Secular Columnist in Historical Jesus Shock!

Posted by Beast Rabban

Shock! Horror! Sensation! The British newstand magazine of the weird, The Fortean Times has published a piece supporting the historicity of Christ. In the October 2007 issue, the Fortean Times’ resident classicist, Barry Baldwin attacks the latest attempt by Tom Harpur to disprove Christ’s existence as ‘as futile as his many predecessors’ and reviews the extrabiblical classical authors who mention Christ – Suetonius, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Lucian, Celsus, Porphyry and even the vehemently antichristian Roman emperor, Julian the Apostate, who wrote the official imperial attack on Christianity Against the Galileans. Examining their accounts of Christ, Baldwin concludes that ‘The overall point is, had any of these hostile sources thought there was the slightest chance of denying the fact of Jesus’ earthly existence, it is inconceivable that they would not have taken it. This conclusion is enhanced by the Neo-Platonist Porphyry’s remark (quoted by Augustine, City of God, bk19 ch23, from his Philosophy from Oracles – lost, as is his Against the Christians) that opponents preferred to attack Christianity rather than Christ himself’, Baldwin, Barry, ‘Classical Corner 91. For Christ’s Sake!’, Fortean Times 228, October 2007, p. 23.

It’s a surprise to me, as the magazine is by no means a Christian publication and has published in the past an awful lot of material critical of Christian claims, including positive reviews of previous books supporting the ‘Christ myth’ hypothesis from fringe writers like Harpur. One could take issue with Baldwin’s description of the Gospels as ‘irrelevant to the argument’ with the ancient non-Christian evidence being the only material that counts. In fact scholarship, contra Harpur et al, supports the view that the Gospels do indeed count as biographical evidence and were based on eyewitness accounts of Christ’s life and mission. However, simply seeing a secular scholar in a magazine that has published material supporting the Christ myth in its pages is a welcome surprise in itself.

My guess is that it won’t be long before furious antichristians write in criticising Baldwin’s endorsement of Christ’s historicity, despite him stating, as ‘pre-emptive retaliation’ that he is ‘non-sectarian’. I suspect that one reason why the Fortean Times published this at all is because the flood of Christ myth material has got out of hand and has now gained the status of a new orthodoxy, despite the fact that the majority of historians, classicists and Biblical scholars, Christian and secular, completely reject it.