Radical idea that sort of fits, but I suspect biblical scholars will have no trouble poking holes in it.
I'm not a Christian, and I have no skin in the game. That is, it makes no difference to me whether or not Jesus was an historical person. But here's where I disagree with the author, and the conventional wisdom generally: "Christianity" isn't what's causing these things. What causes them is human nature, hegemony, paternalism, greed, etc. Christianity just happens to be the substrate on which they have operated for centuries. If it were never convened as a religion, there would have been something else. One need only to look to the similar myths of other religions to see that Christianity isn't really any different from the rest, although its core tenets of charity and anti-materialism seem to be quite peace promoting when taken literally. Anyway, my point is that people were warring and greedy before Christianity, and would have been warring and greedy still had Christianity never been invented. Many of the worst things of the Church were all holdovers from the Roman Empire anyway, after they usurped the church authority from the small groups of practitioners.Although Christianity can be a comfort to some, it can also be very damaging and repressive, an insidious form of mind control that has led to blind acceptance of serfdom, poverty, and war throughout history.
I'll open with my bias, I am religious, but even with the lack of evidence presented in this press release there are a few things I'm not to sure about (as much as I can surmise without actually hearing his argument). Firstly, his overarching theory of population control reads like a conspiracy theory. Roman aristocrats spent thousands of hours, constructing the story of jesus, wrote it in a book, and then just hoped that it would catch on? As many unexpected routes that propaganda seems to take today, that seems like a lot of work for something that "might" work. Even then, they constructed a story so bulletproof that it tricked scholars for centuries? Sure religions come and go, but religions that end up being used as population control (egyptian pharaoh as a god strikes me as most obvious), these rose though centuries of cultural development. None of them were just "thought up" by a group of aristocrats. They developed to a point where they could be exploited. Secondly, him playing the "every scholar before me missed it" card doesn't inspire confidence. If he has a legitimate theory, I'll hear him out, but (and I realize this is just a press release) it seems flimsy at best. Plenty of people have tried to disprove god or jesus plenty of times, whether through physics or philosophy, but so far nobody has been able to inspire the religion ending effect they hope for.
Christianity is not going anywhere. It would not matter how concrete the evidence was. We are talking about people (not all but many) that don't think Carbon dating is legitimate anyways, unless the artifacts being dated support their claims. Hell, many Christians think the world is less than 3k years old. When the crux of your belief system hinges solely on faith, who cares about evidence?
Christian here with 4 year, fully accredited bachelor degree in Biblical Studies (meaning I've spent a little time thinking about this academically). I'd humbly like to add to to the conversation: You'll find that it's a vocal minority that hold to "Young Earth Creationism" (earth is less that 6k years old). Think of it like the Tea Party minority that is bugging up the House of Representatives at the moment. Many well studied men and women of faith don't believe that the earth is that young; one professor of mine with a doctorate in theology was an unashamed Theistic Evolutionist (meaning he was of the mind that evolution as popular science posits is true and that it was set in motion by God. He did not see it in conflict with the Christian scriptures). This goes along with Carbon Dating for some though a few that I have talked to don't like CD not because it doesn't match what they believe but because there have sometimes been irregularities (the claim is that some dating done after the eruption of Mt St Helens in 1980 gave false positives of deep time when it should not have - I'm not a scientist so I can't comment on that). As to your last statement, it is true that a large part of Christianity is based on faith. However, "blind" faith is not common in academic circles and having at least some foundational ground to stand on is quite important. Sort of an evidence first but willingness to take the unknown on faith until further evidence can be found (a standpoint taken by many in non-Christian circles including science: "I have this theory, the limited evidence I have accumulated supports it but my hypothesis remains the same until I can get more evidence".
First of all welcome to the discussion, it will be nice having a biblical scholar in the house :)"I have this theory, the limited evidence I have accumulated supports it but my hypothesis remains the same until I can get more evidence".
-To that end, should evidence come to light regarding the Christ story showing that it was fabricated by the Romans, how would that effect your faith? It seems there are those that worship Christ and those that worship Christ's teachings. If Christ "the man" were found to be fiction, would it make the teachings any less valid?
"Biblical Scholar" might be giving me a little too much credit but I thank you anyways. :) I think something like that would make me dig a bit deeper to understand the implications but I have no fear that Jesus, the person, was real. Other sources from that era such as Josephus (Jewish historian who worked for Rome) or Tacitus (arguably the greatest historian of the 1st century who was also Roman) mention Jesus the man or at the least his early followers. Tacitus takes sort of an "they are an annoyance who get what they deserve" approach in book 15 of the Annals of Rome (part in brackets added by myself): "Consequently, to get rid of the report [of him being the cause of the fire], Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the worldfind their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired." - http://classics.mit.edu/Tacitus/annals.11.xv.html All this to say that I'm confident that Jesus was a real person and that his followers have nearly always been on the short end of the stick.
Does anyone else think it strange that the Romans would create a fictional character who was tortured and executed by the Romans as the basis for a religion which wouldn't hate the Romans?They surmised that the way to stop the spread of zealous Jewish missionary activity was to create a competing belief system. That's when the 'peaceful' Messiah story was invented. Instead of inspiring warfare, this Messiah urged turn-the-other-cheek pacifism
It's an intriguing idea, and the logic sounds good (for a novel, at least). Whether or not it's demonstrably true depends on what these ancient confessions are. I haven't found out what they are or what they say, so it seems like an awful lot hinges on them. Without a good confession, it's just a theory.
It would be great if they provided some examples. So much for The Lost Tomb of Jesus.What seems to have eluded many scholars is that the sequence of events and locations of Jesus ministry are more or less the same as the sequence of events and locations of the military campaign of [Emperor] Titus Flavius as described by Josephus.
I can't tell if this is actually serious or not (I've been burned before), but at the very least his claim that it was all written by Romans in 100 AD should be scoffed at by Biblical linguists, according to my limited knowledge of the subject.
It was in Shane Claiborne's book Jesus for President that I first was exposed to the idea that the procession of kinging a Caesar is remarkably similar to Jesus's execution. Since then, I have always thought that the Christian writings must have been a political document. I am happy to hear that this line of thinking is now being discussed.