On the "rational" wiki, Nazis were Christian (in reality, they weren't and persecuted Christianity and the Churches in Germany after coming into power, source), the anti-theism of Joseph Goebbels and his crusade against Christianity by creating the "German Faith Movement" (a personality cult that worshipped Hitler and was atheistic) never existed (or at least the wiki refuses to acknowledge it since they neglect to mention it in their article about him), communism's atrocities are conveniently looked over, North Korea is no longer a communist nation and worships Kim Jong Un as God, matter can arise from nothingness (despite this having no empirical evidence) and Jesus never existed despite all the historical evidence.
What we see from this is that the "rational" wiki, whilst accepting scientific facts such as evolution, denies history and other facts to advance its anti-religious and atheist agenda. They try to downplay the deaths caused by socialism and communism (in reality these two systems have caused more deaths than any religion in a century alone) and they claim many religious figures didn't exist (despite the evidences that they did). However, this blog post isn't to address their nutty liberal history revisionism, or even the fact that they think communism can work despite history's proof to the opposite, no this blog post will simply be dealing with their claims that Jesus is a myth. Let's address them and refute them:
Claim 1: "The Jesus of The Bible is based on Jesus ben Ananias"
"it can be shown there is a strong correlation between the Jesus of Mark and the actions of a would be messiah named Jesus ben Ananias (66-70 CE) written about in Josephus' Jewish Wars (c. 75) [68] meaning that Mark (and therefore Matthew, Luke, and John) could be in reality a Robin Hood like stories with Jesus ben Ananias being made to fit Paul's earlier writings vis a shift in time and name."
What we know of Jesus Ben Ananias comes from one source: Book 6, Chapter 5, Section 3 of the historian Flavius Josephus' The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem. In it, Josephus writes this:
"But a further portent was even more alarming. Four years before the war, when the city was enjoying profound peace and prosperity, there came to the feast at which it is the custom of all Jews to erect tabernacles to God, one Jesus, son of Ananias, a rude peasant, who suddenly began to cry out, "A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the sanctuary, a voice against the bridegroom and the bride, a voice against all the people." Day and night he went about all the alleys with this cry on his lips. Some of the leading citizens, incensed at these ill-omened words, arrested the fellow and severely chastised him. But he, without a word on his own behalf or for the private ear of those who smote him, only continued his cries as before. Thereupon, the magistrates, supposing, as was indeed the case, that the man was under some supernatural impulse, brought him before the Roman governor; there, although flayed to the bone with scourges, he neither sued for mercy nor shed a tear, but, merely introducing the most mournful of variations into his ejaculation, responded to each stroke with "Woe to Jerusalem!" When Albinus, the governor, asked him who and whence he was and why he uttered these cries, he answered him never a word, but unceasingly reiterated his dirge over the city, until Albinus pronounced him a maniac and let him go. During the whole period up to the outbreak of war he neither approached nor was seen talking to any of the citizens, but daily, like a prayer that he had conned, repeated his lament, "Woe to Jerusalem!" He neither cursed any of those who beat him from day to day, nor blessed those who offered him food: to all men that melancholy presage was his one reply. His cries were loudest at the festivals. So for seven years and five months he continued his wail, his voice never flagging nor his strength exhausted, until in the siege, having seen his presage verified, he found his rest. For, while going his round and shouting in piercing tones from the wall, "Woe once more to the city and to the people and to the temple," as he added a last word, "and woe to me also," a stone hurled from the ballista struck and killed him on the spot. So with those ominous words still upon his lips he passed away."
This would have occurred in 66 AD (when the Jewish-Roman war begun), his death was seven years later in 74 AD and his death was by a ballista that struck him accidentally. The description here doesn't describe him as having any followers, performing any miracles or indeed, sharing any similarity with the Jesus of The Bible apart from having the same name (which was a common name back then). Even the time he existed in is decades away from when the events of the gospels took place so we can already rule Jesus Ben Ananias out of being any sort of inspiration for Christ.
Jesus ben Ananias is only mentioned by one historian too (Josephus) so considering the Christ mythist's stance that "if there's only one or few sources mentioning someone, then it's likely they didn't exist" it's humorous to see them changing the rules when it suits them here. If they accept the existence of Jesus ben Ananias from one historian, then by the same logic they should also accept the existence of Christ considering he's mentioned by at least several 1st century historians.
They later say this of Christ "all Non-Biblical evidence is from non contemporaries and therefore at best might be simply the repeating of urban myth rather than history" but apparently, non contemporaries and their accounts do count as historical evidence when it concerns people other than Christ? By their terrible reasoning of Christ, we can reject the existence of all the historical figures they invoke to refute the historical existence of Christ since most of the figures they bring up weren't recorded by contemporaries. Nonetheless, their reasoning here is flawed. Much of history is recorded by non contemporaries, if we go by the logic of the "rational" wiki then one can argue that many historical figures never existed but of course this would be wrong and all reputable historians would reject this.
Claim 2: "Because the account of Josephus has been tampered with, it's likely that the whole thing is a fake"
"It can be shown that the Testimonium Flavianum of Josephus has been tampered with and given Josephus was supposedly physically in Rome from 64 to 66 CE to petition emperor Nero for the release of some Jewish priest that Gessius Florus sent there in chains.[69] and make no mention of the movement in Rome it is likely the whole thing is a fake."
This is wrong for so many reasons. Firstly, only ONE passage was shown to be tampered with. "Jesus the Messiah was a wise teacher who was crucified by Pilate" is the passage was apparently tampered with in some way, many scholars believe it was tampered with only to add in that Jesus was the messiah. However, the authenticity of the reference in Book 20, Chapter 9, 1 of the Antiquities to "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" is not questioned and shows no evidence of being tampered with. This in itself shows Josephus mentioned Jesus by his own hand since he mentions James as "the brother of Jesus" (whether as a fraternal brother or sibling is up for debate but that's irrelevant here) acknowledging the existence of both.
Josephus is relevant because he was a 1st century historian. In his time, many people from the time of Jesus would still have been alive to affirm whether Jesus was a real person and whether they had met him. Josephus would have been going on reliable sources at the time and he references Jesus as a real person. Josephus also references the imprisonment of John the Baptist and his subsequent death, which agrees with the gospel accounts validating the gospels here. Already we have a picture emerging of a consistent history contrary to the views of the "rational" wiki and the Christ mythists.
Claim 3: "The reference of Jesus and Christ in Tacitus refers to Chrestians who might have been followers of Osiris"
"it has been proven via ultraviolet light that in our oldest copy of Tacitus he originally wrote about Chrestians which may have been followers of the pagan god Osiris or followers of another would be messiah named Chresto. Also there are strong indications that the reference to Christ in Tacitus is an interpolation."
This has no reliable source. There is no reputable academic references saying that Osiris had followers called "Chrestians" and further more, The Sinaiticus (the oldest new testament written in Greek) shows "Christians" written as "Chrestians" so going by this and other early recordings which had this spelling for Christians, we can say that this was one of the original spellings for Christian. So its use by Tacitus clearly does refer to Christians just as "Chrestos" refers to "Christos" Χριστός (the greek spelling of Christ). The name of "chrestos" derives from the greek word of "chriso" which in itself means "to annoit" and "Christos" meant "the anointed one" so again, contrary to the "rational" wiki, the mention of "Chrestos" here by Tacitus likely was a reference to Jesus.
The claim that it all was an "interpolation" is not supported. "Rational" wiki here cites Richard Carrier, a well known Jesus mythist and atheist whose "evidences" are based upon bad scholarship and his citations come from equally dishonest Jesus mythists who made up lies to support themselves or gained their "evidences" from non-existent records. Jesus mythists mainly go upon the now fraudulent and debunked claims made by Gerald Massey, who was a 19th century self-published writer who made up a bunch of bull about Horus sharing similar characteristics to Jesus (something rejected by all educated Egyptologists who know the stories of Horus, Osiris and every other Egyptian god atheists try to compare Jesus to, are totally different. One invention by the atheists here was that Horus was baptised by someone named "anup the baptizer" but apart from atheist sites on the internet, there is not a single reference of this event or "anup" in Egyptology or any academic site so by lack of evidences, we can rule these comparisons out).
Given that "rational wiki" has nothing to say about Thallus, Suetonius or Pliny the Younger and their records, we'll assume that they ran out of imagination at this point. At this point, I think it's fair to say that Jesus has been established as a historical individual. He is mentioned by several 1st historians as a real individual. The accounts from Tacitus and Josephus share the same account from the gospels in that Jesus was trialed by Pilate and crucified according to the New Testament accounts.
"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 Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find 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."
"About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared."
In the end we can see Jesus was a real individual based on the evidences. Sadly, many atheist crackpots such as those on the "rational" wiki still persist with their claims and as shown in this blog, will even misinterpret and twist evidences to try and support their claims whilst relying upon the writings of a charlatan (Gerald Massey) as the whole basis for their little Christ myth "theory." Their dishonesty alone shows their "theory" for what it is: nonsense.
Sources:
(All of these sources come from people qualified in biblical scholarship and study, with E. P. Sanders being one of the most respected scholars in the field on the scholarship for the case of the historical Jesus)
The Historical Figure of Jesus By E.P Sanders
Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium By Bart D. Ehrman chapter four
Josephus and the New Testament H. W. Montefiore
Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence By Robert Van Voorst
http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1354&context=lts_fac_pubs
Q&A: The Historical Jesus Gary R. Habermas Liberty University
What we see from this is that the "rational" wiki, whilst accepting scientific facts such as evolution, denies history and other facts to advance its anti-religious and atheist agenda. They try to downplay the deaths caused by socialism and communism (in reality these two systems have caused more deaths than any religion in a century alone) and they claim many religious figures didn't exist (despite the evidences that they did). However, this blog post isn't to address their nutty liberal history revisionism, or even the fact that they think communism can work despite history's proof to the opposite, no this blog post will simply be dealing with their claims that Jesus is a myth. Let's address them and refute them:
Claim 1: "The Jesus of The Bible is based on Jesus ben Ananias"
"it can be shown there is a strong correlation between the Jesus of Mark and the actions of a would be messiah named Jesus ben Ananias (66-70 CE) written about in Josephus' Jewish Wars (c. 75) [68] meaning that Mark (and therefore Matthew, Luke, and John) could be in reality a Robin Hood like stories with Jesus ben Ananias being made to fit Paul's earlier writings vis a shift in time and name."
What we know of Jesus Ben Ananias comes from one source: Book 6, Chapter 5, Section 3 of the historian Flavius Josephus' The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem. In it, Josephus writes this:
"But a further portent was even more alarming. Four years before the war, when the city was enjoying profound peace and prosperity, there came to the feast at which it is the custom of all Jews to erect tabernacles to God, one Jesus, son of Ananias, a rude peasant, who suddenly began to cry out, "A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the sanctuary, a voice against the bridegroom and the bride, a voice against all the people." Day and night he went about all the alleys with this cry on his lips. Some of the leading citizens, incensed at these ill-omened words, arrested the fellow and severely chastised him. But he, without a word on his own behalf or for the private ear of those who smote him, only continued his cries as before. Thereupon, the magistrates, supposing, as was indeed the case, that the man was under some supernatural impulse, brought him before the Roman governor; there, although flayed to the bone with scourges, he neither sued for mercy nor shed a tear, but, merely introducing the most mournful of variations into his ejaculation, responded to each stroke with "Woe to Jerusalem!" When Albinus, the governor, asked him who and whence he was and why he uttered these cries, he answered him never a word, but unceasingly reiterated his dirge over the city, until Albinus pronounced him a maniac and let him go. During the whole period up to the outbreak of war he neither approached nor was seen talking to any of the citizens, but daily, like a prayer that he had conned, repeated his lament, "Woe to Jerusalem!" He neither cursed any of those who beat him from day to day, nor blessed those who offered him food: to all men that melancholy presage was his one reply. His cries were loudest at the festivals. So for seven years and five months he continued his wail, his voice never flagging nor his strength exhausted, until in the siege, having seen his presage verified, he found his rest. For, while going his round and shouting in piercing tones from the wall, "Woe once more to the city and to the people and to the temple," as he added a last word, "and woe to me also," a stone hurled from the ballista struck and killed him on the spot. So with those ominous words still upon his lips he passed away."
This would have occurred in 66 AD (when the Jewish-Roman war begun), his death was seven years later in 74 AD and his death was by a ballista that struck him accidentally. The description here doesn't describe him as having any followers, performing any miracles or indeed, sharing any similarity with the Jesus of The Bible apart from having the same name (which was a common name back then). Even the time he existed in is decades away from when the events of the gospels took place so we can already rule Jesus Ben Ananias out of being any sort of inspiration for Christ.
Jesus ben Ananias is only mentioned by one historian too (Josephus) so considering the Christ mythist's stance that "if there's only one or few sources mentioning someone, then it's likely they didn't exist" it's humorous to see them changing the rules when it suits them here. If they accept the existence of Jesus ben Ananias from one historian, then by the same logic they should also accept the existence of Christ considering he's mentioned by at least several 1st century historians.
They later say this of Christ "all Non-Biblical evidence is from non contemporaries and therefore at best might be simply the repeating of urban myth rather than history" but apparently, non contemporaries and their accounts do count as historical evidence when it concerns people other than Christ? By their terrible reasoning of Christ, we can reject the existence of all the historical figures they invoke to refute the historical existence of Christ since most of the figures they bring up weren't recorded by contemporaries. Nonetheless, their reasoning here is flawed. Much of history is recorded by non contemporaries, if we go by the logic of the "rational" wiki then one can argue that many historical figures never existed but of course this would be wrong and all reputable historians would reject this.
Claim 2: "Because the account of Josephus has been tampered with, it's likely that the whole thing is a fake"
"It can be shown that the Testimonium Flavianum of Josephus has been tampered with and given Josephus was supposedly physically in Rome from 64 to 66 CE to petition emperor Nero for the release of some Jewish priest that Gessius Florus sent there in chains.[69] and make no mention of the movement in Rome it is likely the whole thing is a fake."
This is wrong for so many reasons. Firstly, only ONE passage was shown to be tampered with. "Jesus the Messiah was a wise teacher who was crucified by Pilate" is the passage was apparently tampered with in some way, many scholars believe it was tampered with only to add in that Jesus was the messiah. However, the authenticity of the reference in Book 20, Chapter 9, 1 of the Antiquities to "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" is not questioned and shows no evidence of being tampered with. This in itself shows Josephus mentioned Jesus by his own hand since he mentions James as "the brother of Jesus" (whether as a fraternal brother or sibling is up for debate but that's irrelevant here) acknowledging the existence of both.
Josephus is relevant because he was a 1st century historian. In his time, many people from the time of Jesus would still have been alive to affirm whether Jesus was a real person and whether they had met him. Josephus would have been going on reliable sources at the time and he references Jesus as a real person. Josephus also references the imprisonment of John the Baptist and his subsequent death, which agrees with the gospel accounts validating the gospels here. Already we have a picture emerging of a consistent history contrary to the views of the "rational" wiki and the Christ mythists.
Claim 3: "The reference of Jesus and Christ in Tacitus refers to Chrestians who might have been followers of Osiris"
"it has been proven via ultraviolet light that in our oldest copy of Tacitus he originally wrote about Chrestians which may have been followers of the pagan god Osiris or followers of another would be messiah named Chresto. Also there are strong indications that the reference to Christ in Tacitus is an interpolation."
This has no reliable source. There is no reputable academic references saying that Osiris had followers called "Chrestians" and further more, The Sinaiticus (the oldest new testament written in Greek) shows "Christians" written as "Chrestians" so going by this and other early recordings which had this spelling for Christians, we can say that this was one of the original spellings for Christian. So its use by Tacitus clearly does refer to Christians just as "Chrestos" refers to "Christos" Χριστός (the greek spelling of Christ). The name of "chrestos" derives from the greek word of "chriso" which in itself means "to annoit" and "Christos" meant "the anointed one" so again, contrary to the "rational" wiki, the mention of "Chrestos" here by Tacitus likely was a reference to Jesus.
The claim that it all was an "interpolation" is not supported. "Rational" wiki here cites Richard Carrier, a well known Jesus mythist and atheist whose "evidences" are based upon bad scholarship and his citations come from equally dishonest Jesus mythists who made up lies to support themselves or gained their "evidences" from non-existent records. Jesus mythists mainly go upon the now fraudulent and debunked claims made by Gerald Massey, who was a 19th century self-published writer who made up a bunch of bull about Horus sharing similar characteristics to Jesus (something rejected by all educated Egyptologists who know the stories of Horus, Osiris and every other Egyptian god atheists try to compare Jesus to, are totally different. One invention by the atheists here was that Horus was baptised by someone named "anup the baptizer" but apart from atheist sites on the internet, there is not a single reference of this event or "anup" in Egyptology or any academic site so by lack of evidences, we can rule these comparisons out).
Given that "rational wiki" has nothing to say about Thallus, Suetonius or Pliny the Younger and their records, we'll assume that they ran out of imagination at this point. At this point, I think it's fair to say that Jesus has been established as a historical individual. He is mentioned by several 1st historians as a real individual. The accounts from Tacitus and Josephus share the same account from the gospels in that Jesus was trialed by Pilate and crucified according to the New Testament accounts.
"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 Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find 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."
"About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared."
In the end we can see Jesus was a real individual based on the evidences. Sadly, many atheist crackpots such as those on the "rational" wiki still persist with their claims and as shown in this blog, will even misinterpret and twist evidences to try and support their claims whilst relying upon the writings of a charlatan (Gerald Massey) as the whole basis for their little Christ myth "theory." Their dishonesty alone shows their "theory" for what it is: nonsense.
Sources:
(All of these sources come from people qualified in biblical scholarship and study, with E. P. Sanders being one of the most respected scholars in the field on the scholarship for the case of the historical Jesus)
The Historical Figure of Jesus By E.P Sanders
Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium By Bart D. Ehrman chapter four
Josephus and the New Testament H. W. Montefiore
Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence By Robert Van Voorst
http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1354&context=lts_fac_pubs
Q&A: The Historical Jesus Gary R. Habermas Liberty University
