I have just finished the book KILLING JESUS; A HISTORY by
Bill O’Reilly of FOX NEWS fame and his co-author Martin Dugard.
First I have to say that O’Reilly has been doing quite well writing
“Killing” books about Abe Lincoln, General Patton, JFK and others.
O’Reilly has also been embroiled in a media battle where
journalists are pointing out the numerous occasions where O’Reilly has either
flat out lied or misrepresented himself in stories he has filed as a reporter,
facts he had mentioned on his weekly show at FOX or things he has written in
his many books.
The reporters accusing him of playing with the truth have
their accusations backed up by facts on the ground but O’Reilly is great at
using an offense as a defense and has been calling his accusers all sorts of
derogatory names.
The fact that FOX NEWS also plays fast and loose with FACTS,
makes it is no wonder that they would defend O’Reilly to the hilt. His ratings
for his show have actually gone up since his viewers unfortunately are people
that feel that facts are true because they want them to be true and not because
they are true.
His “killing” books are popular and sell as “history” even
if some of the history is kind of made up; makes for good reading though.
In his book KILLING JESUS; A HISTORY it is hard to imagine
that there is any history since the one thing about Jesus that we do know is
that there are absolutely no historical records of Jesus’ presence on earth. In
fact there are the few who actually question if Jesus ever existed because of
the lack of any hard historical evidence. These people believe he was invented
to promote Christianity.
I happen to believe Jesus did exist because of the history
that developed after his death which would be a stretch if he never existed.
Robert M. Price wrote a book titled KILLING HISTORY; JESUS
IN THE NO-SPIN ZONE. The “no-spin zone” phrase is actually what O’Reilly
headlines his show on FOX with as if to say just the facts, no bullshit.
Many of the “stories” about Jesus that we are all familiar
with come from either the GOSPELS in the Bible or are “traditions” people have
kept for thousands of years even to this day; THEY ARE NOT HISTORY and that is
where O’Reilly does a disservice to himself as a self-described HISTORIAN.
What O’Reilly does is tell a dramatic story of the death of
Jesus using various Gospel accounts which in some cases contradict themselves,
traditional non-historic beliefs and in some cases, stuff he feels should be
part of the account even if there are no sources supporting what he adds to his
telling of the story.
Robert Price in his book KILLING HISTORY shows how O’Reilly
is killing history by making up his own history. He takes his book page by page
and shows how absurd his statements are.
The really sad thing about this book, as I see it, is the
fact that many, many people will read O’Reilly’s book as real history based on
O’Reilly’s reputation and media exposure.
That said, most of the people reading KILLING JESUS are not
people that, as I said before, have an objective or critical eye towards history;
they believe facts are facts because they want them to be facts.
It is a sad state of affairs that some media types use their
positions of seeming authority to mislead the people that listen to them but
hey, this is something that is not new but has been going on since the beginning
of history.
All I can do is point this out to people that may care about
“real” history.
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