More Reflections on the Historical Jesus — First Response to Matthew
This is the next instalment in an exchange between Matthew and myself on the question of the historical Jesus. It will only make sense if you are familiar with my first article and his response.
I’m not sure what Matthew was expecting when he invited me to participate in this discussion. I thought it would be a rational debate, discussing various points at an intellectual level. I follow his writing on Medium, and appreciate it. He is very thoughtful, intelligent and well-read. So it was somewhat surprising that he has responded with what seems to me a highly charged emotional piece, a ‘rant’ as he himself puts it. This leads me to suspect that I might have hit some kind of raw nerve.
He describes the books I have referenced as conspiracy theories. As I put it to him in an email (I assume before he published): “The term ‘conspiracy theory’ is somewhat silly. It is used by political authorities and the media in the hope that the foolish public will dismiss the claims out of hand without considering the merits or the truth of the theory. In our current context, it can also be used by professional academics in the same way to dismiss independent researchers whose conclusions they don’t like”.
There are of course some bonkers conspiracy theories, but another term for the good ones would be serious investigative journalism. That is what I believe is required when we seek to explore the origins of Christianity.
Rather than address the actual content of my article, Matthew chooses to consistently abuse the books I mentioned, and make several appeals to authority, which is a well-known logical fallacy. He sometimes refers to ‘most scholars’ or some such term, but also mentions specifically Bart Ehrman and N. T. Wright. He says that the latter “rejected debating (Freke and Gandy) on the basis that it would be like debating someone who thought the moon was made of cheese”.
Wright is an educated, intelligent, well-known scholar who, as it so happens, is frequently cited to me as an authority by other Medium Christians (e.g. Gerald R. Baron and David Knott). He starts, however, from a committed Christian perspective and is a Christian apologist (he is, after all, a former Anglican bishop); he can hardly be considered therefore an objective voice. Refusing to debate with someone may possibly be because you think that would be a waste of your time, but it might also be used as an excuse to avoid having some holes in your position exposed. To claim that his refusal to debate in some way proves his position, as Matthew appears to do, cannot be taken seriously.
Bart Ehrman is a respected scholar who I have a lot of time for (I own some books by him). That doesn’t make him omniscient, however; he is merely one person expressing his opinion. What Matthew conveniently forgets to mention is that, having been brought up in a conservative Christian environment, then having studied the texts themselves and become a biblical scholar, he became aware of the various contradictions in, and problems with, the manuscripts. For a while he became a more liberal Christian, but later became an agnostic atheist. That is what a serious study of the New Testament might do for you!
Matthew picks out two works that I referenced “as apparently legitimate sources of historical consideration”. The first is The Jesus Mysteries: Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God? by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. He goes off into a rant about this without addressing any of the actual issues. It would have been far more interesting if he had tried to refute the other book I mentioned on the same theme, Tom Harpur’s The Pagan Christ. This followed on from works of monumental scholarship on the ancient Egyptian religion by, for example, Gerald Massey. Did Matthew try to refute that section? No. I wonder why.
The second book he selects is Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. In response to an email from him prior to his publication, I wrote: “regarding HBHG, the Priory of Sion is or was a secret society with an unknown and possibly dubious agenda. But this was regarding the bloodline, which may well have been a hoax. However, I only reference the book with regard to one out of five theories, and there the authors’ analysis is based almost exclusively on the gospels. Rather than dismiss them as conspiracy theorists, your time would be better spent explaining why Jesus was executed by the Romans for claiming to be King of the Jews, as in all four gospels, what Mark meant by ‘the insurrection’, and so on”.
Has Matthew done this? No, and instead he has gone off on a lengthy diatribe completely irrelevant to my article, which I had told him about in advance and about which I was willing to agree with him. What he wrote in his article is therefore a pathetic attempt to make me look stupid. Why is he so afraid to discuss the actual issues raised by the gospel texts as outlined in my article?
Matthew gives the impression that I was endorsing the five objections/ theories in my article. This was not the case. All I was doing was mentioning five alternative arguments which anyone who believes in the conventional Christian story would need to address. Matthew goes off into a rant about them, dismissing them as conspiracy theories, without actually dealing with the content.
For example, I mentioned the reference in John’s gospel to myrrh and aloes being brought to the tomb of Jesus, where I said that “myrrh is claimed to be a form of sedative, and is also used for its restorative properties and as an analgesic. Aloes is a strong and fast-acting purgative, which would therefore have been useful to help expel the poison from Jesus’s body”. An appropriate response to this would have been something along the lines of: that may have been believed at some time in the past, but recent scientific studies have shown that this was not in fact the case. Matthew instead completely ignores this issue, even though it is in the text of John’s gospel, which he presumably admires and considers factual and authoritative.
On the same theme, Matthew mentions “Abelard Reuchlin’s obscure, unevidenced and ridiculous speculations”, giving the impression that I was endorsing them. I did in fact express my reservations about that text myself, saying that it was hard to take it seriously, but merely that the same conclusions had been arrived at by later authors.
Matthew describes my assumption that “that apparently ignorant Christians are unaware of all this ‘controversial’ information” as patronising, in which case I apologise. From some responses I’ve noted that Christians do indeed discuss such material, which is to be welcomed. It would be interesting to know what effect if any such discussions have.
During his ‘rant’ Matthew mentions “the claim that Jesus was a magic mushroom”, and that “Jesus was a magic mushroom and the apostles were all using elaborate euphemisms for psychedelics”. He is referring here to the book by John Allegro, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. The question of Christianity and psychedelics would probably be best left to a later date, if he would like to bring that up again, (He has mentioned it in this recent article of his. )
Matthew’s closing implication that the theories I’ve mentioned are merely something “you happen to read on the internet” is frankly ridiculous and insulting. These are all published books. Whether or not you agree with their conclusions is of course up to you.
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