As I was getting in bed a couple nights ago, a friend texted me to ask about the documentary Marketing the Messiah, so I decided to stay up and watch it. The documentary purports to tell "the 'true' story of early Christianity," and from a filmmaking perspective, it's pretty well done. They use humor well, the production value is high-quality, and they assembled a seemingly impressive arrangement of scholars. From an academic perspective, it's filled with half-truths and fringe theories that would be hard-pressed to get published in even the most liberal academic sources.
I took several notes on the film while watching it so I could have specific things to talk to my friend about when we meet to discuss the claims in the film. As I told him over text, the claims made in the film should cause Christians to have serious doubts about their faith...but only if the claims of the film are true. Fortunately for Christians, we have good evidence that the claims they make are not true and this article is my attempt to organize my thoughts about the film as preparation to speak with my friend.
Scholarship and Credibility
In the internet age, it is difficult to know who to trust and why. If you've never had the opportunity to study a topic for several years, it's hard to get a sense of how deep a topic can be and how wide the scholarly opinions can be. I like to think of scholarship like a mountain where the height at any given point represents a scholars knowledge in that specific area. Under this analogy, a scholar's specialty is the peak where they have the most knowledge. As disciplines or sub-disciplines move away from the peak, they are less knowledgeable and more reliant on the other scholars who do specialize in those areas.
For instance, a New Testament (NT) scholar likely has better than average knowledge of theology, Old Testament studies (including Hebrew), Christian history, first-century history, other religions, archaeology, and maybe a few other disciplines. They likely have more in-depth knowledge in multiple sub-disciplines of NT studies like Greek, textual criticism, document dating methods, Church fathers, all the books of the NT, New Testament theology, and maybe a few more (and there are more). Someone specializing in Pauline studies would have even more knowledge in the letters of Paul, Pauline theology, first-century Judaism, first-century Greek philosophy, and more. Then, each one of those sub-disciplines can be specialized in.
Someone who specializes in a different sub-discipline just won't have the same level of knowledge in these areas, meaning they won't be as knowledgeable about nuances and the broad range of scholarly views. The further away from a scholar's specialization in a topic, the less likely they are to have as deep of knowledge in other specialties. I am working on an article to explain this in concrete and detailed way and will link it here when I finish.
All that to say, the content of this documentary was mostly in the purview of New Testament studies and first to fourth-century history, but most of the scholars in the documentary had specialties in other areas, and with the exception of Michael Bird (theologian), they were all liberal scholars, and at least two (Price and Carrier) are on the extreme fringes and not taken seriously even by many liberal scholars (Google Bart Ehrman's comments about Jesus mythicism).
In terms of persuasive tactics, this is an extremely effective method to convince people of what is true as long as people are not willing to investigate their claims and the works of more mainstream scholars. It takes time and hard work to figure who is trustworthy, where people are getting their information, and what to believe so most documentaries (not just this one) can seem extremely persuasive by being really biased while trying to appear non-biased.
Examples
- They misrepresented the origin of Jesus' label as the Son of God
- They overemphasized Paul's mission to the gentiles while downplaying his and other apostles' mission to Jews.
- They presented a liberal scholar view as the unequivocal consensus on several topics.
- They ignored the historical accuracy of Luke and Acts.
- They completely ignored other views on the dates and authorship of the gospels and epistles.
- They ignored non-biblical historical sources that didn't support their view.
- They inaccurately portrayed how Christianity became the dominant religion in Rome.
- They ended with the extremely fringe view that Jesus never actually existed which is a view help by arguably no qualified scholar (there are debates about who's qualified, but even with a generous view, it's still a very very rare view).
- They also made several other more minor claims that I just didn't care to write down in my notes.
So Who's Right?
Resources
Beginner or Introductory
Intermediate to Advanced
Experts Featured in Documentary:
Michael Bird, Theology, Ridley College
- Ph.D. appears to be in theology or New Testament, but I couldn't find specifics.
Richard Carrier, No academic affiliation
- Ph.D. in Ancient History
Geoffrey Dunn, Department of Ancient
Languages and Cultures, University of Pretoria
- Ph.D. Specific field unknown and doesn’t seem to publish on dating/reliability methods
Marc Goodacre, Department of Religious
Studies, Duke University
- D. Phil in Theology (New Testament)
David Fitzgerald, No academic affiliation
- No graduate degree. Has a B.S. in History and Liguistics
Chris Forbes, Department of
Ancient History, Macquarie University
- Ph.D. Field unknown, but publishes in NT history
Brent Landau, Senior Lecturer in
Religious Studies, University of Texas
- Th.D. - New Testament & Early Christianity
Raphael Lataster, Religious Studies, University of Sydney
- Ph.D. Religious Studies
Amy-Jill Levine, Professor of NT
and Jewish Studies, Vanderbilt
- Ph.D. field unknown but published in NT
Shushma Malik, Lecturer in
Classics, University of Roehampton
- Ph.D. appears to be in Classics
Robert Price, No academic affiliation
- Ph.D. in Theology and Ph.D. in NT
David Runia, University of
Melbourne and Australian Catholic University
- LittD (Doctor of Letters) in Classics and Philosophy