Gary Habermas Is Bad At History

Today we are looking at Gary Habermas and his bad evidence for a historical Jesus. In this video, they claim to be giving a good argument to shut down a mythicist. Habermas doesn’t actually give any good evidence against minimal mythicism. Habermas just claims there are 15 independent sources that say that Jesus was crucified and that Paul is an eyewitness to the eyewitnesses. Both of these claims are absurd and I handle both of them.

Are there 15 Independent sources?

Simply put, no there aren’t 15 independent sources for the crucifixion of Jesus. What we do have in evidence is Paul and that is it. Paul is the first to talk about Jesus being crucified or even Jesus at all. Mark derives off of Paul’s work and the other gospels use each other as well as Mark’s work. All extra-biblical evidence is just regurgitating the common Christian beliefs of the second century. That’s it. So we have 1 independent source that attests to a Jesus being crucified but even then Paul is ambiguous as to who crucified Jesus and where this crucifixion actually took place. 

There is a solid case to be made that Paul referenced Jesus being crucified by Demons in the lower parts of heaven just above the earth. Satan, being the “ruler of this age,” wouldn’t have crucified him if he knew it would ultimately cause his own destruction. that particular hypothesis fits well with the existing information we get from Paul. The Ascension of Isaiah shows that Jews or Jewish Christians were teaching of a messiah named Jesus doing exactly that. Being crucified by demons in the lower parts of heaven controlled by Satan and his demons.

Was Paul an Eyewitness to Eyewitnesses?

No, Paul does not designate anyone as an eyewitness or a disciple. He identifies people that are apostles but that is just people that recieved revelation of Jesus. Because Paul doesn’t designate anyone as an apostle you can’t say that he is an “eyewitness to eyewitnesses.” What is happening is that you’re taking information only developed later on and claiming that Paul knew that information without any actual evidence that he knew that information.

For Paul, the only way you could know anything about Jesus or his message is to recieve it by revelation. In fact, the entire purpose of Galations 1 is to emphasize that he didn’t get his information from any person on earth and only through revelation of Jesus. To claim that Paul needed eyewitnesses to confirm his account would be detrimental to his entire case in Galatians 1.