A Heavy Tangent

Ok, so I was starting to writing up my findings to date and was doing brief Google searches to get some more info on some people that other sources only briefly mentioned. Well one thing lead to another and I happened to come across a book called Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus by Joseph Atwill - http://www.amazon.com/Caesars-Messiah-Conspiracy-Invent-Second/dp/1569754578. I thought to myself, 'hey lets read a bit through amazon.com just for kicks. You know, to see how much BS it is. I had been writing about the 3 types of sources that John Dickson discusses (1. skeptical, 2. Christian apologetics, and 3.mainstream scholarships), and thought, 'yup this has gotta fall into category 1 and so isn't worth my immediate attention as its probably not peer reviwed and approved by other 'real' scholars.'

Well I found what I read to be rather disturbing, and I was beginning to conjecture the origins of my brother's conspiracy theories surrounding Josephus. From reading his intro and a few reviews, Atwill essentially proposes that the Roman politicians invented peaceful Christianity to stop any further Jewish Messianic revolutionary actions. He considers how the Roman rulers were commissioning and connected to writers such as Flavius Josephus and Pliny (who writings scholars these days take as evidence for the existance of Jesus) and through them and the making up of the Gospels fabricated Jesus and Christianity. So basically, that Jesus didn't even exist and that Christianity is essentially a lie - a political plan to keep peace, order and power over the Jews.

I haven't read his book yet myself, but it seems that a lot of his ideas come from the connection between events in Joesphus' writings and the gospels. Other things like the date this is said to have happened and the noticeable boom of Christianity are also disturbing points.

The first thought that came to mind is if someone made it up, then wouldn't the people from the cities mentioned at the very least be aware that it's a lie and resist it? To answer that 2 points come up. 1. The Romans allegedly killed a lot of Jewish revolutionists in the era surrouding Jesus, so if anyone resisted their new religion they would have killed them to silence them. 2. i thought of Stalin and how he basically used fear to stamp religion out of Soviet Russia. If he could do it, so could Ceasar...

I dunno, even in Stalin's day though underground churches continued and he couldn't change what was really in people's hearts. So perhaps some sign of underground resistance would remain if Christianity was made up and believers of truth didn't want the lie to succeed.

The next thing that came to mind is that if they made it all up, then how did they come up with that kind of thing? I don't think I could just make up a religious text and pass it of as authentic sounding enough to full future generations. I mean, word is that someone like Joseph Smith just made up a religion, but as far as I know it's clear to those who look hard enough that it's fake...

I guess one of Atwill's challenging points is that the Romans who are said to have made it up deliberately wrote it so that it would seem to fulfil the OT and predict future events which they could ensure then happens to further convince people.

My immediate reaction was, 'crap, this guys argument has some solid substance going, now what?' Well the next move was to try to find some reviews on the article and see if anyone scholar tears it to shreds like they did The Da Vinci Code. So far I've managed to find 2 articles:

http://www.insmkt.com/ellensreview.htm
This guys concludes that it's a theory "worth exploring."

http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/rev_atwill.htm
I haven't read this one yet, but will do this weekend.

That's the closest I've found to scholarly responses thusfar. I'd like to see historian's POVs etc too.

So in short, unfortunately I can't just ignore this book and it's claims, as the guy is saying that the crux of Christianity - the NT is made up. Made up so ingeniously as to have corroborating writings that suggest Jesus was real. That's a huge claim, and it's gotta be dealt with.

In response to what I know JM will say, yes - you do have to read the sources themselves to evaluate it for yourself. I agree, for sure. But still I do wanna hear what scholars say about it. I personally don't want Atwill to be right, but as it's distubing, it's gotta be dealt with.

And I'm not the only one distubed by this. Check out http://www.apologetics.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=82622&page=all to see how other Christians have been stirred up a bit by this book.

Man I hate conspiracy theories, especially when they sound so possible.

Over n out for now.

BCE and CE

My high school friend Julie Wilshire who is studying english and history at uni told me that BC and AD are no longer used. BCE and CE are now the letters that go with the years. They stand for Before Common Era and Common Era. I've done a tiny bit of general interest on it, 'cos I'm just curious. It seems both systems were developed along time ago and that it's changed for reaons of political correctness seeing as a lot of people aren't Christians anymore and the BC/AD are associated with Christianity. I got this info from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCE, and
http://web.archive.org/web/20071012132841/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20060527/ai_n16436633

I was also interested in looking into it because I thought that maybe historians changes their minds about the historicity of Jesus or something crazy like that...

But wait there's more

Bad me, I know. No posts yet this week. I figured that a Thursday night post is dumb, 'cos it's not really the end of the week, so Sunday nights might be the go. I don't have much to say this round, as I haven't done any significant research on the topics of interest, other than identifying that the Reformation and other historical events that impacted which books are in the Bible today are probably going to be my next area of exploration. And of course, more OT research. Other than that, I've been reading my Bible a wee bit more, and am finding it more interesting and engaging with all the study note additions.

Hm, so I'll probably hold off 'til I've made some new discoveries and tell you all about them next time. Over and out!