Perhaps the most controversial or widely discussed extra-Biblical early source for the existence of Jesus is a passage from Antiquities of the Jews, by the writer Josephus. It appears in Book XVIII, passages 63 and 64 and is universally known as the Testimonium Flavianum:
Γίνεται δὲ κατὰ τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον Ἰησοῦς σοφὸς ἀνήρ, εἴγε ἄνδρα αὐτὸν λέγειν χρή. ἦν γὰρ παραδόξων ἔργων ποιητής, διδάσκαλος ἀνθρώπων τῶν ἡδονῇ τἀληθῆ δεχομένων, καὶ πολλοὺς μὲν Ἰουδαίους, πολλοὺς δὲ καὶ τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ ἐπηγάγετο. ὁχριστὸς οὖτος ἦν.
καὶ αὐτὸν ἐνδείξει τῶν πρώτων ἀνδρῶν παρ’ ἡμῖν σταυρῷ ἐπιτετιμηκότος Πιλάτου οὐκ ἐπαύσαντο οἱ τὸ πρῶτον ἀγαπήσαντες. ἐφάνη γὰρ αὐτοῖς τρίτην ἔχων ἡμέραν πάλιν ζῶν τῶν θείων προφητῶν ταῦτά τε καὶ ἄλλα μυρία περὶ αὐτοῦ θαυμάσια εἰρηκότων. εἰς ἔτι τε νῦν τῶν Χριστιανῶν ἀπὸ τοῦδε ὠνομασμένον οὐκ ἐπέλιπε τὸ φῦλον.
And there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it is necessary to call him a man, for he was a performer of surprising works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure, and many Jews on the one hand and also many of the Greeks on the other he drew to himself. He was the Messiah.
And when, on the accusation of some of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first loved him did not cease to do so. For he appeared to them on the third day, living again, the divine prophets having related both these things and countless other marvels about him. And even till now the tribe of Christians, so named from this man, has not gone extinct.
(Antiquities of the Jews XVIII.63-64)
Antiquities of the Jews was written in Rome in the last decade of the 1st Century, probably before the death of Domitian as it doesn’t match the somewhat feverish burst of narrative style that appears after his assassination. Let’s say 94AD, just to give it a date.
Josephus is an interesting character. He was born Yosef ben Matityahu in Jerusalem, sometime around 37AD (after the death of Jesus, fact fans) and initially commanded armies against Rome in the Great Jewish Revolt which the future emperor Vespasian was sent to Judea to put down. He surrendered after the siege of Yodfat in 67.
Captured and bought before Vespasian, who enslaved him and used him as an interpreter, Josephus proved very adept at reading the room by claiming that the Jewish messianic prophecies had predicted that Vespasian was to become emperor, a move which probably spared him the indignity of being paraded as a prisoner in a triumphal parade before being whisked off around the back of the forum, strangled and thrown into the Tiber.
Having gone full Stockholm Syndrome, Josephus was then rewarded, on Vespasian becoming Emperor, with his freedom, at which point he took his Roman name from his former master, becoming Flavius Josephus.
Despite his full conversion to Roman ways, Josephus remained a Jew and his works, particularly The Jewish War (c75AD), reflect this. The exact audience of this, and later, work is hard to pin down. He maintains respect for, and loyalty to, Jewish customs and laws as if he is still trying to demonstrate his Jewish credentials, yet the works also contain detailed explanations of Jewish customs that Jews themselves must surely have been familiar with. As a result, it’s obvious he also wrote them expecting gentiles to be among the audience.
But it’s the first part, Josephus’ continuing adherence to Jewish ways, that ring alarm bells with the Testimonium Flavianum. As a Jew, for Josephus to declare that Jesus was ‘the Messiah’ is unthinkable. The entire reason for the schism between Christianity and Judaism was the issue of Jesus as messiah and at the end of the 1st Century AD, Christianity is still very much a Jewish sect set apart largely by this issue. Gentiles wishing to convert to Christianity in Jerusalem at this time were required to ‘undergo the Jewish rite’, i.e. circumcision, and the final wedge, which is never really clear, that splits Judaism and Christianity into distinct separate religions doesn’t happen until some point in the 2nd Century AD, before the writer Celsus started on a withering, but lost, discourse on the nature of Christianity.
So, if Josephus was to call Jesus ‘the Messiah’, or come to that, ‘he appeared to them on the third day, living again’, he would have had to be a Christian and not only was he demonstrably not a Christian, but a Jew and a proud one, but there’s not even the tiniest suggestion, anywhere else in any of his works that would lead anyone to think that he was a Christian. If he was a Christian, he was a Christian for exactly two paragraphs of one book.
Or, Occam’s Razor to the fore once more, those passages were not written by Josephus.
Other problems occur. The passage itself fits the surrounding narrative style of Josephus, but bits of it look like the work of someone else. In the same way the scholar of one of the great renaissance artists can peer closely at the brush strokes of Donatello and recognize instantly the works of the artist, anyone who has studied Josephus and his rather abrupt, scowling metanarrative can instantly spot the Testimonium Flavianum as not entirely the work of Josephus. So much so that by the end of the 19th Century, the whole passage was appearing in parenthesis in works by writers such as Benedikt Niese. The whole thing was being considered fake.
The church father Origen, in his counter to Celsus, Against Celsus, which is the only way we know anything about what Celsus’ original work contained, and written around 248AD, clearly says that Josephus ‘did not believe that Jesus was Christ’ (Contra Celsum I.47). That suggests that the works Origen saw either didn’t contain the Testimonium Flavianum, or some elements of it, or that someone altered Origen, too.
Modern interpretation of the passage has softened the view that the whole thing is an interpolation and now the majority view is that the skeleton of the passage is Josephus but with later additions.
Previously the view was that Josephus, as a Jew, would have been so hostile to Jesus that he wouldn’t have written anything even remotely positive about him at all and his approach would have been much more in the style of Tacitus, who was outright hostile towards Christianity. But greater textual analysis of Jewish attitudes towards Jesus, particularly after the fall of the Temple in 70AD, suggest instead that the view would have been more sympathetic. Jesus wasn’t the Messiah, for sure, but he was still a Jew and as such it would have been unseemly for Josephus to openly attack him. Josephus doesn’t have to support the claim of being the Messiah, but he also knows a ‘brother’ when he sees one.
This modern consensus is also shared across all sides of the debate. Secularists, conservative Christians, Biblical scholars, historians, liberal Christians, atheists, theists and Jewish scholars all agree that the passage is Josephus with some later editing.
There are, of course, a few dissenting voices and these too come from a broad spectrum of the scholarly world. Even among the dissenters there doesn’t seem to be any particular agenda at work. Again, these opinions are the work of respected academics making reasonable arguments, but they very much represent the minority viewpoint.
Online, arguments that mention this passage sometimes take on fantastical details that simply don’t exist. That the writing has been ‘scratched out’ and replaced, or that the paper it is written on has been carbon dated to another period and most of the time these assertions go completely unchallenged. Because many in the atheist community simply hoover up information to use against a theist argument with either an understandable naivety or with a total disregard for authenticity, they then get repeated and repeated across different fora without anyone ever pausing to think whether what they are saying is correct or not.
Some people engage in this debate armed with 6 or 7 ‘facts’ that they then shoot off, claim victory and then move on to the next. It’s alarmingly close to the fabled ‘pigeon chess’ debating style that atheists commonly, and correctly, accuse some theists of engaging in.
The claim that Josephus is ‘false’ and the whole thing just the work of a later Christian is both close to being true and wide of the mark. In repeating it without any context, they are taking what could be a good and well-reasoned argument in favor of their position and smearing it so thinly that it becomes a bad one.
You’ll often hear people say that ‘the passage in Josephus is fake’, which is something I have personally heard some well-known atheists use, which suggests that Josephus only contains one passage about Jesus, instead of two. And the nature of the other passage, we’ll discuss in a moment.
But the knee-jerk dismissal of Josephus as all fake neither represents to view of the majority of scholars, nor does it acknowledge that the debate over this passage is neither settled entirely, nor is it anything new. This debate has been going for centuries.
A reasoned argument for any position must admit that there are some elements that do not outwardly help one’s own position. If you were arguing for the existence of Jesus, then admitting that the Testimonium Flavianum doesn’t do your argument any favors is a perfectly reasonable position to take. There are no single elements to these discussions that would fatally flaw any argument. But likewise, you don’t need to take a sledgehammer to Josephus in order to use that passage to drive an argument for mysticism, as some people try to do. There is a middle ground that shouldn’t just be airily handwaved away.
There are elements of the passage that suggest an addition at a later date rather than wholesale interpolation.
” Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it is necessary to call him a man,”
Why both? The second part reads like a modifier to the first part. If Josephus wrote both, why not combine the two into something more succinct? It’s not Josephus’ style to have to edit himself in such a manner. It seems a very Christian message to accept that Jesus was a ‘wise man’, but to also make it clear he was not just a man. If a Christian inserted the whole passage, then the later clarification would also not have been needed.
The whole passage itself is very short for something that a Christian would have inserted verbatim. In other versions of Josephus’ works that have been interpolated, such as the version of Jewish War known as the ‘Slavonic Josephus’, which comes to us via, as the name would suggest, Eastern Slavic translations, whole passages that are not only obviously Christian but aggressively Christian have been inserted. Those passages go into great detail, claiming that Jesus ‘appeared human, but was divine’ and ‘performed miracles and spoke as if he was being guided by a divine power’ (I paraphrase). Those are the same details as found in the Testimonium Flavianum, but in much more flowery rhetoric. Those are entirely how a Christian would describe them. They are like pieces of the gospels inserted into the Slavic text.
Testimonium Flavianum, on the other hand, effectively drops suggestions into the margin of the text, like a teacher correcting the work with a red pen.
We can see from the Slavic texts what a complete Christian interpolation looks like. And the Christian nature of those interpolations is also almost universally accepted. The insertions into Testimonium Flavianum don’t look like that.
Josephus also talks about John the Baptist later in the work (Antiquities, XVIII, 109-119), which, as anyone who know their New Testament will tell you is in the wrong order. A later Christian who was wholesale editing the work would surely have corrected that order as well.
The passage is, at best, ambivalent about the Jewish leaders, considering that later Christians were hopping mad about the Jews who they saw as betraying Jesus. Calling them the relatively benign ‘principal men among us’ sounds more like the work of a fellow Jew. Elsewhere, this phrase ‘principal men’ (πρώτων ἀνδρῶν) is used several times in Josephus’ works, as are other phrases used in the text.
All surviving manuscripts contain the Testimonium Flavianum as it is written so comparing examples for contextual clues isn’t possible. However, there are translations from other manuscripts we cannot see that give an interesting viewpoint.
One of them, De excidio urbis Hierosolymitanae, of the 2nd Century AD, contains a version of the Testimonium Flavianum that doesn’t contain anything about being the Messiah, nor that Jesus was put to death by Pilate. The first omission may simply be because later Christians wish to wholesale blame the Jews for the death of Jesus, but the second one seems like something the author would have made a point of including, had it been there.
Other translations as far as the 12th Century all fail to mention anything about a messiah. The Arab Christian writer Agapius fails to mention messiah or ‘if indeed he was a man’. In the 12th Century, Michael the Syrian (Chronicle 10:20) very markedly says ‘he was thought to be the messiah’.
The truth is that the exact nature of this passage still has a lot of mileage left in it and whole reams of text can be written about it. It’s genuinely a fascinating, nuanced and complicated discussion. But the broad consensus is that this is Josephus with some later additions, and it is most definitely not ‘proved to be a fake’ by any stretch of the imagination.
Another assertion is that this whole thing is the work of the 4th Century Christian historian Eusebius. For the sake of some form of brevity and for my own sanity, I’m not going to go down that particular route. Eusebius is a figure who deserves an entire work on his own and his - cough - ‘construction’ of early Christianity is a subject for another time.
The rather bombastic way that this particular argument is presented is again indicative of trying to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut. They’re never really used as debating points, more as ammunition to try and shoot down an entire narrative. History doesn’t work like that. Narratives don’t work like that. It’s not science and neither is it a courtroom. Conversations about elements like this don’t have to advance via a series of knockout blows.
The other passage in Josephus where he mentions Jesus is in Antiquities of the Jews, XX.200-203:
“When, therefore, Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity. Festus was now dead, and Albinus was upon the road; so he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Messiah (τον αδελφον Ιησου του λεγομενου Χριστου), whose name was James, and some others. And, when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned. But as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done; they also sent to the king, desiring him to send to Ananus that he should act so no more, for that what he had already done was not to be justified; nay, some of them went also to meet Albinus, as he was upon his journey from Alexandria, and informed him that it was not lawful for Ananus to assemble a Sanhedrin without his consent. Whereupon Albinus complied with what they said, and wrote in anger to Ananus, and threatened that he would bring him to punishment for what he had done; on which king Agrippa took the high priesthood from him when he had ruled but three months, and made Jesus, the son of Damneus, high priest.”
The first thing to notice is that there are two people called Jesus in this passage. Jesus, who was called Messiah and Jesus, the son of Damneus. And what is interesting is that we can see a clear indication of how Josephus differentiates between people distinctly and carefully and also how he refers to ‘Jesus Christ’ in comparison to the Testimonium Flavianum. The fact that here he distinctly used the term ‘who was called’ as opposed to ‘who is’ is notable.
Whilst this passage is equally as interesting and complex as the previous one, it comes up a lot less in arguments simply because people either don’t know about it or know about and have dismissed all of Josephus by waving away the Testimonium Flavianum, or simply because the authenticity of this passage is even less in doubt than the other. Apart from the usual suspects, almost nobody at all, from any spoke of the historical wheel doubts that this is 100% Josephus and Josephus alone. The people who do argue against its authenticity seem to do so not because the doubts are there but more because they might as well. In for a penny, in for a pound. Might as well take this one down while we’re at it.
This one is so problematic to disprove that it is not the work of Josephus that it’s simpler to attack the Testimonium Flavianum and damn them both by the same measure. The problem with that approach is obvious. We know that some versions of Josephus work, such as the Slavic, have been heavily interpolated by Christians and so we have a way of comparing the texts and in this passage, none of the markers we would expect to see in a text that had either be fully interpolated or partly altered are present.
Moreover, all the versions of Josephus that we know of, including ones that have been messed about with by Christians contain this text as it is, unchanged and unmolested. The only way to try and attest that this text is an interpolation is to invent a whole new set of markers and circumstances, separate entirely to the ones used to argue interpolation for the Testimonium Flavianum. If one has to stretch credibility in order to demonstrate Testimonium Flavianum as ‘fake’, then one has to stretch it again in order to demonstrate the ‘brother of James’ text as fake.
It’s a case of special pleading. Please ignore everything every academic says about Testimonium Flavianum so I can show you it’s a fake and then forget all that and believe a whole new bunch of ideas so I can show you that ‘James’ is a fake, too.
It stretches credibility to breaking point and that’s one reason why you won’t often see it used.
As such we might not need to delve as deeply into the text for this exercise alone, but it’s worth pointing out a few things.
The ‘Festus’ mentioned is Porcius Festus, procurator of Judea from 59-62, the same Porcius Festus who appears in the Bible, Acts 24 and 25. ‘Albinus’ is his successor, Lucceius Albinus. As Albinus is on the road to Judea in the passage, this reliably dates it to 62AD.
As an aside, elsewhere in Jewish War, Albinus is recorded as flogging a man named Jesus ben Ananias, another Jesus entirely, who is also prophesizing the destruction of the Temple. Characters such as this Jesus can be used in discussions about the construct of a myth surrounding the ‘real’ Jesus, but that’s not the same exercise we are embarked on. We’re only concerned with whether Jesus of Nazareth was a real man or not. Either way, Albinus declares this Jesus a madman and releases him.
Ananus is ‘Ananus ben Ananus’, the High Priest, who seizes the opportunity emergent in the gap caused by the death of Festus to have James executed. Angered by this extra-judicial execution, particularly using the method of stoning, which the Romans found barbaric, Albinus orders ‘the King’, Herod Agrippa II, the client king and Roman loyalist who went on to support the Romans in the wars that saw the destruction of the Temple, to have Ananus removed and replaced with the aforementioned Jesus ben Damneus.
James is commonly thought to have been the same person who is mentioned in the Epistle of James, who James 1.1 describes ‘James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ’. This is not to be confused with a bunch of other people called James, (including me!), especially James, one of the 12 disciples.
The brothers of Jesus are normally considered to be the adelphoi, James, Simon, Jude and Joses. Whether these are actually brothers of Jesus is a controversial talking point. They might have been cousins, or stepbrothers from a previous relationship by Joseph. There are two sisters, too, but they aren’t named. Their exact relationship to Jesus depends as much on which denomination one follows as the historical interpretation, but in calling these adelphoi the ‘brothers’ of Jesus, the sources are very carefully not suggesting that this ‘brother’ relationship refers to being members of the same tribe, or cult or sect. They are being specific about a familial relationship.
So, when Josephus uses the term ‘brother of Jesus’, he is not suggesting that he was a colleague of his, or a camp follower of his, or an attendee to a sect that followed Jesus, he is definitively calling him his brother.
The exegetical handstands that have to be performed in order to demonstrate this are not really the province of a historical discussion. They’re theological as much as anything else, so let’s broadly skip them. Until another date.
But what we can address is how did Josephus know that this man was Jesus’ brother?
James is not an insignificant figure. This isn’t a snapshot in time where we’ve managed to find a lowly peasant called James being dealt with by the apparatus of state. James is a figure the High Priest has been after for a while.
This James is the one mentioned in Acts 21. He is the one the Apostle Paul visits in Jerusalem to deliver funds raised for the Christians there. James is one of the people the Risen Christ appears to in Corinthians 15. He’s one of the Three Pillars of the Church from Galatians 2, alongside Peter and John the Apostle. James is the one who performs the circumcision of gentiles who wish to become Christian. It is James who demands Paul ritually cleanse himself at the Temple to demonstrate his faith.
This James is a major figure in Jerusalem’s early Christian history. We can safely assume that the James mentioned is not some other James who just happened to have a brother called Jesus, because the Sanhedrin, the legislative and judicial body of Jewish elders is specifically assembled to try him, against the direct orders of the Roman governor. Such meetings aren’t called for when dealing with some bloke called James who has stolen a sheep. The Sanhedrin was assembled for the trial of Jesus Christ.
And the crucial thing is that during the year 65, both James and Josephus, still Yosef ben Matityahu at that point and important enough to become the leader of an army of 60,000 men, lived in Jerusalem.
It is inconceivable that these two people didn’t know each other, or at least of each other. Josephus is almost certainly a firsthand witness to the existence of James, Brother of Jesus and there’s no doubt in any ancient historian’s mind, in any version of any translation of any work that James and Jesus were relatives of some kind.
Is that conclusive proof? No. Of course not. But if you came looking for a smoking gun, you’ll never find one.
But you might find some gunsmoke.
Perhaps the reason that this particular passage is not as often used by atheists in debates about the existence of Jesus, outside of the reasons previously discussed, is that of all of them, this one is arguably the most compelling piece of evidence for the existence of Jesus if only because it is the one that is hardest to disprove.
5. Atheism Versus Theism.
Some of this may have come across like I’m being down on atheists. And I am. But I’m an atheist too and what irks me is not arguments against religion or God or even the existence of Jesus, but bad arguments against religion or God or even the existence of Jesus.
There are so many good ones, it frustrates me to see people using bad ones. Particularly bad ones where the history and archaeology are summarily ignored simply to try and win a debate you’re never going to win, especially against someone who doesn’t want you to win and doesn’t give a shit what you say anyway.
If you’re going to fight that particular fight, why arm yourself with blanks when you can arm yourself with missiles?
The febrile atmosphere of the atheist v theist bearpit can become so blinkered to reason, on all sides, that if one tries to approach it with some handy historical sources clipped from the Bible - sources that can be used in arguments to disprove the existence of Jesus - that the mere sight of a Bible passage has a red-toothed atheist attacking you as a Christian fundamentalist simply for posting them. The sight of them is red meat to some people, regardless of the context of the narrative one is trying to present.
I don’t even bother with these things nowadays, but countless times I’ve had an atheist who is determined to go on the attack round on me for being unable to ‘prove my Bible is right’ despite repeated attempts to make it crystal clear that I’m an atheist. And all I did was quote something from Acts. The red mist sometimes blinds both sides.
And I get it. The internet moshpit might not be the best place to try and have a calm and reasoned discussion about Biblical history in a purely secular way. I’ve met all sorts of Christians, too, who will adamantly clamp up tight when you suggest that you can even have a conversation about the Bible without it being about religion.
But there is all manner of ways to discuss Biblical history in a secular way. I mean, someone wrote this stuff, right? And they wrote it for various reasons. And there might even be explicable, non-theological reasons why various bits of the Bible, such as Matthew 2 and Luke 2 as we discussed earlier, that openly contradict each other, but are both taken, literally, as ‘gospel’. There’s a theological explanation for that and there might well be a historical one, too.
One day, I’ll write something where I try to explain how I think the Bible was actually assembled, from a purely historical viewpoint, which might explain why we have those particular texts, contradictions and all, and not others. If I ever finish this, I might write it!
And I’m also not unaware or sympathetic to the position a lot of online atheists find themselves in, even the attack dog ones who sometimes snarl at my heels.
Because I’m British and they, largely, are American.
In the UK, religion is a very different animal than it is in the USA. In Britian, preachers are by and large genteel souls who live in cottages and ride bicycles to have tea with elderly widows.
I once had a lovely part time job showing tourists around our local parish church, with its fascinating architecture and rich history. The vicar, who was a lovely woman, knew I was an atheist just said, ‘oh don’t be silly, we don’t worry about all that stuff’.
And that, by and large, is the average Briton’s reaction to religion. Religion is not really a part of everyday life. That doesn’t mean that people aren’t religious. Some of them are. But the majority of people either aren’t in the least bit bothered about religion or God or just not interested in talking about it.
Less than 10% of people attend church regularly. Some people only ever attend church for weddings or funerals. Most people are either atheists or tick’ Christian’ on a census form because they think they ought to, rather than having any form of definable Christian faith.
In less than a week’s time from me writing this, Britain will go to the polls and elect a new Prime Minister and I couldn’t tell you for certain what any of their religious views were or even if they had any.
It’s either something that is entirely private to the average Briton, or they just don’t care about it. Ask a bloke in the pub whether he believes that Jesus is his savior and there will be an awkward silence that might just end with the other bloke glancing at his watch, suddenly discovering it’s time to be doing anything else and walk away.
People in Briton dread engaging in conversation with strangers at the best of times. Asking someone how they are is perfectly polite, but for god’s sake don’t actually reply with how you are. That would be hugely embarrassing for everyone.
Instead, just say ‘Fine, thanks. You?’ and carry on your day. Even if you are absolutely not fine. Even if your trousers are on fire and you have seconds to live, the answer is ‘Fine, thanks. You?’
And the irony of all this is that, unlike the USA, Britain is not a secular country.
We have a state religion, Anglicanism, thanks to Henry VIII, of which the current head of state, King Charles, is the titular leader.
Bishops sit in our upper house of government, entirely unelected, simply because they are bishops, which is both enough to terrify the spine out of anyone who favors democratic rule and oddly reassuring because there’s at least someone up there who can act with their morality rather than at the behest of a political whip.
And you might think that bishops acting on law via their own morality might be even more terrifying, simply because they are religious. But these are British bishops, not fire and brimstone, damnation seeking American ones. Sometimes the most moderate voices who speak for the homeless and poor and against government measures that ruin the lives of needy people come from the mouths of those bishops. They can be some of the most effective speakers in embarrassing governments who don’t give two shits about the people who need the most help.
We are taught religion in schools, or, more accurately, about religion in schools. Laws dictate that schools must engage in a daily collective act of ‘worship’, but that is now a very different animal than when I was a schoolkid and literally meant we all had to file into the school hall and repeat prayers.
Television stations are required as part of their license to provide a certain amount of ‘religious’ content in their programming. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not Iran. Such things can take the form of comedy shows about Moses if necessary, and a lot of it ends up shoved on at 3 in the morning just to fill the quota.
Tell someone in the UK that you are an atheist, and nobody will really give a shit.
It’s possible to argue that our constant exposure to a really, really boring form of religion from a very young age just turns everyone against it. American religion, by contrast, is far too exciting. Americans have gospel choirs. In Britain you have to sing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ in a freezing church hall in December.
People in the UK are atheists and nobody really cares.
The contrast with America is remarkable.
When I first started watching internet shows such as the estimable ‘The Atheist Experience’ from the Atheist Community of Austin on YouTube the thing that struck me, alongside some dubious arguments and the craziness of some of the callers, some of which I have spoken to myself (there’s a story for another day) was the number of atheists who called in looking for help with their atheism.
It was genuinely eye-opening and it’s only now that I live in Texas that I can fully understand their concerns.
These were people who were struggling to come to terms with their loss of faith. They didn’t know how to ‘transition’ from a life of deeply held faith to one of atheism. The destruction of family ties that such things bought about was heartbreaking.
To see people struggle with how to tell their parents that they were atheists was tragic. Some of them said it was easier to tell their parents they were gay than to tell them they were atheists.
Aggressive religion had wound itself so deeply into their psyche that even after becoming atheists, they were still terrified of the retribution of hell.
Not all religion is like this, of course, but this was something more like apostasy than simply moving one’s viewpoint along. I felt deeply sorry for these terrified and lost people and the way that the studio responded to them with kindness and compassion and tried to put them in touch with help groups that could support them was humbling.
It’s from this, then that I can understand the visceral reaction to religion that some atheists have. They are people who are coming out of a relationship is a way that compares to people coming out of any abusive relationship. And for that, their anger needs understanding and freedom to express itself.
Of course, they are angry, and they have a right to be. The last thing they need is some smug Limey atheist wondering what all the shouting is for.
And listen, I don’t have the answers for them. I’m not qualified to be able to offer them advice or guide them on their journey out of their abusive past, because I never made that journey. I have always been an atheist.
And neither should anyone dismiss their visceral response to religion as silliness or an overreaction. One might not think that a relationship built around the threats of hellfire is as an abusive relationship as one built around violence or sexual abuse, but to them it is just as devastating, particularly if all those things are combined and religion sits at the central core of it.
This is not a situation unique to America, but it is one more common among American atheists. You will hardly ever meet an American atheist who hasn’t, at some point in their life, been a devout believer.
The kickback, when it comes, is brutal and that this anger sometimes manifests by using arguments that are gathered from all corners of the internet is understandable. People who feel under attack will arm themselves for defense with anything they can lay their hands on. And the attack on what they rightly see as ‘the enemy’ has to be equally brutal and sometimes, reason be damned. Hit the bastards with everything you’ve got.
But I’m not trying to take away your ammunition, if that’s you. I’m trying to give you better ammunition. I’m sharpening your arrows and putting hollow-points on the end of your shells.
The fight you are fighting is yours and the support you need to fight it is out there. But let’s make that fight better.
Anyway. That’s it. Get lost.
Oh, wait. I suppose there is one last thing, right?
What do I think? I’ve spent far too long wittering on about the evidence for the existence of Jesus, so what’s my position in all this?
Yes. I think Jesus was almost certainly a real person. Can I prove that? Nope. But that doesn’t really matter so much. You remember right back at the start when I talked about how history is really about the study of people’s attitudes, motivations and inspirations from the past than about the veracity of events?
That’s good enough for me. I’ve weighed up everything we’ve talked about, and the weight of evidence leans, for me, in the direction of ‘Jesus was real’. For you it might lean the other way, but at least we’re using good weights and good measures to get there.
Plus, there’s one more, every important factor that swings it for me that we haven’t discussed yet.
Maybe one day we will?
I finally go to the end! If you’d like me to get to the end of more stuff, quicker, you can do so by regular inputs of strong caffeine, preferably via the medium of Illy dark roast. For that, I need money and if you’d like to help with that, please choose a paid subscription for which not only will you have the satisfaction of keeping me up until 4AM, vibrating and muttering about Cassius Dio, but also receive exclusive paid only content and the opportunity, in the near future, to have me dance to your every whim, as long as your every whim includes writing some stuff about history.
If you’d just like to buy me coffee, then you can do so at : https://ko-fi.com/jamescoverley
As always, I remain humbly grateful for everyone who takes the time to read this, and your encouraging words are inspirational to me.
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