The Dumplin' Dumbash Page

In search of Dumplin's Brain on the Historical Jesus

How apropos. Not a week after my book on the Christ-myth comes out, Dumplin' Dumbash tries to score a new high in manifest idiocy by addressing the secular references to Jesus. Drool. Slobber. Slobber. Lick chops.

He's addressing Geisler and Turek, and I ought to note that I didn't see a need to include many of the references they did. As far as I am concerned, two - Josephus and Tacitus - are sufficient to establish that Jesus existed; two more, Lucian and Pliny, are icing on the cake. So we'll just see what Dumbash has to say about those four.

Dumbash starts at once with the irrelevant parallel: … discounting all the Christian sources, Jesus is actually mentioned by one more source than the Roman emperor [Tiberius] Of course, just to keep things in perspective, this argument is like proving Mormonism by counting how many non-Mormons mentioned Joseph Smith prior to 1970. Or, for that matter, the angel Moroni.

Um, Dumplin', lemme give you a hint here - no one is saying that an argument for Jesus existing as a person proves Christianity. Not Geisler and Turek. Not me. Not anyone. We would say, yes, that you have to have Jesus exist to get a start proving Christianity. But you're the only one taking the big stupid step to "this proves the whole kit and caboodle." Your angel is apparently named "Moroni" also, sans the last vowel.

From here, let's see what Dumplin' says about our Big Four:

Josephus. Bzzzt. No shocker here. Dumplin' raises the old "forgery" canard for the big one. For the little one, he admits it's "probably authentic" except that he thinks there is "some evidence" the phrase "who is called the Christ" "may be a later interpolation." Wrong. There is NO evidence of this at all. Maybe Dumbash would like to try his hand at Ch. 1 of MY book, where Christopher Price does a number on these very claims.

Beyond that, Dumbash gripes that Josephus "is not what you would call an eye-witness testimony to the life of Jesus, since Josephus wasn't even born until 37 AD." Your point being what, Dumbash? Josephus was not an eyewitness to lots of stuff he reports in his work, but I don't see real historians throwing him away on that basis. He also goes for the old "he heard it from Christians" canard, which Price likewise deals with, and later, a Usseful Idiot named VorJack adds the "Origen and others didn't quote it" canard, likewise skewered by Price.

Tacitus. I have the goods on this one, so I'll refer the reader (and Dumbash) to either Ch 2 of my book or the item here (they're roughly the same). Dumbash deals with this one by changing the subject from, "Did Jesus exist?" to "Did Jesus rise from the dead?" which no one claims Tacitus is useful for proving. He also pulls the "written too late" canard I deal with in my article.

Pliny and Lucian. See here and here. Pliny is merely waved off because he "makes no mention of Jesus (or Christ) being an actual person, but describes believers relating to him in the same sense that the Greeks and Romans related to their gods." Wrong. I demolished that canard in the link. Lucian: Dismissed as merely "second-hand." Also handled in the link.

Is that it?

Holy carp.

So it amounts to this: Dumbash's only whine worth a cent is to call these "second hand" sources, never mind what historians think of their reliability even when reporting events they did not witness (Tacitus in particular). It also doesn't occur to Dumbash that all of his reports are "second hand" or even worse, but apparently, we're still supposed to believe him. That makes sense. Thankfully, Dumbash isn't so dumb as to stump for a Christ myth; he regards it as "reasonable" to conclude that Jesus existed. That he was the powered figure of the NT, he does doubt - but as we said, no one but Dumbash is dumb enough to think that Tacitus and Josephus are used for proving that. Dumbash thinks G and T "needn't have worked so hard" to prove Jesus existed, but if they had not, then Dohertys and Acharyas would be presenting Dumbash diatribes of their own whining that they didn't. Get over yourself, Dumbash…you're not the bellybutton of the world, any more than you were when you expected God to tie your shoes for you.