Rook’s Comment on Way of the Master vs. The Rational Response Squad: Round 3 or The Historicity of Jesus or Jesus Outside the New Testament pt.2:

These are all refuted by modern scholarship, most notable to mention are The Jesus Puzzle, by Earl Doherty, and Mythologies Last God by William Harwood, as well as articles which have been peer reviewed by Richard Carrier, Robert Price, Jeff Lowder, and additional books by them, as well as Burton Mack, Thomas Thompson and Joseph Hoffman. Additional works include George A. Wells and Arthur Drews.

I have an extensive thread posted here where I show the inadequacies of all your supposed “evidences� of Christ here: http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/rook_hawkins/the_jesus_mythicist_campaign/2889

Enjoy.

My Response, enjoy:

First, I highly disagree with what your statement of “These are all refuted by modern scholarship” implies. You are trying to get the reader to infer that all modern scholars agree with your position. This is simply not the case. In fact, scholars who support your position that Jesus never really existed are in an underwhelming minority. I could give you names like Bruce Metzger, F.F. Bruce, Edwin Yamauchi, Bart Ehrman, heck, even people that I totally disagree with like Elaine Pagels and her camp believe that Jesus existed. So please, do not try to make it seem like every scholar worth their mortarboard ardently denies any evidence that Christ was alive. That is just sensationalism. You are trying to convince people that a majority of the academic community believes something that it does not. Shame on you.

Moving on, the problems that I have with your “extensive” thread debunking all of my “evidence” stem mostly from illogical conclusions and suppositions that you make. For instance, in the passage in which you talk about Tacitus and his writings about the fire of Nero, you have multiple, seemingly contradicting pieces of “evidence” that Tacitus’ writing has been forged or altered. Here are some examples:

“…The execution of a Nazareth carpenter would have been one of the most insignificant events conceivable among the movements of Roman history in those decades; it would have completely disappeared beneath the innumerable executions inflicted by Roman provincial authorities. For it to have been kept in any report would have been a most remarkable instance of chance.”

And later you say:

“In all the Roman records there was to be found no evidence that Christ was put to death by Pontius Pilate. If genuine, such a sentence would be the most important evidence in pagan literature. How could it have been overlooked for 1360 years”

So, what’s your point with these two pieces of evidence? If it’s logical for there to be no record of Jesus’ death, how is that evidence it didn’t happen? If it is logical for there to be a record, and there isn’t one, how does that support the fact that Tacitus’ passage has been altered or forged? Unfortunately, when it comes to this section of your “site”, this isn’t the only example.

“The phrase “multitudo ingens” which means “a great number” is opposed to all that we know of the spread of the new faith in Rome at the time. A vast multitude in 64 A.D.? There were not more than a few thousand Christians 200 years later. The idea of so many just 30 years after his supposed death is just a falsehood.”

And, it’s buddy:

“Tacitus is assumed to have written this about 117 A.D., about 80 years after the death of Jesus, when Christianity was already an organized religion with a settled tradition. The gospels, or at least 3 of them, are supposed to have been in existence. Hence Tacitus might have derived his information about Jesus, if not directly from the gospels, indirectly from them by means of oral tradition. This is the view of Dupuis, who wrote: “Tacitus says what the legend said.” In 117 A.D. Tacitus could only know about Christ by what reached him from Christian or intermediate circles. He merely reproduced rumors.”

So, what you’re telling me is that the Christians weren’t numerous enough for the Romans to take notice. Oh, no, wait, you just told me that Tacitus, a Roman historian took notice enough to become familiar with their traditions? How does that make any sense? Either the church was large enough to be noticed, or it wasn’t? You can’t have your cake and eat it too!

Sadly, these are only two examples of the shoddy “history” given on Mr. Hawkin’s site. His entire work is riddled with undisclosed bias. He seems to approach the subject with this end-goal in mind: “Proving the Jesus never existed” and, with that as his final verdict, works backwards to prove his case. In other words, he does not let the evidence speak to him, but imposes his predetermined conclusion upon it. Again, this is not how an actual historian operates.