A Note from the Editor: I rarely publish guest articles on my blog. But this one, by my friend David Fitzgerald (author and journalist), is exceptional and is being stalled by other venues to avoid publishing it. Since I pretty much agree with all of it, and this needs to exist to forestall people falling for this infamous antisemitic crank’s bogus version of Jesus mythicism, I have edited it for publication here. For my most related article see The Problem with Varieties of Jesus Mythicism and articles linked therein. Note that Skrbina technically isn’t really a mythicist (he allows there might be an irrelevant guy) but his case is structurally similar to mythicism.

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Not to judge a book by its cover, but the first red flag raised by Dr. David Skrbina’s book The Jesus Hoax (Creative Fire Press, 2019) is right there in the subtitle: How St. Paul’s Cabal Fooled the World for Two Thousand Years, with the delightful word “cabal” front and center, invoking the image of Paul and his gang of scheming Jews rubbing their hands in evil delight. Perhaps a reader could be forgiven for wondering what they are in for here. An unhinged conspiracy theory? A full-blown antisemitic screed?

Surprise!

It’s both.

Some Context

Given his strident criticism of his rivals’ scholarly credentials and bona fides, University of Michigan-Dearborn philosophy professor Skrbina is not an obvious choice to set the historical record straight. For example, in Skrbina’s appendix B (pp. 125-127), entirely devoted to criticizing Reza Aslan’s 2013 best-seller Zealot, he is harsh, declaring that Aslan’s scholarship is in question, and that Zealot is “filled with unsubstantiated assertions, speculations and flat claims of fact that are highly questionable.” Which itself is fair. Skrbina is quite right when he points out that, really, “…we can say almost nothing about the real Jesus—and yet Aslan offers page after page of what Jesus ‘said’ or ‘did’” (p. 127). Aslan’s popmarket book, after all, did get widely panned by legitimate scholars. But the irony is lost on Skrbina that everything he chides Aslan for applies even more severely to himself. In the immortal words of Christopher Hitchens to Sean Hannity: “You give me the awful impression, I hate to say it, of someone who hasn’t read any of the arguments against your position, ever.”

Prior to Hoax, Skrbina’s publishing choices have been, shall we say, interesting. These include arguing for the importance of “Panpsychism” (the theory that mind exists, in some form, in all living and nonliving things); and editing a fawning biography of the Heretic Pharaoh, Akhenaten: in Skrbina’s words, “the world’s first individual” and “the most perfect man in history.” He has also written the introduction for Technological Slavery, a collection of writings by Theodore J. Kaczynski, better known to the world (and the FBI) as The Unabomber. Indeed Skrbina has drawn ire for his long-time admiration of the Unabomber’s philosophy and his tone-deaf excusing of Kaczynski’s murders with questionable equivalencies like this:

Let’s keep in mind: Kaczynski killed three people. This was tragic and regrettable, but still, it was just three people. American police kill that many citizens every other day, on average. The same with Obama’s drone operators. Technology kills many times that number, every day—even every hour. Let’s keep things in perspective.

— David Skrbina interview, disinfo.com, Aug 21 2015

But more pertinent here is that Skrbina’s celebration of the Unabomber’s philosophy was released by Feral House, a real publisher albeit known for pushing weird ideas, and its own dark history of antisemitism. Yet evidently even they balked at Jesus Hoax. Nor was Hoax published under peer review or by any academic press, but by what appears to be a vanity press from Detroit, “Creative Fire Press.” Which the internet provides little evidence of as an actual thing; nor likewise the Michigan “Walden Group” educational charity it is supposed to be a “division” of. Walden is not listed in GuideStar’s Candid database or Michigan Charitable Trusts, and wasn’t on the list of Michigan Charities as of 2020. That doesn’t mean it isn’t real, but it does imply it’s not taking itself very seriously. Neither CFP nor Walden Group has any discernible website or mailing address.

So we shouldn’t be surprised that CFP publishes almost all of Skrbina’s many books, while its titles by other authors suspiciously are often edited by Skrbina. For example, World as Sanctuary: The Cosmic Philosophy of Henryk Skolimowski (Creative Fire Press, 2010) is edited by David Skrbina and Juanita Skolimowski—wife of the titular Skolimowski, a late mentor or colleague of Skrbina who was also a renowned anti-technologist. Yet that is credited in its meta-data as published by CreateSpace. So, it’s self-published. Its formatting and cover style is also similar to later CFP books. So it appears that Skrbina only later figured out how to alter the meta-data of his self-published books to show his vanity press’s name instead. But it looks like this is just him publishing his own stuff over and over. That’s fine, so far as it goes. But it must be noted.

And yet, to hear Skrbina tell it, he is the only one qualified to piece together the whole, real story of Jesus, as he puts it, “a shocking story, frankly, and one that has only been hinted at before” (p. 13), suppressed until now by the twin scourges of political correctness and contemporary liberal dogma. He is quick to distance himself even from other Jesus skeptics. “The problem with the experts,” as he sees it, is not just their bias or lack of qualifications, which is already ironic—since more than one of those whom he dismisses as only “marginally qualified” have better and more relevant credentials than he does (Skrbina’s own degrees are in philosophy and mathematics, not history). No. Skrbina appears to think that above all, the other critics are not angry enough.

There’s a strange emphasis put on the one “glaring weakness” he claims they all share (with the sole exception of Nietzsche): they are loathe to criticize anyone. Offering a nonsensical list of reasons to explain this dubious “fact,” Skrbina blames the earliest Jesus critics for their “insecurity about their ideas and a general lack of clarity” about the historical facts. For the more recent writers, it’s probably “in-bred political correctness,” “weakness of moral backbone,” or “sheer self-interest” (p. 26). How exactly are these self-serving PC milquetoasts falling down on the job? In their publications, he fumes, “no one comes in for condemnation, no one is guilty, no one to blame for anything” (p. 26).

But Skrbina is on the case. Make no mistake—someone lied and the guilty parties need to be exposed (p. 27). But who are these guilty suspects? If you missed the book’s subtitle, about a third of the way in he finally gets around to pointing the finger and reveals his central argument. It’s the lying Jew Paul and all his lying Jew cohorts: “since the biblical Jesus story is false, it was evidently constructed by Paul and his fellow Jews in order to sway the gullible gentile masses to their side and away from Rome” (p. 43).

Just the Facts

So, so much to correct in just a single sentence. But I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s put a pin in that for a moment. Because before Skrbina dives headfirst into that rabbit hole, he has to lay down “Just the Facts” in chapter two. His expectations for his readership aren’t entirely clear, but apparently, he feels the need to inform them of some very basic facts indeed. For instance, he seems to think his readers will be surprised to learn the Bible is an entirely Jewish document (which isn’t so certain), that Paul was not one of the twelve apostles, or that Jesus was a Jew.

I feel the need to mention that my own book Nailed is included in Skrbina’s roundup of those questionable books no doubt written out of sheer spineless self-interest—since he absurdly thinks we mythicist writers are all rolling in filthy lucre, what with our hefty royalty checks and jet-setting lifestyle between cushy speaking gigs. That’s all fantasy. Which reflects from him a naiveté that would be adorable if it didn’t also inform his more distasteful prejudices, as we’ll see. It’s important to note that in Nailed I did not attempt some new theory. I merely reported on what real experts were already publishing. By contrast, Skrbina is trying to rewrite history, and condemning everyone who disagrees with him. And yet even I have at least a B.A. in history. Skrbina lacks even that.

Which is why it matters that Skrbina implies his own advanced degrees showcase his ability to do “careful, detailed research.” The fact that none of his degrees are in history is very apparent by the howlers he makes even on very rudimentary matters. For instance, he presumes that Jesus was crucified in the year 30 [was he?—editor], but qualifies this by adding “if we accept the traditional (birth) date of the year zero.” Needless to say, the year zero is not the traditional date of Jesus’ birth—or anything else, primarily because there is no such thing as the “year zero.” Nor does Skrbina inspire confidence when, in a footnote, he appears to confuse John the Evangelist with John of Patmos, the author of Revelation (p. 41 n20). And as for his historical methodology toward Jesus (carried on with Paul as well), he follows a time-honored, if problematic, approach: “Temporarily setting aside the miracles, let’s assume the rest is factual” (p. 35), an astonishingly naive methodology. [Which would accept as factual almost All the Fantastical Things in the Gospel according to Mark and ignore How We Know Acts Is a Fake History, for example—editor.]

Since a major cornerstone of Skrbina’s theory is that the Gospels are entirely the work of an evil Jewish cabal, he is compelled to reject that any of them were written by Gentiles, even though experts aren’t sure about that. There are aspects of Mark’s Gospel and of Luke’s Gospel that may indicate they were Gentiles. Many of the forged letters in the New Testament have strong claims to Gentile authorship (merely feigning being Jewish). And John’s Gospel, even if written by someone who had been a Jew, contains notoriously antisemitic sentiments (which we also find in the likely interpolation of 1 Thessalonians 2:14–16), while the author of Hebrews was promoting the abandonment of the fundamentals of Judaism, and may have been an informed Gentile.

There is also substantial disagreement on what it even meant to be Jewish that Skrbina seems to be overlooking here. Mark and Luke and Hebrews are writing for the side who believed Christians need not even be Jews nor Jews even need continue Jewish practices, while Matthew and Revelation and James are writing for the side who believed Christians had to be fully observant Jews. Paul is in between, originating this split with a compromise position, over against the original Apostles Peter, James, and John who were insisting Christians be observant Jews—against Paul who was not. They eventually agreed to disagree. Thus by the time half the New Testament was written, the need of all of its authors to be Jewish no longer existed. And Luke is one of its last authors (the widest consensus places Luke-Acts in the early second century; and John, after Luke-Acts).

By contrast, Skrbina’s “critical analysis” of Luke (p. 40) to prove its Jewishness displays five further mistakes, or perhaps just wishful thinking, as he opens with an impressive triple non sequitur:

• “Paul himself claims the word of God was given to the Jews (citing Romans 3:2), and therefore the Gospel, as the word of God, must have been written by a Jew.” (1) Paul, of course, is referring to the Hebrew scriptures here, not a book written decades after his death; (2) and besides, even if Paul believed that “the word of God” was given to the Jews, he’s certainly not claiming here that only Jews could write about it—(3) nor would that make it true, whether he believed it or not.
• “Second, the claim that ‘Luke’ is a Gentile name is irrelevant; other Jews, notably Paul, changed their names upon conversion to the cause.” Actually, this is doubly irrelevant, since the name of Paul’s companion Luke was added to that Gospel generations later, and that name chosen only through exegetical guesswork. And though Skrbina’s right that Jews often had Gentile names [though not for the reason Skrbina gives—which was a bogus legend about Paul’s name, which he’d have actually acquired either at birth or upon becoming a Roman citizen, not upon becoming a Christian—editor], the experts who believe Luke a Gentile do not conclude that from the name.
• “Third, Luke is never cited as a Gentile, and his alleged companion, Paul, is never condemned for fraternizing with such a Gentile.” Except Paul explicitly tells us (in Galatians 2:7-9) that he was accepted by the leaders of the Jerusalem Church as the Apostle to the Gentiles in the first place, and just a few verses later, when he does angrily tangle with Peter/Cephas, it is precisely over the issue of fraternizing with Gentiles (2:11-14). In fact Paul says he fraternized with Gentiles routinely in his authentic letters; while there is no reason to believe the author of Luke ever met Paul or was even alive at the time anyway. Accordingly, ancient commentaries actually disagreed on Luke’s Gentile or Jewish background. But for what it’s worth, Luke the legendary companion of Paul is certainly explicitly identified as a Gentile in Colossians (4:10-11 & 14). And while we have no way to definitively determine whether “Luke,” the originally anonymous author of Luke-Acts, was a Hellenized Jew or a Gentile God-Fearer, there’s no question that the author enjoyed an excellent and expensive Greek education, was quite familiar with Roman sites such as the Forum Appii and its three taverns (Acts 28:15), seems Gentile in his knowledge and interests, and seems to get wrong some Jewish customs and life in Palestine (though admittedly, that’s disputed).
• “Luke furthermore had detailed knowledge of Jewish religious customs, as we see in (1:8-20); Gentiles would not know this.” Actually, “Luke” probably didn’t “have” the detailed knowledge of Jewish religious customs on display in Luke 1:8-20 either, since he didn’t write the John the Baptist story found in the first two chapters of his Gospel, but borrowed it from other sources (see volume three of Jesus: Mything in Action, p. 125, for discussion of how we can know that). And any Gentile could know all sorts of things about Judaism through sources and informants, even neighbors and congregants. Besides, unlike Matthew, who was a Hellenized Jew writing for a Jewish-Christian community, again, Luke sometimes gets things wrong.
• “Finally, he claims intimate knowledge of the Virgin Mary, including what is “in her heart” (2:19)—something that a non-Jew would be unlikely to know.” Something that a non-Jew would be unlikely to know? Don’t you mean something that anyone but the Virgin Mary would be unlikely to know? Or more to the point, something that only the author of this fictional character could possibly know? By Skrbina’s logic, John had “intimate knowledge” of Judas Iscariot, since he knows the exact moment Satan entered his heart at the Last Supper (13:27). Likewise with Matthew’s “intimate knowledge” of the top-secret meetings of Jesus’ enemies (12:14; 26:4; 28:11-15)—or indeed, all the Evangelists with their insider reports of events as varied as private conversations, appearances of angels in dreams, transcripts from Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness with Satan, or his prayers alone in Gethsemane, or his interrogation by Pilate. Even Skrbina’s logic here is bent. Obviously Luke could know what Mary related by being told it. It’s not as if some law of physics prevents Gentiles from hearing Jewish stories.

These errors are egregious, failing at facts and logic at a truly amateur level, thus demonstrating we can’t trust Skrbina to be right about anything, even his own inferences. In other words, he’s bad at this.

Skrbina also promotes debated matters as settled in his favor, without explaining why. For instance, for the majority of scholars, “John’s” identity as a Jew or Gentile (or even as the work of a single individual or a whole Johannine “school”) is still one of many unresolved questions; but needless to say, Skrbina can’t have that, so he spends a fair amount of ink insisting that the frequent and harsh polemics in John don’t necessarily mean its anti-Jewish author wasn’t Jewish himself. True enough, I suppose; though that at best get us to not knowing, not to knowing his conclusion is true.

Besides, Skrbina doesn’t do his case any favors by acting as though the “more natural” reading can only be an indication of Jewish in-fighting. Yes, that was a thing. And sure, maybe John’s Gospel is the work of Jews opposing other Jews; but if so, its authors are tarring with a very wide brush. Still, when Skrbina assures us “there is a compelling argument to be made” to embrace such a counter-intuitive position (p. 41), it might have been nice to include that argument rather than just a few appeals to authority that alone don’t provide any actual arguments either, compelling or not. But at least Skrbina is citing the opinion of actual historians this time, rather than another tortured chain of his own logic.

Skrbina ends this chapter with his droll bombshell, noted earlier, that the Gospel stories of Jesus are false and it’s (somehow) all Paul & Co.’s fault. Having just said “…since the biblical Jesus story is false…” he proceeds to explain “Why the Jesus Story is False” in Chapter Three. Aside from a few nitpicks I won’t bother with here, this is the least problematic section of his entire book—although it’s fairly pedestrian for anyone with even a passing familiarity with the problems of the “Jesus of Faith.” That said, whatever chapter three’s shortcomings, they positively pale compared to what awaits in the next chapter…

J’accuse the Jews

In case anyone didn’t quite pick up on his antisemitic antipathy earlier, when Skrbina was content to merely drop dark Nietzsche quotes (“The first thing to be remembered…is that we are among Jews”) or referring to Paul and cohorts as a “cabal” for the umpteenth time (and quite self-consciously: as Skrbina puts it, “I’ve been using ‘cabal’ throughout the present text” because it “is, I think, precisely the right word…a perfect description of Paul and his band,” p. 102 n13), by chapter four (“One Against All”) Skrbina decides he’s been too polite so far and needs to provide us with “a proper perspective” of what he really thinks of the Jews. How? By digging up every ancient tirade against the Jews he can get his hands on and repeating them uncritically, no matter how petty, vile, or just ridiculously unbelievable.

For example: Posidonius, who claims the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes rescued a Greek captive from the temple in Jerusalem, where the Jews had been fattening him up to be sacrificed and eaten in their annual ritual. Incidentally, the Jews also worship the solid gold head of an ass installed there (p. 67). Or Cassius Dio, who wrote (in Historia Romana, book 68.32) that Jews “would eat the flesh of their victims, make belts for themselves of their entrails, anoint themselves with their blood, and wear their skins for clothing; many they sawed in two, from the head downwards; others they gave to wild beasts, and still others they forced to fight as gladiators” (p. 77).

These are false or misleading claims anyway. The material purportedly from Posidonius is probably mistaken. Bezalel Bar-Kochva, in The Image of the Jews in Greek Literature: The Hellenistic Period (University of California Press, 2010), convincingly argues (with abundant support from concurring scholars) that Posidonius reported the existence of wild accusations against the Jews only to refute them, and that in fact he praised Mosaic Judaism as an example of an ideal society, and only critiqued its later corruption by the Hasmoneans. Josephus tells us certain authors used Posidonius as a source for these claims, not as an authority making these claims. Which are not the same thing. Similarly, Dio never said any such thing about “the Jews.” He was speaking solely of a terrorist faction of them reduced to barbarisms in the Cyrenean War. Which is not to Skrbina’s point. One could cherry pick similar stories about Greek and Roman atrocities. So Skrbina’s use of these sources is conspicuously simplistic and amateurish (or outright dishonest). He’s pushing his antisemitic narrative, not proving it.

And if a whole chapter of Jew-baiting wasn’t already overkill, Skrbina feels the need to keep digging for still more antisemitic quotes in chapter five as well. Here’s where we notice that his bibliography includes “Debating the Holocaust,” by a certain “Thomas Dalton, PhD.” And guess what. Thomas Dalton is a fake name. In March of 2025, it was revealed that David Skrbina accidently outed himself as none other than the prolific antisemitic author and Holocaust denier, “Thomas Dalton.” Amazon recently removed “Dalton’s” other books (published by Castle Hill, a far-right niche press founded by Germar Rudolf, convicted Holocaust denier), Eternal Strangers: Critical Views of Jews and Judaism through the Ages and The Jewish Hand in the World Wars amid complaints of their glowing praise of Hitler and calls for Jews to be “identified, isolated, sanctioned and removed from positions of power.”

It couldn’t get more heinous or ridiculous if he had asked Hitler and Goebbels for their opinion of the Jews—but I speak too soon. Skrbina does quote both of them (p. 101), I can only suppose for some additional necessary Nazi perspective that would otherwise be missing. Skrbina concludes his brief overview with a remarkable statement (p. 79; emphasis mine):

To say the Jews were disliked is an understatement. The critiques come from all over the Mediterranean region, and from a wide variety of cultural perspectives. And they are uniformly negative. I note here that it’s not a case of ‘cherry-picking’ the worst comments and ignoring the good ones. The remarks are all negative; there are simply no positive opinions on the Jews or early Christians.

No quote-mining here, Skrbina assures us—why, it’s just a plain fact of history that no one has anything good to say about the Jews. All 100% negative reviews. But hold on. Of course, Paul’s converts were primarily Jew-admiring gentile “God-fearers” (and Judaism was evangelistically successful in seeking converts) so it’s ridiculous for starters to think no one had anything good to say about the Jews. But even some pagans said some nice things—and surely more than we have, as we only have what antisemitic Christians chose to preserve to us. When we get to read things outside that filter, we find plenty of exceptions to Skrbina’s hyperbole.

Really, it’s even worse for Skrbina here. Because he frequently cites both volumes of renowned Israeli historian Menachem Stern’s landmark study Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (in multiple volumes completed for the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities by 1984). So he should know that among the 161 classical Greek and Roman authors Stern found who mentioned the Jews, the overwhelming majority (133) wrote quite respectfully of Judaism, its history and literature, the Jewish emphasis on family and community, and the Jews’ monotheism with its rejection of graven images and highly developed moral code. And of the 28 critics who did have negative things to say, most were not repeating the gossipy nonsense Skrbina revels in, but complaining that Jews were different and made bothersome subjects, tending to be obstreperous, rebellious, and insubordinate (I’m indebted to Dr. Konrad Riggenmann for providing the book’s actual figures here).

So much for Skrbina’s ability to do “careful, detailed research.” Read his quote above again. This pins him in an unpleasant catch-22: either he’s lying outright about his flagrant cherry-picking, or he’s so grossly incompetent that he completely missed the lion’s share of historical data that invalidates his pet thesis—and this in one of his main sources, let alone all the rest of the corpus of ancient literature. Either possibility is more than sufficient to be done with Skrbina already. But there are still more opportunities to embarrass himself in this little book, and he makes the most of all of them.

Paul the Mastermind

Now that his readers find the Jews sufficiently horrible, Skrbina’s next mission is to cast Paul as the mastermind behind a (very large) cabal of Jews constructing the biblical Jesus story, all part of his (very long) con to bring down the Roman empire by swaying the gullible Gentile masses to their bogus new religion.

One severe problem with Skrbina’s thesis springs immediately to mind—Paul didn’t invent Christianity. Arguably, he was most responsible for its spread, or at least, certainly received the lion’s share of credit from successive generations of Christians who preserved his writings (and edited and re-edited them, and forged at least half of them). But even in the writings generally attributed to him, he speaks of those who were Christians before him, of his many co-workers and frenemies in the fields of the Lord—not to mention his hated rival missionaries preaching different gospels and different Christs (e.g., Galatians 1:6-8, 2 Corinthians 11:4-12). So the very idea that all these oft-feuding Christian factions (including the Gospel authors from later generation(s) of believers) were really all players in Paul’s diabolical game is untenable right from the start.

Another crucial point Skrbina continues to hammer throughout his book is the theory that Saul-turned-Paul was only a Christian missionary as his side hustle—his true calling was actually a fiery anti-Roman revolutionary. And what’s more, this is all made perfectly clear in the New Testament…if you just know where to look. Introducing Paul, Skrbina comes in like a lamb and out like a lion (p. 37):

“(Paul) also may have been a Zealot, advocating violent resistance to Rome. Speaking in Acts (22:3), Paul says “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia.” He continues: “I was a zealot for God…” or “I was zealous for God…”—the translations vary.

Elsewhere he says, “I was more of a zealot for the traditions handed down by my forefathers than most Jews my age…” (Gal. 1:14). There is a subtle difference between him saying “I was a zealot…” and “I was a Zealot…”; the text is not clear, and interpretations differ. But it seems clear that he was an ardent Jewish nationalist opposed to Roman rule, as was the case with most elite Jews at the time.”

Not so fast. First: certainly, there is a subtle difference between him saying “I was a zealot” and “I was a Zealot”—but there is also a not-so-subtle difference between Paul saying “I was a zealot/Zealot” and “I am still a zealot/Zealot.” Secondly: Skrbina admits “the text is not clear, and interpretations differ—only to follow with “but it seems clear that he was an ardent Jewish nationalist opposed to Roman rule…” How does that follow?

Despite it being the linchpin of his thesis, this single paragraph is all Skrbina offers to argue for Paul’s status as a Zealot. In a footnote, he intimates that the verdict is already in, punting to a 1999 paper by Mark Fairchild, “Paul’s Pre-Christian Zealot Associations,” in New Testament Studies 45. Which was refuted just a few years later by Vincent Smiles in “The Concept of ‘Zeal’ in Second-Temple Judaism and Paul’s Critique of It in Romans 10:2,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 64 ( 2002). One sign of an amateur is to cherry pick a paper that supports you and not check whether subsequent studies overthrew it.

But from this point on, Skrbina takes it as Q.E.D. that not only was Paul a Zealot in his youth, but remained one his entire life, starting with the very next sentence: “Saul was not only anti-Roman, he was anti-Christian…” (p. 37). In fact, Skrbina completely runs with this idea, making Paul a violent, murderous anti-Roman willing to lie or kill anyone who got in the way of his grand scheme to take down the empire:

“Paul now appears as a religious fanatic and ardent Jewish nationalist, willing to resort to violence and even kill non-Jews in order to drive out the Romans.” (p. 43)

“We have seen a few textual clues indicating that he was willing even to commit murder in order to further his ends. Surely he hated the Romans with a vengeance…” (p. 79)

“Paul, as we have already seen, was likely a member of the violent Zealot movement…” (p. 82)

However, Skrbina should re-read his sole source for all this. Even Fairchild’s paper is full of careful, measured claims and nuance that Skrbina promptly jettisons. Worse still, Fairchild makes none of the claims that Skrbina is citing him for. In particular, Fairchild points out that Paul’s use of the term “Zealot” is not necessarily the same as its later use by Josephus, who treats it more as an ideology than a political party anyway (this is further proved by Smiles).

What’s more, according to Fairchild, this ideology was not privy to any social class or sect; those who embraced it may have come from various backgrounds, and perhaps most importantly for our discussion here, even Fairchild notes that zealotry was not directed against any ethnic group or particular style of government such as the Romans. And again, Fairchild appears to understand perfectly well what Skrbina in his eagerness completely misses: that Paul’s zealotry—be it mere “zealotry” or full-blown capital-Z “Zealotry”—is in his former, repudiated, pre-Christian past: Paul “was” zealous for the law, not “is” zealous for the law (Galatians 1:14). And also, as Smiles documents, Paul never meant it with a capital Z anyway, as proved by Romans 10:2 and Galatians 4:17–18 (cf. 2 Corinthians 8:22).

That’s proved even by Acts 21:20 and Acts 22:3, which is fiction and so Skrbina should not be citing it as evidence here, but even within its fictional story it is not using the word the way Skrbina claims. Acts does not depict Paul ever killing anyone, either, but only attending a killing that we know he never did. While Paul himself never mentions ever killing Christians when he persecuted or even just merely harassed them. And even actual “persecution” we know did not entail executions. So we cannot argue Paul ever killed a Christian or even took any to court (and if he did, it could even have been on trumped up charges). For all we know, he just followed them everywhere and hounded and barked and mucked their game, like an ancient Christopher Hitchens. Whereas Paul never does even that with Romans. To the contrary, far from his being anti-Roman, we could sooner argue that Paul was a Roman collaborator.

So the sole scholarly source Skrbina depends on to shore up his image of Paul as a bloodthirsty Zealot partisan does not help his case. And subsequent scholarship actually refutes it. And none of his cited evidence even implies it. And the evidence we have contradicts it. But who needs evidence when you have the power of imagination? [It is worth adding that denigrating Paul as a scheming Jewish corrupter of Christianity was a distinct and unique tenet of Nazi Christianity. Skrbina’s experience with Nazi ideology in the guise of being “Dr. Dalton,” is thus like one plus one equals two here.—editor]

A Simple Plan…?

“Again, I’ll not claim certainty here; no one can do that,” says Skrbina, “but I think the ensemble of facts points to a clear scenario…” Equipped with his hodgepodge of highly-questionable “facts,” he cobbles together this highly-questionable reconstruction of Christianity’s origins:

“Paul and his band of fellow Jews constructed a Jesus hoax in order to weaken Roman rule and, ultimately, lead to its demise. It took a few centuries, but in the end, amazingly, it worked.” (p. 81)

As Skrbina imagines his “clear” scenario, young Zealot Paul must have come up with a new, non-military plan to defeat the Roman Empire:

“What if he could work on the masses—the poor, misguided, superstitious masses—to steer them away from Rome and toward the Jewish side? The local power of Rome rested on them, as a foundation, but they were like a shifting sandbar; if they could be ‘eroded,’ then perhaps the mighty Roman superstructure would begin to wobble and crack—at least, in Palestine.

If the masses could be subtly moved towards the Jews, or even simply morally degraded somehow—or best of all, both at once—then they would be of little use to Rome. The Romans might then eventually just give up and go away.” (p. 83)

Sure, all that does sound like a perfect plan; bring the mighty Roman Empire to its knees (or at least hope they give up on Palestine and just go away) by creating a fringe sect of religious converts, subtly pro-Jewish and/or somehow morally degraded…

But how to sway the rubes? Improbably enough, Skrbina imagines Paul’s Road to Damascus conversion (a story that only comes to us from Luke, not Paul, incidentally) as an epiphany about that beloved young rabbi from Nazareth from a few years back:

Jesus! They loved and adored him. But he couldn’t keep his mouth shut! He would constantly talk about the need for the Jewish people to “rise up” against the Romans. Eventually—what was it, three years ago?—he got fingered by the Romans and was crucified along with two of his friends.

As I recall, he also had a penchant for speaking in esoteric terms, about a new kingdom of God that was coming soon, and about the evil, sinful nature of those devils, the pagan Romans. “Fight the devils,” he would say, and then your salvation is at hand… (pp. 83–84)

He goes on to portray Paul dreaming up the entire Christian plan of salvation as a “third way” between Judaism and paganism, a carrot-and-stick scheme to sell to the Gentiles. “Or so we can imagine” (p. 85). It’s good Skrbina admits this is from his imagination—it would have to be, since even he admits how little we read in Paul’s letters:

“It’s not a terribly farfetched or complicated story … No complicated theology, no life history of Jesus, not even any miracle stories—just a god in human form who preaches love for all, and who was resurrected after death.”

No complicated theology? Has Skrbina even read Paul? Complicated theology is Paul’s bread and butter; as even other New Testament writers complain (2 Peter 3:15-16); for more examples from just one of Paul’s letters, see former minister Dr. David Madison’s cogent analysis of his epistle to the Romans, or N.T. Wright’s struggling analysis of his epistle to the Galatians, or Robert Moses’ study of the excruciatingly elaborate theology of Paul in Practices of Power: Revisiting the Principalities and Powers in the Pauline Letters (Fortress 2014). Quite frankly, “theology of Paul” in Google Scholar returns over two million studies, which calls into question any idea of it being “simple.”

And of course, since this is all just a cover for Paul’s revolutionary activity, Skrbina insists the whole Pauline kerygma is dripping with a message of anti-Roman resistance—well, actually, since he couldn’t be obvious about his call to rebellion, it would have to be a subtle message. Very, very subtle indeed. In fact, so extraordinarily subtle that it would have “No explicit mention of Rome at all; just ‘evil’, ‘Satan’, ‘the worldly powers’. That would suffice.” (p. 85)

Flaws in an Otherwise Perfect Plan

Once again, I have to put on the brakes before we follow Skrbina any further—because he’s already long since careened off the rails. Again, of course, there’s the small problem that Paul didn’t invent Christianity—nor did Christianity invent the idea of a personal savior (see Elements 11–14, on pp. 96-124, of Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus). Then there’s his dual premise that this hoax, devised by Paul and/or his “cabal,” was to “subtly move the Gentiles towards the Jews, or even simply morally degrade them somehow” (whatever that means), all to bring down the Roman Empire—and that “in the end, amazingly, it worked.” (p. 81).

Skrbina grants it did take centuries for Paul’s diabolical plan to come to fruition; somehow his Paul is simultaneously both a blood-thirsty terrorist out for vengeance, and an infinitely patient political chessmaster with the unfailing foresight of Frank Herbert’s Bene Gesserit order, content to weave their deceptive machinations over centuries. And besides … did the plan work? Sure—and all it took was a few disastrous Jewish wars with Rome, followed by decades of unprecedented Roman stability, peace, prosperity and expansion (during which any infrequent provincial uprisings were squashed mercilessly and swiftly) for another century and a half, until the third century, when imperial misrule and assassinations finally accumulated into half a century of near-perpetual civil war and political instability, peasant rebellions, a series of short-lived usurpers (most quickly assassinated by their own troops), runaway inflation, the total collapse of Rome’s vast trade network, neglected frontiers, repeated barbarian invasions from the North, attacks from Persia in the East, and decades of devastating plague. And yet the Empire still endured all that and the subsequent series of political fracturing until the late fifth century when the empire fell—or at least, the Western half did; the eastern half continued on for another thousand years after that, remaining the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in Europe for the majority of its existence.

Come to think of it, Christianity had nothing to do with Rome falling at all.

And what of Paul’s Jesus? Skrbina is correct when he says there’s no life history of Jesus to be found in Paul’s letters—so where’s he conjuring this picture of Jesus constantly talking about the need for the Jewish people to “rise up” against the Romans? Or telling them to “fight the devils,” those evil, sinful pagan Romans, to gain their salvation? Certainly not in the Gospels, or for that matter, any extracanonical Christian writings, either. In fact, scholars including Roland Boer and University of Helsinki’s Niko Huttunen have pointed out that one can find both pro- and anti-imperial sentiments in Paul’s letters, and trying to label him, any other New Testament author, or indeed even early Christianity in general, as either anti- or pro-imperial is an oversimplification: see Niko Huttunen, “Introduction: Recognition between Anti- and Pro-imperial Readings,” Early Christians Adapting to the Roman Empire (Brill, 2020).

But why take what Paul says at face value, anyway? Where New Testament historians and theologians see an often-bewildering jungle of evolving doctrines and Christologies in the Pauline letters, full of nuance and layers (and sometimes contradictions), Skrbina cuts right through that Gordian Knot and declares that everything we see in the Epistles (and the Gospels, most also written by members of Paul’s long-lived clique, let’s not forget) is all really just code-talk for rebellion:

“Throughout his letters we find numerous references to enslavement, revolution, insurrection, war, the importance of the disempowered masses, and so on.” (p. 90)

There are indeed plentiful references to enslavement in Paul’s letters; enslavement to sin, to the lusts of the flesh, to the Mosaic law overturned by Christ, and so forth. But revolution, insurrection, and “the importance of the disempowered masses”? Not so much. Ironically enough, here Skrbina is reminiscent of Perchik, the young revolutionary in Fiddler on the Roof, who finds Marxist lessons everywhere in the Hebrew scriptures.

But no matter how much epistolary ink gets spilled in the New Testament explicitly emphasizing the spiritual, not physical, nature of the war believers are engaged in, Skrbina isn’t fooled. For example, here, when the author of Ephesians (who, notably, was not Paul, but pretending to be) specifically says:

“For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12)

Nothing here implies political struggle against any earthly authorities, let alone Roman. Even the word translated as “world rulers” is actually κοσµοκράτορας, or kosmokratoras, literally “cosmic rulers.” But for Skrbina, everything here is really its exact opposite, and he applauds “Paul’s” clever double-talk here: “Nice cover language. No doubt the real message got through.” (p. 93).

It’s difficult to conceive how Skrbina might falsify his theory with such a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose approach. Where Paul talks about false gods being no more than “weak and beggarly elemental spirits” (Gal. 4:9), Skrbina sees only a strangely-specific allusion to the Roman pantheon. “’Be not enslaved to the Roman gods’, he seems to say,” says Skrbina, putting words in Paul’s mouth yet again—exactly what he criticizes Reza Aslan for.

Bizarrely, Skrbina also connects all this supposed rebel-rousing Pauline samizdat to the Jewish War with Rome, claiming “the Gentile masses had to be psychologically prepared for a coming esoteric ‘battle with Satan’.” Does Skrbina really think any Gentile Christians participated in the war? If so, he’s completely mistaken again. For that matter, hardly any Diaspora Jews rallied to Palestine to fight either, and plenty of others were opposed to the war; many Jewish cities surrendered almost immediately. [Skrbina’s thesis especially makes no sense here considering that Paul’s mission was entirely outside Judea and avoided recruiting Jews, and thus cannot have related to the war at all.—editor]

Confusion like this plagues Skrbina’s entire book. Despite his frequent and confident declarations that he is “reconstructing the likely sequence of events, based on a total picture and complete analysis of the situation” (p. 94), his historical grasp often seems hopelessly muddled. Were the Jewish masses pro-Roman? Skrbina claims “Many Jews were resolved to live and let live with the Romans” while “Paul hated the Romans and detested the common Palestinians who were happily acquiescing to foreign rule” (p. 82). But again, Skrbina’s own source, Fairchild, reports that two of the three rebel groups described by Josephus, the Zealots and “bandits,” came from peasants; and while the Anti-Roman Sicari assassins were probably not a peasant movement, they were hardly a majority of Jewish elites (pp. 520-521).

And Skrbina’s earlier notion that “most elite Jews” were “ardent Jewish nationalists opposed to Roman rule” (p. 37) is not a given by any stretch, either. We know the names of the various Jewish factions, but we have no quantitative data as to their relative sizes. Besides, has Skrbina forgotten he himself said Jewish King Herod Antipater (“Antipas”) “urged his fellow elites to tamp down any insurrectionist activity” (p. 82)? Of course, the Jewish temple elites, the Sadducee party, were notorious Roman toadies, but they barely warrant a mention, except when Skrbina lumps them in with their political enemies, the Pharisees. In real life, the Pharisees hated the temple leadership; though to be fair, the Gospels conflate them as well, one of the many historical problems with taking them at face value.

Conclusion

It’s perversely fascinating to compare the myopic anti-Roman lens that Skrbina brings to bear with its polar opposite, the equally one-note pro-Roman focus of say, a Joseph Atwill (who sees everything in the Gospels as clever Roman satire—and as meant to pacify Jews in service to Rome, exactly the opposite of Skrbina’s thesis). Each has a prodigious capacity to bore through mountains of theological context and come away with only what supports their own pet theory. Skrbina so obviously fancies himself as a Nietzschean hero, single-handedly taking on what he sees as a millennia-old global Jewish-made “scam” of Christianity, a Philistine David taking aim at an Israelite Goliath. But our would-be übermensch is no Zarathustra. He’s just another unstudied crank making things up in ignorance or disregard of all the actual facts and scholarship that bears on what he wants to argue but actually refutes nearly every bit of it.

Skrbina’s methodology is assertion-over-evidence, distortion-and-misrepresentation, and conveniently naive oversimplification. All in pursuit of what sounds like a Nazi-inspired mythology of Jewish cabalism. And given his actual record of literally promoting a Nazi-inspired mythology of Jewish cabalism, it’s hard not to draw that conclusion. As scholarship, Jesus Hoax lacks any meritorious quality. And as a scholar, Skrbina lacks any qualifications or credibilty. So this really should just be binned.