Hey, why didn't *I* make the Times of London over this?

"This" being: Prove Christ exists, judge orders priest by Richard Owen Times of London 01/03/05.

It seems that Luigi Cascioli, the atheist author of a book called The Fable of Christ (presumably in Italian) was criticized by Father Enrico Righi from the pulpit. So Cascioli decided to sue him.

Now, I don't know how the libel laws in Italy work. But if the case attracts enough attention, it could be an interesting showcase for historical arguments about the existence of Jesus. The Times article mentions some of the issues I touched on in my 12/20/05 post 'Tis the season - for bad archaeology and sloppy history, among other things.

Maybe some Italian priest will denounce me and I'll make the London Times, too! No, wait. You would think a priest would like what I had to say there about the errors of the village atheist. So maybe an Italian atheist will denounce me and ... oh, let's just forget it!

I won't repeat what I said in the previous post. Cascioli's type argument sounds a lot like the village atheist version that I talked about there. Although I don't know how serious a work The Fable of Christ is. His argument reminds me of what's known as "minimalism" in Biblical archaeology.

That school of thought argues that the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) in particular is unreliable as an historical source because it was put into its current form much later than most of the historical events it describes, and was written with a theological purpose. They contend that only contemporary archaeological evidence of such events and people are reliable as evidence of their historical existence.

So, they argue in particular that the Kingdom of David and Solomon, if those two existed as historical figures at all, was a far less wealthy and spacious entity than the one described in the books of Samuel and Kings. There's a well-defined political issue connected with this dispute, which normally muddies up such things, and it does so with in case. Rightwing Orthodox Jews in Israel, and the settler movement in particular, base their claims to territory in the West Bank and elsewhere on the boundaries of the Kingdom of David and Solomon as described in the Scriptures.

Their critics argue that such an approach amounts to dogmatic reductionism. The Biblical text can't be taken as an authoritative source for historical events, they argue. But it is one important source in researching the history of that period. And even though the books of the Hebrew Bible took their final form at a certain point, there is strong evidence in the texts themselves that material from earlier periods was used for source information and incorporated into the final texts.

Plus, they argue, a great deal of the historical material in the Bible has been confirmed and supported by archaeological finds. There have been a number of fairly recent discoveries that give archaeological credence to the existence of David as the founder of a royal dynasty and to the notion that the United Monarchy (David and Solomon) ruled over a much larger portion of territory than the minimalists had assumed.

Cascioli's book won't please fundamentalists, of course. And without knowing more about the specifics of his approach, I can't say much about his book in particular. But for the reasons I described in my 12/20 post, the traditions and sayings and teachings of Jesus preserved in the form that we have them do provide strong evidence that such a person lived. Applying such narrow criteria as this type of village atheist argument does has methodological probems of its own.

Because what does constitute valid historical evidence for that way of looking at history? Are we to question the physical existence of any historical figure for whom we don't have photographs, fingerprints, notarized signatures and DNA samples seems to be a little much. How do we really know that Charlemagne or Salah-ed-Dîn (Saladin) were real figures? Maybe people just made them up as good stories? And what about those reports that Paul McCartney was killed in a car wreck in 1966 and replaced by a double? How do we know that didn't happen? I mean, it could have happened. People do get doubles to impersonate them. And people do die in car accidents. And that business about landing men on the moon ...

Here's where basic critical-thinking skills become helpful, reminding us that you can be open-minded without having your brain fall out onto the floor. Guidelines like "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" are useful. In the case of our village atheist, he would be on solid ground in saying that the claim that Jesus raised Lazarus physically from the dead would require extraordinary proof. And that absent such proof, assuming that such a thing did *not* happen would be more sensible than assuming it did.

On the other hand, the idea that one of many Jewish holy men that started their own religious movements around the time of Jesus was a real person is not an extraordinary claim. However, the fact that sayings and many traditions have been preserved about the life of this carptenter-turned-religious-leader, who most likely spoke with the hick accent of his home province of Galilee, that in itself could be counted as extraordinary evidence of his having lived. How many other Judean carptenters are talked about in the histories of the period? Written history at that time was about emperors and kings and generals and such, not about ordinary working people.

The how-do-we-really-know-anything, one-idea-is-as-good-as-another approach can be found among atheists and New Agers as well as fundamentalist Christians. It can lead people variously to notions like: the Holocaust never occurred; "intelligent design" is a scientific theory; slavery had nothing to do with the American Civil War.

Think of the possible consequences. Suppose an American president wanted to start a war against some country for reasons which he didn't want to share with Congress and the public. So he decides to make phony claims about how the enemy nation is stockpiling 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin and 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, plus has a program to produce nuclear weapons, as a way to justify war.

Imagine what could happen if the Congress, the press and much of the general public were unable to apply basic critical thinking skills to raise the appropriate questions about the nature of such false claims. It could be a disaster!

I know it seems incredible. But it could happen. Theoretically.