Real Historian Responds to "Jesus Was a Myth" Claims

hey and a welcome to the Tuesday livestream I'm Mike winger we're gonna be talking today about the question of whether or not Jesus was really just a myth made up by people that there was in fact no historical Jesus what are the chances the Jesus didn't exist so I want to mention really quickly before I introduce my special guest a real live historian he's gonna be talking with us about this topic the prevalence modern-day prevalence of the idea that Jesus was a myth and it's growing in its influence online at least from my perception it is it started a while ago with the movie zeitgeist the current the current surge in Jesus mythos is stuff and then Bill Maher with his movie Religulous or Religulous or how whatever he pronounces is made-up word and then you know recently there was not two longer there's article on big think where they said there's a growing number of scholars that are questioning the historical existence of Jesus and we we are joined today by an actual historical scholar so he's going to talk about these issues a historical Jesus scholars by the name of dr. Mike like kkona he has a PhD and New Testament studies from the University of Pretoria which he earned with distinction Mike's the author of numerous books one of which the big one I read six hundred page one Mike is again the author of those things he's also been interviewed on by Lee Strobel in his book the case for the real Jesus in 2017 he's elected to full membership and the prestigious Society for New Testament studies he has spoken on more than 100 University campuses appeared on dozens of radio and television programs and right here on mic wingers YouTube channel as well now and he's the associate professor of theology at houston baptist university and the president president of risen jesus incorporated thank you so much for coming dr. michael okona welcome well thanks Mike I'm happy to be on your program man you've got such a reputation now that everybody's just talking about mike winger now it's arias a latent flowers i guess he was one of your guests and pre previously and he was just saying man you're just rock star doing this stuff now so pretty cool well I'm just the guy at his home office making videos about Jesus but but I'm really grateful for the opportunity to have an impact in people's lives and and getting messages from people as I'm sure you have two of their lives being changed so okay here's the first question I have Italy tell the audience we are gonna handle questions from myth assists from those who think Jesus is a myth at the end of this livestream so load your questions we're gonna prioritize just those questions today for this live stream I want to hear from you and I want to give Michael a cone of the chance to respond to your your your thoughts but first let me ask you this because it seems as though there's a disparity between the popular the pop level stuff we see online versus actual scholarship and scholarly ideas and thought about these things so what would you say about how scholars of all stripes are viewing this issue of the historicity of Jesus well at least in my discipline New Testament studies and in the discipline of history it's not a live discussion it's just not discussed in fact just to give you an idea because it has become somewhat popular on the internet and the voices of myth assist are loud even though they're a very small group here's what a couple of current scholars say now one this is Bart Ehrman Herman is an agnostic probably an atheist he's gone back kind of back and forth on this he's a friend of mine I like Mark we get along fine now here's what he says in his book did Jesus exist now just think about it Bart Ehrman has no horse in the race here what mattered him at all if Jesus didn't exist and here's what he writes I do not discuss myth assists in the class since as I've repeatedly indicated the myth assist view does not have a foothold or even a toehold among modern critical scholars of the Bible that's Bart Ehrman now here's one another scholar this guy's an agnostic scholar died a few years just a couple of years ago his name is Mars Casey very respected amongst New Testament scholars in his book Jesus evidence and arguments or myth thesis myths this was the final book that Casey wrote right before he died and he concludes with this that this paragraph he says I therefore conclude that the myth assists arguments are completely spurious from beginning to end they have been mainly put forward by incompetent and unqualified people most of them are former fundamentalist Christians who are not properly aware of critical scholarship then and after conversion to atheism are not properly aware of critical scholarship now they frequently confuse any New Testament scholarship with Christian fundamentalism the mythos disputed therefore be regarded as verifiably false from beginning to end and again Mars Cayce was an agnostic and agnostic bordering on atheism let me give you one more I've got a lot of these but a lot of them are from people in the past these are very current Joseph Hoffman a New Testament scholar I'm he's at minimal and an agnostic probably an atheist he earned his degrees at Harvard and Oxford ended up teaching at Oxford and and here's what he writes on myth assist the disease these buggers spread is ignorance disguised as common sense they are the single greatest threat next to fundamentalism to the calm and considered academic study of religion touting the scientific method as their mode off while ignoring its application to historical study while there is some very slight chance that Jesus did not exist the evidence that he existed is sufficiently and cumulatively strong enough to defeat those doubts so what are scholars saying well that's what scholars are saying today that's what atheist and agnostic historians of Jesus are saying today yeah in fact I get the impression that that by and large they're not really wanting to even talk about this issue because they feel that in even addressing it publicly they're they're legitimizing it somehow yeah that's right I mean it'd be kind of like scientist entertaining the Flat Earth theory you know what I mean or other historians entertaining the hypothesis that the Holocaust never occurred I mean it's really on that level or now you know something from NASA engaged in a debate on whether we actually went to the moon yeah and I understand I appreciate you taking the time to do this and we're for those who were maybe caught up in this Jesus mythos is stuff are you've been influenced by it what we're gonna do right now is we're gonna actually talk about the evidence not just these scholarly opinions but the evidence that those opinions are based upon and so I'd like to ask you Mike to comment on maybe and give us an outline of some of the main lines of evidence we have for the existence of Jesus yeah well first but not primarily first we do even have some non-christian writers of the period who mentioned in Jesus so you have Josephus a Jewish historian who mentions Jesus on two occasions you've won it on one occasion either even mentions his brother James and how he was how he was executed because he wouldn't deny that his brother was the Messiah you've got Tacitus the greatest of all Roman historians who mentions the execution of Jesus you have a historian writing in the middle of the second century named Lucian of Sam Masada and he mentions Jesus's crucifixion in Palestine Tacitus reports Jesus execution during the reign of Tiberius Caesar while punches pilot was procurator of Judea so I mean he even places a time on it now Tacitus and lucian interestingly are not fond at all of Christianity so I mean they're hostile in fact Lucian mocks Christians and Tacitus call it refers to Christianity as an EVE as evil and a mischievous superstition so again they're not fun but yet they of Christians but they they mention Jesus as a historical figure so you even have some non-christian sources who mentioned him you've got Paul and Paul's quite early Paul says that he knew Jesus's brother named James and he was also aware of Jesus having other brothers Paul I mean here he acknowledges that he persecuted the church he persecuted the church and then he converted to Christianity when he believed yet he had an experience that he was can was the risen Jesus appearing to him now here's the thing Paul lived at the same time Jesus lived in fact he lived in the same region and traveled and taught the same region that Jesus had been in he lived in Jerusalem for a while he was at the same festivals Jesus would have been at maybe you could explain that for people who don't know about what do you mean by at the same festivals why would you assume that Paul is saying that vegetables is Jesus the Jews had several festivals every year the main one being the Passover the feast of unleavened bread and he would have been Paul would have certainly been at that he was a Jewish leaders a Pharisee who's climbing up the ladder of Jewish leadership and so he would have been in Jerusalem during Passover the same city at the same time Jesus would have been there and been crucified and Paul says in first Corinthians that Jesus was crucified by the the authorities so he would have been in the same city at the same time in which this would have occurred so imagine if Jesus was a mythical figure fictitious never existed then why would Paul who was persecuting this group who had lived at the same time as Jesus been at the same places at the same time as Jesus knew of believed Jesus had been crucified by the authorities in the same city at the same time at which he was at but he was just a fictitious character and he's gonna convert with no better evidence than that I mean that's just asking way too much so you got Paul Annette and again Paul says that he knew Jesus brothers and then you've got the Gospels and at the very minimum most scholars today the majority of scholars do think that at minimum Mark and John contain eyewitness testimony that Mark was reporting what he had heard Peter speak and that John most scholars don't think that John was written by John the son of Zebedee today I do but most scholars don't but they will at least say that John was either written by a minor disciple of Jesus or whoever wrote John one of Jesus disciples perhaps John the son of Zebedee was that authors primary source for the information that he has so now we've got disciples who are reporting about their master who never existed it's just uh you know so we've got some some decent evidence that Jesus existed it's really hard to account for the the Genesis and and spread of such a movement we're not talking about a fictitious character from the grey distant past but a person who had lived within the lifetime of the authors mm-hmm so now I can already hear and feel some people who are watching this program right now and hearing you and they're just punch in the air they're like Mike none of that counts nothing you're saying matters don't you know and they're and they have probably a lot of challenges too many of the different kind of pieces of evidence that you've brought up and so maybe let's address some of that stuff so for instance let's take Josephus you mentioned Josephus and it is cited by myth assists that Josephus his his entry that directly addresses Jesus in detail that that has interpolation and most scholars think that it has been altered in the course of history now um they would then leverage this to say therefore you know you have to throw out Josephus it just doesn't count it is any evidence so what would your response to that be well that most scholars do agree that the text of Josephus Josephus mentions Jesus on two occasions in book 18 section three and in book twenty section 200 there's hardly any debate over book twenty section 200 and there Josephus mentions the stoning of James the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ the Messiah so there you've got one that's virtually undisputed by scholars and then you've got the the disputed passage in this book eighteen section 63 of antiquities of the Jews and most scholars do think that the tech that we have today that there is some interpolation there some doctoring of the texts by a Christian probably in the second or the third century and the reason being is because Origen reports that Josephus was not a Christian and yet the text that we have today has Josephus sayin and that Jesus was certainly the Messiah and he did all these wonderful miracles and that he rose from the dead but the text does fit in the context of what's going on there so most Josephus scholars do think that Josephus does mention Jesus there and a number of things about Jesus but that a Christian has kind of doctored it up a little bit so instead of saying you know he claimed to be the Messiah or some thought he was the Messiah they just doctored the text to say he was the Messiah they made it work pious what's that yeah effectively made more pious that he rose from the dead whereas a number of scholars think that what Josephus actually said was his disciples reported that he rose from the dead and appeared alive to them and so the tribe of Christians remain unto this day now before he died a few years ago Lewis Feldman was the leading Josephus scholar in the world he was not a Christian he was a Jewish scholar he had written extensively on Josephus in fact in mmm-hmm in the 1980s 89 something like that he put a book out that was like Josephus scholarship from something like 1939 to 1987 something like that and talked about where Josephus scholarship was at that point and what they thought of numerous things like the you know what about that passage the disputed passage and he said most Josephus scholars do think that Jesus that Josephus mentions Jesus here and he said that he so I emailed him it was either 2000 or 2001 and I asked him where scholars are now and he said he hadn't done a bean count but he said he suspects that it just a specialist today would say that Jesus is mentioned by Josephus in both texts and he says he would put the ratio of those who say Josephus mentions Jesus versus those who don't at least three to one and he said he wouldn't be surprised if it were five to one and then Feldman went on and he said that he liked the reconstruction of the passage the tone down passage that was presented by John Mayer of Notre Dame in his book marginal Jew Volume one so the majority of Josephus scholars today even non-christian ones even the the best ones out there the leading authorities of Josephus think that Josephus does mention Jesus on both occasions and the only real debate is it sounds like the real live debate is over how much alteration was there not was there an original passage referring to Jesus so we so the historicity question never comes up in the discussion of interpreting you know what happened to Josephus over time right well it does come up because he said it'd be at least three to one and maybe five to one in other words that one in the ratio would be those who would say that Josephus did not mention Jesus okay but in the then they then you'd have the second passage James the brother of Jesus yeah that's that's hardly ever disputed yeah now what about Tacitus um some people would try to rule out Tacitus you know as a historian he he referred to a group called Christians and that was that was oh yeah yeah yeah yeah you're right yes yeah yeah and so the thing I've heard them say is uh you know you referred to questions and this is a whole different group and there's different ways people try to tackle Tacitus and take them off the table that's one way that I've heard yeah what what they don't do is they don't continue to read that same verse where it says Christos from whom the the group derived or got its name and now he spells it correctly Christos and then he says Christos from whom the group derived its name it suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius Caesar while punches pilot was procurator of Judea so you've got him even though he messes up on the name cred that the questions he spells that he spells name Christos Christ he gets Christ correct and he says that Christ was executed by punches pilot during the reign of Tiberius Caesar so there was just a misspelling on his part or misunderstanding with the Christians but he got everything else there correct and spells the name of Christ correctly and in Latin yeah and what I understand and maybe I'm incorrect on this is that that Christians and Christians were two different alternate spellings and they found them even on grave markers demonstrating that it was referring to Christians just both ways I couldn't comment on that I don't know that yeah so um now what about the the idea though that that all these extra biblical sources they're really only getting all their information from the Gospels and that all they're doing is reporting what's in the Gospels this is something Richard carrier says I can actually let me see I can read you a quote from him he said there it is he says all subsequent history claims are based on the Gospels yeah well why'd white why do they get the name Christians wrong then and why would Tacitus who is and and okay well if Kerry wants to say that then again since Tacitus now was writing around the Year 115 well now you can't have a late dating of the Gospels now you're gonna have to put the Gospels in the first century if he's getting it from the Gospels also why would Tacitus who thinks of the Christianity as evil and a mischievous superstition why would he be borrowing from the Gospels and using them as his sources that's insane so these don't they sound more like ad hoc explanations rather than handling the data fairly is that what you're saying well they're certainly ad-hoc and look at the lengths that that carrier has to go to in order to arrive at that conclusion I mean nobody's gonna agree with him on that I mean that but that's the only thing he can say really because Tacitus is pretty good evidence he's the greatest Roman historian he's mentioning Jesus who is executed by punches pilot during the reign of Tiberius and you know so how did he do that well you have to come up with some explanation for that and so you just well he's using the Gospels and we don't have a shred of evidence for that okay well this might irritate you more but I'm gonna bring another one at you so the Gospels are myth and they're myth influenced by dying and rising gods that come from other different religious groups that were known at the time it's just a Jewish version of a Greco you him or zation or you you you or you well excuse me that'll come with Paul Paul's well anyways however they put it basically the dying and rising guys it's all a myth what would your response to that be well even if the Gospels were doing that you got Paul and you still have to deal with Tacitus and Josephus and Lucien who mentioned in Jesus so you still have that but here's a here's the thing think of who these earliest Christians were they were pious Jews who debated over matters of the Jewish law such as whether Christians could eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols whether Jewish Christians whether it was permissible for Jewish Christians to even eat in the same room as Gentile Christians whether Gentile male Christians needed to be circumcised whether Jewish Christians still needed to maintain temple purification rites now if you're going to debate over the minutiae of the Jewish law to that extent do we really still imagine that these same Jews are going to engage in wholesale borrowing from pagan myths the form the foundation of their own religion I mean really and then you think about this you can find parallel details in just about anything I mean right now I'm I'm thinking of a plane that took off of Massachusetts just after nine o'clock one morning and just after 10:00 had flew into one of the tallest skyscrapers in the world in New York City between the 78th and the 80th floors killing everyone on board of course you think I'm referring to the 767 that flew into the South Tower on 9/11 what I'm actually referring to the b20 85 that flew into the Empire State Building on July 28 1945 the same floors in fact as this as the 767 flew into the South Tower now I suppose someone could come along a little bit later and say well 9/11 ever happened because look it's copying off of that earlier incident it's too much to say it's too similar and besides I mean they're just there's too many clues here to see that it makes it simple to recognize that it's just a copycat I mean 911 call when you have an emergency 9-1-1 what was the emergency well the US was gone through its greatest recession ever at that period and that was symbolized by the tumbling of the World Trade Center the crash into the Pentagon was symbolic that the US government had declining influence around the world at that point and the plane that was crashing in the Pennsylvania farm field showed that all of this impacted the average American so see you can modern mythologize just about anything but you got to show there's a causal connection and that's something mythos is haven't been able to do here's another thing and why historians aren't persuaded by the met the parallels and pega myths because the parallels themselves aren't that similar so for example the closest parallel that predates Jesus is a guy named ask Li pious a mythical figure lived I mean he's mentioned in the Homeric epics so we're talking hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus probably a mythical character maybe there's some kernel of his maybe it was a historical character of some sort but all set of Asclepius is that he healed people one occasionally raised someone from the dead that's it the closest figure died Jesus that postdates Jesus is Apollonius of Tyana an apple onus was a traveling itinerant philosopher he didn't believe in resurrection he believed in disembodied existence there's I think he might have raised someone from the dead we really didn't do many miracles or anything like that we're similar about him is of course their conflicting accounts some say that he died others said no he didn't there was some sort of a apotheosis where he was just disappeared coming like kind of like Romulus did so but those that say he died there's one account one account that says that he came back to life but only it's known because he appeared to one of his disciples in a dream and we don't know if that was one of his original disciples or someone a hundred years later there were other people in the room they didn't see him because he was in a dream and that's supposed to be like Jesus so what you have to do in order to make the pagan parallels interesting is you've got to combine a bunch of them so you take Dionysus who is said to have divine paternity and who made wine and you combine that with a Thor whose life was threatened at birth and you combine that with his Clee pious and then with a Polonius of Tiana and then you combine that with Hercules who is said to ascend it into heaven of course it's because he was losing his powers as a hero so he built a big fire jumped in and committed suicide and there's a report that he was seen ascending to heaven on a horse Pegasus but we'll get rid of all these details that are so different than Jesus and we'll only take those ones that are similar and we take all these figures and make a composite figure to kind of resemble Jesus and the reason historians aren't impressed by that is because that would be similar today by saying Abraham Lincoln was a tall lanky politician from Illinois who became president who served who was elected to two terms Abraham I'm sorry John F Kennedy was a US president who graduated from Harvard and then there was a care Derr in the popular television series 24 named David Palmer who portrayed the first black US president and so you put all three of these together and what do you have Barack Obama a tall lanky Illinois senator uh who was elected to two terms as US president graduated from Harvard and was the first black US president therefore Barack Obama was a myth and you'd say well that's insane you got to take three people one of which is fictitious over a hundred and fifty year period and so wait what are you doing with Jesus you're taking fictitious and some historical characters even more than three that span over a thousand years to get somebody that even partially resembles Jesus so it just hasn't convinced historians it only seems to convince those who want to discredit the thought that Jesus existed yeah I'm a little suspicious that what happens is people they watch like whether it's the site Geist or one of these kind of really off-the-wall movies that pushes all these theories with a bunch of false information just outright lies about who Dionysus was or things like that and then later upon research they they find out okay some of those didn't work but I I really like the idea you know and for some people I think that once they like the idea they're trying to find room for it I'm not saying that's available yeah just those those folks are gullible yeah I still today every once in while someone's like Mike how did you see zeitgeist what do you think of that and I'm like I just I thought it was a good way to find out what an acid trip is like without taking any acid it was really cheesy so I and yeah it's just based on on just outright lies yeah complete fabrications complete fabrications um well let me ask you another one because Paul the Apostle he you know his letters are so early they're they come before the Gospels we have like you know information first Corinthians 15 that traces back even earlier than that and so obviously Paul's like an important chess piece in this discussion well some would say in the mythos community that Paul he didn't really believe in a Jesus who died and resurrected on earth but allow me to quote Richard carrier cuz I think he's an icon I think he's probably one of the chief icons right now in this community he says Paul is ever only talking about a Jesus in outer space that he has conversations with that's a quote word-for-word Richard carrier for those who don't know he thinks that that Paul is envisioning a spiritual being Jesus who never came to earth never interacted on the planet Earth and and later you know the gospel writers took this sort of spiritual being and turned him into a human who lived a real earthly life that's the you him or zation thing I was talking about um so what would you say about interpreting Paul as referring to an outer space Jesus that's that's weird interpretation I mean Paul in the crown jewel of all of his letters Romans chapter 1 verse 3 it says concerning his son who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh so he places Jesus clearly as a historical figure and he mentions about this Jesus being crucified by the rulers of our world so I mean it's just again that's just the real stretch that rick has to go to in order to try to discredit a really good source about Jesus I don't know of anyone who really takes no scholars other than Richard would would take that interpretation I don't know of a single one yeah and then and it seems to come up against some really challenging stuff when you're when you go through the actual the rest of what Paul writes to think that he's talking about something that happened in space this is the kind of stuff that like you know with the first time I hear it I'm just like I can't even imagine how that idea came up like you know some understand misunderstandings you understand them and some and some I just don't get and this is on that category of I just don't even understand it at all well what would you say for those who would who would refer to when when who would say that when Paul says you know he met James the brother of Jesus that this is merely referring to James as being a bully in Jesus he's a brother cuz he's a believer you know and then they would use that as an you know - are you against the idea that Jesus had an earthly brother yeah well well Paul in Romans 14 verse 13 he refers to all believers as brothers all of them in fact Matthew as Jesus referring to you all believers as brothers and then on another occasion in Matthew and Luke actually they're two different occasions in Matthew and another a different one in Luke Jesus is referring to all of his disciples the twelve disciples as brothers of one another so so Jesus and Paul referred to all believers as brothers and Jesus referred to all of his disciples as brothers you've got the Gospels and the book of Acts that all talk about Jesus having brothers in fact Matthew says he had four brothers and a number of sisters and Matthew even provides the names of the four brothers and guess what one of them is named James and Paul said he met with James on several occasions he says this mentions two occasions in which he met James in Galatians so you've got that then you've got Josephus saying James the brother of Jesus was executed was stoned all of this seems to be corroborating evidence he got from Josephus you've got the Gospels you've got Paul that mentions the Brothers of Jesus and all of them mentioned James as one of those brothers now you say well wait a minute you know that's still maybe they're just believers well in John chapter 7 it mentions how Jesus's brothers were saying you know they didn't believe they didn't follow him they were egging him on and and kind of insulting him and then it's John says for none of his not even his brothers believed in him so how is it that you could have that say that Jesus had brothers and they didn't believe in him but then after his resurrection we find in the book of Acts that Jesus brothers had become believers by that time by the time Pentecost had come 50 days after Passover and then later on in Acts we find James as the leader of the Jerusalem church so everything seems to point to I mean you've got Josephus a non-christian who mentions it and and all these multiple independent sources Paul Matthew John Luke in a different story the special L material and Josephus I mean this is the strongest kind of multiple at the station historians can look for well you all said I have a couple of other questions for you that these are things that I've I've had people ask me when this topic comes up so what would you say to the following question um why is it that and this is just the question as it's posed to me why is it we don't have contemporary accounts of Jesus written while he was still alive and this seems like a really big deal to people well I can understand that first I'd give a couple answers one would be that a lot of Christians as we find throughout the New Testament literature they thought Jesus was coming back in their lifetime so no need to write that kind of stuff besides only 10% of the population perhaps were literate they could read and most of the time in those days it was only the elite mainly who had books and so things were passed around word-of-mouth and you've got the Apostles themselves who are saying that I mean they're going around preaching so why do you want to read a book when you can hear it straight from the person right I'd also add that a lot of what we have from antiquity is gone so I mean we're missing a lot of works out there Tacitus again the greatest roman historian when he wrote his histories of rome different from his annals but his histories of rome go from the year 69 up to 96 and again the greatest roman historian so you'd think that's would be preserved two-thirds of it have been lost and the third that remains is preserved in a single manuscript medieval manuscript so I mean we're going to seen a lot Plutarch wrote more than 60 biographies of which forty eight to be exact have survived we're missing his biography of Caesar Augustus which would be wonderful to have so we're missing a lot of stuff we're missing Christian writings happiest wrote five volumes of the discourses of the Lord of which only fragments remain and Pappas had contact with an associate at minimal an associate of one of Jesus disciples the Apostle John so I mean we're missing a lot so the Romans why don't they mention Jesus more other than Tacitus well Roman historians basically concerned themselves with Roman history stuff that would be significant to the Romans you know the in fact they don't even mention Pontius Pilate right and we know a Pilate existed and he was one of the governors the prefect of Judea during the time of Jesus reign of Tiberius and it's not even he's not even mentioned in any of the Roman sources we only hear from him from Philo Josephus and the New Testament literature that is from the first century why well because he did mean something to the Jews and Christians he was cruel to the Jews and he was an enemy of Jesus he had Jesus put to death so that's why the Christians and the Jews mention him of that of the first century so it shouldn't surprise us that we don't really have anything of that period for those reasons it'd be nice if we did but we can understand why we don't mm-hmm yeah and the impact of cry mean obviously in some act I should either some are thinking they want something written before the death and resurrection of Christ about Jesus like while he was walking the earth and that I thought that'd be nice that'd be nice I mean it could be something that you'd like to have and you know but historians have to play with the hand that they've been dealt like said we'd like to have Plutarch's life of Augustus that'd be wonderful we'd like to have the beginning of sweet Onias life of julius caesar we don't have that that'd be really nice to have you you've got Josephus you know he doesn't mention in his autobiography his captured by the Romans he mentions it in Jewish war but he doesn't mention it in his autobiography you'd think he'd mentioned his capture of the Romans is something that was a life changer for him ulysses s grant the general for the Union Union Army for the American Civil War the victorious one he wrote two volumes of memoirs of the Civil War not once does he mention the Emancipation Proclamation does that mean he wasn't aware of it so just because it doesn't mention it I mean you want to be careful not to do an argument from Silence to say well he's not mentioned therefore he they didn't know about it and again why would you write about Jesus during his lifetime many of the believers including a lot of his disciples at the time thought he was they didn't think he was gonna die they thought that he was gonna establish his kingdom here on earth now so no need to write about him especially when most people can't read great so there doesn't seem to be that expectation you know it ends up being like you said an argument from silence potentially I've another question for you and this would be an accusation I've heard a lot and the skeptics community and they suggest that the reason why so many scholars are affirming you know Christian beliefs or even things like the historicity of Christ which isn't necessarily a Christian belief the reason why they're doing it is because many of them have signed statements of faith or it's because they're just Christians and they're not you're just not being honest and so it creates kind of like a general distrust of scholarship amongst that community of mithras and I wanted to give you an opportunity to respond to that yeah I'd say well go tell that to Bart Ehrman what about Mars Casey what about Garrett Lou Diamond an atheist New Testament scholar what about Joseph Hoffman what about James crossly who's an agnostic New Testament scholar I mean you can just go on and on John Dominic Crossan I had a debate with him last October pleasant guy we had a good time together really enjoyed him and and yet you know he's not even certain that there's some kind of person in fact he said there's no personal he told me there's no personal being in his view who created the universe Steven Patterson of the Jesus Seminar before my debate with him he told me the same thing he doesn't believe that there is a any kind of personal being who acted as a creator of the universe they call themselves Christians but obviously these guys aren't going to have statements of faith right so I'm good I mean it just flies in the face of the facts anybody can just go to the annual meeting of the Society of biblical literature and hang out with thousands of scholars that are there probably ten eight eight to ten thousand scholars who attend it and and ask them if they're Christians ask them if they believe that Jesus was the Messiah the Son of God and rose from the dead and then for all those who say no which are going to be a significant number of them ask him if they believe that he was a historical figure and I'll bet you just about every last one of them will say yes so if a myth assists wants to find out let him spend the money go to the annual meeting of the Society of biblical literature it's in San Diego this year rent a hotel room you can go on the SBL website sign up for the meeting purchase your ticket to it and go talk to some scholars and and and you'll be enlightened about that immediately so some people will say that that okay so there's a historical Jesus right but he's nothing like what we read in in in the Bible and the Gospels and in the epistles nothing like that we we can safely throw out you know pretty much all of the descriptions of Jesus that we see there but I think that you would take a different perspective and in your in your book on the resurrection you talk about sort of bedrock facts facts that you say are known beyond any sort of reasonable doubt what would you say or maybe a list of things that we are historians would affirm these are these things are true about Jesus and it's well evidenced and it's got this incredible scholarly support well they believe Jesus exists at first of all they believed that he lived spent his whole life in Judea Allisyn Palestine that he believed that he had a special relationship with God who had chosen to chosen Jesus to usher in his kingdom that he performed deeds that astonished crowds and that both he and his followers considered to be divine miracles and exorcisms that's not to say that these scholars think that they were divine miracles and exorcisms but that Jesus did certain deeds that did astonish crowds and that they interpreted them in this sense they all agree that Jesus taught in parables that he ticked off the Jewish leaders because he was criticizing them constantly and that at the instigation of the Jewish leadership of that day Pilate crucified him and that shortly thereafter is is though his followers believe that he rose from the dead and had appeared to them now those are things that virtually every historian of Jesus including agnostics atheists Jewish liberal historians of Jesus will acknowledge about him so it's not enough to say there's at least one guy named Jesus who died by crucifixion but that's all we know but rather there's a lot more data we can gather than that I was a lot learned and and that's what what a virtual you that's what a virtual universal consensus believes okay now you'll find occasionally you'll find some people who you know when I say virtual that's not a hundred percent so for example Bart Ehrman doesn't think that Jesus was known as a miracle worker during his lifetime and he acknowledges being in the minority of scholars well I've talked to some experts historians of Jesus who have specialized on the miracles and exorcisms was Jesus and I said I've asked them I said so how many scholars do you know of who would say agree with Herman that Jesus was not known as a miracle worker during their lifetime his lifetime and both told me they said they couldn't think of a single one there might be others but they couldn't think of anyone else and so erm n'm ight is the minority position that he takes he may be the only member of that group so there are you know it's not a hundred percent consensus again there are some a few a handful who don't even think Jesus existed so you know but there are I'm just giving you the thing that a virtual universal consensus or agree upon and then there are some other things that many agree upon that but not a consensus that or you could even say a majority just not a nearly universal consensus but that a majority would grant you can add more things to those lists um so we're gonna start taking your guys questions in the live chat and so AJ if you could send those over to me once you're able to but while we're getting that ready I want to ask you a question about about miracle claims or the miraculous and there's many who think we can safely disregard or ignore anything that we read historically if it's related to a miracle claim you can assume that that's not true and what would what would your opinion be about that well first of that I'd ask him why and I'd say now you're weighing in with your worldview not with the evidence because we have evidence for those things not only for the past with Jesus miracles but we have them in the present with miracles that occur today so what they're doing is they're waiting with their bias against the supernatural and I'd say now again you're weighing in with your worldview not with the facts and the danger of that is very clear bad philosophy corrupts good history I like that alright so we've got a bunch of questions coming in and so I'm gonna try and limit it to one question per person at least I'll start that way I might backtrack those of you who sent multiple questions and it might backtrack to another one your questions if I have time this questions from kam spires and the question is consensus holds that Jesus existed but was not the Christ of the Gospels eg he probably didn't walk on water feed the multitude what are your thoughts on this consensus it's not a consensus there you go we can answer more than one how to consensus that is not a consensus opinion yeah hmm okay well here's another one this is from godless engineer a godless engineer has a youtube channel and he promotes mysticism I don't know if he says he's partially persuaded by it or Foley or anything like that but he makes videos promoting it he says why does nobody reference Tacitus about this persecution of Christians until the fourth century well you got Tacitus doing it so that the problem is you have tested it so I don't others mention it like who are you thinking of here why don't other Christians mention it I mean you've got Hebrews right the book of Hebrews in the New Testament that mentions some severe persecution that's going on it's probably not the persecution under Nero but it's talking about some persecution where they're getting their property seized from them none of the and they'd been some of them had been thrown into prison they hadn't had their blood shed at that point so they hadn't been executed yet but the Jewish Christians to whom the letter is written have been suffering persecution so you've got that going on you've got Tacitus that does mention it you do have Clement in the book first Clemmie the letter first Clement which the majority of scholars would place somewhere around the Year 92 95 although there is a significant minority who place it in the late 60s but either way he mentions Clement mentions the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul and sufferings of other apostles so you've got that in the first century doesn't tie it necessarily to Nero but you've got persecution that's going on there you've got the book of Acts that mentions persecution by the Jews the Jewish leadership so yeah so I mean we do have multiple accounts within the first century of persecution of Christians taking place and then you do have tested as who reports it isn't there by the way let me sweeten iasts also talked about this soy Tonia's may mention Jesus a lot of historians think that he does but it's a passage that is can be disputed because it talks about at the instigation of Cresta s-- claudius expelled the Jews from Rome and we know that that happened in the 40s the late 40s but there you got that name again Creston and it would have been at a time after Jesus had died you know 15 or more years after Jesus had died so if it's referring to Jesus there you've got the swyto Gnaeus would have been chronologically challenged at that point now one thing is is of interest is that even sweet onehans scholars even though sweet own iasts may be the most accurate biographer of that period probably is and he's the biographer that writes more like modern biographers than anyone else in that period even Plutarch and even though Plutarch's consider the greatest of all the ancient biographers but he experts on sweet onus will say you can't trust sway Toni asan his numbers dates figures things like that so he could have gotten that wrong so sway Toni's may mention Jesus but we we just don't know we just can't be certain of it but there was something else that you oh let me throw this to josie fists well there was something about Josephus I wanted to mention I believe anyway it slipped my mind maybe it'll come to you yeah I'll ask you another question so insects are cool oh I know what it is I know what it is so sweet Oh Gnaeus mentions in his life of Claudius Caesar chapter 25 he mentions how Claudius had expelled the Jews from Rome well that's the only mention of it other than the book of Acts I think it's two acts eighteen so someone could say well if Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome like like the book of Acts says you think that the Roman some Roman historian would report it well sway toniest does it's like two lines two sentences and that's it not you would think that Josephus would report it since he's writing a history of the Jews up to his very day and that would have been a time that would been several decades passed by the time he's writing this so why doesn't Josephus mention it well he doesn't I don't know you know but you but there's an instance right there were a historian that we would expect would mention it certainly mention it he doesn't mention it and it's only mentioned by sweet Onias if sway Tonia's hadn't given us those two sentences then people would say Luc just made that up in the book of Acts it never happened mm-hmm so we just have to be careful about making these sweeping statements about these kinds of things because there's a lot that is just missing from ancient history we just don't have it today okay so insects are cool as a question and she asks did Paul hallucinate seeing Jesus I think that's a common claim yeah that is a common claim she's right but you know you could look at it and say well Paul really doesn't tell us in his letters Paul on Paul he doesn't tell us much about his the appearance he had we got to go to the book of Acts for that and there it's mentioned in Acts chapter 9 I think it was 22 and 26 and it does it's like a vision but hallucinations aren't group experiences their private occurrences in the mind of an individual they're false sensory perceptions of something that isn't really there so they're like dreams so just like I I can't share my dream with my wife if I can't hurry up and say hey honey I'm having a dream that we're in Hawaii go back to sleep join me in my dream and let's have a free vacation you can't do that my dream she's in Hawaii but she won't be having the same exact dream I am she can't join me in my dream because there's no external reality it's all going on in our head same with hallucinations so even in the book of Acts it says that Paul's travelling companions saw the light and they heard the voice they just couldn't understand the voice so they were part of that experience which wouldn't be a hallucination and then Paul later on in Acts chapter 13 talks about Jesus resurrection being something that happened physically he quotes from Psalm 16:10 which says you will not allow your Holy One to see decay and he says this couldn't have been referring to David because David died buried his body decayed we know where he's buried but on the other hand Jesus died was buried but his body did not decay it's referring to Jesus his body did not decay inferring that God raised him and and for that their eye witnesses so if you're looking in Paul in acts yes you've got the description of it that sounds more like a vision but then you've got his his traveling companions partake in it as well and Paul is preaching in a sense that he thinks its bodily resurrection now when we come to Paul on Paul not Luke on Paul but Paul and Paul and he's describing resurrection he we can get to his thoughts about resurrection through the back door so because he doesn't explain Jesus resurrection in detail himself because he's not given a narrative of the resurrection he's writing letters addressing questions and first Corinthians he's answering the question you know what's the resurrection like you know what kind of bodies are we gonna get at the general resurrection there are some people here in corinth through her saying we're not going to be raised from the dead this life is all there is your die that's it and so Paul goes on he says well Christ is the firstfruits in chapter 15 verse 20 and then he says in verse 23 after that those who belong to Christ will be raised at his coming so when Jesus returns that's when believers are going to be raised so what are you saying there's the way Jesus was raised is the way we're going to be raised only we're gonna be raised later on and then he talks about now so in second Corinthians chapter five verse eight he says to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord in Philippians chapter 1 verses 2021 he talks about how in twenty-two that he's in prison he's facing possible execution he says he could die and be with Christ or remain on in the flesh and he says that even though I'd rather be with Christ it being in the flesh does very much better for them more fruitful for them so what he sees himself is when he dies his view is when you die you go to be as a disembodied spirit with Jesus and have an immediately and then you go to first Thessalonians chapter four and he's trying to comfort Christians who have lost loved ones and he says I don't want you to grieve as those who have no hope because when Jesus returns he's going to bring with him those who he's going to bring with him those who have died as Christians and then the trumpet will sound and the dead in Christ will be raised first well wait a minute if he's bringing the dead back with him how they gonna be raised first very simple the spirits the disembodied spirits are gonna be reunited with their corpses and then they're gonna be raised it's a bodily physical resurrection a transformer resurrection and transformation and remember if we're raised as Jesus was raised and if we're gonna be raised bodily physically that means Paul thought that Jesus was raised in that same sense so no it wasn't it wasn't a vision that he taught there you go I'm sorry it wasn't a hallucination besides hallucinations don't account for the group occurrences and Paul wasn't grieving over Jesus death he was glad Jesus was dead Jesus would have been the last person in the universe that Paul would have expected to see or wanted to see okay so another question here this is from Matthew Robinson and he says does doctor like Kona think my Massie's is a mark against the historical Jesus did I read that correct yeah well some would call it mimesis but yeah that's just kind of like the that kid would get back to the Dinan rising gods the parallels something like that it would it would be affiliated with that so mimesis would I don't think that accounts for the resurrection at all mm-hmm and basically your main reason is the parallels aren't really parallel and you have to compile these different things and look for a little tiny hidden clues one I've heard one person say it's like people learn to read between the lines without reading the lines and that's how they finally yeah that's a good way to put it but yeah but it's more than that - remember I mentioned how you know the Christian leaders the first ones were pious Jews and they're debating over matters of the Jewish law you know they don't want to tread they want to be careful not to transgress the Jewish law but yet at the same time they're gonna bar all these things from pagan myths come on mm-hmm well here's another thing on you know before they eat yeah but they're okay with you you know Greek mythology so you don't have it don't know don't have a curse word but go out and commit murder right yeah yes swallowing camels so utopia buster 2017 which I was get a kick out of that YouTube name utopia poster 2017 says can dr. lococo know please explain processes involved in validating historicity and let me add to this question a little bit because in my research on Richard carrier he starts off some of his lectures by saying the following every single expert in the field of Jesus studies who has written on the validity of the methods they're using have concluded they're all invalid and he says all the methods that you're using to prove Jesus existed they're invalid methods so maybe you could talk to us about how you validate historicity of Christ yeah well first I would say carriers wrong there there was a book written in 2012 called something like Jesus Jesus something and the criteria of authenticity Chris Keith and Anthony Ladon are the two co-editors and has some pretty good scholars in it and a lot of them are calling into question the use of the criteria of authenticity and they give several reasons for there's some post modernist view in there that just skeptical of history period and and the other reason is that the criteria of authenticity did not bring about the consensus on Jesus that a lot of scholars of Jesus thought they would so they they just want to abandon him but I wrote a review of that book and published it in the bulletin for biblical research and it's a lengthy critique I do think that there's some good things in the book but I think the scholars are way too pessimistic I mean there's a lot I could get into with it okay but there are probably more scholars who embrace the criteria than those who reject it in fact you can go and you can watch my debate with John Dominic Crossan from this past October it's on my youtube channel just go to youtube.com you'll find my channel and then I think it's still on the first page so the debate with John Dominic Crossan and just listen to his opening statement would I go first I give a twenty minute opening statement and I even mentioned this thing about the criteria of authenticity has some and then have rejecting it and then Crossan comes on and he says I agree with Mike entirely you've got to use criteria and so most historians today still embrace the criteria and one thing I've said in my critique of that book is look the I would want to ask those who think the criteria of no you are of no use do you think that Jesus existed do you think that he was crucified on the orders of Pontius Pilate why do you think this I mean these are things that are pretty much undisputed by historians and why do you think this happened and what are they gonna say well it's you know you even have Tacitus and Josephus who mentions the crucifixion or execution of Jesus it's in multiple independent sources the reason you give are going to be the criteria and it's not like the criteria are these magical things they're just common sense you want to look you want to appreciate the you're gonna give a little more value to those reports that are early a little more value to those that are eyewitness reports if it's an eyewitness report and it's early all the better you're gonna give some way some additional kind of weight to an unsympathetic source if there are multiple independent sources that's going to be the very strongest kind of thing that you're looking for if multiple independent sources are reporting the same thing especially if one of them is unsympathetic you know that's gonna be very strong if you reject that then how can you know anything about the past so carrier I'm afraid it's just terribly mistaken by saying the majority of scholars are rejecting those criteria those tools today so what advice would you give to someone who's perhaps are listening to Richard carrier because that's the thing is I've looked into his content he casts disparaging remarks upon all of a scholarship or whichever scholars he disagrees with he often says that scholars really agree with him on certain issues that it seems like you're saying they don't at least take on some issues and but if you don't know scholarship and you don't know this history stuff but he's your filter like if Richard carriers are filter for history then you think that all the stuff he's saying is accurate like what advice would you give to someone who's been influenced by him to kind of come out of that shadow of Richard carrier well if you like Richard carrier then read some other skeptics read Bart Ehrman read get Lou Diamond read Morris Casey read what they have to say about about Jesus now you're seeing some serious scholarship who were trained not in the classics but in historical Jesus scholarship and there is a difference when I wrote my most recent book why are there differences in the gospel that came out two and a half years ago I dealt with the like Plutarch quite a bit and some of the others and I have to admit my learning curve was very steep and I would have made some egregious errors if not for two classicists who three classicists who reviewed my material on Plutarch and one in particular who has become a very good friend of mine in the meantime he he corrected me on a bunch of things and steered me through the minefield I would have made some terrible errors I just thought you know this is ancient literature it's around the same time Jesus I'm gonna you know be able to get through this pretty well because I don't know what I'm doing with Jesus and know it's different and classicists are gonna make the same kind of mistake if they think they're coming to the biblical literature and they're just gonna know it know how to navigate through it without any kind of real study in the area so carrier makes some egregious errors when it comes to these things so what I would say to mythos is to really like Richard carrier look if you want to be a skeptic read some other skeptics read some that are you know have some great academic credentials and reputation like Bart Ehrman like Garrett lunamon like Mars Casey and and others and see what they're saying and then I would also say look when I don't know how many bona fide scholars there are now in the relevant fields of New Testament studies and history classicist who would say that Jesus did not exist I don't know how many there are now I know just a few years ago Richard was saying there were seven including himself that's not a lot and none of those seven were widely regarded within their discipline they weren't really respected within their own discipline so when you observe that and when you observe that virtually everyone who is forwarding the position that Jesus never that are internet bloggers then I would be stepping back and saying you know I think I see some red flags here maybe I ought to think about this a little bit more and maybe they'll just say well I'll come on you know if even if it turns out that Jesus did exist after all it's no big deal for me right now to think that he didn't I mean what harm well the harm is not to anyone but yourself because it would show that you're gullible when I mean scholars really look at Jesus deniers as myth assist to be on the on the same level as conspiracy theorists who think that we never walked on the moon the Holocaust didn't occur and these kinds of things so it would mean if Jesus actually existed and and you're falling for this then that means you're gullible and that could also mean that you have a tendency to go for these kind of conspiracy theories it doesn't mean you're not intelligent twenty-two years ago there was the Church of Venus cults led by Marshall Applewhite and there was some I think thirty nine of his followers you know some of them were very intelligent they were engineers but they were gullible and they paid a price for it they paid with their life so just be careful that that's what I would say to him great um good stuff I really thank you for the time that you spent we're gone a little bit longer than I originally intended but I wanted to get to the audience questions and so thank you doctor like connais your website is risen Jesus calm people can go to his website there's free resources on there as well as his youtube channel just google or look on youtube for Mike like Kona I actually have a link to his website in the video description as well you guys can can check his stuff out and you also have a podcast and you have a bunch of books and I think you're opening a theme park soon well if I could put a plug in for my school to Houston Baptist University for anyone I mean we had programs of Master of Arts and theological studies we have a Master of Arts and Christian apologetics in fact I think both of them can be done completely from a distance and we are fully accredited so we have some really good programs there you could check them out awesome okay so I think we'll call it a night I have a bunch more questions you guys I'm so sorry but um you know if you go to Risen Jesus calm you can actually send messages to Mike that way and you can you know try to get questions your questions answered and I do encourage you if you've been sucked into this stuff to learn how to do some more independent research it is it is surprising to me like okay on a spiritual side to note how many people who are into this Jesus miss stuff are atheists agnostics and I think it just makes it easy for you if you can say Jesus didn't exist I'm not confronted with really considering who he really was and what he really did and I would I would encourage you to stop and reconsider those things because of who Jesus really is so I thank you again anything else you want to say in parting words no thanks for having me on god bless you Mike it's been a pleasure spending a little bit of time with you and your guests and and they gave some good questions and I thank even the skeptics for for for good questions and for being collegio I appreciate that yeah definitely and we blocked all the mean ones okay all right yeah a couple I see you guys if you want to support this ministry you can in the in the YouTube description below I'm doing this producing this free content with your guys support and it's really working out by God's grace so thank you so much take care

Channel: Mike Winger

Views: 64,609

Rating: 4.8453569 out of 5

Keywords: Was Jesus a myth, did Jesus exist, was Jesus a real person, was Jesus real, Mike Licona, Mike Licona Jesus myth, Real historian responds to Jesus was a myth claims, what historians say about Jesus, Jesus mythicism, mythicists, evidence Jesus was a real person, Mike Winger

Id: 8dQuw1g428c

Length: 70min 16sec (4216 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 18 2019