What’s Up Heathens! Today we are continuing our talk with Street Preacher Joe and talking about a few things: Moses, Tacitus, and Shazaam.
Moses wasn’t a real person. 
Moses wasn’t a real person. Regardless of the fact that there is no archeological evidence for Jews being slaves in Egypt, the story of Moses has the fingerprints of a parable. This, of course, doesn’t convince Street Preacher Joe. He gives me the chariots in the Red Sea narrative as an example of how Moses actually existed. He fails to provide any explanation for there being no archeological evidence for Jews in Egypt, the parable aspects of the Moses narrative, or the lack of evidence from contemporary historians.
Tacitus May Be Forged
Next topic is Tacitus which he says proves Jesus existed. Tacitus does not do this at all. Even if you accept that it’s an authentic part of Tacitus, the actual text says “Chrstus” which is assumed to be “Christus.” This doesn’t make sense as Christ is a title and not a name. “Chrestus” is more probable due it being an actual name. There are several reasons to doubt the authenticity of Tacitus ranging from lack of mention from Church fathers to the fact that Christians started talking about Nero persecuting Christians for the burning of Rome in 400 CE and that is the first mention of it outside Tacitus.
Shazaam Disputes Perfect Memory
Finally, we get to Shazaam. Shazaam is a fictional movie about Sin Bad playing a genie that helps a young boy. I propose this movie to Street Preacher Joe and he seems to remember it fine. This is the Mandella effect and it is an argument against the idea that the first-century Christians had a perfect memory. Human memory is a very flawed thing and that is why contemporary accounts are so important. The closer you can get to the actual even taken place, the truer to reality it will be. That is a general rule in historical studies. He thinks it’s more probable that the first century Christians had some kind of perfect memory and remembered Jesus 40 or 50 years down the road.
