Litwa Carrier Bible Christ

For those who have been following the arguments for and against the position that Jesus was a completely mythical person, you might be aware of some of the discussions that have been sparked by M. David Litwa and Richard Carrier. For those who have not, then one might summarize things as a bunch of drama that doesn’t matter. I figured it was worth discussing some of the recent interactions that have taken place via a number of YouTube videos among the channels that have participated in the discussions about the historicity of the Bible, the historicity of Jesus himself, and the various texts that are discussed when making those arguments.

The biggest reason that makes me want to discuss what is happening is that I believe all sides are poorly engaging each other, either making unfounded claims and errors or bringing up so much vitriol that it becomes impossible to clear-headedly analyze the evidence one way or the other. I won’t pretend that I am some perfect saint in these matters, but I have watched the debate from the side, so I believe I can referee to some degree.

1. Intro
2. Ascending Arguments
3. Vitriol
4. GI’s Video–Beginning
5. GI’s Video–The Good
6. GI’s Video–The Questionable
7. GI’s Video–The Bad
8. Conclusions

Intro

Before I do, let me give some background. Richard Carrier is probably the most prominent defender of the thesis that Jesus was not a historical person, but instead he was the result of visionary experiences and exegesis from the Old Testament, and the transformation of the original idea of a heavenly messiah into a historical figure was a process (as opposed to a conspiracy). His main book arguing the topic, On the Historicity of Jesus (hereafter OHJ) was published through an academic press, so it has deserved more attention by the academy than other versions of the Jesus myth hypothesis. M. David Litwa was, until recently, a research fellow in early Christian studies at the Australian Catholic University. Both of these scholars have been presenting their work and ideas on a number of YouTube channels devoted to New Testament and religion studies, namely MythVision, Gnostic Informant, and History Valley.

Ethical Chocolate: Science Deceptions and Solutions

The big news last week was that a study touted around the world for showing the supposed health benefits of eating chocolate was as a hoax. As revealed at io9, the study was done in order to show how bad things are in science journalism and what can get published and noticed today in diet and medical journals using specious statistical tools.

The way it worked is this: the author, John Bohannon, collected a rather small number of subjects to do an experiment with three groups changing or keeping their normal diets. Then data was collected from all groups and a later battery of tests were done to find any differences. The problem with a study like this is that with the small sample size and the very many different tests, the chances of finding any variable change that is “statistically significant” is rather high. Note that “statistical significance” is not the same as having a result that is large and noticeable but instead is a measure of how unlikely to get that result if there were no correlation between input and output (i.e., diet with chocolate and weight). With most papers, a result is statistically significant if the chances of getting a correlation when there is none is less that 5% (p < 0.05); but that also means that if you do twenty tests you can expect one to be statistically significant just by chance. With so many tests and so few subjects to average out any statistical fluctuations, then any positive results -are at best specious since chance cannot be ruled out. Roll the die enough and you will get snake-eyes. Heck, it’s expected, and that should have been noticed by any journal reviewer or trained science journalist.

So the fact that the study even got published, let alone got wide attention, shows there is something wrong in how things are working.

Interestingly, this has been causing not simply a reflection on issues in science and journalism, but there is a question on the very ethics of doing a fake study like this one.

Review of my Star of Bethlehem Book by Michael Molnar–The Shark has been Jumped

As I mentioned in my last post about the big Star of Bethlehem conference at the University of Groningen, there is a new review of my book on the subject that was published online just after the conference. At least that is when it first appeared on Twitter through the journal’s account. The journal, Science, Religion & Culture, has a review by Michael Molnar, author of the most sophisticated attempt at explaining the Star through ancient astrology. His thesis was the one most focused on at the conference, and so it received considerable analysis and criticism. Molnar did not attend the meeting for reasons unclear to me, but if he had he may have realized that his work is highly problematic and unconvincing to experts in the field.

His review of my book on the Star of Bethlehem is even more problematic. Not only does it repeat many factual errors examined at the conference, but it is filled with logical issues, changing stances from his published work, and even deceptive characterizations of what I wrote, not to mention the facts. He denies the very existence of contrary evidence he doesn’t like, accuses me of logical fallacies I did not commit, and at times writes so unclearly I don’t know if he gave what he wrote a second-read. There is a laundry list of things I can point to, but I will start with a few points that show that Molnar simply cannot be trusted on this subject; he is too invested to learn from mistakes or even understand the arguments.

Daniel 9 and the Historical Jesus

***This post contains original research. If you wish to write on this subject and use my ideas, please let me know and appropriately attribute it. Thanks you.***

Here I think we may reach he apex of this year’s War on Christmas, and here I need to summarize what has been done up to this point.

I first started arguing how the date of Dec 25 for Christmas had nothing to do with the actual date that Jesus may have been born, that this tradition did not start until much later in time. To explain this date, I looked at the ‘traditional’ explanation of how it was a co-option of the birth date of Sol Invictus/Mithras, but that seems to not fit the data we have. Instead, it seems that it can be explained as a feature of beliefs about Jesus having the same birth and death date, which was then adjusted so that the conception and death date were the same, and with an execution right on the vernal equinox we get a birth nine months later on Dec 25.

With that calculation, I wanted to explore how other calculations may explain other features of the timeline of Jesus’ life. But I also wanted to try and explain the other timelines that different from the canonical version by as much as a century. To do this, I explored the well-known prophecy of Daniel 9 and how it was being used in around the time of Christianity’s beginnings. I then looked at how it was originally used by the author of Daniel (whoever that really was), and I showed how it could explain a Jesus dying around 100 BCE and in 59 CE. But this same method could easily point to the time when Jesus was supposed to have ministered and died according to the Gospels in the Bible.

So that leaves us here to ponder what this means for history. Could this sort of explanation I propose be useful to see how Jesus was able to captivate people into thinking he really was the Messiah? Or could it be evidence that attempts were made to put a Jesus into history, and those attempts were derived from Daniel 9, thus implying the whole thing could be a fiction?

Recent Publications

It’s been some busy times, and now they have paid off. In this last week I have had two articles published, so a small synopsis is given here.

The first article concerns the Star of Bethlehem and its history of interpretation. I focus on scientific versions of the object, but there is plenty of other points as well. Unlike other articles, this one does not propose a theory or say which ones are best. I will save that for some other time. The article itself is published by Zygon: Journal of Science and Religion, and the issue my article is in is up for free until the end of the year! Give it a read either online or download the PDF (link is to the abstract).

The other article is based on my master’s/candidacy paper with my adviser. It concerns the teaching modality of project-based learning (PBL), a subset of inquiry-based instruction; this is a general review of the subject, including its characteristics, history, and effectiveness. It also discusses the best ways to implement PBL, what difficulties it has, and how to test and see the effectiveness of a curriculum. This went through a lot of revision, so its content should be well-vetted and useful. The comparison between PBL and other teaching methods, such as traditional lecture-based instruction and some of the more innovative methods from the mid-late 20th century, is unique and ought to be helpful. Like the Zygon article above, this one is online for free, but it should be up there indefinitely. It’s from the journal REAL: Research in Education, Assessment, and Learning, and it is focused on physics education research, though it is more expansive than that.

All in all, a good week last week getting things through the peer review process. Hope to have a several more things published this year, so stay tuned.