Historical Christ

What Are the Parallels Between Jesus and the “Divine Men” of the Ancient World? Part 3

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Mythicists claim that the stories about Jesus were merely copied from other pagan myths circulating around the Roman Empire in the first century. If this is true, it does cast some doubt on the uniqueness of the Gospel accounts of Jesus, and it certainly makes one wonder if all the stories about Jesus were borrowed from other sources.

In order to discuss this claim, I will call to the stand one Bart Ehrman, a man who is no friend to Christianity. Ehrman was interviewed by Ben Witherington in a seven-part series last summer after Ehrman’s book, Did Jesus Exist?, was published.

After Witherington’s initial question about parallel accounts of “divine men” in the ancient world, he zeros in on the alleged accounts of dying and rising gods.  He asks, “Why do you think this theory of dying and rising gods became so popular in the 20th century, and what caused its scholarly demise?”  Here is Ehrman’s answer:

Yes, for a long time it was widely thought that dying and rising gods were a constant staple of ancient pagan religions, so that when Christians claimed that Jesus had been raised from the dead, they were simply borrowing a common “motif” from pagan religions. This view was first popularized by Sir James George Frazer at the beginning of the twentieth century in his enormously influential (and very large) book, The Golden Bough. (As I explain in Did Jesus Exist, Frazer did in his day what Joseph Campbell did in ours – popularized the view that at heart, all religions are basically the same).

This view was exploded by Jonathan Z. Smith in the late 1980s, chiefly in an article on the “dying-rising gods” in the scholarly and authoritative Encyclopedia of Religion. Smith showed that the notion that there was a widespread category of gods who died and rose again was, in fact, a modern myth, not based on a careful reading of ancient sources.  In his own words:

“The category of dying and rising gods, once a major topic of scholarly investigation , must be understood to have been largely a misnomer based on imaginative reconstructions and exceedingly late or highly ambiguous texts. . . .  All the deities that have been identified as belonging to the class of dying and rising deities can be subsumed under the two larger classes of disappearing deities or dying deities. In the first case the deities return but have not died; in the second case the gods die but do not return. There is no unambiguous instance in the history of religions of a dying and rising deity.”  (cited in Jonathan Z. Smith, “Dying and Rising Gods,” Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed. Lindsay Jones, (Detroit: Macmillan, 2005 [original: 1987]), 4:2535).

Ehrman summarizes the findings of Smith:

Smith’s findings were based not on new discoveries, but on a more careful reading of ancient sources. Unfortunately, even though these findings have made a major impact on the research of New Testament scholars and other scholars of Christian antiquity, they appear to be unknown to the mythicists, many of whom continue to make the now dated claim that the resurrection of Jesus was simply invented along the lines of the common pagan myth.

More from Witherington and Ehrman in part 4 of the series.

Historical Christ, Resurrection

What Are the Parallels Between Jesus and the “Divine Men” of the Ancient World? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Mythicists claim that the stories about Jesus were merely copied from other pagan myths circulating around the Roman Empire in the first century.  If this is true, it does cast some doubt on the uniqueness of the Gospel accounts of Jesus, and it certainly makes one wonder if all the stories about Jesus were borrowed from other sources.

In order to discuss this claim, I will call to the stand one Bart Ehrman, a man who is no friend to Christianity.  Ehrman was interviewed by Ben Witherington in a seven-part series last summer after Ehrman’s book, Did Jesus Exist?, was published.  In part 1 of this post series, we reviewed Ehrman’s response to alleged parallel accounts of “divine men” in the ancient world.  After allowing that there are some parallels, Ehrman argues

that all of these figures about whom such stories were told were also different in key ways from one another. They were not all the same. The stories varied from one person to the next. The stories about Jesus are different in many ways from the others (just as each of them is different from the others).

Why is this important?  Why are the differences among accounts of ancient “divine men” damaging to mythicist claims?

This is important to bear in mind because mythicists often claim that everything said about Jesus can be paralleled in the myths and legends told about other divine figures on earth. And that simply is not true. A number of the key stories about Jesus are in fact unique to him, including some of the most important.

What are some examples of stories that are unique to Jesus?  According to Ehrman,

even though there are numerous instances of divine men who are supernaturally born, there is no instance of a divine man being born to a “virgin,” as happens in the case of Jesus, for example in the Gospel of Matthew. The entire point of most of the pagan supernatural birth stories is that a (mortal) woman is made pregnant by a God, precisely by having sex with her (often in human form, though sometimes Zeus preferred being in the form of a swan, or a snake, or…. some other animal, for some odd reason). I don’t know of any instances in which a woman gives birth as a virgin.

So too: the resurrection. The Gospel understanding of the resurrection is that Jesus came back into his body (a one-time corpse) which was then transformed and raised and exalted (explicitly in Luke-Acts) to heaven. This reanimation of the body type of resurrection is not attested, so far as I know, for any other divine man in antiquity.  This is an important point because mythicists want to claim that all the stories about Jesus were simply taken over from the pagan environment. And this is simply not true.

Neither the virgin birth, not the resurrection of Jesus, find parallels in other ancient accounts of “divine men,” according to Ehrman.  As these are two of the most crucial aspects of Jesus’s life, not finding these in other ancient accounts deals quite a blow to the mythicist assertion that everything written about Jesus’s life was just copied from other sources.

In part 3, we will continue looking at Bart Ehrman’s interview with Ben Witherington.  More to come!

Historical Christ

What Are the Parallels Between Jesus and the “Divine Men” of the Ancient World? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Mythicists claim that the stories about Jesus were merely copied from other pagan myths circulating around the Roman Empire in the first century.  If this is true, it does cast some doubt on the uniqueness of the Gospel accounts of Jesus, and it certainly makes one wonder if all the stories about Jesus were borrowed from other sources.

In order to discuss this claim, I will call to the stand one Bart Ehrman, a man who is no friend to Christianity.  Ehrman was interviewed by Ben Witherington in a seven-part series last summer after Ehrman’s book, Did Jesus Exist?, was published.  When asked in the seventh interview post what his research revealed about the alleged parallel stories, Ehrman first affirms that there are some similarities:

There are several points that need to be made, I think, about all the parallels that exist between the stories of Jesus and other supposed “divine men” of ancient Greece and Rome. The first is that there were indeed a number of similarities between the ways Christians talked about Jesus and the ways pagans (and in some instances, Jews) talked about other “sons of God.” There is no point denying this (it comes as a huge surprise to my students). We have stories of other “divine men” from antiquity who were thought to have been supernaturally born; to have been preternaturally wise, religiously, while still youths; to have engaged in itinerate preaching ministries; to have done miracles such as miraculously feeding the hungry, casting out demons, healing the sick, raising the dead; and at the end of their lives to have ascended to heaven. These other stories do exist (and not just about Apollonius of Tyana.)

Not surprisingly, there were other stories in the ancient world of men supernaturally born, who engaged in preaching ministries, who performed miracles, and who ascended to heaven.  In fact, even though I am not a historical scholar, I would wager to say that these kinds of stories have existed throughout the history of mankind, even up to the present day.

What should we make of these parallels?  Do they lead us inevitably to the conclusion that the stories about Jesus were manufactured, that Jesus never existed?  Ehrman argues that

the fact that Jesus was talked about in ways similar to how others were talked about does not mean that he (or they) did not exist. Some of these stories are told about figures who are absolutely and incontrovertibly historical (Alexander the Great; the Emperor Vespasian; Apollonius; and so on). If you wanted to tell stories about a figure you considered to be more than human, to be in some sense divine, these are the kinds of stories you told.

As Ehrman rightly points out, these kinds of stories were often told about real, historical people.  Given that fact, concluding that Jesus never existed, as the mythicists do, is a completely unwarranted move.  We cannot determine that a person never existed because they were said to have been born supernaturally, performed miracles, and ascended to heaven.  If this is the criteria we use to determine whether people existed, we are going to have to redact a lot of historical figures from our history textbooks.

In part 2 of this series, we will continue to look at Ehrman’s exploration of this topic in Ben Witherington’s blog post.

Morality, Philosophy, Truth

What Is Objectivity? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 1 of this post, we looked at contemporary notions of objectivity, as reported by philosopher Tom Howe.   In part 2 we continue to flesh out the concept of objectivity.

Tom Howe quotes philosopher Mary Hawkesworth:

In the context of philosophical and scientific investigations, an objective account implies a grasp of the actual qualities and relations of objects as they exist independent of the inquirer’s thoughts and desires regarding them. In the spheres of ethics, law, and administration, objectivity suggests impersonal and impartial standards and decision procedures that produce disinterested and equitable judgments. Objectivity, then, promises to free us from distortion, bias, and error in intellectual inquiry and from arbitrariness, self-interest, and caprice in ethical, legal, and administrative decisions.

We see the idea of existence “independent of the inquirer’s thoughts and desires regarding them.”  The moral fact, “It is wrong to torture a child for fun,” is objective if it is true independent of the inquirer’s thoughts.  Whether a person believes this statement is true or not is irrelevant to its truth.

In addition, Hawkesworth introduces the concept of “impersonal and impartial standards.”  The statement, “It is wrong to torture a child for fun,” is objective if it can be judged by a standard which is impersonal and impartial.

Howe finishes his survey of contemporary views on objectivity with the following summary:

First, there is a recurring theme . . . that in some sense objectivity involves the notion of a neutral judgment that strives to be free from all biases, prejudices, presuppositions, preconceived ideas, preunderstandings, or other factors that might distort one’s understanding or conclusions.

Objectivity is almost universally equated with what Richard Bernstein calls “objectivism,” which he defines as “a basic conviction that there is or must be some permanent, ahistorical matrix or framework to which we can ultimately appeal in determining the nature of rationality, knowledge, truth, reality, goodness, or rightness.”

Objectivity, then, is about judgment without the undue influence of bias or prejudice.  The worldview of the judge is taken out of the judgment as much as possible.  The judge is to tell it like it is.

In a second, and arguably more important sense, objectivity is, as Richard Bernstein states, a “permanent, ahistorical matrix or framework to which we can ultimately appeal” to on issues of morality, truth, and knowledge.  Any person that denies that this ahistorical and permanent framework exists is thus denying that objectivity exists.  Ironically, the person who claims that ahistorical objectivity does not exist believes this to be true for all time.  To deny objectivity is to affirm it.

Morality, Philosophy, Truth

What Is Objectivity? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

We’ve recently featured several blog posts centered around the idea of moral objectivity.  Objectivity is also a concept that can be applied to truth, knowledge, interpretation, and even beauty.  Although we’ve tried to carefully define objectivity versus subjectivity, it might be worth revisiting this concept to see what contemporary thinkers have to say about it.

Philosopher Tom Howe provides a brief, but insightful survey of several contemporary views on objectivity in his book Objectivity in Biblical Interpretation. Howe starts things off with a quote from the famous agnostic Bertrand Russell:

Subjectively, every philosopher appears to himself to be engaged in the pursuit of something which may be called ‘truth.’ Philosophers may differ as to the definition of ‘truth,’ but at any rate it is something objective, something which, in some sense, everybody ought to accept.

We start with the idea that something is objective if it is something that everybody ought to accept.  If we take the clear moral truth, “It is wrong to torture a child for fun,” this statement would be objectively true if it is a statement that everyone ought to accept.

Howe then describes Paul Helm’s “ontological” objectivity.  According to Howe, “This is basically the question of whether the extra-mental reality exists apart from human perception or is the construct of the human mind.  As Helm puts it, ‘Does the character of the world change with the very fact that we are interpreting it?'”

Here we see another important aspect of objectivity.  Something is objective if it exists “apart from human perception.”  Taking our example again, the moral truth,  “It is wrong to torture a child for fun,” would be objective if the statement was true regardless of whether any human being perceived it to be true.  In other words, if all human beings went extinct tomorrow, it would still be objectively true that torturing a child for fun is wrong.

Here is an interesting thought experiment.  If an intelligent alien race came to earth and began torturing human children, would we react with moral outrage and accuse them of atrocious immoral acts, or would we say to ourselves, “That’s a shame they are torturing kids, but they obviously just have a different moral code than we do.  It must be morally acceptable, under their moral system, for them to torture human children.”

I think that we would obviously be morally outraged.  In fact, this very situation, or something like it, is portrayed in dozens of science fiction movies where intelligent aliens attack and/or torture humans.  The humans in these movies are almost always portrayed as holding the aliens morally culpable, but if moral facts only exist in human perception, then it would be truly bizarre to hold aliens morally accountable.

They might have their own moral facts, or they may perceive no moral facts at all.  Why is it, at least in the movies, humans always assume that hostile aliens have the same moral sensibilities we do?  I submit that it is because the writers of these movie scripts, just like the rest of us, assume moral facts exist apart from human perception.

Attacking aliens aside, this aspect of objectivity seems to confuse many atheists, because they fail to see how something like a moral fact could exist without human minds perceiving it to be true.  For theists, of course, truth also exists in the mind of God, so we have no problem with moral facts being objective in this sense.  If you are a non-theist, you could posit that moral truths exist as brute, fundamental facts of the universe, but this answer merely leads inevitably to the question of why the universe would come furnished with moral facts.

In our next post, we will continue to look at the notion of objectivity.

Morality

What Are the Flaws of Moral Relativism? – Part 4

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Post Author: Darrell

Re-post from Aug. 11, 2010

Beckwith and Koukl’s sixth fatal flaw reads as follows: Relativists can’t hold meaningful moral discussions.  To the relativist, morals are formulations that exist only in the minds of human beings, and as a result, objectively true moral standards do not exist.  Consequently, there is no way to compare and contrast different moral points of view as all views are considered equal and no true transcendent standard of morality exists. However, having a coherent meaningful conversation regarding morals necessitates the ability to compare and contrast different points of view.

Some moral relativists may respond by saying, “All views are not equal.  There is a view which is better than others – my view!”  However, one is left asking, “Why is your view better?”  To what standard does the relativist appeal in order to claim that their view is better?

In the first post in this series, DagoodS claimed that the “Veil of Ignorance” standard as formulated by John Rawls demonstrates that Hitler’s actions were wrong.  But the big question left unanswered is, “Why is the Veil of Ignorance standard better than Hitler’s standard of morality?”

In reality, the moral relativist has nothing to which they can appeal to show that another moral view is wrong.  Therefore, there is no way to have a meaningful moral discussion, because there is no way to compare and contrast views in order to show that one view is better than another. DagoodS may love the “Veil of Ignorance” standard, but if someone believes it to be utter hogwash and believes that murdering millions of people is perfectly moral, e.g., Hitler, the relativist is completely powerless to meaningfully and logically counter their claim.

Seventh Flaw: Relativists can’t promote the obligation of tolerance.  Moral Relativism is built upon the virtue of tolerance.  Relativists claim that we should all be willing to tolerate the moral views of others because morals are an individual and/or community driven issue and we have no right to push our views on others. What is morally wrong for one person may be morally good for another, and we should all be open minded and willing to tolerate those with whom we disagree.

However, the worldview of the Moral Relativist makes their cry for moral tolerance incoherent. In reality, to claim that tolerance is something to which we all should adhere is to claim that it is a moral standard to which all should be held. This then makes tolerance a universal moral standard and is self-defeating given the worldview of the moral relativist. In fact, for the moral relativist to say that all should be tolerant is actually intolerant of them!

In conclusion, as each of these seven fatal flaws demonstrate, the worldview of Moral Relativism has several practical and logical problems.  It creates a world where nothing is wrong and nothing is praiseworthy. If Relativism were true, there would be no such thing as justice or fairness, no such thing as moral improvement, and nobody could be expected to be tolerant. In short, Moral Relativism would create a world in which no one would truly want to live.

Morality

What Are the Flaws of Moral Relativism? – Part 3

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Post Author:  Darrell

Re-post from Aug. 6, 2010

Beckwith and Koukl’s fourth fatal flaw is as follows: Relativists can’t make charges of unfairness or injustice. As a concept, unfairness hinges upon an external standard of right.  By definition, something is considered fair or unfair when it is in line or out of line with an external standard of right.

Unfortunately, to the moral relativist no such standard exists. Instead they believe that right is relative to the individual or society in question.  As such, they are truly unable to deem anything fair or unfair.  For example, as cited in the first post, the relativist may personally believe that it was unfair for Nazi Germany to slaughter millions of Jews. However, if Germany considered their actions to be right, and if right is relative to the individual or society in question, then by Germany’s standards of right and wrong they were being fair.  Consequently, the moral relativist is unable to declare Germany’s actions unfair.

The moral relativist is equally incapable of making the charge of injustice, for the concept of justice also hinges upon the existence of an external standard of right. Justice involves punishing those who are guilty of wrongdoing. However, in order for someone to be guilty of something, they necessarily have to have violated an external standard of right. Since the moral relativist believes that right and wrong are relative to the individual or society in which one lives, they are incapable of declaring anyone guilty of anything.  Perhaps the realtivist  doesn’t like the fact that someone stole their car or the fact that a society refuses to punish a parent who abuses his children, but they are incapable of judging these actions as unjust unless there is an external standard by which to judge these actions as guilty.

Fifth Flaw:  Relativists are incapable of improving their morality. Improvement involves getting better at something when compared to an external objective standard. However, to the moral relativist no such standard of morality exists. Therefore, there is no standard of moratlity to which ones moral conduct can be compared. This renders the concept of moral improvement incoherent to the worldview of moral relativism.

Stick around!  The next post will address the final two flaws.

Morality

What Are the Flaws of Moral Relativism? – Part 2

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Post Author:  Darrell

Re-post from Aug. 4, 2010

According to Beckwith and Koukl, the second fatal flaw of Moral Relativism is as follows: Relativists are incapable of complaining about the problem of evil.   The problem of evil is commonly used by atheists to argue against the existence of God. The argument is often structured as follows:

1)      An all powerful God would be capable of stopping evil.

2)      An all good God would want to stop evil.

3)      However, evil still exists.

4)      Therefore, an all powerful and all good God does not exist.

The problem for the relativist is that this entire argument rests upon the third premise: the fact that true evil exists. The worldview of the moral relativist makes the existence of true evil impossible.  The existence of true objective evil is wholly contingent upon the existence of true objective morality.  If morality is dependent upon what an individual and/or community believes, then that which is evil is also wholly dependent upon what an individual and/or community believes.  In other words, there is no true objective evil for God to stop, for evil only exists in the minds of the individuals or community!

Flaw Number Three: Relativists cannot place blame or accept praise.  To the moral relativist, there are no external standards by which actions can be measured. However, both blame and praise necessarily require an external standard.  Praising or blaming someone for something implies that their actions are either right or wrong as compared to an objective external standard of right or wrong. For example, placing blame upon an individual for stealing your car implies that stealing is an objectively immoral action. However, if the morality of theft is dependent upon what an individual believes to be appropriate, then we have no external standard by which to judge the thief’s actions. Perhaps they believe stealing is acceptable, and as such, we are in no position to place blame upon them for doing something that is morally appropriate to them. The same thing can be said for praising someone. Giving someone praise for something implies that they did well when compared to an objective external standard of right or good. The moral relativist is unable to do this because to them no such standard exists.

Stay tuned! Flaws four and five will be coming in the next post.

Morality

What Are the Flaws of Moral Relativism? – Part 1

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Post Author:  Darrell

Re-post from Aug 2, 2010

Moral Relativists hold to the position that morals, i.e., that which is right versus that which is wrong, are not absolute or objective in nature.  Instead, they are dependent upon what an individual believes and/or a community deems appropriate. As a result, an action can be morally wrong for person “x” and morally right for person “y” at one and the same time and in the same sense simply due to the fact that they hold different beliefs or their community deems different things to be appropriate.  To the relativist, moral principles are not transcendent in nature, and as a result, they do not apply universally to all people at all times.

In Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air , Francis Beckwith and Gregory Koukl cite seven fatal flaws of Moral Relativism.  In the next few posts, I will list and explain these flaws in an effort to demonstrate the challenges inherent in the philosophy of Moral Relativism.

Flaw Number One: Moral Relativists are logically incapable of accusing others of doing wrong. Many moral relativists take the position that morals are a matter of personal definition, i.e., something is only wrong if it is deemed to be so by that particular individual.  This places relativists in quite an untenable position, for then an individual who believes murder to be morally acceptable would be morally appropriate in murdering.  The moral relativist may personally believe that murder is wrong, but this is of no effect when defining what is morally wrong for the murderer.  The murderer’s actions are only wrong if the murderer himself believes them to be wrong.

Some moral relativists believe that morals are not defined by an individual, but are instead defined by one’s community.  However, this position is equally untenable, for if morals are defined by ones community, Hitler and Germany were acting in a morally appropriate manner when they slaughtered millions of Jews.  After all, their community deemed these actions morally acceptable.  In fact, one might even say that the Allied forces were morally wrong in forcing Germany to stop, for they were forcing their community’s moral beliefs upon Germany.

Obviously, next to no one is willing to say that murder is acceptable or that the holocaust was morally appropriate, yet both of these positions are a logical consequence of moral relativism.  Consequently, moral relativists are in the position of affirming the moral acceptability of these horrific actions or are forced to maintain the belief that at least some actions (murder and genocide) are morally wrong despite what an individual or community believes.

In the next post we will look at a few more flaws inherent in Moral Relativism.  Stick around.

Morality

Are There Any True Moral Relativists?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

This post is a bit of a rant, but I hope it provides some light on top of the heat.  In 2011 I asked a simple question on the blog and then allowed readers to vote on the answer.  Here is the question: Is the statement, “It is wrong to rape little children for fun,” objectively or subjectively true?

I explained that objectively true means that a statement is “true for all people at all times in all places,” and that subjectively true means that a statement is “a matter of taste, of my personal preference,” like saying that “French roast is the worst tasting coffee.”

299 votes have been cast since I posted the poll question, and disappointingly, only 68% voted that the statement is objectively true.  Think about this: more than 30% of the people who responded to this poll are so morally confused that they fail to recognize that raping a little child for fun is morally wrong for all people at all times in all places.

By casting their votes for the subjective truth of this statement, they are saying that it is possible that for some person, living at some place, in some time, raping a little child for fun is morally acceptable.  But you can’t really feel the total impact of these votes until you read some of the comments left by people who voted for subjective truth.  Here is a sampling:

“Of course I voted for ‘Subjectively’ since there is no objective morality.”

“Morals are subjective, so yes: raping little children is a matter of taste.”

“In my opinion, it is subjective. Everyone has their own sets of morals and values, therefore, their own sets of morality.”

“I voted for subjective because the statement gives an opinion. . . . Many people regard ‘wrong’ in many different ways and the way one regards what is wrong is based on his or her personal opinion.”

“I think it is subjective because to some it is wrong, but to some people, like the rapists themselves, it is good.”

“It’s a matter of fact that it is subjective.  Good or bad is subjective, justice is subjective and many more things that most people assume they aren’t subjective are actually subjective.”

Please keep in mind that I asked about a moral action that is so extreme that there should be no problem arriving at a judgment of its rightness or wrongness.  I didn’t ask about abortion or gay marriage or any other issue where there is moral controversy.  No, I wanted to make it simple.

For a person to say that the moral rightness or wrongness of raping a child for fun is a matter of taste is insanity, not to put too strong a point on it.  The wrongness of raping a child for fun is a fact as much as the fact that 5+4=9.  Only a twisted society could affirm the latter and deny the former.

The only reason I don’t truly panic when I see poll results like this is because 99% of the people who voted for subjectivity are just running their mouths, so to speak.  They don’t really believe what they’re saying.  It’s all about the shock value.  It’s hip to deny objective morality.  Only backward religious folks still believe in that silliness.  We have so moved beyond old-fashioned values.  Can I get a secular humanist “Amen”?

Almost every one of the “subjective” voters really believes in objective morality, and they demonstrate it every day.  They complain when other people talk behind their back, they accuse politicians they don’t like of evil intent, they protest against corporations who profit from child labor, and they demand justice in the courts.  They act, every day, as if there is a common, objective set of moral laws, that everyone should follow.

There have been precious few consistent moral relativists in the history of the world, thank you God.  And the ones who are truly consistent, who truly believe that there is no objective morality and who live that belief out every day in practice, are diagnosed by the psychiatric community.  The diagnosis?  Sociopath.

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