The purpose of this research is to refute the christian apologist strategy of rewriting fictional jesus as a “minor figure” or just a “blip on the radar of history.”
Our Research Paper:
~66 Famous Historians and Writers From The 1st and 2nd Century, Who Never Mentioned Fictional jesus – The Screaming Silence of Real History
Today, jesus is so famous that you could take:
The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, William Shakespeare, Albert Einstein, Christopher Columbus, Leonardo Da Vinci, Pablo Piccaso, Vincent Van Gogh, Ludwig van Beethoven, Napoleon, Gandhi, Walt Disney, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Michelangelo, George Washington, Thomas Edison, Sigmund Freud, Isaac Newton, Neil Armstrong, Mozart, Samuel L Jackson, Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Joe Namath, Peyton Manning, Emmitt Smith, Lawrence Taylor, Joe Montana, Muhammad Ali, Rocky Marciano, Joe Frazier, Evandeer Holyfield, Mike Tyson, Pele, David Beckham, Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, Rafael Nadal, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Arnold Palmer, Michael Phelps, Carl Lewis, Dale Earnhardt, Jimmie Johnson, David Pearson, Jeff Gordon, Richard Petty, Wayne Gretzky, as well as Mario Lemieux and combine them as one person.
Then, mix in the magic of David Copperfield, Harry Houdini, David Blaine and Criss Angel, with the medical genius of Jonas Salk, Alexander Fleming, Sir William Osler, Harvey Williams Cushing, Christiaan Barnard, Joseph Lister, and Michael DeBakey.
This super-fame-magic-medical man, still couldn’t come close to the bible’s fictional character of jesus, as he is believed in by so many, today.
~But was he famous during his claimed New Testament life in the first century?
Most followers would laugh at such a silly question and say yes but that belief is shifting, in order to cover-up why nobody ever wrote about him during his claimed life and over 100+ years later.
In the “invention stage” of christianity, jesus’ fame was vital and it was used gloriously to spread their religion, but now it is a MAJOR problem for the Church and their apologists.
Much to the church’s miscalculations, people are now free to question without the church arresting and killing them. I don’t think the church ever figured on their slip of total power along with our amazing information and communication era that we have today.
Free-Thinkers and non-christians have researched the story of jesus and found that every single claim, aspect and detail of jesus has absolutely ZERO evidence. There is nothing except the bible. The christian leaders around the world have been scrambling in a desperation to prove their claims but they hold an empty basket. They pump out more apologists, “scholars,” theocrats and theologians than ever before but they only have one book to go with.
Their strategy is simple. They have to lie and repeatedly, so it sticks; and it sure has.
~Who is John P. Meier?
John Paul Meier (born 1942) is a biblical “scholar” and Catholic priest. He attended St. Joseph’s Seminary and College (B.A., 1964), Gregorian University Rome (S.T.L, 1968), and the Biblical Institute Rome (S.S.D., 1976). He is author of the series A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (4 v.), six other books, and more than 70 articles for peer-reviewed or solicited journals or books.
Meier is the William K. Warren Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. His fields include biblical studies and Christianity/Judaism in antiquity. Before coming to Notre Dame, he was professor of New Testament at The Catholic University of America.
John Meier is a leader in the “jesus-blip on the screen of history” strategy. He wants people to believe that jesus would have been a minor figure of the 1st century, thus explaining the lack of evidence on their side.
John Meier argues against John Remsberg’s list (from his book, The Christ.) of over 40 writers, who are silent about jesus:
“Why should any of these people have mentioned Jesus?”
“The list is presented flat, as though it is obvious that merely by being in the same century as Jesus, something requires these writers to make mention of him. “
“This argument goes, “Surely if a miracle worker like Jesus existed, there writers would have mentioned him.” But this argument lacks a certain perspective. It assumes that any non-Christian author who heard about Jesus would automatically believe, and therefore consider worth reporting, any stories about him – without any critical consideration. “
“In fact, the immediate reaction of people in the first century to the story of Jesus would have been one of disgust and disdain. Jesus would not be considered worthy of report, and stories of his miracle-working would have been immediately dismissed. Why?”
Biblical “scholar,” John Meier offers these reasons why someone like Jesus would not make it into the typical ancient history:
As far as the historians of the day were concerned, he was just a “blip” on the screen.
Jesus did not address the Roman Senate, or write extensive Greek philosophical treatises; he never traveled outside of the regions of Palestine, and was not a member of any known political party. It is only because Christians later made Jesus a “celebrity” that He became known. Biblical scholar E. P. Sanders, comparing Jesus to Alexander, notes that the latter “so greatly altered the political situation in a large part of the world that the main outline of his public life is very well known indeed. Jesus did not change the social, political and economic circumstances in Palestine …the superiority of evidence for Jesus is seen when we ask what he thought.” Biblical scholar Murray Harris adds that “Roman writers could hardly be expected to have foreseen the subsequent influence of Christianity on the Roman Empire and therefore to have carefully documented” Christian origins.
Jesus was executed as a criminal, providing him with the ultimate marginality. This was one reason why historians would have ignored Jesus. He suffered the ultimate humiliation, both in the eyes of Jews (Deut. 21:23 - Anyone hung on a tree is cursed!) and the Romans (He died the death of slaves and rebels.). On the other hand, Jesus was a minimal threat compared to other “Messiahs” of the time. Rome had to call out troops to quell the disturbances caused by the unnamed Egyptian referenced in the Book of Acts. In contrast, no troops were required to suppress Jesus’ followers. To the Romans, the primary gatekeepers of written history at the time, and others who wrote history, Jesus during His own life would have been no different than thousands of other everyday criminals that were crucified.
Jesus marginalized himself by being occupied as an itinerant preacher. Of course, there was no Palestine News Network, and even if there had been one, there were no televisions to broadcast it. Jesus never used the established “news organs” of the day to spread His message. He traveled about the countryside, avoiding for the most part (and with the exception of Jerusalem) the major urban centers of the day. How would we regard someone who preached only in sites like, say, Hahira, Georgia?
Jesus’ teachings did not always jibe with, and were sometimes offensive to, the established religious order of the day. It has been said that if Jesus appeared on the news today, it would be as a troublemaker. He certainly did not make many friends as a preacher.
Jesus lived an offensive lifestyle and alienated many people. He associated with the despised and rejected: Tax collectors, prostitutes, and the band of fishermen He had as disciples.
Jesus was a poor, rural person in a land run by wealthy urbanites. Yes, class discrimination was alive and well in the first century also!
Therefore, “Remsberg’s List” fails as an argument because it lacks perspective.
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Funny, how they really have to marginalize their jesus, in an attempt to try to make this strategy seem to work. There are many people in the 1st century that WERE written about, that a majority of Meier’s 5 points would describe as well. His 5 points, in no way represent factual prerequisites of who gets lost to our history books.
In order to establish why a secular historian would refuse to write about jesus, Meier offers:
“Jesus’ teachings did not always jibe with, and were sometimes offensive to, the established religious order of the day.”
Meier’s bible claim would actually draw much more attention by historians on either side of religion. This would make jesus stick out of the crowd of rabbis. His claim points to a grand conspiracy between almost several dozen historians and writers of the time.
Meier, also questioned the honesty and integrity of church leaders by claiming that jesus was pretty much a “nobody” and then stated: “Christians later made Jesus a “celebrity.” He has to admit that the New Testament writers were writing fiction about his claimed “historical” jesus. He acknowledges deceit and dishonesty in the Christian doctrine.
A historian of that time, does not have to “believe” (As Meier claims) that jesus is who he claims, in order to report the largest news story of the 1st century.
According to the bible, jesus had tens of thousands of followers and most everyone in the Middle East knew who he was. The same, one book that Meier uses to dismiss his jesus’ fame, can be used to debunk Meier’s claim. As a bible scholar, Meier has to know the mountain of bible evidence that disproves his claims. Yet, he makes these false statements. The bible debunks the bible despite Christian claims that the bible proves the bible.
“Jesus was a poor?” With 10,000+ followers, he would have been well off.
~Now, let’s see the counter-evidence:
~The bible claims that fictional jesus was one of the Most Famous people of the 1st century, with tens of thousands of followers – The New Testament is the ONLY Source for jesus.
~66 Famous Historians and Writers From The 1st and 2nd Century, Who Never Mentioned Fictional jesus – The Screaming Silence of Real History
http://tmblr.co/ZkpfQtnCiu1a
~See Richard Carrier’s work on the same subject:
A Silence That Screams (No contemporary historical accounts for jesus)
From the above link: Counter-arguments
For those who wish to respond to this Essay:
First, those who wish to question my argument from Silence, please recognize that my argument not only meets all of the requirements, it actually meets the criteria required for a strengthened Argument from silence
Now, if you still wish to respond, unless you have entirely new points to raise, please save yourself some time and note which of the canned excuses you’re selecting:
No one would have noticed, because "Jesus” was a minor figure.
This response simply ignores the essay. Reread the opening points on the book of Mark, which demonstrate that the Jesus presented in the Gospels cannot be sanely held to be a figure that anyone could ignore, no matter their pre-xistent beliefs.
Richard Carrier writes:
One could say that Jesus was an insignificant, illiterate, itinerant preacher with a tiny following, who went wholly unnoticed by any literate person in Judaea. However, this would not bode well for anyone who wished to maintain he was God, or did any of the more amazing things attributed to him. It is very implausible, for instance, that a biography would be written for the obscure itinerant philosopher Demonax in his own lifetime (by Lucian), yet God Incarnate, or a Great Miracle Worker who riled up all Judaea with talk, should inspire nothing like it until decades after his death. And though several historians wrote on Judaean affairs in the early 1st century (not just Josephus and Tacitus, but several others no longer extant), none apparently mentioned Jesus (see the Secular Web library on Historicity). Certainly, had anyone done so, the passages would probably have been lovingly preserved by 2nd century Christians, or else inspired angry rebuttals.
For instance, the attacks of Celsus, Hierocles, and Porphyry, though destroyed by Christians and thus no longer extant (another example of the peculiar problem of Christian history discussed above), nevertheless remain attested in the defenses written by Origen, Eusebius, and Macerius Magnes. But no earlier attacks are attested. There is no mention of Christians in Plutarch’s attack On Superstition, nor a rebuttal to any attack on Christianity in Seneca’s lost work On Superstition (which ruthlessly attacked pagans and Jews, as attested in book 10 of Augustine’s City of God), so it seems evident Christians got no mention even there, in a text against alien cults, by a man who would have witnessed the Neronian persecution of 64 A.D. (alternatively, the fact that this is the only work of Seneca’s not to be preserved, despite the fact that Christians must surely have been keen to preserve an anti-pagan text by a renowned pagan, might mean it contained some damning anti-Christian material and was suppressed, though Augustine clearly had access to the work and says nothing about such content). All of this suggests a troubling dichotomy for believers: either Jesus was a nobody (and therefore not even special, much less the Son of God) or he did not exist.[24]
“The people I listed wouldn’t care about writing about a god striding the earth in earthly form, attracting throngs of people and working miracles… because they preferred to focus on other things… like philosophy.”
Response: Sure, and people dealing with philosophy, the meaning of life, matters of the true nature of existence, would not be interested in a godman striding the earth, working miracles, offering redemption, because such things have nothing to do with the meaning of life…
Please think your argument through. It relies on circular logic when the very conclusion of such an argument is being ruled out in the first place: Had they encountered such a being, it’s unlikely that they would have carried on writing about other matters in the first place. The fact that they did focus on other matters works against you, not for you.
We would never expect disinterested parties, or outright ‘enemies’ of Christianity to record it, since it would not serve their purposes.
First, we would expect to hear criticisms and attacks from enemies.
But more importantly, this is circular logic. If the book of Mark, a book that reports epoch shattering events, is a historical account, then how could there be so many disinterested third parties and outright enemies of Christianity in the first place? It is simply begging the question to assume that doubters would remain doubters, even in the face of overwhelming evidence as per the claims of the book of Mark. It is simply backwards logic to argue that doubters would simply remain doubters: the more parsimonious explanation is that these amazing events didn’t occur in the first place. This better explains the silence.
As Richard Carrier writes:
“Of course, if the evidence were really so clear, there would not be many enemies in the first place: many leading, literate Jews would have converted, many more than just Paul, and all would have left us letters and documents about their experiences and reasons. But that would fall under the category of eyewitness testimony, of which we have none, except Paul, who of course never testifies to ever meeting Jesus in the flesh, to seeing the empty grave, or to seeing the actual corpse of Jesus rising and talking. In fact, Paul never really says anyone saw these things.
Instead, my category of hostile attestation is distinct from this, for if even those who don’t like it or don’t believe it nevertheless report it, even if only to denounce or deny it or explain it away, that is itself stronger evidence than we now have. For example, if we had what Matthew claims the Jews were saying in Matthew 28:11-15 from a first-century Jewish writer, that would be hostile attestation.[11] Certainly many Jews would have an interest in publishing such lies or explanations, if in fact Christians were making such claims then, and there really were enough Christians making these claims for anyone to care. Instead, the complete absence of any Jewish texts attacking Christianity in the first century is astonishing–unless Christianity was a socially microscopic cult making unverifiably subjective claims of revelations from God that no one could falsify. Otherwise, ancient authors were not beneath writing tracts slandering other people, and later pagan authors had no scruple against attacking the Christians. So why did no one attack the Christians earlier? There are problems here, surely.”[25]
“Remsberg was refuted a long time ago.”
This essay corrects the flaws in his argument. However, while many have pointed out flaws in Remsberg’s original list, his main point still stands: it’s ridiculous to claim that a historian or a philosopher wouldn’t be interested in mentioning that he saw a god man working miracles. In addition, those who questioned the original list by pointing to authors of questionable merit, critics rarely, if ever bothered to concede the existence of early authors whose works are lost to us, but would have been available to second century Christians.
Argument from silence
The Argument from Silence suggests that in the absence of information, the dearth of evidence is in itself a form of evidence.
How to make an Argument from Silence
To be valid, the argument from silence must fulfill two conditions: the writer[s] whose silence is invoked would certainly have known about it; [and] knowing it, he would under the circumstances certainly have made mention of it. When these two conditions are fulfilled, the argument from silence proves its point with moral certainty.
It ought to be clear to even the casual reader that the men I have cited meet both criteria.
In addition, the historian Richard Carrier suggests two additional criteria to strengthen an argument from silence:
1) Whether or not it is common for men to create similar myths.
It is prima facie true that this is the case. History is replete not only with 'god’ claims, but with claims for messiah status.
2) The claim is of an extraordinary nature, it violates what we already know of nature.
(Important note: this is not to rule out extraordinary claims, a priori.)
The miracle claims in the book of Mark violate what we know of nature.
The argument presented here meets the two additional criteria.
Also see: Did Jesus Exist? Earl Doherty and the Argument to Ahistoricity (2002) Richard Carrier
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/jesuspuzzle.html#
Carrier writes: There are two ways to “prove” ahistoricity:
(1) If you can demonstrate that there is both (a) insufficient evidence to believe x and (b) sufficient evidence to disbelieve x, then it is reasonable to disbelieve x. This is the “Argument from Silence.”
(2) If you can demonstrate that all the evidence can be far better accounted for by a theory (y) other than historicity (theory x), then it is reasonable to believe y and, consequently, to disbelieve x. This is the “Argument to the Best Explanation.”
For more on evidential arguments from silence:
http://www.umass.edu/wsp/methodology/outline/silence.html
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