Thanks to New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman’s new book “Did Jesus Exist”, the debate over the historical Jesus has reached mainstream. Today CNN posted an article about called The Jesus debate: Man vs. myth
Interestingly, the only “Mythicist” writers they quote from are Robert Price (author of the Price, author of “Deconstructing Jesus “Deconstructing Jesus” published in 2000) and Timothy Freke (co-author of “The Jesus Mysteries: Was the ‘Original Jesus’ a Pagan God?” published in 2001).
According to CNN, Ehrman “devoted an entire section of his book to critiquing Freke, the mythicist and author of “The Jesus Mysteries: Was the ‘Original Jesus’ a Pagan God?” who says there was an ancient Osiris-Dionysus figure who shares uncanny parallels to Jesus. He says Freke can’t offer any proof that an ancient Osiris figure was born on December 25, was crucified and rose again. He says Freke is citing 20th- and 19th-century writers who tossed out the same theories. Ehrman says that when you read ancient stories about mythological figures like Hercules and Osiris, “there’s nothing about them dying and rising again. He doesn’t know much about ancient history,” Ehrman says of Freke. “He’s not a scholar. All he knows is what he’s read in ... Read More »
