A Postscript on My Post about Evidence for Dinosaurs and Jesus
What scholars like Bart Ehrman don’t tell you (likely because
they don’t fully comprehend it themselves) is that the Jewish-Christian world
was totally awash with forged stories of divine divine men of miracles. Ancient Biblical figures from Israel’s mythic
past had either written new books about themselves or were written about by unnamed
Jewish authorities who were in the know.
Although I did my under graduate work in Bible and graduate work in Christianity
while having been an active Church member most of my life, I had never realized, nor was I told,
that there were more than 295 divine histories and sacred texts about miracle
workers sent from God. (I discussed these HERE
)
By not knowing (or ignoring) this critical fact, traditional scholars
will have you believe the stories about Jesus are really unique; that like Adam
and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses and many other figures of the Hebrew Bible, all
you need do is separate fact from fiction and Wolli!, you have distilled a real person who really existed. What scholars don’t tell you
(likely again, due to the fact that they have not dealt with it themselves)
is their so-called Historical Jesus in his Greek text is no different than the rest of
the forged pseudepigraphic personalities of the time who were likewise composed mostly in Greek.
Ehrman in his book Did Jesus Exist is careful to avoid this
fact or he would bring down his own Historical Jesus house of cards. The fact that
none of the Old Testament can be date earlier that 200 BCE means these ancient
Near Eastern Jewish people swam in a sea of religious fiction . . . it was
their super heroes who provided hope and entertainment much like movies do for people
today.
No different was life in this religious climate for Josephus who loved his Jewish super heroes
from the Hebrew Bible; heroes he could modify (like a video game software) and make even more powerful and
wonderful as he continually did in his Jewish Antiquities. Like the Jewish peers of his
time, he let his mind run wild by embellishing Biblical figures who were
showing up in hundreds of "ancient" books already embellished (we need to understand
there was no orthodox Jewish or even Christian canon at this time, so every
ancient text inspired by god was consider absolute true).
Today, truth for Christianity is that which leads to belief that
sells books, that which brings people to church to have their heads filled with religious
propaganda (called doctrine) . . . and that Jesus was and is really unique even if separated
from his mythical core (as Ehrman tells us). He must have at
least been a man who taught compassion, wisdom and who one can still worship
even if he is recreated / synthesized in a scholastic test tube. It's so simple! All one needs do is run any Biblical figure
though a reality still where reality is boiled off like alcohol leaving a Biblical
figure 100 proof historical! Hey, need a hstorical Abraham (and what Jew won’t), then simply (scholastically) create one
in a test tube of subjective logic.
This is what the late Dean of Biblical Archeology, William Foxwell Albright (PhD from Johns Hopkins who was awarded 29 honorary doctorates from religious institutions) who believed the Bible was a historical treasure map to archaeological sites; that you could have a spade in one hand and the Bible in the other and prove truth. Ironically, after Harvard hired Frank Cross (one of Albright’s favorite students along with David Noel Freedman), the faculty seem to be loaded up with John Hopkins graduates who push the Albright School of religious thought. (To understand Albright's impact at Harvard and elsewhere, see Burke Long, Planting and Reaping Albright: Politics, Ideology, and Interpreting the Bible
For the Christian believer,
his or her “will to believe” is the biggest factor. This is why Christian denominations have their own publishing houses to make sure one's mental diet is controlled making ignorance look like faith and truth. This
is why churches advertise for pastors by telling what bias is expected . . . that piety and faith must rule over objectivity and historical truth. Thus, it’s doesn’t
take an objective scholar to lead God’s dumb sheep . . . after all, they have the carrot and the
stick or Heaven and Hell as proof God exists. For the uneducated Christian mind, ignorance equates to fear; the unknown.