The piece first appeared on the Post’s op-ed page in 2014, and was written by a fellow named Raphael Lataster. Very soon thereafter, a thorough and amusing rebuttal appeared online, written by Lataster’s former professor, who said he would have given the piece a failing grade. Here is a taste of the good professor’s rebuttal:
This time, however, I was particularly interested, not because Raphael Lataster’s piece in The Conversation had anything new to say but because it was written by a young man who just three years ago sat in my Sydney University class on “Historical Jesus to Written Gospels.” . . . As his former lecturer, I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that Raphael’s 1000 words on Jesus would not receive a pass mark in any history class I can imagine, even if it were meant to be a mere “personal reflection” on contemporary Jesus scholarship.
. . . .
Finally, Raphael Lataster reveals that his real interest is in sceptical apologetics rather than ancient history when he opines, “There are no existing eyewitness or contemporary accounts of Jesus. All we have are later descriptions of Jesus’ life events by non-eyewitnesses.” Leaving aside the question of whether there are eyewitness accounts in the New Testament – many think there are – such a statement overlooks the fact that virtually everything we know from ancient history comes to us from sources that are neither “contemporary” with events, nor written by eyewitnesses. What we know of Emperor Tiberius, for instance, comes mainly from the Roman chronicler Tacitus, who writes some 80 years after the emperor’s death. This is typical of ancient history, and it poses no dilemma to the contemporary scholar because it is clear that authors such as Tacitus, like the Gospel writers, employed earlier sources within their works.
. . . .
. . . Raphael Lataster’s arguments amount to an unfortunate disregard toward mainstream scholarship and highlight a worrying trend in new atheist literature generally: the tendency to pontificate on topics well outside one’s area of expertise.
The second link is from RedState, from Erick Erickson, who wrote in 2014:
The common thread of all these columns, articles, and expositions are unbelievers writing to reassure other unbelievers at a time of year billions of people are celebrating either the miraculous burning of oil for eight days or a virgin giving birth to a child. The secular left can abide no miracles.
It is not particularly surprising that the Washington Post once printed this garbage. It is a little surprising, given how laughably slipshod the piece is, that they continue to promote it three years later.
https://www.redstate.com/patterico/2017/12/26/yes-washington-post-jesus-exist/
.............. Lataster surely knows what every historical Jesus course makes plain: Paul's evidence for the historical figure of Jesus is widely regarded as particularly early and significant. His letters weren't written to defend a historical personage, and yet Paul refers in passing to Jesus as "born of a woman," being a descendant of King David "according to the flesh," having Twelve apostles, eating a final meal, being betrayed, and being crucified and buried. There is a mountain of data standing in the way of any claim of "overwhelming support" for the celestial Jesus theory.Fourthly, there are numerous idiosyncratic statements throughout Lataster's article which he passes off as accepted insights of historical study. For example, the claim that the Gospels are all "anonymous" is no more accurate than insisting that a modern biography is anonymous on the grounds that the biographer's name appears only on the front and back cover of the book not in the body of the work. Of course, the Gospel writers did not begin by writing, "I, Mark, now want to write about Jesus of Nazareth ..." But wherever we have a surviving front or back page of a Gospel manuscript, we find a superscript indicating the biographer's name, and there is absolute uniformity of that name: euaggelion kata Markon, euaggelion kata Lukan and so on.
Equally eccentric is the claim that Paul in Galatians 1:12 "rules out human sources" for his knowledge of Jesus, thereby indicating that his Jesus is a celestial being not an historical one. Leaving aside the obvious non sequitur(why on earth should a divine revelation, such as Paul claims for himself in Galatians, not concern an historicalperson?), Raphael's idea is shipwrecked on the rock of 1 Corinthians 15:1-5, the earliest datable statement of Christian belief, in which Paul unmistakably rules in his dependence upon human sources for his knowledge of an obviously historical Jesus. This is such an obvious and widely commented upon issue that I am at a loss to explain Lataster's claim.
Finally, Raphael Lataster reveals that his real interest is in sceptical apologetics rather than ancient history when he opines, "There are no existing eyewitness or contemporary accounts of Jesus. All we have are later descriptions of Jesus' life events by non-eyewitnesses." Leaving aside the question of whether there are eyewitness accounts in the New Testament - many think there are - such a statement overlooks the fact that virtually everything we know from ancient history comes to us from sources that are neither "contemporary" with events, nor written by eyewitnesses. What we know of Emperor Tiberius, for instance, comes mainly from the Roman chronicler Tacitus, who writes some 80 years after the emperor's death. This is typical of ancient history, and it poses no dilemma to the contemporary scholar because it is clear that authors such as Tacitus, like the Gospel writers, employed earlier sources within their works.
It is also worth noting that a little chronological distance from a subject - 80 years in the case of Tacitus, 20-60 years in the case of the New Testament - can actually enhance historical portraits, allowing a chronicler, like a modern biographer, to integrate into the account a diversity of sources and judgments about a subject of the recent past. In any case, to suggest that the Gospels are somehow dodgy because they are not contemporaneous accounts of Jesus indicates a basic unfamiliarity with the discipline of history. And it underlines the impropriety of a student in religious philosophy, whatever his faith perspective, assuming the mantle of academic historian. Anyone may express an opinion, of course, but opinion should not be offered under the guise of expertise.
Any one of the above four misrepresentations would, I believe, result in a very poor mark in any Historical Jesus class in any university, even if the piece were only meant to be a personal response to the field. Taken together, though, Raphael Lataster's arguments amount to an unfortunate disregard toward mainstream scholarship and highlight a worrying trend in new atheist literature generally: the tendency to pontificate on topics well outside one's area of expertise. And when challenged by those who belong to the relevant field, these evangelists of unbelief, just like the anti-vaccinationists, cry foul.
But there is no conspiracy. There is just an urgent need for all of us to be more cautious before making (or accepting) grandiose claims like, "there are clearly good reasons to doubt Jesus' historical existence - if not to think it outright improbable." Fail.
abc.net.au
|
|
