Next Fitzgerald goes into some detail about the writers and historians of the First Century who he claims "should" have mentioned a historical Jesus but did not. He lists eleven who are contemporaries of Jesus. Like many Mythers, he seems to think that the lack of any contemporary reference to Jesus is somehow a particularly telling point, since the few extra-Biblical references to Jesus are in writings dating almost a century after his time. This would come as no surprise to anyone actually familiar with the nature of ancient source material, however. There are few more famous ancient figures than the Carthaginian general Hannibal; even today most people at least know his name. He was one of the greatest and justifiably famous generals of ancient times. Yet, despite his fame then and now, we have precisely zero contemporary references to Hannibal. If we have no contemporary mentions of the man who almost destroyed the Roman Republic at the height of its power, the idea that we should expect any for an obscure peasant preacher in the backblocks of Galilee is patently absurd.
(Edit: In the discussion in the comments on this review here and elsewhere it was brought to my attention that we do have a tiny fragment of one contemporary account of Hannibal. P.Würzb.Inv. 1 is a papyrus fragment that seems to contain a few lines from Book IV of Sosylus' The Deeds of Hannibal. I was not aware of this when I wrote the paragraph above, so thanks to the commenter Evan for bringing it to my attention.
The point still stands however - if we have nothing more than a few lines from any contemporary work about Hannibal to expect to have surviving contemporary mentions of someone as unimportant and obscure as Jesus is still absurd. And there are many other very prominent people for whom we have no contemporary mentions: we have nothing of the sort for the Icenian warrior queen Boudicca or the Germanic warlord Arminius, for example. Arminius destroyed one tenth of the whole Roman army in one battle and led the only successful rebellion against the Empire in its history, yet we have nothing about him from the time or even from his lifetime. Fitzgerald's emphasis on the lack of contemporary references to a peasant who did not much is plainly ridiculous. Of course, it should also be noted that my point is still correct - the text of P.Würzb.Inv. 1 makes no mention of any "Hannibal". )
Fitzgerald labours mightily to detail all the writers who he claims "should" have mentioned Jesus. But in every case his argument suffers from the same fatal flaw: given that none of these writers mention any other Jewish preachers, prophets and Messianic claimants, there is absolutely no reason to think they "should" have mentioned Jesus. As noted above, Athronges, the Sarmatian, Theudas and the Egyptian prophet were actually far more prominent and significant locally than Jesus was even according to the most naive, face value fundamentalist's reading of the gospels. Yet not one of them is mentioned by any of Fitzgerald's list of "should" writers either. Nor are any other comparable Jewish figures of the time, such as Hillel, Shammai, Choni HaMa'agel, John the Baptist or Gamaliel.
Yet Fitzgerald again claims that these writers do mention other figures similar to Jesus. "In many cases", he claims, "these same writers have much to say about other much less interesting messiahs - but not Jesus" (p.42) In "many cases"? In which cases? Fitzgerald simply does not say. And other messiahs are mentioned? Which ones, where and by who? Again, despite this being a key point that should potentially back up and substantiate his creaking argument, he never bothers to tell the reader. The reason is simple - what Fitzgerald is saying here is absolute nonsense. None of his writers mention any such figures for the same reason they do not mention Jesus: because these writers had no interest in any such Jewish preachers and prophets. As a result, despite all his bold claims and loud rhetoric, Fitzgerald's argument collapses in a heap.
@ me
