Before we begin, please view this short 18 second clip:

Bart Ehrman. Video © Mythicist Milwaukee, 2016.

As Bart says above and will wholeheartedly agree, I don’t think Christians are foolish. There are many types of atheists, and again as Bart puts it, some are atheist fundamentalist, every bit as bad as a fundamental Christian. This is kind of where the mythicist belief has crept in, and I will agree with Bart on that as well. Where we are different is that I am not agnostic on Yahweh – I am convinced that he does not exist as a real physical entity, and exists only in mythology.

The tendency to gravitate towards beliefs on the extremes like mythicism is typical of inter-group bias. It’s no different to what happens within religions. People think that it sound like an intelligent argument – but that’s largely because they’re not historians and don’t know how to evaluate ancient literary evidence. It’s also because they don’t understand the answer to the question “why was Jesus special if he was an ordinary man?” I think Jesus of Nazareth was a special person, and I’ll explain why in a moment.

Mythicism is not taken seriously in scholarly circles. As an atheist, attaching yourselves to these outlandish claims makes all of us atheists look like closed-minded tinfoil-hat wearing nut cases. Despite this Bart recently agreed to debate one of the two prominent mythicist scholars – Robert Price. Bob did not appear up to the task frankly, he did not so much engage in a debate, rather he gave an overview of why he doubted the historicity of Jesus and then concluded by saying it was on a knife’s edge and could be disproved any time with a “new discovery”. Bob appears to have his beliefs and to be set in them – as is the case in fact with all mythicist scholars. You’d have to be joking to say that Richard Carrier doesn’t have a vested interest, and Thomas Brodie has held the same mythicist belief from before he even studied to become a scholar and a priest. Brodie is unique in being a devout Catholic Priest convinced that Jesus didn’t exist – which I hope shows that this belief is not unique to atheists.

So what then is the evidence?

The primary evidence for the historicity of Jesus are the four Christian gospels. Secondary to that are the genuine epistles of Paul. And thirdly there is the Epistle of James. That’s it in a nutshell.

The Epistle of James is often overlooked, it wasn’t even mentioned by Bart in his recent debate (even though he mentions the SotM). Yet the Epistle of James is unique in that the author knows of the Sermon on the Mount, and uses its teachings prior to the SotM being published in Matthew, but knows about almost nothing else found in the synoptic gospels.

So what makes Jesus special?

Contrary to what Christians think, Jesus was not a perfect man. However he appears to emphasise with marginalised, stigmatised, and low-status people so much so that scholars are convinced that Jesus came from a poor family! The interesting thing though is that the gospels do not ever say that Mary and Joseph were poor, and the nativities that paint them as being so are not considered historical events. For evidence though that perhaps they were in fact well off let’s compare Joseph to Paul of Tarsus. Joseph was said to be a builder, in Nazareth, where there would have been plenty of work for him. Paul is said to be a tentmaker, and the book of Acts makes it pretty clear he is well off as he can afford to rent a house out of his own pocket while under house arrest, as well as employ a full time secretary, for two whole years leading up to his presumed execution. Now I’m no expert in classics, but it appears to me that Paul was under house arrest because he could afford to rent his house – if he couldn’t he would have been placed in a Roman prison of some kind. It also appears to me that if tentmakers were wealthy people, then likely the same would be true for carpenters.

This at least gives us some insight into Jesus’s background. He wasn’t from a dirt-poor family – even if carpenters in Nazareth were not wealthy people, they still would have been well off as their service was in demand at that time in history. They weren’t lowly fishermen after all. The other thing that suggests to us that Jesus wasn’t poor as scholars assume, is the fact that he clearly could read the Hebrew scriptures for himself. This is demonstrated clearly when Jesus goes to the synagogue in Nazareth, reads from Isaiah, and is rejected and chased out of town. This event is considered historical by scholars. And it is generally assumed that the poor in ancient world were illiterate.

So Jesus’s empathy with people of low social status is remarkable – as is some of his teachings. And in particular you will not find a better example of this than the Parable of the Good Samaritan. In modern day terms it would be like giving a parable of the “Good Jihadist”. The other thing Jesus did not like was the religious leaders exploiting the laity. This is possibly what motivated him to perform his own healing ceremonies – which the gospels paint as being very popular. Although you may scoff at the idea of faith healings, the fact is that Jesus offered these healings to people like lepers who no one else would. And even today just offering people prayer can be very powerful for believers.

So I think it’s a shame there are people that doubt the existence of demonstrably good people like Jesus of Nazareth, simply because they want to be right. Jesus did exactly the same thing in his day that atheists like us do today – he challenged the religious authorities of his day. He disputed their beliefs, and boldly held his own – even in the face of oppression. If Jesus were alive today he would have made a terrific atheist!