Christian Texts and History • Re: Fernando Bermejo-Rubio latest article June 2024

First, as we have already seen, The Things that Make for Peace is a book
whose author does not appear to appreciate how historical research is carried
out. Historians (and philologists) are aware of the problematic, biased nature
of ancient sources, and of the need to remain reasonably skeptical towards
them, but Nickel, despite his contrary claims, naively trusts the contents of the
Canonical Gospels, which he labels as ‘coherent’.
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In the light of all the former remarks I am compelled to infer that Nickel’s
book can and must be confidently described with the same words with which
he dismisses Reza Aslan’s Zealot, namely, ‘a pseudo-historical examination
of Jesus’. This is the reason why I will not discuss further numerous other
fallacious contentions of his work, ....
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In these circumstances, constructive and productive discussion is (often)
not possible, as some perceptive scholars have insightfully recognized. More
than half a century ago, the Jewish savant Samuel Sandmel, witnessing the
obstinacy which so many exegetes have devoted to the effort to ‘disparage
Judaism and its supposed legalism’, confessed that, after having addressed
himself to the topic in several essays, he did not intend to pursue such a task
any longer, ‘preferring to conclude that, with those Christians who persist in
deluding themselves about Jewish legalism, no academic communication
is possible’. Some years ago, Robert J. Miller argued that debates about
the historical Jesus that occur between the camp which sees the Canonical
Gospels as fully reliable historically and the camp which sees the Gospels as
blends of fact and fiction are futile, since there is no middle ground of shared
assumptions.I heartily concur, being prone to expand the field of skeptical
silence: with those authors who are incapable of removing the theological wax
from their ears and persist in deluding themselves about (and caricaturing)
the hypothesis taking seriously into account the ample evidence pointing to
Jesus’ (and his group’s) involvement in the politics of his time, no academic
communication is possible. 128

Although reading Nickel’s book is an intellectually frustrating experience,
there is still something important to gain. The unveiling of the many flaws and
shortcomings contained therein is a further contribution to argue yet again,
a contrario, the extraordinarily high historical likelihood of the sjh. That
hypothesis (having been endorsed by scholars coming from very different
ideological backgrounds through the centuries) has such a wide textual
and argumentative basis, enjoys such contextual plausibility, and has such
an explanatory power, that opposition to its most sophisticated versions is
only possible by engaging in the methodological missteps that we have seen
throughout Nickel’s book. That is just another reason for me to go on thinking
that it is the best hypothesis ever devised, not only to reconstruct Jesus of
Nazareth’s career, but also to understand the logic underlying the emergence
of those fanciful works that are the Canonical Gospels.

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128 footnote:

This is the reason why I will no longer invest my time responding to alleged ‘refutations’
coming from people lacking serious historical training, goodwill, and academic ethics.
In these cases, the only reasonable response is a resounding silence.