose, the seventh element of definitions of "miracle": PURPOSE – the goal or intention behind the making of a miracle Habermas indicates that miracles must have some sort of purpose, they are "effected for a purpose". This seems only to imply that miracles are events that are produced intentionally by some person or agent. If the definition already requires that God be the cause of the event, then this very general requirement is red ... Read Article