Historical data about Jesus (2)

I was rather disappointed at the arguments that appeared on June 22 in response to my letter of June 14. I expected better.

Amadeo Mifsud compares the absence of any contemporary writings about a man with a following supposedly numbering tens of thousands with the lack of contemporary writings about an event that took place billions of years before humans even existed. If the story of Jesus were real, and his followers had witnessed some pretty amazing things, it would be unthinkable that nobody thought to write anything down until more than half a century later. Of course, there is also the fact that the physicists who write about the cause of the big bang are not presenting this as “gospel truth” but, rather, a workable model – a possibility.

Anton Borg responds to my statement that Josephus only mentions Jesus as someone worshipped by the Christians, by saying that Josephus refers to “Jesus, known as the Christ”. I’m not sure whether he was trying to confirm what I said or somehow thinks that this contradicts my own statement. I must conclude that it’s the latter, since he says that mentioning Jesus by name is proof of his existence – which is hardly the case, especially since Josephus and Jesus were not contemporaries. He then goes on to say that the apostles, being first hand witnesses, managed to spread the word and were willing to subject themselves to all kinds of torture. They did neither. Christianity was spread by Paul, not the apostles, and Paul himself never met Jesus. There is no evidence that any of the apostles were tortured or killed. There are conflicting accounts, however, to the extent that certain important characters apparently died in more than one place and time. One account has the apostles fleeing into Egypt when there was a failed uprising against Rome – and were never heard from again. In the meantime, the apostles seemed to keep the “Nazarene” group going and were still waiting for the opportunity to place the messiah on the throne – which in itself would have been a good enough reason for continued persecution by the Romans. Incidentally, Jewish scholars did not transmit important teachings or histories orally during Jesus’ time. That was much earlier.

Alphonse M. Sammut takes aim at my statement that science has been removing the need for a deity. He quotes statements by two persons whom he calls a scientist and a media person. One of these is Enrico Medi, who is a Catholic candidate for sainthood and who held an official position at the Vatican before his death, and the other is Bishop Fulton Sheen. I never said that there are no scientists who are also religious, although surveys among scientists consistently show that the majority are atheist or agnostic, and among believers, most seem to favour a more deistic type of god than the traditional kind where he actively influences events in the world. This does not contradict my original statement however. You will be hard pressed today to find a scientist who thinks that rainbows are colourful reminders to god not to drown all the world again. As for Bishop Sheen’s rehashing of Pascal’s Wager – he makes the logical mistake of assuming that, if there is a god, he must be the god that he believes in, complete with heaven and hell and so on. I’d have asked him: “What if a god exists that punishes those who believe blindly?” His statement that “a fool says in his heart that there is no god” is about as convincing as the idea from Peter Pan that every time someone does not believe in fairies, a fairy will drop dead.