Michael Paulkovich's "Argument" Against Jesus

One might feel for Secular Humanist magazine.  They appear desperate for writers.  How else to explain the fact that they publish Michael Paulkovich, an engineer who appears to have no innate (never mind cultivated) talent for historical thinking, on the alleged weakness of the evidence for Jesus?  And apparently they're too poor to hire editors who recognize weak pseudo-history when they see it.  

Here's Paulkovich's "argument," followed by a point-by-point rebuttal.  Instead of believing nine impossible things before breakfast, I thought I'd breakfast on this impossibly bad argument instead, after someone brought it up at National Review to dispute Easter. 

"I have always been a staunch Bible skeptic but not a Christ-mythicist. I maintained that Jesus probably existed but had fantastic stories foisted upon the memory of his earthly yet iconoclastic life."

He and Richard Carrier were, it seems, enlightened to the Gnostic "truth" about the most famous man in history at about the same time.  

"After exhaustive research for my first book, I began to perceive both the light and darkness from history."

What a sentence!  The pomposity of this line should let us know what we're in for.  After "exhaustive" research (we'll see otherwise below), you "began" to perceive that both bad and good things happen?  Or that a particular hidden pattern of good and evil can be traced by the Illuminati?  

"I discovered that many prominent Christian fathers believed with all pious sincerity that their savior never came to Earth or that if he did, he was a Star-Trekian character who beamed down pre-haloed and full-grown, sans transvaginal egress. And I discovered other startling bombshells."

Sounds Carrier-esque, all right.  

"An exercise that struck me as meritorious, even today singular, involved reviving research into Jesus-era writers who should have recorded Christ tales but did not. John Remsburg enumerated forty-one “silent” historians in The Christ (1909). To this end, I spent many hours bivouacked in university libraries, the Library of Congress, and on the Internet. I terminated that foray upon tripling Remsburg’s count: in my book, I offer 126 writers who should have but did not write about Jesus (see the box on p. 57). Perhaps the most bewildering “silent one” is the super-Savior himself. Jesus is a phantom of a wisp of a personage who never wrote anything. So, add one more: 127."

We begin to see that Paulkovich has no natural talent for history.  The confusions already are enormous: 

(1) Who is to decide who "should" have written about Jesus.  Based on what criteria? 

(2) Why "should" Jesus have written an autobiography?  The biographies his disciples wrote have proven worldwide Number One best-sellers, to put it mildly.  That worked well enough. 

(3) Confucius didn't write an autobiography, either.  Yet his Analects, like the gospels an account of the life, acts, and teachings of the Master by early disciples, is one of the foundations of Chinese tradition.  Analects is not, as I show in How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture, anything so well-attested as the gospels, but it is the best evidence for Confucius' life we have, and satisfies most historians as such. 

(4) How does Paulkovich know Jesus "never wrote anything?"  Or any of these other alleged writers?  As every historian knows, the vast majority of ancient writings are lost, even by the most famous philosophers, dramatists, and historians. 

(5) Still less writings about folk preachers in backwaters of the Roman Empire whose followers were persecuted for centuries.

"Perhaps none of these writers is more fascinating than Apollonius Tyanus (sic), saintly first-century adventurer and noble paladin.  Apollonius was a magic-man of divine birth who cured the sick and blind, cleansed entire cities of plague, foretold the future, and fed the masses. He was worshiped as a god and as a son of a god. Despite such nonsense claims, Apollonius was a real man recorded by reliable sources."

I know "LOL" is a cliche.  But I really did laugh out loud when I read this paragraph.  

(6) To give Paulkovich "credit," here he is at least echoing ridiculous arguments made by many real scholars, for instance, Bart Ehrman.  I refute them thoroughly in Jesus is No Myth. 

(7) Apollonius actually left no writings behind, anyway.  So why should he have written about Jesus?  

(8) The main account of Apollonius' life, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, was not in fact written by a "reliable source," but by a Saturday Night Live comedian before his time.  It is filled with amusingly absurd dialogue, pepper-farming monkeys, ridge dragons, and fawns that attack Indian cities with cloaking devices around them.  

(9) It was commissioned by an enemy of the church, for reasons of her own.  

(10) The stories it tells cover the known (and unknown) globe at the time, but are fabulous tall tales, with little more to recommend them than, say, The Alexandrian Romance. 

(11) Apollonius is sort of said to have cleansed the city of Ephesus of the plague -- by instructing its inhabitants to stone a beggar to death.  Jesus, let us note, stopped a stoning, he never instigated one.  Apollonius wasn't really all that "noble."  Most of the rest of what Paulkovich says is derivative and sketchy.   

(12) It is telling that that IS the best skeptics can come up with.  The one valuable take-away here is that Paulkovich can find no better parallel to the life of Jesus -- as, I show, is true of real NT scholars on the same mission.  (I won't say from God.)  Apollonius is frequently cited by genuine skeptical historians as well as fake ones, because they can't come up with any better parallels to the life of Jesus.  To a starving man, three day old crow meat will do.  

"Because Jesus ostensibly performed miracles of global expanse (such as in Matthew 27), his words going “unto the ends of the whole world” (Rom. 10), one would expect virtually every literate person to have recorded those events. A Jesus contemporary such as Apollonius would have done so, as well as those who wrote of Apollonius."

(13) A classic non sequitur, which shows again that Paulkovich has little concept of how history works.  

In fact, Matthew 27 records events which are said to have occurred not around the globe, but in Jerusalem.  Suppose there were a small earthquake in Jerusalem that day.  How was some writer in Spain or Greece supposed to know about that?  Why should he believe any reports that come to him about veils rent or even the dead raised?  Why should he bother filling expensive papyrus pages or codexes with such remote accounts?  Who would have copied it?  And then have preserved it all those centuries, against the ravages of time, unlike more famous works which were lost? 

The idea that "every literate person" would have recorded such rumors, and then those records would have been preserved, is ridiculous.  What is amazing is how much we do have about the life of one particular penny-less 1st Century Jewish carpenter, as again I show in Jesus is No Myth, and of what extraordinary, unparalleled quality.  

"Such is not the case. In Philostratus’s third-century chronicle Vita Apollonii, there is no hint of Jesus. Nor does Jesus appear in the works of other Apollonius epistolarians and scriveners: Emperor Titus, Cassius Dio, Maximus, Moeragenes, Lucian, Soterichus Oasites, Euphrates, Marcus Aurelius, or Damis of Hierapolis. It seems that none of these first- to third-century writers ever heard of Jesus, his miracles and alleged worldwide fame be damned."

(14) More bosh.  Note that against Paulkovich begins with Philostratus' Apollonius, showing how bad his evidence is.  Damis was his main supposed source, though he was obviously just his sock-puppet, a convenient device from a city that didn't even exist in that time.  Lucian is most famous for a proto-science fiction work about floating islands and countries in the stomachs of giant whales.  (Not very good sci-fi, in my opinion.  But neither was Kepler's story of a travel to the moon, so one must give him credit for trying, I suppose.)  

And is there "no hint of Jesus" in Lucian?  One wouldn't be surprised: Christianity was still a tiny movement in the late 2nd Century.   (See Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity.)  But actually Lucian did mention him.  In all his "exhaustive" (or is that "exhausting?") time in libraries, apparently Paulkovich never came across the following passage from The Death of Peregrine: 

"The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day,--the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account."

So dead wrong on that.  

But Paulkovich prefers to harp on old and silly parallels: 

"Another bewildering author is Philo of Alexandria. He spent his first-century life in the Levant and even traversed Jesus-land. Philo chronicled contemporaries of Jesus—Bassus, Pilate, Tiberius, Sejanus, Caligula—yet knew nothing of the storied prophet and rabble-rouser enveloped in glory and astral marvels."

No one who has dipped into Philo's long commentaries on the Old Testament will expect him to mention Jesus.  He barely writes of the contemporary city of Jerusalem!  His writings are almost entirely theological and philosophical, though his work also took him occasionally into politics, the context in which he mentions Pilate, the ruler of the country, in a letter.  

So if an American Muslim writer mentions Donald Trump, it follows that if he doesn't also mention Mark Driscoll, the latter did not exist?  Such silliness. 

"Historian Flavius Josephus published his Jewish Wars circa 95 CE. He had lived in Japhia, one mile from Nazareth—yet Josephus seems unaware of both Nazareth and Jesus. (I devoted a chapter to the interpolations in Josephus’s works that make him appear to write of Jesus when he did not.)"

I shall pass on reading that chapter.  The consensus among historians is that Josephus did, in fact, write about Jesus, not once but probably twice.  But engineers who tangle their feet in the weeds at every step should be believed before historians about history!     

"The Bible venerates the artist formerly known as Saul of Tarsus, but he was a man essentially oblivious to his savior. Paul was unaware of the virgin mother and ignorant of Jesus’s nativity, parentage, life events, ministry, miracles, apostles, betrayal, trial, and harrowing passion. Paul didn’t know where or when Jesus lived and considered the crucifixion metaphorical (Gal. 2:19–20). Unlike what is claimed in the Gospels, Paul never indicated that Jesus had come to Earth. And the “five hundred witnesses” claim (1 Cor. 15) is a forgery."

No, that passage is not a forgery, though it needs to be, for the Carrier-Paulkovich thesis. 

And no, from the fact that in his writings to the young church, Paul emphasized moral and theological themes, it is completely invalid to deduce that he "was unaware" of the details of Jesus' life.  He wrote and spoke often of Jesus' death and resurrection, so that latter part is just false.  But ancient writers, and even some modern writers, liked to focus on specific topics.  Writing a book does not imply one knows or cares about nothing outside of that book.  Luke barely mentions the historical Jesus in Acts, but fills his gospel with Jesus' life.  I don't think one could find mention of Alexander the Great in Arrian's account of his Stoic teacher Epictetus, or of Epictetus in his biography of Alexander.  Paul's close friend Luke wrote an excellent biography of Jesus, and Paul visited Jesus' disciples.  He no doubt knew the facts well.  And he does mention the death and resurrection of Jesus numerous times -- also Jesus' brothers, another piece of evidence which Carrier feels the need to try to debunk.   

"Qumran, hidey-hole for the Dead Sea Scrolls, lies twelve miles from Bethlehem. The scroll writers, coeval and abutting the holiest of hamlets one jaunty jog eastward, never heard of Jesus. Christianity still had that new-cult smell in the second century, but Christian presbyter Marcion of Pontus in 144 CE denied any virgin birth or childhood for Christ. Jesus’s infant circumcision (Luke 2:21) was thus a lie, as well as the crucifixion! Marcion claimed that Luke was corrupted; Christ self-spawned in omnipresence, esprit sans corps."

What do you know!  Orthodox Christianity had critics, 110 years after the resurrection!  This is like saying, "Some people criticized communism in the 20th Century, so Karl Marx must be an imaginary figure."  

As for Qumran, here's a list of Dead Sea Scrolls.  Where in this list would one expect biographies of contemporary Jewish preachers?  

List of the Dead Sea Scrolls - Wikipedia

"I read the works of second-century Christian father Athenagoras and never encountered the word Jesus—Athenagoras was unacquainted with the name of his savior! This floored me. Had I missed something? No; Athenagoras was another pious early Christian who was unaware of Jesus."

Here Paulkovich moves from mere stupidity, to out-and-out lying. 

It is true that in Athenagoras' open letter to the emperor and others, he does not use the name "Jesus."  It is true that he is mainly arguing for theism and the goodness of Christian teaching, not offering a detailed account of Jesus' life.  But it is also true that he quotes Jesus' words as given in the synoptic gospels, several times.  And he refers, in terms clearly borrowing from John, to the Son of God: 

"We acknowledge also a Son of God.  Nor let anyone think it ridiculous that God should have a Son. For though the poets, in their fictions, represent the gods as no better than men, our mode of thinking is not the same as theirs, concerning either God the Father or the Son. But the Son of God is the Logos of the Father in idea and in operation; for after the pattern of Him and by Him were all things made, the Father and the Son being one. And, the Son being in the Father and the Father in the Son, in oneness and power of spirit, the understanding and reason (νοῦς καὶ λόγος) of the Father is the Son of God."  

And, from the Synoptics, we get several quotes like this: 

"But we are so far from practising promiscuous intercourse, that it is not lawful among us to indulge even a lustful look. For, says He, he that looks on a woman to lust after her, has committed adultery already in his heart.

But Athenagoras uses the word "he" instead of "Jesus," so it doesn't count, and the man had never heard of Jesus!

Even if Paulkovich can make himself believe that, it is gross dishonesty not to mention the fact that his source is caught quoting words ascribed to Jesus in the gospels directly.  One should never trust a writer who plays such games: he is a scoundrel.  

"The original Mark ended at 16:8, with later forgers adding the fanciful resurrection tale. John 21 also describes post-death Jesus tales, another forgery. Millions should have heard of the crucifixion with its astral enchantments: zombie armies and meteorological marvels (Matt. 27) recorded not by any historian but only in the dubitable scriptures scribbled decades later by superstitious folks. The Jesus saga is further deflated by Nazareth, a town without piety and in fact having no settlement until after the war of 70 CE—suspiciously, just around the time the Gospels were concocted."

Even an engineer with an amateur knack for history should be able to do better than this.  

"Zombie armies?"  There is no mention of such armies in Matthew 27, in fact.  

"Decades later?"  But Jesus died young, and his disciples would have been younger.  Many would have been alive in the 70s.  

While it would be incautious to write so dogmatically in response as this amateur does about Nazareth, we can at least say that his opinion about when the city was founded is disputed by better-informed writers. His suspicions count for nothing.  

"When I consider those 126 writers, all of whom should have heard of Jesus but did not—and Paul and Marcion and Athenagoras and Matthew with a tetralogy of opposing Christs, the silence from Qumran and Nazareth and Bethlehem, conflicting Bible stories, and so many other mysteries and omissions—I must conclude that Christ is a mythical character. Jesus of Nazareth was nothing more than an urban (or desert) legend, likely an agglomeration of several evangelic and deluded rabbis who might have existed."

An absurd argument, with nonsensical premises and invalid arguments to connect those premises to a ridiculous conclusion.  (Which furthermore, simply ignores the contrary evidence, which I describe in Jesus is No Myth.)  

"I also include in my book similarities of Jesus to earlier God-sons such as Sandan and Mithra and Horus and Attis, too striking to disregard. The Oxford Classical Dictionary and Catholic Encyclopedia, as well as many others, corroborate."

As if we didn't have enough to make us laugh, already.  These arguments have already gone far beyond refuting, to the land of satire.   

Sorry, I gave in and had breakfast before finishing this, finding P's argument thin gruel, indeed. 

"Thus, today I side with Remsburg—and with Frank Zindler, John M. Allegro, Godfrey Higgins, Robert M. Price, Salomon Reinach, Samuel Lublinski, Charles-François Dupuis, Allard Pierson, Rudolf Steck, Arthur Drews, Prosper Alfaric, Georges Ory, Tom Harpur, Michael Martin, John Mackinnon Robertson, Alvar Ellegård, David Fitzgerald, Richard Carrier, René Salm, Timothy Freke, Peter Gandy, Barbara Walker, Michael Martin, D.M. Murdock, Thomas Brodie, Earl Doherty, Thomas L. Thompson, Bruno Bauer, and others—heretics and iconoclasts and freethinking dunces all, it would seem."

I'm tempted to add another "LOL."  

Dunces?  I wouldn't call Price, Carrier, Bauer, or Martin that.  But flakes?  Crack-pots?  Yes, absolutely.  Martin is a philosopher, and can be given some leeway, since history wasn't his gig.  But true, Freke and Gandy, Doherty, Fitzgerald, Murdock, are not the sharpest blades on the shelf.  Perhaps even some of them are better historians than this chap, though.   

"If all the evidence and nonevidence including 126 (127?) silent writers cannot convince, I’ll wager that we will uncover much more. Yet this is but a tiny tip of the mythical-Jesus iceberg: nothing adds up for the fable of the Christ."

That's a metaphor to get one's head around.  "The mythical Jesus iceberg" on which "nothing adds up?"  He gave a line or two of decent alliteration earlier: one hoped he might end on a rhetorical high note, considering how he has bungled history. 

Before we get to his list, let me reprise, or at least prise, some salient facts: 

1. Paulkovich has claimed or implied that four people did not mention Jesus, who plainly and clearly did, one of whom repeatedly quoted Jesus' words from the gospels. 

2. His "all stars" of those who "should" have mentioned Jesus can hardly be bested for lameness, as witnesses against Jesus: Jesus himself, the extended Saturday Night Live gag Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Philo the theologian, and St. Paul.  

3. He has, thus far, breathed not a word of the extensive evidence for the historicity of the gospels that I describe in Jesus is No Myth, and other scholars like Craig Blomberg, NT Wright, and Ben Witherington have delved into in such depth.  

4. He clearly has no concept of how extraordinarily rare it is to find as much and as rich textual evidence for anyone in the 1st Century, as we have for Jesus of Nazareth -- let alone for an itinerate preacher in a remote Roman province.  I challenge anyone to find anything remotely resembling the gospels, never mind other early works which speak of Jesus.  The closest analogy that I have found, as mentioned above, is the Analects of Confucius.  But that is only one book, and it is far poorer in the kind of historical evidences found and described in the gospels.  

5. Paulkovich's comments breath of Amateur Hour at the Karaoke Bar.  We do not, then, need to go through his long, vain list in detail.  Paulkovich has given his best arguments, and they are pathetic.  These other cases are, one can fairly assume, are even weaker and, hopefully, half as amusing as Apollonius of Tyana, though that is a tall order.  

Several of these people actually do mention Jesus, against all odds.  Look up some of the others.  Arguing that Jesus didn't live because the writings we have from these people don't all mention him, would be like claiming that Mark Driscoll is a fictional character, because he's not cited by name in your World Lit textbook or the Farmer's Almanac.  The non sequitur is strong with this one.   

Paulkovich has fired his best missiles, and they circled round and hit him in the rear.  And he hasn't even glanced at what's incoming from the other sideat least not in this article.  If he takes a shot at my Jesus is No Myth: Fingerprints of God on the Gospels, I hope he does better than than Carrier did.    

Poor Secular Humanist.  I'm half-tempted to contribute an article or two myself, to help them make their anti-Christian case, so refuting them will be more fun.      

 

The Silent Historians

• Aelius Theon
• Albinus
• Alcinous
• Ammonius of Athens
• Alexander of Aegae
• Antipater of Thessalonica
• Antonius Polemo
• Apollonius Dyscolus
• Apollonius of Tyana
• Appian
• Archigenes
• Aretaeus
• Arrian
• Asclepiades of Prusa
• Asconius
• Aspasius
• Atilicinus
• Attalus
• Bassus of Corinth
• C. Cassius Longinus
• Calvisius Taurus of Berytus
• Cassius Dio
• Chaeremon of Alexandria
• Claudius Agathemerus
• Claudius Ptolemaeus
• Cleopatra the physician
• Cluvius Rufus
• Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Gaetulicus
• Cornelius Celsus
• Columella
• Cornutus
• D. Haterius Agrippa
• D. Valerius Asiaticus
• Damis
• Demetrius
• Demonax
• Demosthenes Philalethes
• Dion of Prusa
• Domitius Afer
• Epictetus
• Er
  otianus
• Euphrates of Tyre
• Fabius Rusticus
• Favorinus Flaccus
• Florus
• Fronto
• Gellius
• Gordius of Tyana
• Gnaeus Domitius
• Halicarnassensis Dionysius II
• Heron of Alexandria
• Josephus
• Justus of Tiberias
• Juvenal
• Lesbonax of Mytilene
• Lucanus
• Lucian
• Lysimachus
• M. Antonius Pallas
• M. Vinicius
• Macro
• Mam. Aemilius Scaurus
• Marcellus Sidetes
• Martial
• Maximus Tyrius
• Moderatus of Gades
• Musonius
• Nicarchus
• Nicomachus Gerasenus
• Onasandros
• P. Clodius Thrasea
• Paetus Palaemon
• Pamphila
• Pausanias
• Pedacus Dioscorides
• Persius/Perseus
• Petronius
• Phaedrus
• Philippus of Thessalonica
• Philo of Alexandria
• Phlegon of Tralles
• Pliny the Elder
• Pliny the Younger
• Plotinus
• Plutarch
• Pompeius Saturninus
• Pomponius Mela
• Pomponius Secundus
• Potamon of Mytilene
• Ptolemy of Mauretania
• Q. Curtius Rufus
• Quintilian
• Rubellius Plautus
• Rufus the Ephesian
• Saleius Bassus
• Scopelian the Sophist
• Scribonius
• Seneca the Elder
• Seneca the Younger
• Sex. Afranius Burrus
• Sex. Julius Frontinus
• Servilius Damocrates
• Silius Italicus
• Soranus
• Soterides of Epidaurus
• Sotion
• Statius the Elder
• Statius the Younger
• Suetonius
• Sulpicia
• T. Aristo
• T. Statilius Crito
• Tacitus
• Thallus
• Theon of Smyrna
• Thrasyllus of Mendes
• Ti. Claudius Pasion
• Ti. Julius Alexander
• Tiberius
• Valerius Flaccus
• Valerius Maximus
• Vardanes I
• Velleius Paterculus
• Verginius Flavus
• Vindex

Does Capitalism Necessarily Destroy Souls?

Recently, I reflected on Frederick Douglass' autobiography, and the spiritually-destructive nature of slavery ("corrupt-making," I said) as he depicted it. A Facebook friend asked me if capitalism might also be "soul-destroying." I will attempt to answer that question in this forum.

First, my comments, and the challenge I received: 

DM: "Frederick Douglass' autobiography (ies) are wonderful writing, but often distressful reading. Christianity doesn't seem to have done the South much real good at that period, for instance. Douglass describes pious masters who went from singing hymns to beating or starving their slaves without a qualm. One of his masters got religion at a Methodist camp revival, and it just made him meaner. Douglass himself was a serious Christian as a young man, but found all this quite disappointing. (There were exceptions, which he gratefully describes.)

"Slavery was a corrupt-making institution: everything that came into contact with that rotten fruit, also went bad. From which we should ask: what about our worldview is not only immoral, but causes our faith, and our lives as a whole, to fester and stink? Much of what the Left says about 'Christian Nationalism' is hysterical and unjust, but certainly there are such temptations on the Right as well as on the Left."

ED: "Would you say that the imperative of viewing labor power as a commodity doesn't carry with it the danger of viewing people as commodities? If so, the latter is surely potentially soul-corrupting, especially if it tends to lead us to view them as mere commodities (in which case it very plausibly runs afoul of Kant's humanity formula of the CI."

I have not read Martin Buber for myself, but this question reminds me of his distinction between "I-It" and "I-Thou" interfaces. It is inherent to the nature of man to treat other persons in one of two ways: (1) as an object; (2) as a mutual subject, with whom one relates as a spiritual being. A human being is, among other things: a. A physical object with mass, subject to gravitational force. b. An animal with instincts which seeks to satisfy those instincts, competing with other animals for space, air, water, food, mates, and money. c. A social animal that exists in families, tribes, nations, churches, schools, and other social institutions, with hierarchies and rules.

d. A spiritual being in relation to God and other sapiential creatures.

It follows, then, that not capitalism in particular, but life in general "carries with it the danger of viewing people as commodities." We do, in fact, compete with other people, if only for the last seat on the bus, for a promotion, the best score in class, a girl a fish or the best room at a resort hotel.

To a linebacker, the quarterback is of necessity an "it," a "commodity." After the game, they might shake hands and nod at the "thou-ness" of the competition. Most of life must be lived on the "I-It" level: we cannot enter into a deep spiritual relationship with the guy tailgating us on the freeway, though we might let him pass. But is that because we recognize him as a troubled soul and have compassion on him, or so we can drive in peace?

Christian ethics, as exemplified in Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan, means looking at people we meet as "thous" and not just "its." The gospels amaze me because Jesus never seems to meet an "it," a "woman," a "Samaritan," a "cripple," or even a "Pharisee." He looks into the eyes of each person he encounters and says "I see you." So he never repeats himself, because he never meets the same person twice, or a category that renders any two people clones. He is always aware of the "Thou," even when he rebukes people.

Is this possible for a capitalist businessman? Does capitalism make "I-Thou" relationships impossible? Do pre or post capitalist social structures make "I-It" relationships either more or less frequent in comparison to "I-Thou" relationships?

The argument is that the businessman sees his laborers as mere "commodities," like his mules or his tractor or the produce of his factory.

Certainly that happens sometimes, maybe most often, just as it happens most often in every social structure. Students compete with one another. Teachers think of students, or their parents, as customers. Generals count their troops to calculate the chance of victory and glory, at a cost of so many lives. Even parents think of their children as extensions of their own ego, or perhaps someone to take care of them when they grow old.

These examples, though, may already suggest to you the importance of a hierarchy of relationships. It is an obscenity if a mother sees her children as no more than a McDonald's manager sees his employees. We cannot always think of the souls of those we interact with: say hi to the cashier, but both sides recognize that as a fleeting and mostly instrumental transaction. A saint might go further in seeing each person as a soul for whom Christ died. But you ought to think that way about your own kids.

The difference between capitalism and slavery is that the relationship between boss and worker is mutually-established. The slave doesn't choose to be a slave, usually, and seldom is allowed to choose her owner. The employee, on the other hand, does agree to work for so much an hour, applying to several companies before finding a job that he thinks will meet his needs. They sign a contract. The employee receives a wage. He can leave when he wants. He can't usually be sold to another cotton farmer down the river.

Still, both sides may see their relationship mostly as "I-It." "The boss" is grumpy today, better avoid her. This employee is inefficient and has low ratings from customers, better let him go.

So yes, the transactional push of the bottom line -- for both parties -- encourage "I-It" thinking, as does driving on a freeway in competition with other cars, or asking a girl out in competition with other boys, etc. But "I-Thou" thinking is also possible: real concern for the other person. Growing up in the home of a small businessman with employees, I saw that this was possible. And whether working in a state or private business, the challenge of seeing those under me -- teachers or students -- as human beings with whom I can enter into a spiritual relationship, is really not that different.

So what's the difference between slavery and private enterprise?

The very fact that the master-slave relationship is not free, corrupts on both sides. Douglass makes this extremely clear. The master beats the slave for being "lazy" because he faints from heat stroke, because he knows the slave has no financial incentive to work hard, and so must be incentivized with punishment. The slave cannot change masters, cannot choose her own mate, cannot raise her own children, works for the benefit of another, eats and dresses poorly, and dies without honor or love.

You may say, employees are also often poor and unloved.

But the market system creates incentives in both directions. The worker has the chance of doing better, because her hard work makes more money for her boss. Therefore all things being equal (though of course they are not always equal), the boss is forced to share the benefits of produce, to treat his employees more and more like "thous." He is competing for good workers, as the workers are competing for good salaries and benefits.

And if you treat someone like a "thou," you may begin to think of them as spiritual beings holy in the sight of God, as well. Slave society covers up for the bosses even when they kill "their" property. It must do so, otherwise the slaves would rebel, and the society would fall apart. But in a market economy, even a boss can generally be arrested for murder.

So while people may treat one another functionally under any system, and generally do, the incentive structures of slave and capitalist societies fundamentally point in opposite directions. Personally, I have almost always gotten along well with my bosses and with my subordinates. Yes, we laborers were "commodities," and sometimes my bosses made it clear that that is how they saw us, for the most part. And frankly, sometimes that was appropriate. But I think capitalism tends, by its nature, to create more incentive for genuine human relations than either slavery or statism.

Hierarchies are, as Jordan Peterson points out, and Burke before him, inevitable in any system.

Another Response to Richard Carrier's Scholarship (sigh)

I'm not sure who (introduction, please?) but someone keeps asking me to refute various comments Richard Carrier has made about the historical Jesus.  I'm happy to be of help if I can.  But with a few stipulations: (1) I don't want to watch any videos; (2) or budge in on an argument between, say, Carrier and Tim O'Neill; (3) or discuss what I regard as trivial details, like how much of Josephus' famous two passages on Jesus are really from him.  Also (4) I may not have time to answer everything!  

And since I have already proven Carrier's flaws as a scholar pretty thoroughly, I think, I don't want to beat that dead horse too much, either.  Also, Jesus is No Myth: The Fingerprints of God on the Gospels makes my positive case not only for the historicity of Jesus, but for the accuracy of the earliest accounts of Jesus' life.  Carrier attacked that book with amusing futility: I got the impression he skimmed it while drunk, and wrote his "rebuttal" at 3:00 the next morning, with an aching hangover.  (Or, I theorize elsewhere on this site, while green, having metamorphized into Hulk Carrier.)

I may shoot from the hip a little here.  But let me see what I can do, before getting back to class prep:  

"It begins with Mark having Jesus say literal stories that are false are told to keep the secret allegorical truth hidden that will only be told to initiates. Just as Plutarch says the Osirians did with the biographies of Osiris."

These comments are too occult for me to attempt to tease any sense out on a sunny day.  Carrier seems to be viewing some obscure connection in his head, but not explaining it clearly: let it rest there for the moment.  

"Then Matthew “embellishes” Mark’s technique by adding allusions to the things he is saying fulfilling scripture, thus further disguising the truth but making it now look like scripture."

This is confused.  To offer allusions to a text is not to make your work "look like" that text.  Augustine's Confessions are chock-full of allusions to Scripture, which does not turn a psychological autobiography into, say, a gospel or an epistle to the Corinthians.  Matthew obviously does not "look like" the stories in I King about David.  Carrier misunderstands what an allusion is and does. 

But Carrier's implications are clear.  He thinks Matthew must be making stuff up, because he keeps on saying Jesus fulfills Scripture.  But that begs the question: 

(1) What if Jesus really did fulfill Scripture? 

(2) Mark says he did, too, after all, and so did other early Christian writers.  

(3) I show, in True Son of Heaven, that Jesus also fulfills Chinese Culture.  Carrier tried to answer a few of my arguments, but just showed he doesn't know much about China.  If Jesus could fulfill Chinese culture, that shows that fulfillment does not demonstrate something is made up for that purpose.  Early Chinese like Lao Zi were not, of course, writing to show Jesus fulfilled the core images and truths of Chinese tradition, and yet he does.  

(4) Can Carrier point to any other text that employs the "fulfillment motif" in such detail and depth as Matthew shows Jesus fulfills the Jewish tradition?  I wonder if that would even be possible.  I wonder if Carrier has even realized just how rich that motif is in Matthew.  In Fulfillment: A Christian Model of Religions, I describe twelve such pervasive patterns in Matthew alone.  (Not twelve details, but twelve patterns, most of which contain multiple instances.) 

"Then Luke takes this a step further and instead of making the allegory look like scripture, he makes it look like actual history, using all the markers of historical writing, but still never explicitly saying that what he is preserving is literally true rather than the correct allegory (the correct version of “the parable” of Jesus)."

The confusion here drops further into the deep. 

In fact, the very first chapter of Mark is already chock full of the sorts of details one finds in historical records: we have historical locations (Judea, River Jordan, Capernaum, Nazareth, Galilee), known historical characters from outside the Bible (John the Baptist, Herod is coming up, and of course Jesus), customs and texts from the place and time (Isaiah, baptism, synagogues) and concrete, realistic activities (fishing on the Sea of Galilee). 

So the sequence begins, not ends, in what appears -- and I show that it appears far more deeply after being tested forensically -- to be history, not "allegorical truth to initiates."  The rest of this is all empty bloviating.   

"Then, for the first time ever, John comes along and outright says it’s not allegory, it’s literally true, and you’d better believe it because it’s literally true."

Hogwash.  Mark places Jesus in historical time, with historical figures, doing historical things.  Matthew pays closer attention to Scriptural links, but adds more depth which, I show, increases the historical credibility of the story in many ways.  Luke is an intellectual who has probably read Thucydides, maybe Polybius, and uses those historical tools to tell a story he says he has researched to ensure accuracy.  

Then John is the first to claim "literal truth" for the story?  How absurd!        

"That’s the sequence of events.  The story gets more concretely historical over time."

Perhaps Carrier is afflicted with the same condition that many scholars of religion suffered from in the 19th Century: they could not help but read their evolutionary paradigms into the histories of religion.  Carrier wants to see development from "allegory" to "history," but Mark and Luke don't oblige his delusion for anyone who lacks his eyes of faith.  

"Which is the opposite of what we should expect. We should first have mundane memoirs and letters about Jesus and his impact and the controversies about him among those meeting or confronting him. Then this evolves into more elaborate mythical legends. Just as happened with Alexander the Great. Instead we get elaborate mythical legends right out of the gate. Skipping everything else. And then gradually those legends are wrapped more and more to look like history, and then finally are insisted upon as history."

I dare anyone to read the Alexander Romance, and claim it looks like any of the canonical gospels.  I analyze it in Jesus is No Myth.  That is, indeed, what a gospel should look like though, on the skeptical theory.  The desperation of skeptics looking for a credible fictional parallel to the gospels is actually rather touching, and amusing.  I also find this scramble through ancient texts quite helpful: all those unbelievers scurrying around proving the truth of Christianity, seizing on vain analogies that fall apart at the lightest touch of common sense, shows just how unique the gospels actually are.  I often suspect they are simply gambling that no one will read the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, the Descent of Ishtar, or the "Gospel" of Thomas, and see how threadbare the analogies they grab at in futile desperation actually are.  

"No, Mario, the same standards do not lead to doubting the historicity of Alexander the Great.

"This has been extensively explained already. Read the damned book. It’s very affordable. If you keep making arguments showing you haven’t even read the book, and keep failing to respond to those arguments, I will permanently ban you from making blog comments."

I read it, and refuted it.  "Easy as turning over your fist," as the ancient Chinese put it.  Carrier's temper tantrums and complete inability to accurately read my rebuttal and show he understood it in response revealed how futile his thinking had become.    

"You’ve been warned.  Everything you just said, Mario, is false.  You’ll discover that fact when you read my section on the evidence for Alexander in OHJ.  But you won’t get to comment on it further here. You are banned for persistent misbehavior against repeated warnings."

Poor Mario.  Or maybe, lucky Mario.  Plumbing is a more profitable business than reading Richard Carrier, anyway, Mario.  

Richard Carrier Scrawls in Crayon on the Gospels

 I've been asked to respond to the following comment by Richard Carrier, historian (etc, etc):

"John is historicizing Jesus’s divinity. Mark allegorized it. Matthew turned it into a scripture. And Luke is the first to represent it as a history. And John is the first to insist everything he says is literally, historically true. That’s all fact. That’s the sequence. Denying it is denying reality.

"Meanwhile, John did not add anything not already in Paul. And Mark is based on Paul. So there was no progression 'to' John’s Jesus. The only difference between John’s Jesus and Paul’s is John is repeatedly insisting Jesus was really on earth. That’s it."

To be frank, this is skeptical baby-talk for the masses.  It the lazy, imperious, impressionistic scrawling of a crayon on a cathedral wall.  

(1) I refuted Carrier's argument against the historical reality of Jesus in a couple chapters of Jesus is No Myth: The Fingerprints of God on the Gospels.  That part of the book was easy; Carrier is sloppy and a vulnerable target, as were Reza Aslan and Bart Ehrman.  After that chore, in the more important part of the book, I showed how thirty traits in the gospels, including Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, demonstrate their historicity in a deep and inimitable way.  

Then I controlled that main argument by comparing the gospels on those 30 traits to "alt-gospels" that skeptics, including Carrier, have claimed resemble the first four books of the New Testament.  It turned out that not one of those "fake gospels" remotely resembles the real ones when it comes to these historically-relevant traits.  The desperation even of renowned scholars in offering such poor analogies reveals how unique the gospels remain.  (Tim McGrew particularly enjoyed my take-down of Ehrman's attempt to find a parallel to Jesus in early-modern Poland, of all places!  Perhaps Ehrman was hoping no one would take the trouble of reading the chief early source for the life of the rabbi he foolishly picked as a potential Jesus clone!)  

The gospels are, one might say, a cathedral of words, patterns within patterns, parables and metaphors and quips, dramatic dialogues, frames, miracles rising from stone like living gargoyles, sculpted into forms quite different from the "wonder-works" of mystics or legends (Apollonius, Sai Baba, the apocryphal Jesus), with a dozen different kinds of link showing Christ as fulfillment of the Old Testament (not just in Matthew, but in all the gospels), simple, elegant words which have changed the course of civilization.  

Carrier's mythicism is a childish scrawl across those stones: "Nah-ah!"   

Carrier then "reviewed" my book in a long, rambling piece which got a hundred or so things wrong -- almost every single comment he made about it was completely off, even when he tried to describe my thesis.  He thought the book was about his own scrawling, not about the cathedral.    

2. Some analysts don't even think that was the order in which the gospels were written.   Carrier would, no doubt, dismiss their arguments contemptuously.  

3. I'm not sure what the distinction is supposed to be between Luke presenting the Gospel as history, and John saying it actually happened.  That sounds like the same thing, to me.  Luke clearly insists what Carrier says John is the first to say: that he had looked closely into the facts, and found them to be as follows.   

4. And how is Mark not telling history as well?  He names names, beginning with John the Baptist, who is known from Josephus as well as the gospels.  He describes locations, beginning with Israel's longest river, the Jordan, and with Galilee, and Capernaum, none of which is Wonderland or Middle Earth, but known features of the landscape in the Middle East.  He talks about a synagogue and fisherman.  He gives them names which we know from ossuaries were, in fact, common in the 1st Century in Palestine.  He describes customs which were common among the Jews of Palestine at that period.  All that, in the first chapter alone.  

That's history.  Carrier may not admit that it is true history, but even if Mark doesn't do any of the navel-gazing historiography of Thucydides or Polybius (as Luke does, to some degree), he is clearly at least pretending to tell a story about something that happened recently in real places to actual people.  Yes, he says Jesus does miracles, but those who study history closely, know that real people in real history (including some people I have known) also report miracles.  (As Craig Keener showed in two long books on the subject.)  

(5) The gloss "Mark is based on Paul" is, again, a child's crayon scratching marks on a cathedral wall.  

Carrier himself argues that actually, Paul never mentions the historical Jesus.  Paul mentions Jesus' brothers, but didn't mean biological brothers (he says), so that doesn't count.  And so on. 

How can a detailed description of the life, actions, teachings, death, and (yes, promised four times before that death) resurrection of Jesus be "based on" an author who allegedly never mentions an historical Jesus?  

One would, no doubt, need to read the rest of this particular scrawl to figure out how where precisely it begins in cognitive space.  But one does not need to trace every gimlet and hinky of a child's smear to recognize it as such.  Carrier is reducing Mark to an instantiation of something he finds in Paul.  So he simply wipes away all the concrete details of the book.  "Nothing to see here, folks!  Walk by quickly and don't look!" 

Which can be refuted merely by reading the book.  Gaze at the ramparts.  Watch the figures in light.  Here the life of the most vivid and powerful figure in history stands, for all to see, and no, you will not find this in Paul, as Carrier himself insists elsewhere.   

Or you can go more analytical, as I did in Jesus is No Myth: The Fingerprints of God on the Gospels.      

(6) The same is true of John's Gospel.  "John did not add to anything not already in Paul?"  What does that even mean?  Presumably Carrier means Jesus is presented as divine in Paul, then also in John.  That is true, and is true of all 1st Century Christian literature.  But obviously, John "added" lots to that skeleton, which is all that Carrier allows to Paul.  Even sensitive readers like AN Wilson are shocked to find John so concrete, detailed, and historically-credible, even as his Christology soars like a cathedral. 

John doesn't add anything to Paul?  Only the life, wisdom, miracles, death and resurrection of the most famous, startling, and transformative man in history?  

Surely one can find better sense in most children's scrawling!  

In short, I don't think these comments really need to be refuted.  Like other forms of reductionism, they may sound plausible at first sight, because simple theories have a kind of a jarring resonance, like the note of a bell.  Simple theories are always plausible so long as you simply listen to the ring, and ignore contrary evidence.  

I remember walking along a river in China where for more than a mile, great poetry of China and the world had been hung on the wall protecting the city from floods.  I caught a sudden scrawl, and recognized the style immediately, out of those hundreds or thousands of works: Chairman Mao!  

Mao, like Carrier, was a clever man, and his bold style, which ignored Chinese poetic convention for filling spaces, was distinctive and eye-catching.  But his reductionistic theories were too simple, and his revolution against Chinese tradition ultimately failed, because there was too much great stuff in that tradition for the Chinese to let go.  His scrawl proved eye-catching for a moment, but his revolution against the "Four Olds" and Chinese tradition ultimately failed.  

Richard Carrier has a bit of the same gift.  He cannot be mistaken for a great historian or philosopher, by those who read other poems.  But his claims are eye-catching.  They can even excite a mob temporarily, when people are in the mood to deface cathedrals.  But Carrier's childish scrawls can never take a Gospel down.