Historian explains why Jesus ''mythers'' aren't taken seriously by most Historians

[TimOneill]

Tim O'Neill, An atheist who has studied the scholarship on the historical Jesus, his Jewish socio-religious context and the origins of Christianity for over 25 years.

I wonder what Tim O'Neil has to say about this?


The 'Oxford Classical Dictionary', one of the foremost authorities on the Greco-Roman world, does not have an entry for Jeshua Ben Yusef?


http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.co...alify.html


"The 3rd. ed. continues the title:  The Oxford Classical Dictionary: The Ultimate Reference Work on the Classical World includes more than 6,200 entries, but again fails to provided any entry on Jesus nor has it any use for the New Testament as a historical record.  Although the entry on Josephus is expanded in the newer editions, the Dictionary dismisses the Testimonium Flavianum account on Jesus as reliable history in just one sentence: “The famous testimonium to Jesus is partly or even wholly an interpolation.” (p. 798)

Likewise, there are no entries on Gospels, New Testament, nor does the Dictionary list a single reference  to any Biblical book under its section: Abbreviations Used in the Present Work   A. General  B. Authors and Books in its 75 pages."


I don't believe Oxford are in the 'fringe', are they?  

Well, let's see.  Since I have full access to the Oxford Classical Dictionary online via my university, it was pretty easy to do a search on it and see if they regard Jesus as a historical figure.  A few seconds with the search tool and I got no less than 25 references to him in the work, of which at least seven are to the historical man and not to the figure at the centre of Christian beliefs.

So why doesn't he get his own entry?  Because this is the Oxford Classical Dictionary - a research resource on the Greco-Roman world.  The Jewish sphere was at best marginal to that world and much of the time actively sought to be separate from it.  So Jesus doesn't get a separate entry, but is mentioned in entries that are relevant to the Greco-Roman world.  Such as, not surprisingly, the one on Christianity.  In the same way, searches on other historical Jewish figures of the time turned up no separate entries but some references in other entries relevant to Classical history (eg Hillel, John the Baptist) or no entry or references at all (Caiaphas, Theudas, Athronges).

So which Oxford dictionary would we expect to find entries on these Jewish figures that are absent from the Oxford Classical Dictionary ?  Not surprisingly, we'd expect to find them in the Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion.  And there we find a detailed entry on Jesus, on pages 395-6.  As we'd expect.

So this rather stupid blog post by this Harry H. McHall guy is yet another example of Jesus mythers not thinking things through.