Did John of Gamala die for your sins?

You may have heard the silly story about the Italian lawsuit in which a court is being asked to rule as to whether or not Jesus ever lived.

I use the word "silly" advisedly. Many assertions concerning the Gospel narratives are made by skeptics, and apologists find a great deal of useful work in refuting them. The argument that Jesus of Nazareth never existed, however, is a claim no informed, intelligent critic of Christianity makes. The reason is pretty straightforward: on the basis of totally disinterested ancient sources, we have far more evidence for the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth than we do for that of, say, Socrates.

But it turns out that the lawsuit is even sillier than it sounds. It seems that the plaintiff has his own, alternative theory of the evidence.

Let's just say that say that he would have been better off arguing that Socrates was actually a restaurant owner on Halsted Avenue in Chicago's Greektown. John of Gamala is a fictional character, invented by novelist G. A. Henty!

I remarked not long ago that the Italian legal system would end up with less credibility than the Florida Supreme Court if it ever ruled that Jesus is imaginary. But that doesn't begin to tell the tale. If that zany alternative theory about Jesus is upheld, the Italian courts will end up being a laughingstock not only among the informed and the educated, but in the popular culture as well.

Ain't gonna happen. Not even in Italy. But as the story indicates, the man bringing the charges doesn't expect it to. It's merely a technique to raise the issue before the European Court of Human Rights under the guise of an incoherent charge of "religious racism," whatever that might be.

Ain't gonna happen there, either.

The really sad thing, though, is that the lawyer for the priest who is being charged with a somewhat nebulous offense amounting to defrauding people with a bogus historical claim is using weasel-words about the priest's statement that Jesus actually lived being an "expression of theological principles," rather than a bald assertion of fact. Sad, because it's unnecessary- and because it will only cloud the legal basis under which the man making the charge is inevitably going to be laughed out of first an Italian, and then a European Union court.

It would have been nice to have had those courts on record as plainly ruling the obvious: that any denial that Christianity has its origins in the ministry of an actual man named Jesus of Nazareth is simply beneath intellectual contempt.