We are getting close to the end of by extended book analysis of Dan Barker’s godless. The next couple of posts will primarily focus on the final two chapters of his book: Chapter 15—Did Jesus Exist? And Chapter 16—Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?
Chapter 13 is entitled “Bible Contradictions.” As the title implies, it is all about the supposed contradictions in the Bible. Of course, all Barker does is yank various verses completely out of their contexts, puts them side by side, and says, “See? Contradiction!” The problem with that is two-fold. First, if you want to be sure to misinterpret something, just rip it out of context. No serious reader who wants to learn the intent of the author does that. The second problem is one that I’ve repeated throughout this series: Barker reads the Bible like a Fundamentalist, as if the Bible is a monolithic rule book of legislation.
At the end of the chapter, Barker addresses criticisms like these. Responding to the objection that it takes some knowledge of the ancient historical and literary contexts, not to mention the ancient languages, to get to a better understanding of the Bible, Barker writes:
“A respectable deity should have made his crucial message unmistakably clear to everyone, everywhere, at all times, in all languages? No one should have to learn a dead tongue to understand God’s message, especially an ancient language about which there is scholarly disagreement. If the English translation is flawed or imprecise, then God failed to get his point across to English speakers. A true fundamentalist should consider the English version of the bible to be just as inerrant as the original because if we admit that human error was possible in the translation, then it was equally possible in the original writing” (241).
When I read that, I wrote in my margin, “This is the exact argument Ken Ham makes!” It is a wholly anti-intellectual, anti-educational excuse not to engage in serious Biblical Studies. Besides that, look at that first sentence. As a matter of reality, how is that possible? An “unmistakably clear” message to “everyone, everywhere, at all times, in all languages?” That is impossible, given the reality of human history and language. And if Barker (or anyone) is going to come back with, “Oh, but if there really is a God, He could do it,” that person is intellectually lazy. If you are going to say, “The only way I’ll accept the reality of God is if He uses some sort of unrealistic magic way of communicating to all people at all times,” then you are not a serious person.
In chapter 14, “Understanding Discrepancy,” Barker discusses Paul’s Damascus Road experience, and goes into a rather elementary “exegetical” discussion of whether the men with Paul “heard the voice but saw no man” (Acts 9:7) or whether they “didn’t hear the voice” (Acts 22:9). Barker’s rather simplistic conclusion is that there is no way to reconcile that the men “heard the voice” (9:7) and that the men “didn’t hear the voice” (22:9). Therefore, the Bible is contradictory and not reliable.
Needless to say, I think Barker blows this out of proportion just a bit. A quick look in the Greek reveals the following: in 9:7, it specifically says the men “heard of the voice,” whereas in 22:9, it says the men “did not hear the voice that was speaking to me.” To the point, the two verses are not necessarily contradictory. Acts 9:7 seems to be saying that the men didn’t see anyone, but did hear something, whereas Acts 22:9 just says it in a different way: they saw a light but didn’t specifically hear what was being told to Paul.
In short, methinks Barker makes a bit too much of this—it is entirely plausible see both verses in the way I just described, and it certainly doesn’t call the reliability of the entire Bible into question.
Chapter 15: Did Jesus Exist?
What I want to focus on, instead, is Barker’s discussion in chapter 15, as to whether or not Jesus even existed. To cut to the chase, Barker pretty much has jumped aboard the Richard “Mythicist” Carrier. In this chapter, using many of the standard mythicist arguments, he attempts to argue that Jesus didn’t really exist. As I told Carrier once on Twitter, I can understand if someone doesn’t believe Jesus was God, or doubts he did miracles or was resurrected—those are admittedly tough things to get one’s head around. But if someone is going to go the Mythicist route and deny the historical reality that Jesus even existed, well, I have a room full of tinfoil hats for you. Such a notion is on the same level as flat-eartherism and young earth creationism. Nevertheless, let’s go through what Barker claims…
Barker’s first claim is that there is no external historical confirmation from the early first century AD for the stories in the Gospels. He writes: “Not a single word about Jesus appears outside the New Testament in the entire first century” (252).
Josephus, Anyone?
Really? What about Jewish historian Josephus, who wrote near the end of the first century? He mentions both Jesus and the “tribe of Christians” that had continued until his day. “Nope,” says Barker. The part about Jesus clearly was put in there later, and besides, Barker claims, “There was no ‘tribe of Christians’ during Josephus’ time. Christianity did not get off the ground until the second century” (256).
Two things are in order. First, yes, most scholars think that the famous passage in Josephus where he mentions Jesus has been altered. It doesn’t make sense that Josephus, who wasn’t a Christian, would proclaim Jesus was the Messiah or that he rose again. That being said, most scholars think those things were added to a passage in which Josephus did mention there was a man named Jesus, who had a following, and who was handed over by the Sanhedrin to be crucified by Pilate. Most do not believe the entire passage was made of out of whole cloth later on.
Secondly, Barker’s claim that “Christianity didn’t get off the ground until the second century” is just flat out wrong. By his own admission, the books of the New Testament were written between 40-100 AD. As a matter of basic logic and chronology, it is literally impossible for the founding Christian texts to have been written before there was such a thing as Christianity. As a matter of historical fact, there was a distinct Christian movement in Josephus’ lifetime.
On a similar note, Barker also dismisses another passage in Josephus where he mentions James, the brother of Jesus, being stoned to death in Jerusalem. With absolutely no proof, Barker claims that this is a doctored text, and says, “Most scholars agree that Josephus is referring to another James here, possibly the same one that Paul mentions in Acts, who led a sect in Jerusalem. …Again, if Josephus truly thought Jesus was ‘the Christ,’ he would have added more about him than a casual aside in someone else’s story” (258).
No, that is not true. “Most scholars” do not think that. Most scholars clearly accept this passage in Josephus to be authentic, along with his other comments concerning John the Baptist. But to be clear: Acts 12:2 tells us about the beheading of James the apostle around 44 AD; the James with whom Paul interacted was James the brother of Jesus, who became the leader of the church in Jerusalem and who was stoned at the instigation of the Sanhedrin in 62 AD, after Festus the Roman governor had died and before the next governor, Albinus, arrived. The Sanhedrin wasn’t allowed to execute capital punishment (i.e. that’s why the Sanhedrin took Jesus before Pilate), but they were able to orchestrate James’ execution during that short interim when no Roman governor was in Judea.
Early Church Fathers and Roman Historians, Anyone?
And, without going into all the details, there are all the early Church Fathers and Roman historians like Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, and Tacitus. Barker’s response? “Nope, none of them count!”
The early Church Fathers? The all were from the 2nd-4th centuries and were actual believers, so clearly, they weren’t reliable!
Suetonius (112 AD)? Not in the first century! Besides, he mentions both Claudius’ edict that expelled all the Jews from Rome because of arguments over a certain Chrestus and Nero’s persecution of Christians around 64 AD. Barker claims, “It is unlikely that Christianity had spread as far as Rome during the reign of Claudius, or that it was large enough to have caused a revolt” (259). Again, not only is this historically not true, but among those NT letters he acknowledges that were written in the first century, one of them, Romans, was written around 55-56 AD—and it was addressed to Christians living in Rome. Furthermore, in Acts 18:2, Claudius’ edict of 49 AD is actually mentioned.
Pliny the Younger (112 AD)? Again, not in the first century! Besides, he only refers to Christians, not to Christ! So, despite the fact we have a written account that as of 112 AD, there were Christians throughout the empire who were known to “sing a him to Christ as a god,” Barker still thinks that proves nothing about a historical Jesus.
Tacitus (117 AD)? Again, not in the first century! And he only mentions Christians, not Christ! Furthermore, Barker writes, “There is no other historical confirmation that Nero persecuted Christians. Nero did persecute Jews, and perhaps Tacitus was confused about this. There certainly was not a ‘great crowd’ of Christians in Rome around 60 CE, and the term ‘Christian’ was not in use in the first century. Tacitus is either doctoring history from a distance or repeating a myth without checking his facts. Historians generally agree that Nero did not burn Rome, so Tacitus is in error to suggest that he would have needed a scapegoat in the first place” (260).
Not to sound like Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi, but everything Barker says there is wrong. In his own comments about Suetonius, he mentions another Roman historian who mentions Nero’s persecution of Christians. We have Paul’s letter of Romans, written in the mid-50s, to Christians in Rome. In Acts 11:27, we are told that the term “Christian” was first used in Antioch—Acts was written some time in the 70s-80s: so yes, it was most certainly used in the first century. And sure, historians do not think Nero actually start the great fire in 64 AD, but they do agree that many Romans accused him of doing so…and that is why he used Christians as the scapegoat.
A Few Other Things
As for the smattering of the other unimpressive claims Barker makes:
1. He says that Philo, who lived in Alexandria in the first century was “the investigative reporter of his day,” and that he never mentions Herod’s massacre of the infants of Bethlehem. Well, first, Philo wasn’t “an investigative reporter,” and second, Bethlehem was a tiny town of a few hundred people. Thus, the number of children two years and younger would have been only a few. It wasn’t a literal “massacre,” and I doubt Herod would have publicized it. He probably sent a small dispatch of soldiers to do the job, and a Jew living in Alexandria certainly would have not known about it!
2. He plays down the fact regarding the number of early manuscripts we have of the NT (5,300 Greek NT manuscripts, 10,000 Latin Vulgate, 9,300 other versions). He writes, “What does the number of copies have to do with authenticity?” (263). Well, quite a lot actually. From a historian’s perspective, that many Greek manuscripts alone, some dating to within 100-150 years of the events, is remarkable.
3. He tries to play up Bart Ehrman’s point of the thousands of variants within the Greek manuscripts. Yes, it is true, there are thousands of variants—we don’t have any of the original writings. But it is equally true that 99.9% of those variants are completely irrelevant to the reliability of the texts. They are the equivalent of misspellings and grammar errors.
4. He claims that Paul says hardly anything about the life of Jesus; rarely quotes him. Barker writes, “The Jesus of whom Paul writes is a disembodied, spiritual Christ, speaking from the sky, not a flesh and blood man of history” (264). No, that is not true. Paul’s letters are occasional letters that speak to specific issues that that specific church is dealing with. If the Corinthian church was dealing with the issue of whether or not Christians should eat meat in the marketplace that had passed through pagan temples, there was no need for Paul to re-write the story of Jesus. Besides, the entire talk of the resurrection itself shows that Paul did not view Christ as a “disembodied Christ.”
How Did the Myth Originate?
In the final part of the chapter, Barker, after failing to actually prove Jesus wasn’t a historical figure, proceeds to list all the various mythicist explanations for how Christianity started. There is no need to go through them all because 99.9% of historians and Biblical Scholars find them ludicrous. That is why it is so amusing (or perhaps sad) to read Barker’s triumphant claim at the end of the chapter: “Either in ignorance or in defiance of scholarship, preachers such as televangelist Pat Robertson continue to rattle off the list of Christian ‘evidences,’ but most bible scholars, including most non-fundamentalist Christians, admit that the documentation is very weak” (275).
“The Gospel stories are no more historic than the Genesis creation accounts are scientific. They are filled with exaggeration, miracles, and admitted propaganda. They were written during a context of time when myths were being born, exchanged, elaborated and corrupted, and they were written to an audience susceptible to such fables. They are cut from the same cloth as other religions and fables of the time. Taking all of this into account, it is rational to conclude that the New Testament is a myth” (275).
Again, none of that is true. “Most biblical scholars” do not think what Barker claims “most scholars” think. In reality, the only people Barker quotes in the chapter are either people who aren’t Biblical scholars or who belong to the infamous Jesus Seminar—a group of 150 people of whom only 1/3 were Biblical scholars, and 50 Biblical scholars from the Jesus Seminar hardly constitutes “most scholars.”
These are the facts. Jesus was a historical person. No myth.
Like Dan Barker, Madeline Murray O’Hare claimed Jesus never lived. She was an unusual woman.
His next-to-last paragraph says it. Barker’s problem is much more with Pat Robertson and similar fundamentalist/evangelical Christian leaders who, he believes, sold him a bogus bill of goods, than it is with serious NT scholarship. Basically he’s concluded that if the fundamentalist interpretation (caricature?) of Christianity he was taught isn’t true, then Christianity itself isn’t true.
Bill Maher used the same kind of illogic in his awful documentary of a few years ago, *Religulous,* for example, in one section of the film, asking a group of Protestant Holiness truckers if it bothered them that the Immaculate Conception wasn’t mentioned in the Bible. Yet why would/should it bother a group of Protestant truckers that an extra-biblical teaching espoused by the Roman Catholic Church (which it has never claimed was in the Bible) and not by Protestants isn’t in the New Testament?
Barker, Maher, et. al. critique Christianity and the Bible using the same kind of fuzzy logic they make fun of fundamentalist Christians for using.
I’ve noticed that these authors almost *never* engage with serious NT scholars such as Marcus Bockmuehl, Michael Bird, NT Wright, Richard Bauckham, Martin Hengel, Larry Hurtado, etc. On the rare occasions when they *do* cite serious NT scholars they typically trot out Bart Ehrman. Yet they hafta use him selectively as even Prof. Ehrman believes that Jesus was a real historical figure, and even wrote a book about it titled *Did Jesus Exist?*
Pax.
Lee.