If you’re looking to summarize the mainstream view, you don’t look at Christian apologists or fundamentalist arguments. They aren’t part of the mainstream view. You also don’t look at fringe groups and act like they define what the mainstream is. And you definitely don’t make up arbitrary rules about what evidence you can accept.
Honestly, this section was just a complete mess and it foreshadows how Britt and Wingo approach the subject.
The first question they post here was, “is there a particular reason why most scholars agree on the natural Jesus?” If they had done a proper summary of the mainstream position, this wouldn’t be a question.
Most scholars don’t argue that Jesus existed. That is a historically established fact. As there is no reason to doubt such a position, there isn’t a real reason to continually argue the position. It’s largely the same reason why we don’t have to debate whether other historical figures existed. The view has been established, and unless new reasons come to light to question it, we simply don’t.
We can look at it in another way. It’s an established fact that the Holocaust occurred. When writing about the Holocaust, I don’t have to argue that it is a historical fact. And even though there are people out there who argue against such a position, there’s no real reason to debate them on the subject, unless one is actively debunking such a position. And we have to realize that those who would engage in such a process, those who would actually debunk the views of those who deny the Holocaust, they aren’t doing it for historians or people in academia. They are doing it for the general public.
Any number of conspiracies could be used as an analogy here. But the underlying point is that one doesn’t have to argue ideas and facts that are already established. We can just accept the established facts, and then build upon them. The only time this changes is when we are given serious reason to doubt.
To date, there hasn’t been serious reason to doubt. So scholars generally just ignore mythicist ideas. With the works of Carrier and Lataster, there is slightly more reason to at least look at their specific arguments, and a few, like Bart Ehrman and Maurice Casey, have offered responses. While a full-length response hasn’t been published, various scholars have offered either direct responses to different points, or they have published works that indirectly address an issue that is brought up among mythicists.
The bigger issue though, as we see in both Ehrman’s book, “Did Jesus Exist,” and Casey’s book, “Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths?” is that so much of the popular mythicist material lies firmly within the realm of conspiracy theory. It has no real historical basis, and thus there is no reason to even consider it. In whole, this has really tainted mysticism.
Another clear sign that Britt and Wingo aren’t aware of the mainstream position is their statement that “the ones (atheist writers) who agree with the mainstream opinion use the same arguments that theists use.”
Theism should not come into the equation at all. And for the majority of actual scholars, those who make up the mainstream, theism doesn’t come into play. The tools used are the same tools used in any other historical research. The manner in which we study someone such as Augustus should be the same way we study Jesus. And for the most part, that’s what we see.
This leads me to think that the mainstream they looked at wasn’t actual mainstream scholars, but those on the fringe. Individuals such as apologists, and fundamentalist scholars who place theology over history. This view is furthered by the fact that they bring up the Jesus Seminar.
Ironically, this is a group that Strobel’s book, “The Case for Christ,” also brings up, but as an example of extreme views. Both works seriously miscategorize and misrepresent what the Jesus Seminar actually was.
The Jesus Seminar, from the very beginning, was heavily criticized by mainstream scholars. It was always, largely a more fringe group. And while they basically ceased to exist in 2006, they really hadn’t produced anything of substance for quite some time. Their last major phase, as per the Westar Institute website, ended in 1998.
A mass has been written about the Jesus Seminar, from their questionable methodology, to a variety of failures they had. While they would attempt to produce a consensus among themselves, that’s all it ever was. It did not represent the mainstream consensus.
What makes this worse is that many who were part of the Jesus Seminar weren’t even scholars. Britt and Wingo mention that the group included 150 individuals, but what they don’t mention is that 100 of those, at least when they started, were laymen. Only 50 were actual scholars. One such individual involved here was Paul Verhoeven, the filmmaker behind movies like RoboCop, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers. Verhoeven had no background in any relevant field.
Why Britt and Wingo would focus on this group is another red flag here. If they are basing their views of what the mainstream is based on this group, then they clearly have no idea what the mainstream view is.
They finish off this section by saying, “Lastly, additional evidence and points of view continue to present themselves as time goes on, so relying on evidence no later than 2006 isn’t scientific nor final whatsoever.” Just prior to this, they also bring up the idea of science, that science doesn’t work on the basis of voting, as the Jesus Seminar conducted some of their research.
First, pointing at 2006 as some boundary date is arbitrary. Why can’t evidence prior to 2006 be looked at? What rules it out? If we have an established historical fact from 2000, that hasn’t been challenged, why must we reject it because it comes from prior to 2006? It’s an arbitrary boundary that they have no support for.
While it is true, we shouldn’t rely on outdated information, that doesn’t mean we reject solid evidence either because it’s a bit older. And it’s not like Britt and Wingo even believe that 2006 is really a boundary line anyway. Looking at their sources, as well as their recommended further reading, many of them predate 2006. Sometimes this is only by a few years. Sometimes it is by a decade, such as with Richard Horsley’s “Archeology, History, and Society in Galilee.” And then sometimes, it’s by nearly half a century, such as the 1957 work by Alan Rowe, “A Contribution to the Archeology of the Western Desert.”
Second, history isn’t a science like physics. It’s a soft science. Saying that a process isn’t scientific, because we wouldn’t use it in a hard science, is largely irrelevant when it comes to history. Yes, as historians, we use evidence that is old. Jumping back to the use of newspapers by historians, often the evidence we use is hundreds of years old. That’s how history works.
Third, and final, the idea that science doesn’t work by voting is just ironic here. Because Britt and Wingo are presenting their entire argument as if it were in a court of law, and the readers are part of the jury. But don’t juries take a vote? Don’t they vote on their conclusion? I don’t think they really thought this through.