I am certainly sympathetic with those who try to cast a skeptical eye on stories from the Bible. However, it is easy to go overboard, and to apply a higher standard of evidence to the Bible than one would apply to non-religious texts. I personally do not believe that the writers of the Bible simply made up stories to fit their ideas (although the apocryphal section of Daniel is a possible exception). In most cases, the stories that are demonstrably false were probably fairly old traditions that later writers simply accepted and wrote into the Bible. I am more interested in explanations that show how a story got into the Bible rather than trying to see everything debunked. I think that the “myth of Nazareth” idea is this kind of over-skeptical debunking. Most historical Jesus scholars have come to the conclusion that he was crucified by the Romans, and that the Jewish leaders probably played a very minor role. They have come to the conclusion that he himself probably did not claim to be the Messiah or the Son of God. I don’t see why these same scholars who are so open-minded about rethinking the Jesus of the Bible would be so committed to ignoring the evidence about Nazareth that Rene Salm and others claim to have found.

I more lean towards the theory that Christianity was so successful a lot because of the centrality it placed on community-building, not just at an empire level, but on the church level, with members being very much part of a tight-knit group who would help each other out. In Timothy it appears that second-generation Christians were providing support for the needy in their community. Early social security. Supporting people who weren’t necessarily related to you. Pretty radical.

Josephus has one mention of Jesus the brother of James the Just, apart from the clearly fraudulent reference. It is slightly disputed.

Yeah, I have never heard anyone arguing that Jesus wasn’t born in Nazareth. It’s like his being baptized by John the Baptist. Something that would have driven his followers attempting to claim that he had been the christ absolutely batty and they would have tried to explain and rewrite like crazy.

The Gospels make astonishing claims about the miracles and popularity of Jesus, but the evidence outside of the Bible shows no awareness of this. Jesus appears as a relatively minor figure in the writings of Josephus, our best historical source for the period, and he is not mentioned at all by Roman sources until almost a century after his death. This leads to the probable conclusion that the popularity of Jesus during his lifetime was a legend that developed between his death and the time the Gospels were written decades later.

The Biblical evidence does show that the Jesus movement grew substantially during the first century. Scholars accept 7 of the Pauline letters as authentic: therefore, we can say with some certainty that between 50-60 CE, there were communities of the followers of Jesus in Corinth, Galatia, Philippi, Thessalonica, Rome, and other cities of the Empire, including the community of Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. Again, however, there is no evidence that the Jesus movement was popular enough to come to the attention of Roman authorities until early in the second century CE. Josephus knew about this group, but only as a dissident Jewish sect.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that by the time Constantine converted to Christianity, a significant proportion of the Empire’s population was already Christian. According to Bart Ehrman, at the beginning of the fourth century, the Christians made up about 5-7% of the population of the empire. However, after Constantine’s conversion in 313, it became extremely beneficial to become a Christian, and by the end of the century, about half of the population of the empire had converted to Christianity. It is easy to be cynical about this massive explosion in popularity and attribute it to selfish motives, political gain, or simply following the crowd. However, it is a much more difficult problem to determine why Christianity became popular before Constantine’s conversion.

As it turns out, the growth of Christianity before the conversion of Constantine was not nearly as fast as we generally believe. Bart Ehrman compares the growth rate of early Christianity to the growth rate of the Mormon church today. There are several theories about why Christianity was attractive to its Gentile converts (it basically failed among Jews as the Pharisaic group established rabbinic Judaism as the dominant form of Jewish belief and practice). One theory is that whereas the pagan religions of the Roman empire were inclusive (you could worship at a number of temples without anyone telling you to worship only there), Christians claimed an exclusive corner on the truth, and this claim may have been very popular. This exclusive claim to truth may have been reinforced by the fact that the followers of Jesus were willing to die for their faith. Another idea is that Christianity provided a social network of believers all over the Empire (much like the Mormon church today provides a social network all over the world). Another attraction of Christianity was its claimed ability to provide real-world benefits, such as healing the sick. Even if one does not believe that these claimed powers actually exist, it is not difficult to imagine that perhaps Christians were more persuasive about having these powers than the adherents of the pagan religions.

So it is simply not true that Christianity spread rapidly, and therefore it must be something special. Yes, there was something quite unique about Christianity compared with the other religions of the Empire, but its growth was rather slow and steady until the conversion of Constantine. And it is not necessary to claim that the growth of Christianity is inexplicable unless its claims are actually true. I doubt most Christians are willing to grant the same argument to the Seventh Day Adventists, whose growth rate is significantly higher than the growth rate of early Christianity.

Rene Salm wrote a book called “The Myth of Nazareth” and appeared on the Infidel Guy podcast to describe his “findings.” But I wonder, we tend to be so critical of the creationists when they sound so confident about their ideas but don’t submit them to peer-reviewed journals. Why is it that I can’t find anything about this in a peer-reviewed journal? Is it possible that Rene Salm’s confidence about his findings is not actually warranted by the evidence? Or does he just realize that he doesn’t have the necessary qualifications to submit anything to a peer-reviewed journal?

Obviously, I realize that criticizing someone’s qualifications does not debunk his argument. However, from what I have seen of modern Bible scholarship, scholars are not so committed to a literal interpretation of scripture that they would ignore evidence such as Salm claims to have found. A New Testament scholar will be the first to tell you that Luke’s story about Jesus being born during an empire-wide census is historically implausible. A New Testament scholar will be the first to tell you that John’s story of the woman taken in adultery is a late addition to the text by the scribes who transmitted the text. I see no reason to believe that the case against Nazareth is as absolutely certain as Salm claims it is. Salm claims that he got all of his information from the experts, but his conclusions run contrary to the more or less consensus view of the experts that Nazareth was a tiny agricultural village of several hundred people at the time of Jesus.

After listening to the interview, I do not believe we can take him at his word when he says that the defenders of Nazareth are doing so because they are theologically committed to its historicity, and that he is simply a disinterested historian. First of all, I can’t find any evidence of his qualifications as a historian. Second, it seems to me that he is anything but disinterested when it comes to discussing the origins of Christianity. If someone can find a book or an article by a qualified historian that supports his views (hopefully peer-reviewed), I’ll be happy to read it. Until that happens, I’ll believe the consensus view of the academic community.

1)Historicity of Jesus

Most scholars of the New Testament, even those who are not Christian, believe that Jesus was a historical figure who was crucified by Pontius Pilate on suspicion of stirring up revolutionary sentiment among his fellow Jews. The earliest sources are the seven undisputed letters of Paul that were written between about 50 and 60 CE. However, other than the vision in which Paul claimed to see Jesus, and any other mystical experiences he may have had, all of Paul’s information about Jesus came from other followers of Jesus. Then we get the Gospel of Mark, written around the time of the Jewish War in 70 CE, which Bible scholars consider a reinterpretation of the Jesus stories in light of recent events. Scholars hypothesize that Matthew and Luke were both written around 80 to 85 CE, and that they both used Mark, a hypothetical Q source of the sayings of Jesus, and additional sources that are unique to one or the other of the Gospels. The author of Luke also wrote Acts, which is the earliest record of the history of the Jesus movement. Finally, the Gospel of John was written around 95 CE and overlaps very little with the material found in the three Synoptic gospels. All four writers probably used material that had circulated as oral traditions in the decades since the death of Jesus, and each Gospel is strongly colored by the particular theology and ideology of its writer.

Josephus was a Jewish historian who fought in the Jewish War in 70 CE on the side of the Jews, and then changed sides and became an adviser to Emperor Vespasian. Josephus is our best source for this period of Jewish history, although his writings are also colored by his theology. In one of his books, he briefly mentions Jesus, and the current text also asserts that Jesus was the Messiah and that he appeared to his apostles on the third day after his death. Since it is very clear from the other writings of Josephus that he was a Jew, not a Christian, the text as it currently reads is not the work of Josephus. Probably the most likely resolution of the problem is that Josephus did in fact mention Jesus as a historical figure, but the Christians who copied his writings added in the rest. Josephus said a great deal more about other contemporaries of Jesus who he considered more important, such as John the Baptist.

The earliest mention of Jesus or Christianity in Roman sources is in 112 CE when Pliny the Younger asks the emperor about how he should prosecute Christians.

Other than the four canonical Gospels, the other references, even the letters of Paul, say very little about the life and death of Jesus, and so scholars are forced to rely mostly on Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, even though they know that the Gospels themselves are extremely problematic. Despite these difficulties, most scholars have not concluded that Jesus was a fictional character, only that later writers added their own interpretations and that the stories about his life changed over time before they were finally written down decades later. Some scholars conclude that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, while others consider him a Jewish sage. Very few scholars reject the historicity of Jesus altogether.

Wait, people were flocking to Jesus during his lifetime? Not really. Not really at all. During his life, he was an incredibly tiny, local figure. There were maybe 20 or so people who followed him at the time of his death. So 20 or so people were just quite good at multiplying in the following generation.

“It doesn’t mean that word of mouth wasn’t trustworthy.”
Word of mouth wasn’t trustworthy. Do the research.

Christianity failed in Jerusalem. It spread among gentiles in Corinth. Sure, there’s Acts. Paul did it all. You couldn’t “just go talk to somebody” who saw it. The majority of the areas where Christianity spread in that generation after never saw anyone who knew Jesus.

Most gnostics either didn’t believe in or didn’t care about the Resurrection.

The “historical” book of Acts? Few modern scholars would accept Acts as that reliable on the life of Paul. The most reliable things in the Bible are the books of Paul that were really written by Paul.