In the footsteps of amazing scholars like David Fitzgerald and Richard Carrier, Biblical scholar Joseph Atwill will be presenting the most current information regarding the historicity of Jesus Christ. Joseph Atwill is the author of the best-selling book “Caesar’s Messiah” and its upcoming sequel “The Single Strand.”

Atwill will be presenting his papers at a one-day symposium called Convert Messiah in Holborn, London on October 19th. If there is a web stream, I will post it when available.  http://www.covertmessiah.com

Just to wet your lips a little, here are some excepts from an interview with Atwill:

Was Jesus based on a real person from history? “The short answer is no,” Atwill insists, “in fact he may be the only fictional character in literature whose entire life story can be traced to other sources. Once those sources are all laid bare, there’s simply nothing left.”

“the Roman Caesars left us a kind of puzzle literature that was meant to be solved by future generations, and the solution to that puzzle is ‘We invented Jesus Christ, and we’re proud of it.'”

“When the Romans had exhausted conventional means of quashing rebellion, they switched to psychological warfare. They surmised that the way to stop the spread of zealous Jewish missionary activity was to create a competing belief system. That’s when the ‘peaceful’ Messiah story was invented. Instead of inspiring warfare, this Messiah urged turn-the-other-cheek pacifism and encouraged Jews to ‘give onto Caesar’ and pay their taxes to Rome.”

Will this be a deathblow to Christianity? Was the science that the Koran is older than the people who wrote it? Nope. The religious have an amazing ability to ignore science and data that disagrees with them, and just stick with ‘faith’. I expect this to get people on the fence, or people who are already skeptic of the historical Christ, but the ‘true’ followers, the blindly devoted, will not be shaken. Yet.