This is point of inquiry for Monday, March 7th, 2011.
Welcome to Point of Inquiry. I’m Robert Price. Point of Inquiry is the radio show and the podcast of the Center for Inquiry, a think tank advancing reasons, science and secular values in public affairs and at the grass roots. If you’re an atheist, you don’t believe in God. You see no evidence of him. But you do believe in Frank Zindler because the evidence for him is inescapable. He is, for instance, the editor of American Atheist Press and the American Atheist magazine. That by itself ought to be sufficient reason for believing in him. But that’s not all. Frank is also an accomplished linguist and editor of Biochemical Literature for Chemical Abstracts, Inc.. He spent 20 years as a teacher and professor of biology, psycho biology and geology. In 2008, he served as acting president of American Atheists. He’s an outstanding debater and public speaker with a gift of making you laugh almost as much as he makes you think. One day, Jehova brought Frank outside and told him, Frank. Take a look at the stars of the sky. If you can count them, why, then you’ll be able to count the number of books and articles you’ll one day, right? Proving I don’t exist. And Frank said you’re on. Among the cheapest of these books is his the Jesus. The Jews never knew which thoroughly reviews all the claims that Jesus is mentioned in various ancient Jewish sources. Frank has applied his scientific acumen to the project of cloning himself for so I gather. How else could he be a member of innumerable organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the New York Academy of Science, the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Schools of Oriental Research. Frank Zindler, welcome to a point of inquiry.
Well, Robert, thank you for having me on.
Frank, you’re one of the major exponents of the theory that Jesus Christ never existed as a historical figure. Would you mind summarizing what you see as the major pillars of this theory?
Well, certainly, I certainly flatter me by calling you one of the major exponents of the theory.
Considering that this is a theory that has at least 200 years of very illustrious history behind it. And in my own research again and again, I found that, you know, somebody discovered this already 70 years ago and 100 years ago and one hundred and thirty years ago and one hundred and sixty years ago and so forth.
Of that I had for the umpteenth time reinvented the wheel. But thank you anyway for the flattering comment.
Yes. The idea that Jesus never existed. Probably stands on two legs. One is the leg. That shows that all of the evidences for the historicity of Jesus simply are inadequate to prove the thesis. And then, more importantly, perhaps. Oh, well, I don’t know. More importantly, but certainly just as important is the second leg, which attempts to account for the rise of Christianity and the mythological documents in terms that do not involve the historical figure. Basically, the idea that we can show that you don’t need an historical Jesus in order to account for the phenomena that we we have in Christianity. And again, the first leg of the evidence is for Jesus. There were basically three pillars there. One was the evidence from the New Testament. And the second was the supposed evidence from extra biblical sources, pagan writers like Tacitus. And you’ll see that. Well, just Seaforth, I guess, was not a pagan, but anyway, a non Christian. So that that would have been the second line. But then the third leg was curious when the alleged evidence in Jewish sources, the idea that the Jews had recollections of Jesus, perhaps hostile ones. But nevertheless, that the Jews in their ancient writings could attest to the historicity of Jesus. Now, of course, you and many other very fine scholars have done more than enough work to show that the New Testament authorities are nothing of the kind and that the New Testament evidence cannot support the historicity of any Jesus. And many other critics showed that the extra biblical pagan sources were too late to have been eyewitnesses, and many of them were forgeries and all of this sort of thing. So that fell apart. And if there is any little corner where I can claim a little bit of credit in this, it has to do with debunking the third pillar of supposed proof of the history. See Jesus, namely going through the ancient Jewish literature, the mission and the TSF done the two Kelman’s and and various other Jewish writings, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, and exhaustively showing that every passage that has ever been adduced by a serious scholar as evidence, even if indirect evidence of Jesus of Nazareth was not anything of the sort that I show in my book, The Jesus, the Jews never knew that either. These references were very late by the time of the Babylonian Talmud 5th century or so, and thus are of no significance historically or else they may be ancient references. But I show that their reference was something totally different than Jesus of Nazareth. And in fact, I show that not only had the ancient Jews never heard of Jesus of Nazareth. Never heard of Nazareth either. And so I think that. The the the first leg of the Christ myth theory, namely getting rid of the so-called evidences for Jesus is very solidly taken care of where I think we still have a lot of work to do, although I think I’m beginning to see the clear outline of the solution is to account for the rise of Christianity without a historical Jesus. I have written at some length to argue that that Christianity began as a new age religion, that the new age of Pisces, the astrological age of Pisces, began right around the turn of the era. And certainly the stoic philosophers knew this. The Guston religion, Caesar Augustus, he’s the first one to use the word gospel or eungella on. And I’m trying to tie the birth of Christianity to the beginning of the new age, the new astrological age of Pisces. But certainly there’s a lot of work to be done on that.
That’s really interesting. In many, many ways. But I think of how David, your Lancey has shown in his book The Origin of the Myth Raich mysteries, that pretty much the same sort of thing happened with Myth Rasam, that the Mithras was not a new deity, but he was combined with Perseus and head of a new religion because of the what was it, the shift in the the equinox or something like this, that procession of equinoxes.
Yeah.
And yeah, that would make a lot of sense. How there’s kind of an odd question, but it comes up in my contending for the Christ myth theory. I always have to remind people I’m not preaching it as a doctrine. I am pursuing it and preferring it as a hypothesis house near certain. Would you say you are of the nonexistence of Jesus?
That’s a really, really good question, Bob. I don’t want to be playing in the hands of critics by answering this way.
But I but I have to answer honestly. I, I find as the years have gone by that my feeling of of certainty or near certainty has grown and grown and grown with every year and with every new bit of research that that I carry out or research that I see other people have done. It is worth pointing out that back in 92, what was an 80 run, nineteen eighty or eighty one, when Madalyn Murray O’Hair very loudly trumpeted the fact as she was writing a book that was to be called Jesus Christ Superstar, which proved that Jesus never existed. I was mortified. I almost had apoplexy. I thought, oh my goodness, Madeline is going to embarrass us horrifically.
She’s completely gone off her nut. And and I’ve got to see what I can do to head her off at the pass. And so even though I was an atheist, of course, I had no doubt whatsoever that Jesus had been a historical thinker. I certainly felt that there’d been all kinds of mythically and crustaceans, magical things that had been added to the story. But I had no doubt whatsoever that he was historical. It was just common sense. All in. So I quietly, immediately ran to the university libraries that I had access to and started to look up the evidences in. I was astounded at what I did not find. I, of course, looked at all of the apologetics books, first of all, that had the evidences for Jesus and looking everyone up and checking it out. I thought, wow, that doesn’t show anything. And it took me about three months. I was in a state of total bewilderment. I had to agree with Madeleine that there was no evidence that would hold water for his historicity. That, of course, was not quite the same thing as proving that he did not exist. I mean, it simply said that the evidence for his existence is inadequate to prove the point. But I still had tremendous misgivings about it for a few years. And then I started doing more research and actually started to write cautiously on it. And as I gathered more and more evidence, everything seemed to be more and more definitely excluding the possibility. And then, let’s see, 20 years ago. I was doing a study of New Testament geography, and to my astonishment, I began to discover that much of the geography of the New Testament is fictive. I particularly was tipped off on Nazareth by the encyclopedia biblical by. It was a black and chain.
That’s right. And they raised the question of whether Nazareth existed in the first century as it was.
How are you talking about? Of course it existed. So I went and got all of the archeological reports from excavations at Nazareth. All of this was done by the Franciscans. Well, at that time, I was still something of an archeologist myself while I was still a professor of geology and biology and Sunni.
I had independent studies students in anthropology and archeology. And so I was able to I was really up on archeological methods. And I looked at these reports. I whoa, this is so tendentious. This doesn’t prove anything. There was no control of stratification or anything like that. The provenance of just about everything was uncertain. And it was clearly just put together to prove the Franciscan claims that that was the site. This is where Mary bakes her bread. And this is where the Angel Gabriel stood when he announced that she was going to have a baby.
So I then concluded that Nazareth itself had not existed. And I went on to show the same thing for Capernaum. There never was a place called Capernaum at that time. The site that is now being excavated as Kafar known certainly existed at that time, but I’m quite certain it was not called Ghafar not home. And it certainly does not fit the bill for the New Testament. Capernaum and Bethany and Beth Page. And in on and probably Keena. These also are not we’re not places that really existed at that time at the turn of the era and the first century BCE, because, of course, they would have had to have been established before the biblical story begins. And then just recently, two years ago, after I became editor of American Aegeus Press, a man by the name of Rene SARM followed up. He didn’t know me about me at all. He had no idea about my research. But he went into the same sources that I had gone through 20 years ago. And he did it exhaustively. But this is the important thing about our research. Whenever we do it, we’ve got to be exhaustive.
He went through every artifact that has ever been excavated there at present day Nazareth and has checked the identification and provenance and all of this. And he shows that, no, none of this stuff will will fill the bill for being authentic from the turn of the era or the Hellenic Peery Hellenistic period. And so we now have a situation that, as far as I know, is unique in the history of trying to prove a negative. It seems that because of this exhaustive study, we can indeed say quite certainly at least, that Jesus of Nazareth never existed because simply Nazareth did not exist at that time. It’s sort of like if there never was an OZ, you could be talking about the Wizard of Oz. And so if there wasn’t and Nazareth, it’d be kind of silly to be talking about Jesus of Nazareth. Now you can say, well, yeah, well, maybe with Jesus something else, you know, maybe Jesus, the Bethlehem. Well, you know, I’m Oshri, a senior archeologist on the Israel Archeological Antiquities Authority or something like that.
Yeah. And he’s shown that Bethlehem in Judea was not inhabited at the turn of the era.
That Bethlehem in Galilee was. But Bethlehem in Judea was also not inhabit. Wow.
And recently ody Magnis, a rising star. Or I should say a risen star in Israeli archeology has confirmed that there’s basically no evidence from Bethlehem, from the period of interest for New Testament scholars. So we have a double whammy, it seems. Bethlehem was not inhabited when Jesus should have been born there in Nazareth, was not inhabited at the time. Jesus and the Holy Family were supposed to be living there. So this comes as close as anything I’ve ever seen in historical research to prove an absolute negative. Again, it’s there’s a little bit of wiggle room left. I admit that. OK. Jesus someplace existed, even if it wasn’t Nazareth. And even if it wasn’t Bethlehem. But by the time you scraped away all the flesh and that’s the only bone left, that’s a bone about the size of an ear bone.
Well, at least we now know why there was no room for him in the end.
There wasn’t any and there wasn’t anything but. Well, yes, exactly.
Exactly. So, you know, it sounds unscientific, I suppose, to to say that I’m virtually certain now that Jesus never existed or left. I had to keep faith that Jesus of Nazareth never existed, because I can’t say that Jesus said something or other didn’t exist.
But, you know, at that point, you say, well, is there any reason to suppose that Jesus of any place existed after you ruled out all this other stuff and after research in the Gospels and the epistles and so on shows, they’re completely non divine origin. And you look at the ten. The ten then says that the German scholars used to call it the tendentious nature of much of the writing. You see that it is quite political, that it is written to justify particular political Theo. Theo political parties within the early Christian movement to lend authority either to the apostolic wing and to this off the the Christian groups that trace their authority from the family supposedly of Jesus. You know, I understand. Bart Ehrman has just published or is coming out in a couple of weeks with a book called Forgery or Forged or something like that.
HAUGE That indicates that, you know, the the much of the New Testament is forgery in our modern modern SMK expectation of that term financials to see what he has to say about that.
Yeah, that’s good to see some frankness because no pun intended, because in all of these new tests, critical New Testament introductions, this is pussyfooting that they they’re really trying to say something like first and second, Peter, which actually do have names attached to them.
They’re not anonymous, like the so-called JOHANNAH in the business, that these things were fakes to draw people in. Then I want to say that so they’ll say, well, it was sort of like, oh, I’m no write in an editorial. And if by George Washington. Nobody was fooled. Nobody was intended to be fooled. That’s that’s obviously not the case. I’m glad Irman is doing that.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
And of course, with appalling Pessl. Well, yeah, you he’s wasn’t written by Paul, but it was somebody, one of his disciples or part of the Pauling’s school or quittin that.
If you’re looking for a euphemism, I guess I guess the weirdest example of that was in a book about the the Old Testament pseudo epigraphy, especially the apocalypses, how they were. Don’t know why this man felt the scholar felt compelled to take this route. But he trying to explain the use of false descriptions. Apocalypses by Enoch Baruch. He lies and all that. And he posited that there was some kind of corporate personality thing involved in that. I mean, that practically verges on New Age channeling, but I don’t know why they couldn’t just say no. Obviously you. Yeah, nobody’s going to read the gospel according to Bill. You got to have a gospel according to the Apostle Zoon. So. And that it is a pious fraud.
Yes, exactly. And a pious fraud is a fraud.
Boy, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to believe. If I want to write a book sometime called The Sin of Faith, zeroing in on the idea that once you claim to know things you have no basis for. And you know it because you call it faith. Then you’re taking the first wrong step morally and you can cut any corner thereafter, which is why they do all the time. It’s really shameful. Yeah. Yeah. How do you get the impression the Christ myth theory was just rejected out of hand for decades and decades, but that it’s making something of a comeback today, at least it seems like people feel it’s worth debating some of them anyway.
That’s interesting. As I mentioned at the beginning of this discussion, I have seen that my ideas were, you know, discovered in 30 years, 70 years ago and 100 years ago. And so there has been a sort of a rhythmicity to the emergence and reemergence and re re emergence of the Christ myth idea, like with the history of religions, school and things like that. And yes, I think definitely it is on the rise right now. The question I really would like to have an answer for is, is this now finally after two centuries? Is it going to have staying power and is it going to become the new paradigm? Are we finally ready for the paradigm shift to go from the common sense telling us that Jesus was real, even if not God, to the common sense, saying Jesus was a God?
Yeah. Yeah.
And, you know, I’m encouraged. Some of the younger scholars are very favorably disposed to the Christ myth idea, particularly, I think, of Richard Carrier. And there are several others that I have encountered.
And I think more and more the younger scholars are favorably disposed to the idea. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re supporting it, but they’re not as ready to reject it out of hand as the older, established scholars are. There is a problem, as you certainly know better than I do. Bob.
It is almost impossible for an established biblical scholar who’s teaching at a seminary for sure, or at a religious university or even in the few secular universities that have religion departments and so on. It would be almost suicidal for one’s job to come out as a Christ myth assist. It’s one thing for Professor So-and-so to say Jesus was not a God. We need to understand what he was doing. It’s it’s just unthinkable for a professor of religion someplace to say that Jesus never existed. And so we have this problem of vested interest that many scholars who maybe even if they, you know, privately would come to the view of the Mathis’s position to save their necks. They couldn’t say it publicly. I’m concerned about some of the younger scholars who I think are coming to this position wondering just exactly what kind of jobs are they going to get. I mean, I had been free to do this simply because I’m a scientist. I have not hired as a theologian. I’m not hired as a biblical authority or anything of that sort. In a seminary, I have had total freedom as a freelance scholar, so to speak, to come up with this highly unpopular view.
But it’s unthinkable that any professor at Notre Dame or Xavier University or at Rice University is going to be able to espouse such views as you and I daily talk about. But that that is the problem. I think it’s a an economic problem even more than it is an intellectual problem.
Yeah. If you want to be part of the scholarly guild, that’s a if even if that was the only trouble, that’s equally problematical. Do you just open your yap about this? At the Society of Biblical Literature, you’re a leper. You just dismissed as crazy. At the Jesus seminar some years ago, Darrel Daudi and I were in the Paul seminar, which they’d started on the side. We were making the case for the Dutch radical hypothesis that Paul’s the Pistols were none of them written by him any more than any of the truckload of P Trine writings went back to Peter and everybody just seemed stunned.
And at the end of it, this one guy, I guess the chairman thinks, said, well, now let’s get back to reality. And I couldn’t believe I mean, here it’s this group that’s supposed to be the ultra radicals, and they just wouldn’t hear of any of this one. What? The egg. One thing that really pains me, a good friend of mine who was who wanted to come to Drew because Daoudi and I were there at one point and then he retired and I moved down here. This young fellow wanted to pursue this kind of study and he and I became friends. It turned out I’d move close to where he lived and he’s gone. He’s is now going to university down here, but in majoring in religion. But he just realized I just might as well not go into this. No one will ever hire me. No one will accept a dissertation based on this. I just better forget it. And he’s going to go into teaching Latin somewhere else. Boy, the odds against Ján, this kind of thing.
Yeah. Yeah. It says it’s a serious problem. And, you know, it’s a bit ironic because people like us who spend a lot of our conscious hours thinking about these abstract things and so on. Periodically we are brought crashing down to earth by the simple thing of an empty bank balance.
Yeah.
And and, you know, it’s very humbling, but it’s depressing, too, because, you know, there is no such thing as real academic freedom. If only the people holding a particular view can have jobs.
It’s it’s like the invisible, the elephant in the middle of the room.
So much controls what purports to be just. Very intellectual exchange, and that’s just.
Yeah, yeah, it’s going to have to be something that comes from without from outside the established biblical studies areas. That means it will not have authority within the seminaries until the next century. Probably. If ever it will have to become established in secular universities, whether it’ll come out of anthropology departments or history departments. I don’t know. But I think that the Mathis’s position has no future whatsoever in the established theological schools and religious universities and places like that. It’s going to have to catch fire. And I think it is, but it’s it’s still in the kindling stage in areas outside the normal areas where you expect biblical studies to be done.
One little spark of that kindling. I just found out today that the Intervarsity Press book, the historical Jesus five views, which they graciously invited me to participate in, I did an essay for that. And then there was John Dominic Crossan and Darrell Bock. James Dunn. Luke Timothy Johnson. And we all set out our case and then critique each others. I just found out today that this was given the award as best book in biblical studies of the year by Christianity Today, astonishingly.
Are you kidding? It’s astounding because I leave the thing off and I’m just. And the others. I don’t think anybody could say they’d just pummel me. It’s not like I’m some. Some duck in a shooting gallery. I got a decent portion of the book and I just have to commend them that they did. They’re not just given one side and not only Intervarsity, but but Christianity Today. I’m I’m I think that’s a very hopeful sign.
So who knows? Yeah. Yeah.
You know, you mentioned Madalyn Murray O’Hair. I always used to tell students that you all of you who were Christians should thank God for her forgetting prayer artists schools, because to mix the state and your kids prayers in this manner is is the Antichrist.
I don’t know why you can’t see that. And I said you ought to be pleased that she did that. Well, would you say she was the first of the militant atheists? Do Dawkins and these guys hold a candle to her?
Well, that’s a really difficult question to answer, even though I was very close to Madeleine for almost 15 years. The problem is that Madeleine inhabited a very, very different political social environment in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s. Then Dawkins and then it and Hitchens. And in Shermer, the modern atheists in many ways, I think are able to do what they’re doing because of the foundation that Madeline laid. I think our modern atheists are all wonderful people. I love Richard Dawkins. I’ve never met it, but I love his writing. I think that they’re really great. Their styles, of course, are utterly different from Madeline and Madeline. Know Madeline is always remembered as being brash and loud and brazen and somewhat foul mouthed. And all of this sort of thing. But what is not understood was that she had to do what she had to do, given the circumstances in which she was trying to gain awareness of racism and to make a place, a political place for atheists in this Christian America. She had to put on a good show in order to get on a show. I mean, like a television show. As you know, she was the one who inaugurated Phil Donahue. She was on his very first broadcast.
Yeah.
And and she you know, she launched him into space within one half hour, hour or whatever it was. It was just astounding, the response that got most of it fury, of course. But the thing is, Donahue’s career was made in one show, his very first show. It was because of Madeleine and because she knew how to put on a good show. She was sufficiently outrageous without being vulgar or anything like that. But but yeah, she knew how to push the buttons and and everything went extremely well for him. And because other radio and television personalities could count on Madeleine upping their ratings, they would have around the professor so and so’s who were atheists in the philosophy department at Harvard and wherever, could not get on a radio show or a television show to save their lives. They were, you know, to ho hum to academics, to this, to that Madeleine was fun. She was exciting. And everybody knew that they would get the price of admission if if they paid to hear her talk in some degree. I think Richard Dawkins has been able to cash in on that sort of thing, although he’s he’s still much more professorial than Madeleine. But, you know, he’s a kind of startled me to see people criticizing Dawkins as being so brash and and so so rude. I think even somebody said, I think rude. I mean, you’re talking about.
What do you think of the suggestion that Dawkins and others made to call freethinkers, et cetera? Brights. What would you think of that?
Well, you know, I personally, I find it kind of risible. You know, it’s it’s true.
I really haven’t known very many atheists who were not bright. But, you know, there are a lot of bright people who are believers also. And I don’t think that the word bright is is sufficiently definitive. It’s not a sufficient identifier. I really want to use the A word, and this was one of madeleines great campaigns to desensitize the public to a word. I think definitely people do become desensitized to words. And it takes not only Reppert to repeated use of these words, but people have to see these words used in contexts, meaning behavioral contexts, where it’s clear that there is nothing evil or since sinister about these people who are calling themselves atheists.
They’re they’re fighting like we are to keep religion out of government and things like that, and that we’re fighting to maintain the Constitution of the United States and that we’re concerned with the welfare of our fellow humans and so forth.
Well, I hate to say it. I mean, I’ve got loads more questions, but I think we actually are out of time. Thank you so much for being our guest. Frank, I appreciate that.
It’s been a lot of fun, Bob, and I really appreciate the opportunity to to flap my gums in front of an August audience.
Thank you so much, Frank.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Point of Inquiry to get involved with an online conversation about today’s show. Join the online discussion forum at point of inquiry dot org. Views expressed on point of inquiry aren’t necessarily the views of the Center for Inquiry, nor its affiliated organizations. Questions and comments on today’s show can be sent to feedback at point of inquiry dot org.
Point of inquiry is produced by Adam Isaac in Amherst, New York. And our music is composed for us by Emmy Award winner Michael Bailin. Today show also featured contributions from Debbie Goddard. I’m your host, Robert Price.
