Don’t Quit Your Day Job

On a recent Podcast of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” UFC commentator and standup comedian Joe Rogan along with producer and co-host Brian Redban had on comedian Eddie Ifft to discuss all types of depraved matters.  This was actually my first time listening to the show.  I thought there would have been some commentary on the upcoming UFC event tomorrow night but I didn’t catch any (I admit that I only listened for 20 minutes and I skipped around).  When I fast-forwarded the program I came to a section where Rogan and company were discussing religious zealotry.  Rogan recounted an experience at a night club where he told a joke about Jesus being cloned and a Christian woman in the audience got offended and voiced her opinion.  This led to the comments in the audio file below, which only show why people should stick to what they know, so Joe and friends should talk about mixed martial arts and keep telling jokes and leave the Jesus and New Testament stuff to folks who are a little better informed.  Be warned, there is some profanity in there, but the ignorance is more offensive.

Here’s what they got right:

There’s volumes of pages written about Caesars and rulers of Greece & Rome.

This is true but it has absolutely nothing to do with the point that Rogan was trying to make, which was that there is evidence that there was no Jesus.

There were books in the NT attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Can’t argue with that.

There is believed to be a ‘Q.’

Technically, this should be listed under things they got wrong since the guy calls it a “Book of Q.”  There is no evidence that any such “book” existed and there’s still plenty of doubt amongst scholars about the existence of any ‘Q’, be it written, oral, or otherwise.

Here’s what they got wrong:

There’s a lot of evidence that there was no Jesus.

In point of fact, all the evidence points to there being a Jesus, and no evidence points away from this.  The best that even the most ardent skeptic could argue is that there’s not enough evidence to suggest that Jesus really existed; but no one in their right mind would argue that there’s evidence that shows there was no Jesus.

That the canon was formed at the Council of Nicaea.

I can’t recall how many times I’ve heard this and I still can’t fathom how this rumor got started in the first place.  Canon issues are tricky since there are different canons for different Christian communities.  But whatever the difficult issues are, one thing is clear: no canon was chosen at Nicaea.

The Gospel writers didn’t live at the same time.

I see no evidence to suggest this.  If the traditional dates of the Gospels are any indication then I think it’s safe to assume that they all did live in the same period (mid to late-first century).  Even if we accept later dates for the Gospels (late-first to mid-second century) then they’d still all have been alive at the same time.  The issue the commentator (I don’t know if it was Redban or Ifft) was trying to highlight was that the Synoptists used each other as sources.  This is true enough, but that doesn’t make the point they were trying to make, which was that the Gospels are unreliable second, third, and fourth-hand paraphrases based on hearsay.

B”H