SI Jesus article draws AP writer's ire

Skeptical Inquirer, Sept-Oct, 2004 by Kevin Christopher

In May, veteran Associated Press religion writer Richard Ostling wrote a scathing story criticizing CSICOP Senior Research Fellow Joe Nickell and one of his sources--Robert M. Price, author of The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man (Prometheus, 2004)--for daring to pose the possibility that Jesus never actually existed.

Ostling took offense to Joe Nickell's special report "'Visions' Behind The Passion" in the May/June 2004 issue of SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, where Nickell writes: "Of course, historically, apart from later Christian sources, there is virtually no evidence for Jesus' crucifixion--or even his very existence," citing Robert Price. Ostling takes Nickell's statement entirely out of its context in a larger discussion of whether Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ "is as it was."

Ostling suggests that the "SKEPTICAL INQUIRER needs to be more skeptical about its skepticism." He proceeds to delve into a laundry list of references to Jesus and Christianity by ancient historians, such as Flavius Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, and Tacitus, all of whom wrote about 100 years after Jesus' death. Ostling also points to the letters of Paul in the New Testament, though Paul never met Jesus and only first "encounters" him in his vision on the road to Damascus.

At the end of his article, Ostling attempts to discredit Joe Nickell's "humanist colleague," Robert Price, whom he describes as "a member of the left-wing Jesus Seminar."

We asked Robert Price for his reaction to Ostling's piece. He provided the following response:

   Richard Ostling, long-time religion
   editor for Time magazine, cannot be
   expected to take kindly to radical
   scholarly speculations about the historical
   (or possibly non-historical)
   Jesus. Whether we can know anything
   about the historical Jesus, we can
   know about the historical Ostling.
   Among other things, he is an evangelical
   Christian believer. On many matters
   his convictions do not shape his
   reporting on religion, or such is my
   reading after many years of enjoying
   his work. With one exception: I am a
   Fellow of the Jesus Seminar, and I
   have been amazed at the blatant twisting
   of the facts in Time's reporting of
   our semiannual sessions. I can't imagine
   Ostling and his personal savior
   much care for the results of our
   scholarship.

   But Ostling's recent comments
   for the Associated Press raise a
   broader question. I realize that popular
   media are committed to reinforcing
   popular conceptions of religion,
   just as they give the benefit of
   the doubt to popular beliefs in the
   paranormal. In both cases, they
   know where their bread is buttered.
   It is like the game show Family Feud:
   the "right" answer is not the factually
   correct one but rather the one that
   matches the opinion or belief of
   most people surveyed.

   In the present instance, one feels
   that Ostling is similarly playing to the
   crowd. "Experts" in the field are said to
   dismiss the Christ Myth theory with
   derision. In fact, for Ostling, that is
   precisely what makes them experts. He
   has plainly not read a line of my books,
   one of which he mentions in order to
   ridicule it, or he would know the
   debate is much more complex. He
   might have noticed that a major part
   of my argument is to show how the
   critical methods of all New Testament
   "experts" have far more radical implications
   than most of their practitioners
   seem to realize. But Ostling is inclined
   to judge a book by its cover and not by
   its content.

   What argument Ostling presents is
   either circular or not to the point. He
   takes it as simple common sense that
   the memory of Jesus could not have
   been distorted so badly within a mere
   twenty years (given the date of the
   Pauline Epistles according to the
   "experts" Ostling accepts). One might
   offer as counterevidence the astonishing
   fact that, just fifty years after World
   War II, half of American young adults
   do not know whom their country
   fought in that war!

   But that is not quite the point. We
   beg the question if we frame it as
   Ostling does: Could a famous figure
   be so distorted in a few decades? But
   the Christ Myth contention is that we
   need not assume any historical figure
   as the origin point; rather, ancient
   myths of a dying and rising man-god
   could well have mutated into a distinctly
   Christian form. And that is still
   pretty much the form of Christ-talk we
   find in the Epistles, which know only
   of a heavenly savior put to death by
   evil archons (angels), raised up to glory,
   and given the honorific name "Jesus."
   There is nothing in Paul about a
   Nazarene teacher or healer.

   And as for early references to Jesus
   in Jewish and pagan writings: suppose
   every one of them is genuine. All alike
   would merely represent Christian
   preaching as Tacitus, Pliny, et al.
   heard it in their day. It is not like
   Geraldo Rivera covering Jesus on the
   scene. What is very odd is that Philo
   Judaeus, describing religious life in
   Palestine in the 40s C.E., mentions
   nothing of Jesus, nor does the early
   second-century Pharisee historian
   Justus of Tiberias. Other wandering
   teachers, including Proteus Peregrinus
   and Apollonius of Tyana (though
   later objects of legendary embellishment),
   do seem to have been historical
   figures. Each is mentioned by several
   contemporaries. Not Jesus.

   But the basic issue here is that if
   an issue is important and one is interested
   in that issue, it will not suffice
   merely to count or to cite "experts."
   One is stuck with the task of becoming
   one's own expert and learning
   how to weigh the evidence, complex
   as it is, for oneself.

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SI Jesus article draws AP writer's ire

Skeptical Inquirer, Sept-Oct, 2004 by Kevin Christopher

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