Subject: Christ myth: Silence of NT thesis

Central Theme: Three aspects of the Christ myth “silence” thesis

Objective/Rationale: Every Christian can learn to defend against the Christ myth “silence” thesis by learning about the three ASPECTS of the thesis

Aspect #1: The theorists

Aspect #2: The arguments

Aspect #3: The examples

Summ last lesson: Christ myth; what hist would have said about Js: not as Chr see, but as disint pagans think mythical; Tacitus, Josephus

Slide 1

First major school of the Christ myth theory, and that’s the one that attempts to use the NT itself to claim that Jesus never existed as a human walking the earth.

Slide 2

Now I imagine that has you scratching your head already because you’re thinking, “How do these guys get around the Gospels?” I’ll give you their quick answer, and put off our answer to (another) lesson: Gospels late, inauthentic, legendary – 2 wks.

You may also ask how they dispense with the secular references to Jesus, such as Tacitus and Josephus, and the answer to that is by using some of the same arguments we’ve already mentioned in the ()

The major component of the silence theory also makes much of how the NT epistles, written by Paul, James, Peter and others, say nothing about the life of Jesus. Lack of detail = Jesus either was thought to have been a real person, but lived in distant past, 100-200 years before Paul; or, Jesus of the epistles was some sort of spiritual entity, not a person who walked the earth. lesson.

Slide 3

I need to mention briefly to start who the main theorists are of this idea. Try as you might, you can’t find pictures of either of these guys online, so I’ve used their book covers.

That first gent’s name is GA Wells, not to be confused with HG Wells who wrote science fiction books, although both profess to be atheists. Wells wrote several books with different publishers on the Christ myth, and his explanations of what happened changed a little each time. His most recent theory as a silence mythicist was that Jesus was a real person, but lived somewhere around 100 BC. These days, he’s no longer a mythicist. In fact, he believes that the figure of Jesus in the NT was inspired by two different people – one insp. Paul, and the other insp Gospels, though with a lot of legend added on. So he’s gone over the last 40 years from believing in no Jesus to bel in 2 of them.

That leaves the other major name: Earl Doherty. He’s written one book on the Christ myth called the Jesus Puzzle. (qt last week) He takes tack that Jesus of Paul was a spiritual being who lived in a “sublunar realm” bt earth and moon.

The fact that it’s hard to find pictures of these guys symbolizes something I’d like to make a point about – and that is, that neither of these writers has any serious qualifications as a historian. Professional historians are not the ones pushing the Christ myth. Wells is a professor of German. Doherty says he has a degree in ancient history, but it isn’t a doctorate and he is not a pro historian. In fact, he’s very quiet about what he does do for a living and where he got his alleged degrees, so much so that I have some suspicions about him.

I’d like to mention one other person; he’s not so much a theorists as he is someone who has taken it upon himself to promote mythicist theories by hook or by crook.

Slide 4

This troubled soul’s name is Brian Flemming. Flemming professes to be a former Christian. He now advocates for mythicist theories, mainly inspired by Doherty, via a film titled The God Who Wasn’t There,. Flemming is trying to take CM mainstream. In 2006 started an aggressive campaign for his film called The War on Easter. He bought 666 copies of his own film, encouraged his fans to sneak them into churches and leave them there – in restrooms, or literature racks, or wherever. He also had them take plastic Easter eggs and put messages in them like “Jesus is no different than the Tooth Fairy” to be hidden where children at church could find them.

Many atheists said that they didn’t care for Flemming’s tactics, and it’s fair to say that his confidence in his film outstrips the impact. He sure didn’t do a War on Easter again in 2007/8. Nevertheless, don’t relax. People’s mind are being changed by this nonsense, and every soul has value in God’s sight. Here is what one review of the film said:

Like many christians I was profoundly affected and moved by Mel Gibson's portrayal of Jesus in his well-made first film: "The Passion of Christ". Until recently, I thought my faith was even more affirmed by Gibson's version of Jesus' passion and this film affirmed my suspicions about Jesus, the Bible, if not God himself.
I recently decided to take it upon myself to do research on Jesus to see if he is recorded anywhere in history as an actual historic figure. Unfortunately, as of this review, I have found none. Furthermore, as this film points out, there are no records of Pontius Pilate having ordered the execution of anyone named Jesus at all….
My father is a priest in a well-known protestant denomination, I was born and raised to believe in God, the Bible and Jesus himself and that Jesus and God actually exist. However, after watching this film and conducting my research, I have concluded that, until it is proven to me that a god exists I will not believe.

Sad: Pilate ref (last week) We can’t afford not to be aware of the Christ myth theory and how it argues.

Slide 5

We’ll cover the authenticity of the Gospels, as I said, in another lesson; let’s go instead to the other two components, which come together: It is said that the epistles are very mum about details about the life of Jesus on earth. Therefore it is argued that Paul, James, and others never envisioned Jesus as living on earth, but rather as a spiritual being or person way back in history. Now if you know your Bible, you’re probably thinking, how in the world do these guys dispense with references in the epistles to Jesus dying on the cross? Or to things like Galatians 4:4 which say he was born of a woman? Just move it all where they want it. Say “person way back in history” say he was crucified back in 100 BC.

Say Jesus was spirit being say he was crucified, but in the spiritual world.

But once they get past that, the main argument is that there are other details lacking that they thinks should be in there. In ED own words, this is how it goes:

The Gospel story, with its figure of Jesus of Nazareth, cannot be found before the Gospels. In Christian writings earlier than Mark, including almost all of the New Testament epistles, as well as in many writings from the second century, the object of Christian faith is never spoken of as a human man who had recently lived, taught, performed miracles, suffered and died at the hands of human authorities, or rose from a tomb outside Jerusalem. There is no sign in the epistles of Mary or Joseph, Judas or John the Baptist, no birth story, teaching or appointment of apostles by Jesus, no mention of holy places or sites of Jesus’ career, not even the hill of Calvary or the empty tomb. This silence is so pervasive and so perplexing that attempted explanations for it have proven inadequate.

I can see this has you considered apostasy. No of course not. The first thing many of us will think is, tempest in a teapot. He’s making a big deal over nothing. And you’d be absolutely right.

I’ve written a full-length rebuttal to Doherty’s work, and he has mostly tried to ignore it. His case is weak and I think he knows this. Nevertheless, he has some people convinced that he has undone Christianity. So it behooves us to have an answer ready.

Slide 6

How do we answer this claim that there is some problem in lack of details about the life of Jesus in the epistles?

The first and most obvious point to make is that the epistles were not written for the express purpose of informing people about the life of Jesus. The Gospels were written for that purpose. The Gospels are in the form of ancient biographies. Epistles were essentially personal letters. Paul, James and the others are writing to their churches who need help solving problems they are having. They don’t need to hear about Mary or Joseph. They don’t need to hear about the place where Jesus fed 5000 people with fish.

The second point that can be made is that the epistles were written to people who had been Christians for 10 or more years by the time they were written. Question: Do you think all that stuff about Joseph and Mary and all of that, might have been covered earlier? I’ll use this to lead into my third point. We who go to church today hear about Joseph and Mary every year at Christmas. We hear a lot of details about the life of Jesus every time we come to church. We have an altar call with an offer of salvation every Sunday. One of the reasons some people have found silence argument persuasive is because they assume it must have been the same way in the first century Biblical world. But it wasn’t. That leads to the third and most important point.

The Bible was written in what is called a high-context society. A HCS. Let me explain what that is with an illustration.

Slide 7

In your household you live in, I’ll bet you have a lot of “inside jokes” that no one else can understand, right? Let me set up a wild, hypothetical example. Let’s say one Thanksgiving, Uncle John came to the dinner dressed like this. And he spent the day shouting, “Ahoy there!” and cracking pirate jokes and that sort of thing. Well, from then on, you may have a family joke, and anyone in the family who says, “Ahoy there!” is obviously making reference to the time Uncle John came to dinner dressed like a pirate. All those hours of fun with Uncle John are now brought back to memory when someone in the family shouts, “Ahoy there!”

What if you have a friend come over who wasn’t there that Thanksgiving and doesn’t know what happened? And what if someone in the family yells, “Ahoy there!” What will your friend think? He has no idea what’s going on, does he? You’d need to explain it to him or he’ll think you’ve all gone pirate-wacky.

Now here’s the point. Your household is operating as a “high context” setting. You don’t need to explain to each other why you say, “Ahoy there!” You know what it refers to. Your friend just visiting is outside that circle of knowledge. What I am saying is that the New Testament and the world it was in is much like that family – and that we’re often like that friend.

In a high context society, people can assume a lot about what other people know and don’t need to explain a lot of things. In contrast, we in America are a "low-context" society. We have a lot of leisure time on our hands that lets us spend time repeating details over and over again. We also assume people don’t know the details and want or need to hear them again. People in HC societies would say, we talk too much but say very little.

The huge, huge problem with silence theory is that mythicist are low context readers who thinks that the NT is a low context document. The equivalent then would be for Wells or Doherty to be like the friend who visits your family. He’s read a detailed account of how your Uncle John dressed as a pirate. But when he comes to your house and hears people saying, “Ahoy there!” he says, “It’s obvious that Uncle John never dressed as a pirate. All people do here is yell ‘Ahoy there!’ They never mention the parrot on his shoulder, or how much grog he drank, or the funny hat he wore, or the pegleg or the eyepatch, or….”

No. Within your own household, you don’t need to mention all that again to know what happened. True, we would likely talk about all those details again, but we are a low-context society with a lot of leisure time on our hands. That was not the way it was in the time of Paul and Jesus. The “silence” mythicists finds so significant is meaningless – it is what we would expect the epistles to be like.

I should note before I go on that I have had this point about high-context posted as an answer to Doherty for years now. He has ignored it for years.

Slide 8

So now I’ll round off this teaching with a handful of examples of how silence mythicists interpret scripture. I will be straightforward as I usually am: Many times, I find that silence theorists are not exactly high on the understanding scale. The first example I’d like to give shows this very well. Let’s look at these two passages.

Rom. 8:26/Matt. 6:5-9

“When Paul, in Romans 8:26, says that 'we do not know how we are to pray,' does this mean he is unaware that Jesus taught the Lord's Prayer to his disciples?”

Kind of a shaky way to argue that Jesus never existed, isn’t it? Little words do make a difference! Paul is talking about what (tis) we are to pray for. Jesus is talking about how (houto) we should pray. As even the context of each remark shows, Paul is talking about content, what our prayers should have as their subject; Jesus is talking about form, hwo to pray: Not like the pagans who babble and so on. There was no reason for Paul to appeal to Jesus’ teaching here. But this is typical from sil myth: Thinks that just because there is a common topic – prayer – this is cause for Paul to recite anything Jesus said on the matter.

Slide 9

1 Peter 3:9, 1 Thess. 5:2-4 When the writer of 1 Peter urges, 'do not repay wrong with wrong, but retaliate with blessing,' has he forgotten Jesus' 'turn the other cheek'? Paul tells his readers: "the time we live in will not last long," and "you know the Day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night." But can Paul be truly unaware that Jesus himself had made almost identical apocalyptic predictions, as recorded in passages like Mark 13:30 and Matthew 24:42?

Paul and Peter here use words that sound like something said by Jesus. But they don’t credit Jesus with the words by saying something like, “As Jesus said….” Therefore, Jesus didn’t exist as a human being on earth.