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Jesus Mythicism 1: The Tacitus Reference to Jesus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was one of the most reliable of all Roman historians and many first century figures are known to us solely through his mention of them. This means his passing reference to...
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Jesus Mythicism 2: “James, the Brother of the Lord”
It makes sense that the sect which survived Jesus’ execution would be more likely to leave an early historical trace than Jesus himself, given his relative obscurity in his lifetime. Seeing that this...
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Jesus Mythicism 3: “No Contemporary References to Jesus”
One of the more common arguments among online supporters of the Jesus Myth thesis is an argument from silence: “There are no contemporary references to Jesus, therefore he did not exist”....
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PZ Myers and “Jesus Agnosticism”
New Atheist blogger and biologist, PZ Myers is an honest guy. He admits he finds the issue of the historicity of Jesus baffling and knows this is largely because he has no training in history. As a...
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History for Atheists on the Non Sequitur Show 4: Jesus Mythicism
My fourth appearance on the Non Sequitur Show was by request and I strove to explain why Jesus Mythicism is not parsimonious and why the majority of scholars conclude a historical Jesus most likely...
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Jesus the Apocalyptic Prophet
For over a century, scholarship on the origins of Christianity has been dealing with a fundamental issue – the Jesus in the earliest Christian texts is presented as preaching an eschatological message...
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Jesus Mythicism 4: Jesus as an Amalgam of Many Figures
When discussing the historicity of Jesus and debating the claims of Jesus Mythicists I often come across people who take the view that there may be at least some historical basis for Jesus, but there...
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Jesus Mythicism 5: The Nazareth “Myth”
Not only is the idea that Jesus came from Nazareth a common element in all four canonical gospels, it also seems to have been an awkward fact that did not fit well with the gospel writers’ claim he...
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Jesus Mythicism 6: Paul’s Davidic Jesus in Romans 1:3
The opening of Paul’s letter to the Romans contains a statement that Jesus was a descendant of King David (Romans 1:3). Most Jesus Mythicists claim that Paul only believed in Jesus as a celestial...
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Jesus Mythicism 7: Josephus, Jesus and the ‘Testimonium Flavianum’
Mythicists like to claim that the issue of the authenticity of Josephus’ account of Jesus – the so-called “Testimonium Flavianum” – is settled. They insist that the passage is a wholesale forgery,...
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