Was Jesus a Myth? Part 1

Good morning. Thank you for joining us at the first hopefully annual

Believer's Reason Conference here at New York Christian Church. My name is Ken Cook and I'll be moderating the first debate for you.

So today the thesis for our debate is the story of Jesus is cut from the same story as other ancient mythologies.

Mr. Barker will be taking the affirmative and Dr. White will be taking the negative.

James White is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, a Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona.

He's a professor having taught Greek, systematic theology, and various topics in the fields of apologetics.

He's an author who contributed to more than 20 books, including the King James Only, Controversy, The Forgotten Trinity, The Potter's Freedom, and The God Who Justifies.

He's an accomplished debater, engaging in more than 75 moderated debates. Please welcome

Dr. James White. We also have with us

Dan Barker, who is the co -president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the author of the recently published book,

Godless. For your information, we have a coffee shop open in the back and there is also a table full of books for you to purchase from all of the authors who are speaking today.

The format for the debate is in your program on the first side.

Mr. Barker will be opening. If you have questions for the question and answer time, please turn them in at the book table and they will be sorted through.

The only additional change to this schedule is that there will be a five minute break between Dr.

White's closing and the audience questions. Thank you for your time. Mr. Barker, you may begin.

Thank you, Ken. Thank you, James. Good to see you again. I can see James and I are in the same denomination.

We both have Macs. And we are hoping to convert the rest of you by the end of today's...

the rest of you troglodytes. We're still using that old system. Thank you,

Gilbert Christian Church. Thank you all for coming. I was going to start off today by saying that I felt like Daniel in the lion's den.

It's my name's Dan, but that's an old joke. But it turns out I was going around in the back out there.

There's a whole lot of non -believers here as well as believers. My brother

Darryl and my dad down here came down from Olympia area. He's got the hat on and says...

what does your hat say?

It says, Out of the Claws of Atheists. And some others who drove from away.

So thank you so much for coming in. And I have to say that Ken and the staff here have been very warm and friendly and generous and welcoming.

And it's a real pleasure to be in a group like this. I'm not an expert in ancient mythology.

I'm a former preacher who is still preaching, I guess. And this field of ancient mythology is very deep and very wide.

It's a fountain flowing deep and wide. But in my reading I noticed that the experts in the field often disagree.

The scholars of paganism as well as the scholars of Christianity are sometimes locked in fierce debates.

And I think that is healthy. That's how we learn things. There are very few claims about ancient history that have a high level of certainty.

Like all scientists, historians have to work with probabilities. We do have documents, we have monuments, but it is all interpretation.

And just as with Christian theology, interpretations vary. I made up my own story, my own myth.

Once upon a time there were three little donkeys. One of the donkeys built his house out of paper.

One of them built his house out of sticks. The other one built his house out of bricks. Then along came a big bad elephant.

And he huffed and he puffed and he blew down the house of paper. And he got a match and he burned down the house of sticks.

But he couldn't break down the house of bricks. So he came back with a bulldozer and he demolished the house of bricks.

Well, I'll spell you the rest of the gruesome story. But what did I base my story on? The three little pigs.

How did you know that? Did I base it on the three little pigs? Did I copy the story exactly?

How did you know it was the three little pigs? Because I'm appealing to your cultural knowledge when

I write a story like that. Suppose a historian 2 ,000 years from now were to discover my story, not knowing about the three little pigs, and the possible political symbolism of donkeys and elephants, how would that historian interpret my story?

She might doubt that a donkey could build a house, just as some doubt that Balaam's ass could talk, or that there was actually a snake in the garden who could talk.

But that's beside the point. She would want to know the purpose and the message of my story. And suppose she were to discover the three little pigs story, would she say, aha,

Dan Barton is a thief, he plagiarized. Suppose she discovered, oh, donkeys and elephants.

Suppose she realized, oh, back then, oh, okay, I can see what Dan was trying to say. She would understand that I wasn't plagiarizing,

I wasn't stealing. She would understand that I was building on an earlier form in order to create my own work of art, my own story that I think is a better story.

Maybe you disagree with that. There's a difference between imitation and emulation.

A story like Christianity doesn't have to exactly parallel or mirror every little detail of the pre -existing pagan stories in order to be seen as a copy or emulation of the earlier myths.

In fact, we expect it not to be identical. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a new religion.

The new religion is trying to outdo the previous stories. So they have differences.

All religions are unique. Christianity, Judaism, Mormonism is unique, Scientology, Islam, Rastafarianism, the

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is certainly a unique religion. Some of you here today?

By the way. But the uniqueness is in the modern details.

All of these religions evolved from earlier traditions, and that's especially true of Christianity.

Last summer, Annie and I were in New York City, and we went to see West Side Story. We love that musical. The fact that West Side Story is a modern adaptation of Romeo and Juliet didn't detract from our enjoyment.

Instead of the monarchies and the Capulets, we have the sharks and the jets. Instead of Romeo and Juliet, we have

Tony and Maria. But it's the same story. The authors admitted it was the same story. They brought it up to date.

The fact that many details are different, for example, Maria doesn't die in the end, doesn't mean it's not cut from the same tale.

In fact, it's the differences that prove the point. It's the same with Christianity.

In the first century, there was already a huge template, many model stories upon which previous myths have been built.

There were dozens of ancient god -men who came down from heaven. They were born of a god and a human female, often a virgin.

They performed heroic, miraculous deeds. They were persecuted. They died tragic deaths.

They rose from the dead. Many of them ascended into heaven. But in the gospel story, the gospel version of that old tale, the god -man is not called

Osiris, or Dionysus, or Attis, or Adonis, or Augustus, or Romulus.

His name is changed to Jesus. Different name, same story.

In his book, Born Divine, The Births of Jesus and Other Sons of God, Robert Miller documents many miraculous births.

Hercules, Theogenes, Alexander the Great, Caesar -Augustus, Apollonius of Tyana, Pythagoras.

Let's just look at one of those. Caesar -Augustus. In the first century B .C., there was a resolution in the

Provincial Assembly of Asia Minor in honor of Caesar -Augustus. Look what it says. Whereas the providence, or whereas God, which has guided our whole existence, and it was shown such care and liberality, has brought our life to the peak of perfection in giving to us

Augustus Caesar, whom providence filled with virtue, and for the welfare of mankind, being sent to us, to our descendants, as a

Savior, Sotir, has put an end to war and has set all things in order. Whereas God, having become visible, and whereas finding that the birthday of the

God, Caesar -Augustus, has been for the whole world the beginning of the Gospel concerning him, therefore let all reckon a new era, beginning from the day of his birth.

Here he is, he's a Savior. He brought peace on earth. He was a God who was made visible. And that phrase, beginning of the

Gospel, if you read the book of Mark, the first Gospel, how does that Gospel start? The beginning of the

Gospel of Jesus. Randall Helms, in the book Gospel Fictions, tells this story. In the first century of the common era there appeared at the eastern end of the

Mediterranean a remarkable religious leader who taught the worship of one true God. He declared that religion meant not the sacrifice of beasts, but the practice of charity and piety, the shunning of hatred and enmity.

He was said to have worked miracles of goodness, casting out demons, healing the sick, raising the dead.

His exemplary life led some of his followers to claim he was a son of God. He called himself the son of man.

Accused of sedition against Rome, he was arrested. After his death, his disciples claimed he had risen from the dead.

He appeared to them alive, and then he was sent up into heaven. Who was this teacher and wonder worker?

His name was Apollonius of Tyana. Tyana was in Nazareth. You can read this story.

He died about the year 98 AD, the next generation after Christianity. You can read about it in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius.

Here is a clear example of a pre -Christian story from which the Jesus story was cut.

Romulus, the founder of Rome. Romulus was called the son of God. He was also called God, King, and Father.

He was prophesied to be the builder of a great city. He descended from heaven, born of a virgin, and the god

Mars. He became a god incarnate in order to establish a kingdom on earth. He was murdered by the political elite.

Romulus, when he died, darkness covered the earth at his death. The earth shook at his death. His body vanished.

He appeared around the break of dawn to a disciple on a road to the city, revealing that he was resurrected. He would ascend back to heaven to rule from on high.

Romulus' death and resurrection were celebrated in annual public ceremonies since before Christian times.

These documents predate the Christian documents. In her book, Miracles in Greco -Roman

Antiquity, Wendy Cotter documents many pre -Christian gods and heroes who healed. Hercules, Asclepius, Isis, Pythagoras, and Pericles, Pyrrhus, you can read the list.

She documents exorcisms and exorcists. Gods and heroes who controlled nature. Aphrodite, Poseidon, the sons of Zeus, Orpheus, and so on.

She even gives three examples of Dionysus changing water into wine. The Gospels were not created ex nihilo.

Christianity was not delivered by the stork. It had a parentage. Its most immediate parent was

Judaism. But neither was Judaism delivered by the stork. It too had gone through a long history of evolution before the

Christians came on the scene. In his book, The River of God, Greg Riley describes how the early

Israelites were not monotheistic. They did not have a body -soul dualism. They got that from the Greeks.

Nor did they have a Satan. That came from Zoroastrians. As evidence, Riley shows us the well -known contradiction in the

Bible between 2 Samuel 24 .1 and 1 Chronicles 21 .1. Both telling the same story about how

David was pressured to take a census. In 2 Samuel we read, And again the anger of the

Lord was kindled against Israel. And he moved David against them to say, Go number Israel and Judah.

But in 1 Chronicles, the same story says, Satan stood up against Israel and provoked

David to number Israel. So did the Lord make him do it, or did the devil make him do it? The answer to this contradiction is pretty easy.

Because it wasn't until the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BC that the Jews got the idea that God had a near -equal adversary who battles for the soul of humanity.

While the Jews were in Babylon, Babylon was conquered by the Persians, Cyrus the Great, by the way, whom the Jews called their

Messiah, because he allowed them to return home. When they got back home, they brought along with them a new religious idea, an evil

Satan from the Zoroastrians. So now we see why the Bible contradicts itself. 2

Samuel was written before the Babylonian captivity. 1 Chronicles was written after the

Babylonian captivity. The Jewish God could be both good and evil, but after coming into contact with Zoroastrianism, the

Jews now had someone else to blame. Christianity inherited its devil from Judaism, which we see was cut from an even earlier pagan story.

Dennis MacDonald, in his wonderful book The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, makes a strong cumulative case that the author of the first gospel patterned many of the

Jesus stories primarily after Judaism, but then after the Odyssey and the

Iliad. I was surprised by this wonderful book, and you would love reading this book. Odysseus and Jesus, both were carpenters.

MacDonald writes, Odysseus and Jesus both sail the seas with associates who are inferior, who weaken when confronted with suffering.

Both heroes return home to find them infested with murderous rivals that devour the houses of widows.

Both oppose supernatural foes. They visit dead heroes. They prophesy their own returns in the third person.

A wise woman anoints each protagonist. Both eat last suppers with their comrades before visiting ladies, from which both return alive.

In both works, we find gods stilling the storms and walking on water, meals for thousands at the shore, monsters in caves.

And of course, the Odyssey was many centuries before Christianity. Here's one example, the sleeping sailors.

I wish I could show you all these examples, but this is amazing. Odysseus' crew boarded and sat down.

In Mark 4, we have the story where Jesus boarded the boat and sat down to teach. On a floating island, Odysseus told stories to Aeolians.

On a floating boat, Jesus told stories to crowds. After a month, he took his leave, boarded, and sailed with twelve ships.

When it was late, Jesus took his leave and sailed with other boats. Odysseus slept. Jesus slept at the stern.

The greedy crew opened the sack of winds and created a storm. And there was a great gale of wind in the gospel.

The crew groaned. The disciples were helpless and afraid. Odysseus awoke and gave up hope.

But Jesus, Mark's improving the story, Jesus awoke and stilled the storm. Odysseus complained of his crew's folly.

Jesus rebuked his disciples for lack of faith. Aeolius was the master of the winds. Jesus was the master of the seas.

I wish I had time to read this whole parallel. This is incredible. The next chapter, Mark 5, about the demoniac of the

Gerasenes, how point by point by point, even with the exact kinds of words and the phrasings, in terms of phrase, the cyclops and the demon who both lived in caves are compared.

Obviously, Mark was familiar with Homer's work. The sons of thunder.

In Mark chapter 3, we see where Jesus picked his disciples. He appointed the twelve, Simon, to whom he gave the name

Peter. He liked to give them names, I guess. James, the son of Zebedee, and the brother of James, to whom he gave the name

Boanerges. Do you know what that word means? Boanerges. Well, he translates it for us. The sons of thunder.

These two twins, these guys who have one name for two guys, and usually always speak in one voice, James and John, are amazingly parallel to Homer's Castor and Polydeuces.

Castor and Polydeuces were called the sons of Tyndareus, James and John were the sons of Zebedee. They were also given another name.

They were called the Dioscuri, the sons of Zeus. The Boanerges, the sons of Zebedee, were given the name

Boanerges, sons of thunder. Of course, Zeus was the god of thunder. Mark is copying or emulating the story here.

They were twin brothers who spoke with one voice. They were Argonauts, sailors, or fishermen and sailors.

Castor died a violent death. James died a violent death. Not this James. Polydeuces could have lived forever.

John was thought to live until the Parousia. Polydeuces asked Zeus if he and Castor could share a single immortality.

Remember on the transfiguration? The brothers asked if they could sit in Jesus' right hand and left hand.

Zeus consented, but Jesus refused. Here's another amazing parallel. If we want to come back and look at this, the deaths of Agamemnon and John the

Baptist over sexual affair and the killing during a party. This whole thing just goes point by point by point.

A fascinating parallel here is that in the book of Mark, we have two stories of the feeding of the multitude. The first one is in Mark 6.

The other one is in Mark 8. In the Odyssey, we also have two stories of the feeding of the multitude. Look at this first one.

Telemachus and Athena sailed and disembarked. Jesus and his disciples sailed and disembarked.

They found a great crowd on the shore. They found a great crowd on the shore. Forty -five hundred men. Well, Mark increases it to five thousand men.

Everyone sat down in companies. Nine groups of five hundred each. Mark had to say everyone sat down in companies and he had to make it by ranks.

He had to do the math differently. He had the hundred and fifties. Peisistratus ordered the guests to sit. Jesus ordered the people to sit.

Nestor sacrificed and others prayed. Jesus offered thanks to God. They took the meat and divided the food Jesus took the loaves and fish and divided them.

Everyone ate and was filled in both stories. I have to skip the second feeding but it's also quite similar and parallel to it.

Now, MacDonald admits, and so do I, that any one of these hundreds of details might be accidental parallels.

Perhaps similar ways of telling similar stories. But since there are literally hundreds of details usually in the same order and dozens of similar stories often with two parallel stories followed immediately by another two parallel stories in the same order or close to the same order the cumulative case for emulation becomes too strong for historians to ignore.

Historians work in probabilities and the likelihood that all of these coincidences are accidental becomes so tiny it is virtually zero.

Mark was emulating Homer. Now, the stories don't have to be exact to be seen as emulations.

You know, Roman and Juliet, West Side Story or The Odyssey and Jesus or those two stories. Pythagoras. Pythagoras was a

Greek. He came up with the fish symbol. You take two circles and you put them together. It's hard to see there. And then the middle section becomes the sign of the fish where those two symbols intersect.

And Pythagoras worked out the ratio of the width to the height which is the closest approximation they could get at that time.

265 to 153. Those became mystery numbers. They didn't reveal those mystery numbers. Pythagoras believed that the numbers were special and mysterious.

There's a story. He called it the measure of the fish. There's a story that when Pythagoras was journeying he met near the shore with some fishermen.

They were drawing their nets heavily laden with fish from the deep and he told them that he knew the exact number of fish that was in those nets.

And he did tell them that but he didn't tell the reader. In John 21, John by the way is the most Gnostic of all the

Gospel writers. Peter, Thomas, Nathaniel and the sons of Zebedee were going fishing. They immediately entered a ship and they caught nothing.

But when the morning was now come Jesus stood on the shore and he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship and you'll find it.

They cast and they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fish. Simon Peter went up and drew the net to the land full of great fishes.

How many fish were there that they caught? John tells us 153 fish.

The measure of the fish. John is obviously putting mystery numbers in things that his readers of his day would have known.

I also read some Christian authors. Jack Finnegan, I think he's an Evangelical fundamentalist.

Myth and mystery in the background of the Gospels. I also read Everett Ferguson's huge book,

I have it here, on the mythological background of Christianity.

Ferguson is a strong believer. He strongly believes in faith in Jesus. But on the last page of his book, he has this two page section.

The final payoff. What was unique in Christianity? We finally get to the end of this book.

Romans, the Greeks, the Zoroastrians, the Canaanites, the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians and so on. What was unique in Christianity?

Ferguson cannot name one single thing after he surveys all this history. What he does is he says that Christian claims don't rest on its originality or on its uniqueness.

He says in order for Christianity to be true, we have to pass from history to faith.

Now it's not just modern scholars, but even early Christians. In the second century, there was a Christian apologist who had been a pagan believer who converted to Christianity, Justin Martyr.

And he was arguing with the pagans about you should all convert to Christianity. You know why? Because it's no different. Look what he says.

When we say also that the Word, who is the firstborn of God, was produced without sexual union, that He, Jesus Christ, our

Teacher, was crucified and rose again and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you pagans believe regarding those whom you esteem to be the sons of Jupiter.

Like Mercury, Jesus is the Logos. Like Perseus, he was born of a virgin. Like Escalate. If early

Christians claimed that the Jesus story was nothing different from paganism, who am

I to disagree? Dr.

White, you have a question. Well, it is a pleasure to be with you this still morning,

I guess. It's unusual to be late in the morning, but I commend all of you for being here this morning for an exceptionally important discussion on the subject of Jesus and whether He was cut from the mythological cloth of other religions, or as Christians have believed, whether Jesus is in fact unique as the

Son of God. Now, in my opening, I can only respond to what

Dan himself has published before. I found it fascinating that almost none of the sources that Dan just used, he used in his book,

Godless. So with this first, I will be responding to his published work, then the rebuttal will go to what he has presented this morning.

Can I make a point of order here? We're not debating my book. We're debating... I may have changed my mind in the book.

I may not have debated my book. Can I respond to that? When you're in a scholarly debate and you've published a book, what you've published in the public realm is fair game.

It is what you yourself have presented. Now, if you want to stay, if you want to say, after I'm done here, I repudiate the book that's for sale in the back, that would be fine.

But I'm not a scholar. I don't see anything wrong with quoting your book,

Dr. Barker, or Mr. Barker. Do you have an objection to him quoting it? I object because we're not debating my book today.

We're debating the issue. Mr. Barker, I have never engaged anyone in a debate who objected to their own published materials being what was cited.

I would love if people would quote my books in my debates because that's what I have presented to people.

I cannot believe that there would ever be an objection to my citation of your own book.

I can't imagine... Did you address this subject in your book? Is there not an entire section on this subject?

Yes, but you don't know that I may have changed my mind in the meantime on that, so it's unfair. I may have changed my mind about Mithra, for example.

Is your book for sale in the back? Yes, it is. But we're not debating my book today. How can we have a debate?

Let's debate the issues. Let's not debate my book. Let's debate the issues. Mr. Barker, I have, on the screen, quotations from you.

I might be dealing with the sources that you used and the arguments that you've used. That is the form of scholarly debate.

But we're not... I'm sorry, but we're not debating my book tonight. And I think he's out of line. And for the record,

I think it's inappropriate. I didn't quote anything you wrote. I stuck to the actual... That's the point. That's the problem.

We need to deal with what someone has actually put into the public realm. Your book is for sale.

I cannot believe on any possible academic or scholarly level... I have done more debates than you've done.

This is the first time anyone has ever objected to the citation of their own published material, which is still in print.

If you had pulled it out and repudiated it, that would be one thing. Are you going to do that? The moderator has already spoken.

I think it's reasonable, then, to use a source that is available on the topic.

Isn't it, in your mind? If there's something out there, whether it's quality or not. This is a presentation that I've put together, and Dan has given his objection to quoting him.

I'm sorry, but I do not see how you can have a meaningful dialogue on this subject if what the person himself has put into the public realm is not available.

I would just like to say, before I begin my time again and my presentation, that I would be honored if people would quote my books, especially when

I address the specific topic of the debate. That shows that you have done your homework in listening to what the other person has to say, and if I put something in print, if I change my mind,

I'm going to let people know, and I'm going to pull it out of the print. So I think that's just simply the way it needs to go.

So can I make my presentation now? Okay, thank you very much. All right, we continue on.

Dan has written in his book, Godless, which is available in the back, so you can check the references. I'm now convinced that the

Jesus story is a combination of myth and legend mixed with a little bit of real history unrelated to Jesus.

And he presented four arguments in his book on this foundation. He said that there is no external historical confirmation for the

New Testament stories. Secondly, that the New Testament stories are internally contradictory.

Third, and this is the main subject of our debate, that there are natural explanations for the origin of the

Jesus legend. And finally, the miracle reports make the story unhistorical.

That is, the presence of the supernatural in the Gospel stories make it an unhistorical source. Now, I need to address each one of these arguments, but I want to focus primarily on number three.

The first argument is that there is no external historical confirmation for the New Testament stories. Now, this requires an amazingly biased view of history itself.

The New Testament Gospels, Acts, many of the epistles are unlike such works as the

Book of Mormon, because the New Testament Gospels Acts and Epistles are filled with rich historical detail, both geographically and politically.

That is, they give us information from the first century, demonstrate that these writings came from that particular time period.

At one point, Mr. Barker comments on manuscript Rylar 457, better known as P52, from John chapter 18, dated to A .D.

100 to A .D. 125. And he makes reference to this and says there is no way to verify from these few verses whether the rest of John or any of the remainder of the

New Testament is reliable. The numbers are to the page references in the Book of Godless. Now, let's think about this for just a moment.

Surely on the level of reliability, as far as historic accuracy or honesty goes, no manuscript is even relevant to such an inquiry.

However, what P52 does tell us is that John, as the Gospel of John, in the form in which we have it today, existed in the first decade of the second century, which puts its initial writing well into the first century.

It likewise tells us that the manuscript tradition we have is, in fact, very reliable.

The second argument that was presented is the New Testament stories are eternally contradictory.

Now, Mr. Barker's work provides no interaction with serious scholarly works offering consistent, sound, exegetically insightful discussions of any of the alleged contradictions that he offers.

Here are some examples provided from the book. On page 265, Dan writes,

Even Paul's supposed confirmation of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, 3 -8 contradicts the

Gospels when it says that Jesus first was seen of Cephas, that is Peter, then of the twelve.

Notice the insertion of the word first into Dan's sentence. It is not a quote from the Bible. Paul did not say

Peter was first seen by Jesus. And there isn't the first logical reason why anyone would assume that a brief creedal summary was being given as an exhaustive list of all the appearances of Jesus after his resurrection in chronological order.

Paul's statement, coming as most critical scholars admit from within the first few years after Jesus' crucifixion, is still not blurry than the

Gospel stories themselves, well known to all who would be reading Paul. So it is Dan who is creating, out of whole cloth, a contradiction that nowhere exists in any semi -reasonable reading of the text.

This is a hallmark of much of what you see in Atheist writings on the Bible today. Dennis McKenzie is an especially good example of that.

Here's another example. Barker notes Luke's mention of Quirinius as governor of Syria, yet he shows no familiarity with any of the scholarly discussion in the translation of Prote, issues relating to our lack of knowledge of the political situation at the time of Cephas.

The reality is that there are a number of perfectly fair, historically sound explanations for Luke's statement, none of which gets a fair hearing in the discussion that was provided.

But the focus is upon the third argument. There are natural explanations for the origin of the

Jesus legend. Now at this point, Mr. Barker lists eight different natural explanations of the

Jesus legend. I would say with the presentation he just made, that's now at least 16 to 20. It is important to point out that each of these explanations, and this would be true with what he added, is completely contradictory to the other seven.

That is, if any one is true, the other seven are false. Consider the consistency of this kind of argumentation.

When you add in the other option, that is that Jesus existed and that the New Testament documents were more than sufficient to demonstrate this, that's a total of nine options, just in his book, all completely contradictory to the others, meaning any single one in Mr.

Barker's offering has an 11 % chance of being correct. And now with the presentation this morning, that number is about half of that.

Is that the kind of solid historical argumentation that can carry the day? Now a debate is not the proper context for the foundational discussion of how to do serious historical inquiry and thinking.

However, it must be stated that the vast majority of material flowing from Prometheus' books, the

Jesus Seminar, Bajans, and other proponents of either a Jesus mythology or a Gnostic Jesus theory comprises a mythology all unto itself.

Through selective use of facts and horribly imbalanced application of context, an entire cottage industry has appeared over the past few decades, an industry that makes its living through anti -Christian propaganda.

Ignoring counter -evidence, the volumes of sound historical scholarship standing in opposition to their conclusions, these writers pursue a single goal, the denial of the

Christian message. Double standards abound as these writers draw parallels that are totally unfounded on any serious historical basis.

We will unfortunately see many examples of this in our examination today. Now any fair examination of the

New Testament documents demonstrates the following. First of all, they are consistent with the context of Second Temple Judaism in the first part of the first century.

Secondly, they demonstrate a clear first -hand knowledge of Judea and Galilee in the same period.

And thirdly, they present a consistent testimony to the Jewish Messiah prophesied in the

Tanakh, that is, in the Old Testament scriptures. Now some of the naturalistic arguments listed by Mr.

Barger are barely worthy of note, such as the pre -Christian Joshua cult theory, which was utterly unsubstantiated, or the

Old Testament parallels theory, which was likewise left utterly unsubstantiated. But the third possible source in Jesus' legend is very popular amongst atheists today.

A compilation of various and divergent pagan mythologies, such as those of Attis, Dionysus, Osiris, and most important, the

Persian religion of Mithraism. Now the number of reasons that has led serious critical scholarship to reject this kind of parallelomania is so great that we cannot even begin to list them all in 20 minutes of time.

We can only summarize in general and give a few specifics in reference to Mithraism. First, these sources regularly use

Christian language to describe pagan beliefs, and then feign amazement at the resultant parallels.

Witness, for example, the assertion that Dionysus was virgin -born. He was actually, in most versions of the story, sewn into Zeus' thigh, and born from there after his mother was killed.

That's not quite a virgin birth in the biblical sense. Or the common statement that Osiris experienced a baptism when, in fact, his coffin was thrown in the

Nile. Or that Osiris was resurrected when, in fact, his dismembered body was put back together so he could become the zombified lord of the underworld.

None of these pagan myths have any logical or meaningful connection to Christian beliefs about resurrection, the afterlife, baptism, or salvation.

We must also note the fundamental difference between the monotheistic Judaism that formed the background of Christian belief and the polytheistic mythology of pagan beliefs.

The Christian faith is based upon a firm assertion that the events of Jesus' life took place in history at a particular time and a particular place.

Pagan mythology did not ground its stories in history at all. An extended citation providing alleged parallels to Mithraism is provided by Mr.

Barker on pages 270 -271 of Godless, drawn from this work, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara Walker.

Mr. Barker identifies Barbara Walker as a historian, when in reality her only schooling, as far as I've been able to determine, is in journalism.

The majority of her published works are on knitting. She is an atheist feminist, but as we are about to see, her willingness to distort historical facts and present historical fiction is simply astounding.

A brief scan of other portions of this work reveal incredible errors of fact and representation, errors utterly beyond defense.

The work is grossly anti -Christian, biased, and as a work of history, completely worthless.

Here are some examples of fallacious historical argumentation from Godless by Dan Barker, even though in this first number he's quoting from Barbara Walker.

Quote, Mithra was born the 25th of December, which was finally taken over by Christians in the 4th century as the birth date of Christ.

Now the date of the birth of Christ is not a part of the Christian scriptures. The reality is that January 6th was discussed earlier than December 25th, and what is more,

Mithraism coming into the Roman Empire in the 2nd century arrives too late to be relevant to the formation of Christianity.

This has been known and documented for nearly a century. What is more, there is much dispute as to who borrowed from who at this point, as there is reason to identify

Christian discussion of December 25th prior to the earliest Mithraic references. What is more likely?

What is more likely? That Mithraism borrowed from the rising Christian religion, or that Christianity borrowed from the dying

Mithraic religion? I would direct you to Roger Beckwith's fine discussion of the date of Christ's birth for a meaningful and poor historical insight that is free of the rhetoric that is so often found in internet discussions of this particular topic.

We continue. Before returning to heaven, Mithra celebrated a Last Supper with his 12 disciples, who represented the 12 signs of the

Zodiac. In memory of this, his worshippers partook of the sacramental meal of bread marked with a cross. This was one of seven

Mithraic sacraments, the models to Christian's seven sacraments. Now, Mithra did not have 12 disciples, note the purposeful use of Christian language.

The signs of the Zodiac are hardly relevant to the named disciples from known cities in first century

Israel. When was the Mithraic ceremony called a Last Supper by Mithraists themselves?

We are not told. The meal, common in almost all religions around the world, was in memory of Mithra's slaying of the bull, and would often be done on a table spread with the skin of such an animal.

There was nothing regarding sacrifice, atonement, eternal life, or anything else relevant to the Christian faith.

Remember, Christians were celebrating the supper a century before Mithraism came into Roman society, and anyone suggesting such a parallel should be ready to prove that Mithraism was not only known in Jerusalem in the early first century, but that people were practicing these things and was popular enough to provide a basis for Christians borrowing their concepts.

These were not called sacraments, as far as anyone can see, nor have I found any foundation for the assertion that the bread was marked by a cross, as irrelevant as that would be as primitive

Christian celebrations did not have such items themselves. Further, the concept of seven sacraments developed in Roman Catholicism centuries and centuries later, making this blatant example of parallelomania particularly useful in identifying bad, very bad, argumentation.

The text continues to say, it, the supper, was called miz, the Latin missa, English mass.

Mithra's image was buried in a rock tomb. He was withdrawn from it and sent to live again. The actual origination of the term mass comes from the

Latin missa. Catechumens were dismissed from the worship at a particular point before the celebration of the supper, and this led eventually to the use of the

Latin term mass for that which took place after the catechumens left. Mithraic scholarship knows nothing of a death or resurrection for Mithra, and again,

Barker's source, Barbara Walker, is seen to be creating parallels where none exist in truth and reality.

Continuing, like early Christianity, Mithraism was an ascetic, anti -female religion. Its priesthood consisted of celibate men only, page 271.

The Mithraism was primarily attractive to those in the military, and as such was ill -suited to provide a foundation for the creation of Christianity, even if it had been prevalent in first -century

Palestine, which, of course, it was not. Further, it is simply absurd on its face to say early

Christianity was an anti -female religion, since it was Christianity that taught that there is neither male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus.

Further, the concept of a celibate priesthood developed long after the New Testament period, once again demonstrating how historically untenable are the assertions that are being reproduced here.

Then we're told the Christian notion of salvation was almost wholly a product of this Persian eschatology adopted by Semitic Aramites and some cultists, like the

Essenes, and by Roman military men who thought the rigid discipline and vivid battle imagery of Mithraism appropriate for warriors.

Such a statement expresses an astounding ignorance of the Christian notion of salvation, let alone the makeup of the early

Christian movement, which was primarily made up not of Semitic Aramites and some cultists, let alone

Roman soldiers, but slaves and lower -class people in Roman society, and again, at a time when

Mithraism had yet to make its entrance into Roman society. To anyone with an even fairer familiarity with the historical sources, this kind of argumentation would be humorous if it was not being presented as being serious by Barbara Walker.

Then Mr. Barker himself writes, the name Mary is common to names given to mothers of other gods.

The Syrian Myra, the Greek Maya, and the Hindu Maya all derive from the familiar Ma, for mother.

Now is this relevant to the name of Mary, wife of Joseph, and mother of Jesus? Just a few years ago,

Richard Baucom published a groundbreaking study that has sent shockwaves across the field of New Testament studies entitled

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Apart from his arguing that at least one of the Gospels is in fact eyewitness testimony, he likewise included a study of the most common names in Israel derived from archeological digs in the centuries immediately prior to and after the time of Christ.

And guess what the most common female name was? You guessed it, Mary. So which is more likely, that the

Gospels are reflecting the historical reality, or that there is some pagan mythology at play?

Instead of this kind of parallelomania, we should listen carefully to sober scholarship on this topic, such as that provided by Gary Leese who has written, quote,

After almost 100 years of unremitting labor, the conclusion appears inescapable that neither

Mithraism nor Christianity proved to be an obvious and direct influence upon the other in the development and demise or survival of either religion.

Their beliefs and practices are well accounted for by their most obvious origins, and there is no need to explain one in terms of the other.

And so, if I were to take the time to examine each of the popularly promoted sources for Jesus, including the

Osiris myth, or Greek stories like Attis or Dionysus, or those who promote Gnostic myths, etc.,

we would find the same kind of constant anachronism and factual misstatements that we have documented here regarding Mithraism.

Indeed, as Osiris historian Trigvi Meninger has put it in his conclusion of his work The Riddle of Resurrection, Dying and Rising Gods in the

Ancient Near East, quote, The death of Jesus is presented in the sources as vicarious suffering, as an act of atonement for sins, but there is no evidence of the death or dying and rising of gods as vicarious suffering for sins.

There is, as far as I'm aware, no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct, drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world.

The faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus retains its unique character in the history of religions, end quote.

Like the fiction of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, those who ignore the fundamental realities of history, the vast chasm of difference between the historically grounded story of Jesus and Nazareth, and the ahistorical mythology of Mithra, or Osiris, or Dionysus, or Romulus, can only offer us fantasies rather than the truth.

There is only one logical context for the story of Jesus, the very one offered in the

Bible, that of the Jewish people of the first century who, like Simeon and Anna in the Temple, look for the promised

Messiah while rejecting and detesting the paganism of the world around them. Finally, argument number four, the miracle reports make the story unhistorical.

This is truly the foundation of Dan's position, for in essence, here again, we have the overriding power of his naturalistic, materialistic worldview coming to the fore.

His argument is simple. There is no supernatural realm, hence any source even referencing it must be, quote, unhistorical, end quote.

This is circular reasoning, begging the question, assuming the end of the debate before you have proven your point. I refer you to the debate between myself and Mr.

Barber from late April of this year, for further discussion of whether naturalistic materialism can provide a consistent ground for human thought and predication.

For now, let me point you to a single miracle that is recorded in the Gospels to see if you would agree with Mr.

Barber's position. In Luke chapter 17 verses 11 through 19, we have the healing of the ten lepers.

It takes place on the border between Galilee and Samaria, which was a place of racial tension and arrogance.

The Jews detested the Samaritans, the Samaritans returned the favor. The miracle is rooted in history.

To even understand it, you have to know what was going on in first century Palestine. It is a purposeful miracle, speaking directly not only to the need of men, but the situation in that day, a situation that changed only 40 years later.

So this narrative had to come from that time period when people would have understood the context. The entire story lives and breathes the original historical context.

It does not breathe the air of mythology in any way, shape, or form. And so we conclude, there is no reason to look for a mythological foundation for Jesus.

The historical realities of the Jewish people at the beginning of the first century, together with the Jewish scriptures and their prophetic witness, are more than sufficient foundation for the gospel stories.

The story of Jesus is unique because he, as the incarnate one, was himself truly unique.

Thank you very much. Thank you

Dr. White. Mr. Berkert, you now have 10 minutes for cross -examination.

We take this first cross -text really for informational purposes.

So, I don't remember, did you define the word pagan? No, I did not define the word pagan.

Well, as I was using it there, I was referring to religions that are primarily focused upon celebration of nature, fertility, the vegetation cycle, hence would have holidays specifically associated with spring, fall, those issues along those lines.

Isn't it true the word pagan really just means non -Christian, any religion that's outside of Judeo -Christian?

I think that would be an anachronistic use of the term prior to Christianity, obviously. I would imagine a lot of Christians use it that way, but I was referring to its use in the history of religion studies.

So, if there were any believers who were not basing their beliefs on natural, cyclical things, but they had some kind of spiritual knowledge of God, you would not call that a non -Christian, non -pagan religion?

What would it be then? You're talking about after the beginning of Christianity? Before and during. Well, I wouldn't use the term

Christian of anything prior to Christ, obviously, that was Judaism, but there were obviously all sorts of religions that were focused upon the vegetation cycle, which was the means by which anyone stayed alive in those days.

Had a good crop, you'd live. If you had a good crop, you might not make it. That would be a pagan religion because it's focused upon the creation rather than on the creator.

So, Pythagoras' worship of numbers would not be pagan then? Since the numbers are a part of creation itself, you could, if you wanted to use that terminology,

I don't know if the term pagan is defined in the Bible, so it's not a hill I'm interested in denying. Well, in my reading, a pagan basically is anybody who's not a

Christian, anybody who's outside the circle, and you don't consider pagan to be a bad word, do you?

It's not a pejorative, it's just a description. It's a descriptive term, sure. I mean, it can be used in that way.

I mean, sometimes you look at somebody and say, you're pagan, but you're not. I know.

Not in a specific scholarly sense, though. Some of us would be proud of the word pagan, because well, that's a different part of the debate.

I'm sure you agree, you alluded to the fact that later Christians did borrow from paganism, especially after Constantine.

Church construction within their practices, and in their mass, and in their clergy, and in their vestments, and in all, you know, a lot of these things that the

Church did basically borrow from paganism, from Romans and from the Greeks. And you do admit that within the

Christian Church Well, I have to ask, I haven't finished the question yet, because that's preparing the question.

In that admission, I think you agree then, therefore, that some parts of the Christian Church have exhibited a propensity then to borrow from outside sources to flavor their religion.

I would then ask you, what is it that makes the first century Christians exempt from that proclivity?

A couple of things. I don't agree with the first two complex foundational statements, in the sense that medieval

Roman Catholicism, especially the ones established into baptism as a means of entry into the

Church, brought all sorts of pagans in, and so you had assimilation of various and sundry pagan elements within medieval

Roman Catholicism. There is a vast difference between the practice of something five or six hundred years out of the time of the

Romans and that of the apostles who are living in Judea prior to AD 70 and are living in a

Jewish context where paganism, the pagan religions of the day are considered to be completely anathema, and hence to try to build a religion by borrowing from the very religions that the people you tend to reach find to be reprehensible or repulsive has never made any sense to me.

So that's how I answered the main question, that is, why is the first century precluded from what happened later on, is you have a completely different context for the apostles than you have for fifth century medieval

Catholicism after the fall of the western portion of Rome. Isn't it true that all religions consider the others to be anathema in some way?

No, not at all. In fact, a large number of the mystery religions of the days, in fact that was one of the things the

Jews were so hated for, was there was a tremendous non -reflecticism in the mystery religions. If you were a follower of Dionysus, that didn't mean that someone who was a follower of Mithra was wrong.

So, no, that would not be a case in any serious study of the history of religions at all.

You were allowed to be a member of multiple of the mystery religions. In the first century, I'm sure you agree that whoever wrote those gospels would have or should have been familiar with earlier stories of heroes and gods who had had virgin births.

There were stories floating around at the time, right? Of gods and heroes who were born of a virgin. The primary sources that have been identified by scholarship of New Testament documents primarily come from the

Jewish people themselves. The primary references have been found in what we would call the Apocryphal works today, the

Old Testamental period, Maccabees, works like that. Paul is aware of Greek philosophy and Greek philosophers and stories along those lines.

But there would be entire sections of especially Roman religion that would only be known by having a discussion with maybe soldiers that came in from Rome, even though the

Roman cohorts in Palestine initially generally were not of religion level.

They were not Italian, and hence my knowledge of that. Someone like Peter would have extremely limited exposure to many of the sources that you were presenting here.

He lived in Galilee, and that's quite a cosmopolitan crossroads where a clash of many cultures, many religions were in existence.

Are you suggesting that the people who wrote the New Testament were ignorant of the story of Romulus? You do agree there were pre -existing stories of virgin births, right?

Whether the Christians knew of them or not. There were pre -existing stories of gods in human form impregnating women.

I am not aware of any story from monotheism where a child is conceived without the means of a physical god.

If you are, please let us know. Romulus was impregnated, the first virgin was impregnated by Mars, who was this whatever kind of a creature.

Whatever happened to the virgin birth of Jesus, by the way, was there a historical witness to the virgin birth of Jesus, to the virgin conception of Jesus?

How could you have a historical witness? Exactly. How could you have a historical witness to Romulus, right, or to Caesar Augustus?

There's no way you would know that historically. Outside of the people that were involved, yeah.

So, at least this isn't a claim of a virgin birth, a non -historical claim. It's just a claim in some degree that can't be verified.

Well, if you assert that history has to be naturalistic and ignore any activity of God in history, then certainly that's the conclusion.

Well, where's the historical nexus there? Where is the historical source or document or testimony of the fact that this virgin got impregnated by a ghost?

Where's that? Well, of course, it's not a ghost. It's a spirit. Holy ghost. Yeah, but as you know, that's not a proper translation of Pneuma, although it's fantastic.

But that would be due to the fact that the writer Luke specifically makes reference to checking his sources, doing interviews, and writing during the lifetime, having interviewed the people that he is writing the story of.

That's about as close as you can get to an original historical source, as I'm familiar with.

So he talked to somebody who saw Mary get pregnant? No, he talked to Mary. Oh, and Mary saw herself get pregnant by this spirit.

I think the line of question here is self -evidently presupposing a naturalistic worldview that's not a fine foundation.

You bet the naturalistic worldview is the only viable worldview, by the way. Is that a question? Do you believe that the

Egyptian sorcerers actually turned sticks into snakes? Yes. They did?

Yes. By what power? There is more than one supernatural power in the world.

So the devil, they actually performed so they had... That's one of the evidences that your

Zoroastrian assertions are completely out of line with the Old Testament. I only make one

Zoroastrian assertion. Well, one's not. Cyrus the

Great should be cross -examined. Do we still have time here? 46 hours.

How long has the human race existed? I do not have an answer. Unless you're helping him.

He knows exactly what I'm doing. Well, in your best guess, how old is the human race? How long have we been here?

I do not know. There's estimates anywhere from... If you're talking about from the time of Adam onward, there are various ways of working the genealogies that would go anywhere from 6 to 20 ,000 years.

6 to 20 ,000 years. The human species? You're on record saying that. No, no. I didn't say that. The human race.

The human species. I said from Adam. However you determine who Adam was, there are people who would say that Adam is the first creature that is created.

There are other people that would say that Adam came at a point where just saying from Adam onward, because that's the only biblical revelation.

Were there humans before Adam? Our time is up. There will be a five -minute break to stretch your legs.

I'd like to offer just a brief reminder. If you have questions for the speakers for our question and answer period, please turn them in at the book table at the next break so that they can be sorted through.

Thank you very much. And also, each party will be receiving a copy of this debate that they will individually sell,

I assume, at their discretion. So, Dr.

White, you now have ten minutes for cross -examination. Thank you very much, Kevin.

Mr. Parker, you presented a number of slides wherein you presented alleged parallels.

All right, now we'll try that.

You presented a number of slides where you presented alleged parallels between the gospel of Mark and Homer.

Is it your position that the writer of Mark knew of the epics of Homer and that he constructed his gospel in such a way as to parallel those epics?

Two answers. Yes. I'm still not hearing you.

One, two, three, four, five. Is it on mute? Do you see digits?

I tell you what, let's pray about this. See? Nothing fails like prayer.

There we go. Okay, that worked. I prayed to Mother Goodness, by the way. Well, there's two parts to that answer.

Yes, the author of the first gospel, the gospel of Mark, was familiar with Homer and the epics and the

Homeric hymns. Every educated writer of Greek in those days was familiar. School children were familiar.

Homer, the Odyssey, the Iliad were used pretty much like tutorials to learn how to write.

The Romans copied and emulated Homer. The Greeks copied and emulated

Homer. Homer was sort of the Shakespeare of the day. And Mark, as I said earlier, patterned most of his gospel after the

Jewish scriptures, obviously. But, he did take many stories, not all of them, but many of his actual supposed historical tales within the book of Mark and he emulated, just like I emulated

The Three Little Pigs, he emulated Homer. Although you can see that he tried to improve it. He tried to change it.

He tried to say our Jesus is even better than our Jesus. So, yes, it's a claim that you're exactly right.

Much of the book of Mark was deliberately emulating Homer. You also said the

Christian story was clearly cut from the Romulus story. Is that what you said? I didn't say it was clearly cut from that story.

I'm saying that that story is part of the fabric from which the Jesus story was cut.

Romulus is one example of many examples of virgin born sons of God who were saviors who were prophesied and persecuted and so on.

We can't connect the dots exactly between Mark, Matthew, Luke and the story of Romulus, but we can show the fabric, the texture from which the culture of the day, the readers of his day would have known and understood.

Anybody who was anybody in those days, if you're going to create a new religion you better have elements in it that have virgin births.

One or two childhood stories of how magnificent he was and miracles and demons.

You've got to do stuff like that. Stealing the ways. You've got to show that your God is really a real God and that's how you do it.

So in the first century of Palestine amongst the Jews the Jews had access to all these myths and Mark was purposely attempting to start a new religion amongst the

Jews by referring to those religions that the Jews detested. Not all the

Jews had access to all the myths but any literate Jew who could compose something like the book of Mark, which is quite a work of art actually when you think about it.

It's pretty amazing. Those types of Jews, the Greek writers, would have been familiar with Homer.

No, he had already believed. In fact, I think it's possible that Mark already believed in Jesus and didn't just manufacture it.

But what he was doing was in order to tell the story he brought these earlier legends in.

He brought these earlier epics in to say look at our... He probably believed Jesus was a real person but look at he did this.

He outdid Odysseus. He outdid Homer. He did better than Romulus. He was bringing these stories in. He's writing historical fiction, creative work of art type of fiction to tell a story to convince the readers of his day that our

God is part of the crowd too. Our God is just as good as any of the others. So he's getting monotheists who have been willing to die in opposition to these religions to adopt a new religion by drawing from the religions that they detest.

But the only reasons we might think that these monotheists were willing to die for the new religions is because of writers like Mark who start to tell us those stories.

Because before Mark we had no gospel of Jesus. No, I'm sorry. I must have confused you.

What I meant was it's very clear that the Jewish people from intertestamental sources prior to Mark rejected these religions and found them to be reprehensible and repulsive.

So I'm referring to Mark comes on the scene in that context. He's trying to create a new religion and so he draws from the various sources that the people he's trying to convert find to be repulsive to create a new religion to attract.

Christianity started somehow and it was one of those bold moves, some kind of creative bold move that those writers,

I don't know if Mark thought his gospel was going to become some bestseller like it is. He was writing the story his own way.

Later writers Matthew and Luke, of course you know, pandered much of their gospels after Mark. So I don't know if we can say that the author of Mark was thinking about Christianity the same way we are here today.

I'm a little confused at your presentation because it does seem that you have fundamentally changed some of your positions so I need to ask a question here.

You said in your published work that there was no tribe of Christians during Josephus' time.

Christianity did not get off the ground until the 2nd century. Have you abandoned that assertion? No, I haven't.

In the 1st century the word Christian and Christianity historically was not really what you would call a tribe of Christians.

I think that was Suetonius though. I read that in reference to Suetonius in the year 112, not Josephus. This is actually talking about Josephus.

But you do recognize that there were Christians in the 30s, 40s, and 50s.

Yeah, they were Jewish Christians. They were Jews without their Messiah. In Rome as well?

I don't think in Rome. Not that early. Not at the time. No, I don't think so.

I don't think there were a tribe of Christians in Rome that early in the 1st century. So who was Paul writing to around 51?

He might have been writing to some people, but certainly referencing that.

The thing about Rome isn't Josephus. The thing about Rome is Suetonius. Suetonius in his 12 Caesar's was talking about how