Christ myth theory

See also: Historical Jesus, Historicity of Jesus, and Jesus Christ in comparative mythology

The Christ myth theory (also known as the Jesus myth theory, the Jesus-parable, the mythic-Jesus thesis, and the nonexistence hypothesis) is the idea that Jesus of Nazareth was not an historical person, but is a fictional or mythological character created by the early Christian community. Some proponents argue that events or sayings associated with the figure of Jesus in the New Testament may have been drawn from one or more individuals who actually existed, but that none of them were in any sense the founder of Christianity.

The history of the idea can be traced to the French Enlightenment thinkers Constantin-François Volney and Charles François Dupuis in the 1790s. Notable proponents include Bruno Bauer in the 19th century, Arthur Drews in the 20th century, and more recently—to varying degrees—professor of German G.A. Wells, professor of English Alvar Ellegård, and New Testament scholar Robert M. Price. The theory has come to public attention through the work of New Atheist writers such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and the French philosopher Michel Onfray.

Arguments used to support the theory emphasize the absence of extant reference to Jesus during his lifetime and the scarcity of non-Christian reference to him in the first century. Some proponents contend that Christianity emerged organically from Hellenistic Judaism, and draw on perceived parallels between the biography of Jesus and those of Greek, Egyptian, and other gods, especially those figuring in myths about dying and rising deities.

The idea remains a minority one. Most scholars who specialize in the historicity of Jesus believe his existence can be established using documentary and other evidence, although even mainstream church scholars agree that information about him contained in the New Testament should not be taken at face value. Alvar Ellegård argues that theologians have failed to question Jesus's existence because of a lack of communication between them and other scholars, causing some of the basic assumptions of Christianity to remain insulated from general scholarly debate.

Context

Jesus

"Cristo crucificado" by Diego Velázquez (c. 1632). Jesus is said to have been crucified around 30 CE.

Further information: Chronology of Jesus, Jesus and history, Jesus in Christianity, Jesus in Islam, Jesus in Judaism, Origins of Christianity, and Paul of Tarsus and Judaism

Those who argue that Jesus existed say he was born a Jew between 7 and 4 BCE—according to the gospels of Matthew and Luke, he was born during the reign of Herod the Great, who died in March 4 BCE—and died around 30 CE, during the administration of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Iudaea province.

Biblical scholar L. Michael White, not himself a Christ-myth theorist, writes that, so far as is known, Jesus did not write anything, nor did anyone who had personal knowledge of him. There is no archeological evidence of his existence. There are no contemporaneous accounts of his life or death: no eyewitness accounts, or any other kind of first-hand record. All the accounts of Jesus come from decades or centuries later; the gospels themselves all come from later times, though they may contain earlier sources or oral traditions. White writes that the earliest writings that survive are the letters of Paul of Tarsus, and they were written 20–30 years after the dates given for Jesus's death. Paul was not a companion of Jesus; nor does he ever claim to have seen Jesus.

Definition of the theory

Further information: Jesus Christ in comparative mythology

The idea that Jesus did not exist has been expressed in a variety of ways and given a number of different names. Philosopher George Walsh argues that Christianity can be regarded as originating in a myth later dressed up as history, or with an historical being mythologized into a supernatural one: he calls the former the Christ myth theory, and the latter the historical Jesus theory. I. Howard Marshall, a biblical scholar, describes two views that stand at the opposite ends of a spectrum of opinion: at one end is the view that the gospels describe an essentially fictional person, and at the other that each event depicted in the New Testament is the literal truth. John Dominic Crossan, a religious scholar and former Catholic priest, prefers to call the Christ myth theory the "Jesus-parable," because the argument is that we have a purely parabolic Jesus, not an historical one.

Paul Eddy, a biblical scholar, and Gregory Boyd, a theologian and pastor, break the spectrum of opinion into four positions that they say are a useful, if simplistic, heuristic. They group the first three into what they call a "legendary-Jesus thesis," namely that the picture of Jesus in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke is mostly or entirely historically inaccurate.

The Return of Persephone by Frederic Leighton (1891). Robert Price writes that a central plank of the Christ myth theory is that Jesus is one of a number of dying-and-rising gods.

• The Christ myth theory, or what Eddy and Boyd call the "mythic-Jesus thesis": the gospels describe a virtually, and perhaps entirely, fictitious person. There are no grounds for supposing that any aspect of the Jesus narrative is rooted in history, a view represented by writers such as Bruno Bauer, Arthur Drews, and G.A. Wells. Boyd and Eddy say Robert Price can be included in this category as an example of "Jesus agnosticism," the position that we lack sufficient evidence to be able to say whether he existed or not.
• There is enough evidence to conclude that Jesus existed, but the reports are so unreliable that very little can be said about him with confidence. This position is represented by Rudolf Bultmann and Burton Mack.
• Historical research can reveal a core of historical facts about Jesus, but he is very different from the Jesus of the New Testament. His sayings and miracles are myths. Robert Funk and Crossan are representatives of this view, one that Eddy and Boyd write is increasingly common among New Testament scholars.
• Finally, there is the position that the gospels are reliable historical sources, and that critical historiography should not rule out the possibility of supernatural occurrence. This view is represented by John P. Meier and N.T. Wright.

Three pillars of the theory

New Testament scholar Robert Price, who argues it is quite likely there never was an historical Jesus, writes that the traditional Christ myth theory is based on three pillars:

• There is no mention of a miracle-working Jesus in secular sources.
• The Pauline epistles, earlier than the gospels, do not provide evidence of a recent historical Jesus.
• The story of Jesus shows strong parallels to Middle Eastern religions about dying and rising gods, symbolizing the rebirth of the individual as a rite of passage. He writes that Christian apologists have tried to minimize these parallels.

Development of the theory

18th and 19th centuries

Volney and Dupuis

French philosopher Constantin-François Chassebœuf (known as Volney) argued that Jesus was based on an obscure historical figure and solar mythology.

Serious doubt about the historical existence of Jesus emerged when critical study of the gospels developed during the Enlightenment in the 18th century. The primary forerunners of the Christ myth theory are identified as two French philosophers, Charles François Dupuis (1742–1809) and Constantin-François Chassebœuf (1757–1820), the latter known as Volney.

Napoleon Bonaparte may have echoed Volney when he privately questioned the existence of Jesus.

Dupuis rejected the historicity of Jesus entirely, explaining a reference to Jesus by the Roman historian Tacitus (56–117)—in around 116, Tacitus mentioned a Christus who had been convicted by Pontius Pilate—as nothing more than an echo of the inaccurate beliefs of Christians at the time. In Origine de tous les cultes (1795), he identified pre-Christian rituals in Greater Syria, Ancient Egypt and Persia that he believed represented the birth of a god to a virgin mother at the winter solstice, and argued that these rituals were based upon the winter rising of the constellation Virgo. He believed that these and other annual occurrences were allegorized as the histories of solar deities, such as Sol Invictus, who passed their childhoods in obscurity (low elevation of the sun after the solstice), died (winter) and were resurrected (spring). He argued that Jewish and Christian scriptures could also be interpreted according to the solar pattern: the Fall of Man in Genesis was an allegory of the hardship caused by winter, and the resurrection of Jesus represented the growth of the sun's strength in the sign of Aries at the spring equinox.

Volney, who published before Dupuis but made use of a draft version of Dupuis' work, followed much of his argument. In his Les Ruines, Volney differed in thinking that the gospel story was not intentionally created as an extended allegory grounded in solar myths, but was compiled organically when simple allegorical statements like "the virgin has brought forth" were misunderstood as history. Volney further parted company from Dupuis by allowing that confused memories of an obscure historical figure may have contributed to Christianity when they were integrated with the solar mythology. The works of Volney and Dupuis moved rapidly through numerous editions, allowing the thesis to circulate widely. Napoleon, who knew Volney personally, was probably basing his opinion on Volney's work when he stated privately in October 1808 that the existence of Jesus was an open question. Later critics argued that Volney and Dupuis had based their views on limited historical data.

David Strauss

David Strauss argued that only a small core of bare facts could be known about Jesus, and that the rest was myth.

Further information: Quest for the historical Jesus

German theologian David Strauss (1808–1874) caused a scandal in Europe with the publication of his Das Leben Jesu (1835)—published in English as The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1860)—in which he argued that some stories about Jesus appeared to be mythical, concluding that early Christian communities had fabricated material based on Old Testament stories and concepts. Theologian Thomas L. Thompson writes that Strauss saw the development of the myth not as fraudulent invention, but as the product of a community's imagination, ideas represented as stories. Thompson writes that Strauss's influence on biblical studies was far-reaching. James Beilby and Paul Eddy write that Strauss did not argue that Jesus was entirely invented, but that historically there was only a small core of facts that could be asserted about him, they note this view was highly controversial and that Strauss was clear about his anti-dogmatic and philosophically Hegelian views.

Bruno Bauer

Bruno Bauer's views were sufficiently unorthodox that in 1842 they cost him his lectureship at the University of Bonn.

The German historian Bruno Bauer (1809–1882) took Strauss's arguments and carried them to their furthest point, arguing that Jesus had been entirely fabricated. He thereby became a leading proponent of the Christ myth theory.

Writing while he was teaching at the University of Bonn from 1839 to 1842, Bauer argued that the Gospel of John was not an historical narrative, but an adaptation of the traditional Jewish religious and political idea of the Messiah to Philo's philosophical concept of the logos. Turning to the gospels of Matthew and Luke, Bauer followed earlier critics in regarding them as dependent on Mark's narrative, while rejecting the view that they also drew upon a common tradition apart from Mark that scholars argue is lost—a hypothetical source called the Q document. For Bauer, this latter possibility was ruled out by the incompatible stories of Jesus' nativity found in Matthew and Luke, as well as the manner in which the non-Markan material found in these documents still appeared to develop Markan ideas. Bauer concluded that Matthew depended on Luke for the content found only in those two gospels. Thus, since in his view the entire gospel tradition could be traced to a single author (Mark), Bauer felt that the hypothesis of outright invention became possible. He further believed there was no expectation of a Messiah among Jews in the time of Tiberius, and that Mark's portrayal of Jesus as the Messiah must therefore be a retrojection of later Christian beliefs and practices—an interpretation Bauer extended to many of the specific stories recounted in the gospels. While Bauer initially left open the question of whether an historical Jesus existed at all, his published views were sufficiently unorthodox that in 1842 they cost him his lectureship at Bonn.

In A Critique of the Gospels and a History of their Origin, published in 1850–1851, Bauer argued that Jesus had not, in fact, existed. Bauer's own comprehensive explanation of Christian origins appeared in 1877 in Christ and the Caesars. He proposed that the religion was a synthesis of the Stoicism of Seneca the Younger, whom Bauer believed had planned to create a new Roman state based on his philosophy, and the Jewish theology of Philo as developed by pro-Roman Jews such as Josephus. Bauer concluded that the origins of Christianity were not Jewish, and that the Christian movement originated in Rome and Alexandria, not Palestine.

While subsequent arguments against an historical Jesus were not directly dependent on Bauer's work, they usually echoed it on several general points: that New Testament references to Jesus lacked historical value; that both the absence of reference to Jesus within his lifetime, and the lack of non-Christian references to him in the 1st century, provided evidence against his existence; and that Christianity originated through syncretism.

Radical Dutch school

Main articles: Radical Criticism and Authorship of the Pauline epistles

In the 1870s and 1880s, a group of scholars associated with the University of Amsterdam, who were known in German scholarship as the radical Dutch school, followed Bauer by rejecting the authenticity of the Pauline epistles, and took a generally negative view of the Bible's historical value. Within this group, the existence of Jesus was rejected by Allard Pierson, the leader of the movement, S. Hoekstra, and Samuel Adrian Naber. A. D. Loman argued in 1881 that all New Testament writings belonged to the second century, and doubted that Jesus was an historical figure, but later said the core of the gospels was genuine. G. J. P. J. Bolland argued in 1907 that Christianity had evolved from Gnosticism, and that Jesus was simply a symbolic figure representing Gnostic ideas about God.

20th century

During the early 20th century, several writers published arguments against Jesus' historicity, ranging from the scholarly to the fanciful. Proponents of the theory drew on the work of liberal theologians, who tended to deny any value to sources for Jesus outside the New Testament, and to limit their attention to Mark and the hypothetical Q document. They also made use of the growing field of Religionsgeschichte—the history of religion—which found sources for Christian ideas in Greek and Oriental mystery cults, rather than in the life of Jesus and Palestinian Judaism. Joseph Klausner wrote that biblical scholars "tried their hardest to find in the historic Jesus something which is not Judaism; but in his actual history they have found nothing of this whatever, since this history is reduced almost to zero. It is therefore no wonder that at the beginning of this century there has been a revival of the eighteenth and nineteenth century view that Jesus never existed."

J. M. Robertson

J. M. Robertson (1856–1933), a Scottish journalist who became a Liberal MP, argued in 1900 that belief in a slain Messiah arose before the New Testament period within sects later known as Ebionites or Nazarenes, and that these groups would have expected a Messiah named Jesus, a hope based on a divinity of that name in the biblical Joshua. In his view, an additional but less significant basis for early Christian belief may have been the executed Jesus Pandira, placed by the Talmud in about 100 BC.

Robertson wrote that while the letters of Paul of Tarsus are the earliest surviving Christian writings, they were primarily concerned with theology and morality, largely glossing over the life of Jesus. Once references to "the twelve" and to Jesus' institution of the Eucharist are rejected as interpolations, Robertson argued that the Jesus of the Pauline epistles is reduced to a crucified savior who "counts for absolutely nothing as a teacher or even as a wonder-worker". As a result, he concluded that those elements of the gospels that attribute such characteristics to Jesus must have developed later, probably among gentile believers who were converted by Jewish evangelists like Paul.

This gentile party may have represented Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection in mystery plays in which, wishing to disassociate the cult from Judaism, they attributed his execution to the Jewish authorities and his betrayal to a Jew (Ioudaios, misunderstood as Judas). According to Robertson, such plays would have evolved over time into the gospels. Christianity would have sought to further enhance its appeal to gentiles by adopting myths from pagan cults with some Judaic input— e.g., Jesus' healings came from Asclepius, feeding of multitudes from Dionysus, the Eucharist from the worship of Dionysus and Mithras, and walking on water from Poseidon, but his descent from David and his raising of a widow's son from the dead were in deference to Jewish messianic expectations. And while John's portrayal of Jesus as the logos was ostensibly Jewish, Robertson argued that the underlying concept derived from the function of Mithras, Thoth, and Hermes as representatives of a supreme god.

William Benjamin Smith

At around the same time William Benjamin Smith (1850–1934), a professor of mathematics at Tulane University, argued in a series of books that the earliest Christian sources, particularly the Pauline epistles, stress Christ's divinity at the expense of any human personality, and that this would have been implausible if there had been a human Jesus. Smith believed that Christianity's origins lay in a pre-Christian Jesus cult—that is, in a Jewish sect that had worshipped a divine being named Jesus in the centuries before the human Jesus was supposedly born. Smith argued that evidence for this cult was found in Hippolytus's mention of the Naassenes and Epiphanius's report of a Nazaraean or Nazorean sect that existed before Jesus. On this view, the seemingly historical details in the New Testament were built by the early Christian community around narratives of the pre-Christian Jesus. Smith also argued against the historical value of non-Christian writers regarding Jesus, particularly Josephus and Tacitus.

Arthur Drews

Arthur Drews's public debates were regarded by The New York Times as one of the most remarkable theological discussions since the days of Martin Luther.

The Christ Myth (Die Christusmythe), first published in 1909 by Arthur Drews (1865–1935), professor of philosophy at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe, brought together the scholarship of the day in defense of the idea that Christianity had been a Jewish Gnostic cult that spread by appropriating aspects of Greek philosophy and Frazerian death-rebirth deities. Drews wrote that his purpose was to show that everything about the historical Jesus had a mythical character, and there was no reason to suppose that such a figure had existed. The focus on an historical Jesus conflicted with both Drews' philosophical outlook, a form of monistic pantheism—he was involved with the German Faith Movement— and his belief that ethnic Germans should observe their ancestral forms of spirituality and not religions derived from a Semitic source—a source which Drews considered depraved.

His work proved popular enough that prominent theologians and historians addressed his arguments in the Hibbert Journal, the American Journal of Theology, and other leading journals of religion. In response, Drews took part in a series of public debates, the best known of which took place in 1910 on January 31 and again on February 1 at the Berlin Zoological Garden against Hermann von Soden of the Berlin University, where he appeared on behalf of the League of Monists. Attended by 2,000 people, including the country's most eminent theologians, the meetings went on until three in the morning.

Lenin accepted Drews's arguments.

The New York Times called the meeting one of the most remarkable theological discussions since the days of Martin Luther, reporting that Drews caused a sensation by plastering the town's billboards with posters asking, "Did Jesus Christ ever live?" According to the newspaper his arguments were so graphic that several women had to be carried from the hall screaming hysterically, while one woman stood on a chair and invited God to strike him down.

Drew's work found fertile soil in the Soviet Union. Lenin (1870–1924) Soviet leader from 1917 until his death, accepted it as fact and argued that it was imperative in the struggle against religious obscurantists to form a union with people like Drews. Several editions of Drews's The Christ Myth were published in the Soviet Union from the early 1920s onwards, and his arguments were included in school and university textbooks. Public meetings asking "Did Christ live?" were organized, during which party operatives, including the Commissar of Enlightenment, Anatoly Lunacharsky, debated with clergymen.

Paul-Louis Couchoud

Paul-Louis Couchoud (1879–1959) was a French doctor of medicine turned man of letters and poet. He developed his idea of Jesus as myth in a series of essays and books, including Enigma of Jesus (1924)—which had an introduction by J.G. Frazer, who did not himself subscribe to the Christ myth theory— followed by The Mystery of Jesus (1925), Jesus the God Made Man (1937), The Creation of Christ (1939), Story of Jesus (1944), and The God Jesus (1951).

Theologian Walter P. Weaver writes that Couchoud dismissed the evidence of Josephus, the Talmud, Tacitus, and Suetonius. Turning to the New Testament gospels, he argued that Paul had had nothing to do with Jesus, and that Mark was the source for Luke and John. He argued that Mark was not an historical text, but a commentary on early Christian stories and memories. He further argued that Paul's affirmation of the divinity of Jesus alongside Yahweh (God), suggested that Jesus was not real, because no Jew would have done that. For Couchoud, Jesus was a figment of Paul's imagination, the result of a new interpretation of ancient texts and a representation of the highest aspiration of the human soul.

Other 20th-century writers

photograph

Bertrand Russell doubted that Jesus existed.

The British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) famously announced in his 1927 lecture, "Why I Am Not a Christian"—delivered to the National Secular Society in Battersea Town Hall, London—that historically it is quite doubtful that Jesus existed, and if he did we know nothing about him, though he did nothing to develop the idea.

Dead Sea Scrolls scholar John M. Allegro (1923–1988) argued in two books—The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (1970) and The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth (1979)—that Christianity began as a shamanic cult centering around the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms, and that the New Testament was a coded record of a clandestine cult. In a forward to The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth, Mark Hall writes that Allegro suggested the scrolls all but proved that an historical Jesus never existed. Philip Jenkins writes that Allegro was an "eccentric scholar" who relied on texts that did not exist in quite the form he was citing them, and calls the Sacred Mushroom and the Cross "possibly the single most ludicrous book on Jesus scholarship by a qualified academic." Allegro was forced to resign his academic post.

Albert Kalthoff wrote that Jesus was an idealized personification created by a proto-communist community and that incidents in the gospels were adapted from first-to-third century Roman history. Peter Jensen saw Jesus as a Jewish adaptation of Gilgamesh whom Jensen regarded as a solar deity. Joseph Wheless wrote that there was an active conspiracy among Christians, going back as far as the second century, to forge documents to make a mythical Jesus seem historical.

21st century

G. A. Wells

Graham Stanton wrote in 2002 that the most thoroughgoing and sophisticated of the proponents' arguments were set out by G. A. Wells, emeritus professor of German at Birkbeck College, London, and author of Did Jesus Exist? (1975), The Jesus Legend (1996), The Jesus Myth (1999), Can We Trust the New Testament? (2004), and Cutting Jesus Down to Size (2009). British theologian Kenneth Grayston advised Christians to acknowledge the difficulties raised by Wells, but Alvar Ellegård writes that his views remain largely undiscussed by theologians.

Wells bases his arguments on the views of New Testament scholars who acknowledge that the gospels are sources written decades after Jesus's death by people who had no personal knowledge of him. In addition, Wells writes, the texts are exclusively Christian and theologically motivated, and therefore a rational person should believe the gospels only if they are independently confirmed. Wells also argues that Paul and the other epistle writers—the earliest Christian writers—do not provide any support for the idea that Jesus lived early in the first century. There is no information in them about Jesus's parents, place of birth, teachings, trial, or crucifixion. For Wells, the Jesus of earliest Christianity was a pure myth, derived from mystical speculations stemming from the Jewish Wisdom tradition. According to this view, the earliest strata of the New Testament literature presented Jesus as "a basically supernatural personage only obscurely on Earth as a man at some unspecified period in the past".

In The Jesus Myth, Wells argues that two Jesus narratives fused into one: Paul's mythical Jesus and a minimally historical Jesus whose teachings were preserved in the Q document, a hypothetical common source for the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Biblical scholar Robert Van Voorst said that with this argument Wells had performed an about-face, while Robert M. Price said that Wells had abandoned the pure Christ Myth theory for which he is famous. Wells wrote in 2000:

Now that I have allowed this in my two most recent relevant books ... [The Jesus Legend and The Jesus Myth], it will not do to dub me a "mythicist" tout court. Moreover, my revised standpoint obviates the criticism ... which J. D. G Dunn levelled at me in 1985. He objected that, in my work as then published, I had, implausibly, to assume that, within thirty years from Paul, there had evolved "such a ... complex of traditions about a non-existent figure as we have in the sources of the gospels" (The Evidence for Jesus, p. 29). My present standpoint is: this complex is not all post-Pauline (Q in its earliest form may well be as early as ca. A.D. 40), and it is not all mythical. The essential point, as I see it, is that what is authentic in this material refers to a personage who is not to be identified with the dying and rising Christ of the early epistles.

In response to being called the leading contemporary Christ myth theorist by Paul Eddy and Gregory Boyd in 2007, Wells clarified again in 2009 that in his books of 1996, 1999, and 2004, he repudiated the idea that Jesus is virtually and perhaps entirely fictional. He writes that he belongs in the category of those who argue that Jesus did exist, but that reports about him are so unreliable that we can know little or nothing about him. For a statement of his position, he refers readers to his article, "Jesus, Historicity of" in Tom Flynn's The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief (2007). He writes there that, while he is not as radical as in his 1975 work, he still argues that the story of the suffering and execution of Jesus under Pilate is non-historical.

Alvar Ellegård

Alvar Ellegård (1919–2008), a professor of English at the University of Gothenburg, developed the ideas of Wells and Couchoud in his Myten om Jesus (1992), arguing that Jesus is essentially a myth and the gospels largely fiction, created to give substance to the ecstatic visions of Paul and the apostles, in which Jesus appeared as the messiah. He argues that the point of Paul's letters to the Jewish diaspora was to show that the Day of Judgment was imminent, messianiac views that were common among Jews at the time. When it became clear decades later that the Day of Judgment was not upon them, Paul's audience wanted to know more about Jesus, and because there was little to guide them, the gospels emerged to complete a picture, using passages from the Old Testament that messianic Jews had long interpreted as heralding the messiah.

Ellegård writes that his position differs from that of Drews and Couchoud. Like G.A. Wells, he believes that Paul's letters show Paul and his audience believed Paul's visions had been about a real person. Ellegård develops arguments proposed by André Dupont-Sommer and John Allegro, and identifies Paul's Jesus as the "Essene Teacher of Righteousness" revealed in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but he argues that this was not Jesus of the gospels. For Ellegård, the figure Paul had in mind was the founder of the Essene, or para-Essene, congregations Paul was addressing, someone who had probably lived in the second or early first century BCE, though Ellegard acknowledges there is no evidence of a Jesus who would fit this description, or evidence that the Teacher of Righteousness was crucified.

Modern theologians do not acknowledge that the question of Jesus's existence is an open one, and Ellegård accuses them of failing to live up to their responsibilities as scholars. He argues that their position is dogmatic, often concealed "under a cover of mystifying language," that they often have ties to Christian churches, and that there has been a failure of communication between them and scholars in other fields, leading to an insulation of theological research from scholarly debate elsewhere. He dismisses as an ad hominem argument the criticism of himself and Wells as non-specialists.

Thomas L. Thompson

Thomas L. Thompson, a former professor of theology at the University of Copenhagen, argues in The Messiah Myth (2005) that the Jesus of the gospels did not exist, and that stories about him are a combination of Near Eastern myths and stories about kingship and divinity. He argues that the contemporaneous audience of the gospels would have understood this, that the stories were not intended as history.

Robert M. Price

New Testament scholar Robert Price argues we will never know whether Jesus existed, unless someone discovers his diary or skeleton.

American New Testament scholar Robert M. Price questions the historicity of Jesus in a series of books, including Deconstructing Jesus (2000), The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man (2003), and Jesus is Dead (2007), as well as in contributions to The Historical Jesus: Five Views (2009). Price is a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, a group of writers and scholars who study the historicity of Jesus, arguing that the Christian image of Christ is a theological construct into which traces of Jesus of Nazareth have been woven. He was also a fellow of the Jesus Project, set up in 2007 by the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, the aim of which was that a group of scholars should focus specifically on the historicity question, but the project lost its funding in 2009; see below.

A former Baptist pastor, Price writes that he was originally an apologist on the historical-Jesus question but became disillusioned with the arguments, then switched to a position similar to that of Rudolf Bultmann, the German theologian, who argued that the New Testament should be read as myth. As the years went on, he found it increasingly difficult to poke holes in the more extreme position that questioned Jesus's existence entirely, a position he eventually adopted. Despite this, he still takes part in the Eucharist every week, seeing the Christ of faith as all the more important because, he argues, there was probably never any other.

He now believes that Christianity is an historicized synthesis of mainly Egyptian, Jewish, and Greek mythology. He writes that everyone who espouses the Christ myth theory bases their arguments on three key points. First, they ask why there is no mention of a miracle-working Jesus in secular sources. Secondly, they argue that the epistles, written earlier than the gospels, provide no evidence of a recent historical Jesus—all that can be taken from the epistles, he argues, is that a Jesus Christ, son of God, came into the world to die as a sacrifice for human sin and was raised by God and enthroned in heaven. The third pillar is that the Jesus narrative is paralleled in Middle Eastern myths about dying and rising gods, symbolizing the rebirth of the individual as a rite of passage. He names Baal, Osiris, Attis, Adonis, and Dumuzi/ Tammuz as examples, all of which, he writes, survived into the Hellenistic and Roman periods and thereby influenced early Christianity. He writes that Christian apologists have tried to minimize these parallels.

Price's position is that if critical methodology is applied with ruthless consistency, one is left in complete agnosticism regarding Jesus's historicity, and that unless someone discovers Jesus's diary or skeleton, we'll never know. He writes: "Is it ... possible that beneath and behind the stained-glass curtain of Christian legend stands the dim figure of a historical founder of Christianity? Yes, it is possible, perhaps just a tad more likely than that there was a historical Moses, about as likely as there having been an historical Apollonius of Tyana. But it becomes almost arbitrary to think so." While recognizing that he stands against the majority view of scholars, he cautions against attempting to settle the issue by appeal to the majority.

Earl Doherty

Canadian writer Earl Doherty argues in The Jesus Puzzle (2005) and Jesus: Neither God Nor Man—The Case for a Mythical Jesus (2009) that no historical Jesus stands behind even the most primitive hypothetical sources of the New Testament. His view is that Jesus originated as a myth derived from Middle Platonism with some influence from Jewish mysticism, and that belief in an historical Jesus emerged only among Christian communities in the second century. He writes that none of the major apologists before the year 180, except for Justin and Aristides of Athens, included an account of an historical Jesus in their defences of Christianity. Instead the early Christian writers describe a Christian movement grounded in Platonic philosophy and Hellenistic Judaism, preaching the worship of a monotheistic Jewish god and what he calls a "logos-type Son." Doherty argues that Theophilus of Antioch (c. 163–182), Athenagoras of Athens (c. 133–190), Tatian the Assyrian (c. 120–180), and Marcus Minucius Felix (writing around 150–270) offer no indication that they believed in an historical figure crucified and resurrected, and that the name Jesus does not appear in any of them.

New Atheism movement

Richard Dawkins writes that a serious, though not widely supported, case can be made that Jesus never existed.

In the 2000s, a number of books and films associated with the New Atheism movement questioned whether Jesus existed. The books included The God Delusion (2006) by Richard Dawkins, the former professor for the public understanding of science at Oxford University; God:The Failed Hypothesis (2007) by the American physicist Victor Stenger; and God Is Not Great (2007) by British writer Christopher Hitchens. Films that referred to the issue were The God Who Wasn't There (2005), Zeitgeist (2007), and Religulous (2008).

Dawkins, citing G.A. Wells, sees the gospels as rehashed versions of the Hebrew bible, and writes that it is probable Jesus existed, but that a serious argument can be mounted against it, though not a widely supported one. Stenger's position is that the gospel writers borrowed from several Middle Eastern cults, including that of Mithraism, Osiris, and Dionysus. Hitchens argues that there is little or no evidence for the life of Jesus, unlike for the prophet Muhammad.

The Jesus Project

Further information: Jesus Seminar

The Jesus Project was announced at a conference in the University of California Davis in December 2007 by the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, part of the Center for Inquiry. Its aim was that a group of 20 scholars from relevant disciplines—historians, archeologists, philosophers—should meet every nine months for five years, with no preconceived ideas, to examine the evidence for Jesus's existence. Joseph Hoffman who was The Chair of The Scientific Committee for the Study of Religion (CSER), the Jesus Project's sponsor, claimed that in would be "the first methodologically agnostic approach to the question of Jesus' historical existence."[1]

The project was temporarily halted in June 2009 when its funding was suspended, and shortly thereafter its director, historian of religion Joseph Hoffmann, resigned, which effectively brought the project to an end. Hoffman wrote that he no longer believed it was possible to answer the historicity question, because of the extent to which the history, the myth, and the religious belief are intertwined. He argues that the New Testament documents, particularly the gospels, were written at a time when the line between natural and supernatural was not clearly drawn. He concludes: "No quantum of material discovered since the 1940’s, in the absence of canonical material, would support the existence of an historical founder. No material regarded as canonical and no church doctrine built upon it in the history of the church would cause us to deny it. Whether the New Testament runs from Christ to Jesus or Jesus to Christ is not a question we can answer."

Hoffmann also said there were problems with the media and blogs sensationalizing the story, with the only possible newsworthy outcome of the project being the conclusion that Jesus had not existed, a conclusion he writes the majority of participants would not have reached. When one Christ myth supporter asked that the project set up a section devoted to members committed to the non-existence thesis—with Hoffmann describing the "mythers" as people out to prove through consensus what they cannot establish through evidence—he interpreted it as a sign of trouble ahead, a lack of the kind of skepticism he argues the Christ myth theory itself invites.

Contemporary public response

A 2005 study conducted by Baylor University, a private Christian university, found that one percent of Americans in general, and 13.7 percent of religiously unaffiliated Americans, believe that Jesus is a fictional character. Comparable figures for Britain in 2008 say 13 percent of the general population, and 40 percent of atheists, do not believe that Jesus existed. A 2009 study found that 11 percent of Australians doubt that Jesus was an historical figure.

In Italy in 2006, Luigi Cascioli, the atheist author of The Fable of Christ and a former trainee priest, sued Father Enrico Righi for having written in a church newsletter that Jesus was born in Bethlehem to Mary and Joseph and that he lived in Nazareth. Cascioli said the statement was an "abuse of popular belief," and brought the lawsuit against Righi under an Italian anti-fraud law. The case was thrown out.

Counter-arguments

The Christ myth theory has never achieved acceptance among biblical scholars. Some of the earliest arguments against the theory included satirical treatments by Richard Whately and Jean-Baptiste Pérès—entitled "Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Bonaparte" (1819) and "Grand Erratum" (1827)—who argued against the existence of Napoleon, including while he was still alive.

In 1914, Fred C. Conybeare published The Historical Christ, in which he argued against J.M. Robertson, Arthur Drews, and William Benjamin Smith. He was followed by the French biblical scholar Maurice Goguel, who published Jesus of Nazareth: Myth or History? in 1926. Goguel argued that prima facie evidence for an historical Jesus came from the agreement on his existence between ancient orthodox Christians, Docetists, and opponents of Christianity. Goguel proceeded to examine the theology of the Pauline epistles, the other New Testament epistles, the gospels, and the Book of Revelation, as well as belief in Jesus' resurrection and divinity, arguing in each case that early Christian views were best explained by a tradition stemming from a recent historical Jesus.

Later editions of Albert Schweitzer's The Quest of the Historical Jesus contained a lengthy section on the Christ myth theory, concluding "that Jesus did exist is exceedingly likely, whereas its converse is exceedingly unlikely." Further refutations were produced throughout the 20th century, including R. T. France's The Evidence for Jesus (1986), Robert Van Voorst's Jesus Outside the New Testament (2000), and The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition (2007), coauthored by Paul Eddy and Greg Boyd.

Multiple attestation

In contrast to Bruno Bauer's view, modern scholars believe that Mark is not the only source behind the synoptic gospels. The current predominant view within the field, the Two-Source hypothesis, postulates that the Synoptic gospels are based on at least two independent sources (Mark and "Q"), and potentially as many as four (Mark, "Q", "M", and "L").

Pauline epistles

Paul, 1410s (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)

The composition of the letters of Paul of Tarsus is generally dated between 50 and 64 CE, some two to three decades after the conventional date given for Jesus's death. Paul did not know the historical Jesus. He only claims he had seen him, 'as of one born out of due time', i.e., as the 'risen' Jesus.

Many biblical scholars turn to Paul's letters (epistles) to support their arguments for an historical Jesus. Theologian James D.G. Dunn argues that Robert Price ignores what everyone else in the field regards as primary data. Biblical scholar F. F. Bruce (1910–1990) writes that, according to Paul's letters, Jesus was an Israelite, descended from Abraham (Gal 3:16) and David (Rom. 1:3); who lived under Jewish law (Gal. 4:4); who was betrayed, and on the night of his betrayal instituted a memorial meal of bread and wine (I Cor. 11:23ff); who endured the Roman penalty of crucifixion (I Cor. 1:23; Gal. 3:1, 13, 6:14, etc.), although Jewish authorities were somehow involved in his death (I Thess. 2:15); who was buried, rose the third day and was thereafter seen alive, including on one occasion by over 500, of whom the majority were alive 25 years later (I Cor. 15:4ff). The letters say that Paul knew of and had met important figures in Jesus's ministry, including the apostles Peter and John, as well as James the brother of Jesus, who is also mentioned in Josephus. In the letters, Paul on occasion alludes to and quotes the teachings of Jesus, and in 1 Corinthians 11 recounts the Last Supper.

Josephus

Further information: Josephus on Jesus

Louis Feldman argues that the writings of the first century Jewish historian Josephus contain two authentic references to Jesus. One of them, Josephus' allusion in The Antiquities of the Jews to the death of James, describes James as "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ," and is seen as providing attestation independent of the early Christian community. Josephus' fuller reference to Jesus, known as the Testimonium Flavianum, while considered by specialists to contain later interpolations, is nevertheless believed by some scholars to preserve an original comment regarding Jesus as well.

Principle of embarrassment

American philosopher Will Durant has applied the criterion of embarrassment to the question of Jesus' existence. He argues that if the gospels were entirely imaginary, certain issues might not have been included, such as the competition of the apostles for high places in the kingdom of God, their flight after Jesus' arrest, Peter's denial, the failure of Jesus to work miracles in Galilee, the references to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, and his despairing cry on the cross. Durant argues that an invented narrative might have presented Jesus in strict conformity with messianic expectations.

Rejection of mythological parallels

Biblical scholars argue against the idea that early material related to Jesus can be explained with reference to pagan mythological parallels. Paula Fredriksen, for example, writes that no serious work places Jesus outside the backdrop of first century Palestinian Judaism. Biblical scholarship also generally rejects the concept of homogenous dying and rising gods, the validity of which is often presupposed by advocates of the Christ myth theory, such as New Testament scholar Robert Price. Tryggve Mettinger, former professor of Hebrew bible at Lund Unversity, is one of the academics who supports the "dying and rising gods" construct, but he argues that Jesus does not fit the wider pattern.

Edwin Yamauchi argues that past attempts to equate elements of Jesus' biography with those of mythological figures have not sufficiently taken into account the dates and provenance of their sources. Edwyn R. Bevan and Chris Forbes argue that proponents of the theory have even invented elements of pagan myths to support their assertion of parallelism between the life of Jesus and the lives of pagan mythological characters. For example, David Ulansey shows that the purported equivalence of Jesus' virgin birth with Mithras' origin fails because Mithras emerged fully grown, partially clothed, and armed from a rock, possibly after it had been inseminated. S. G. F. Brandon and others argue that the very idea that early Christians would consciously incorporate pagan myths into their religion is "intrinsically most improbable," as evidenced by the strenuous opposition that Paul encountered from other Christians for even his minor concessions to Gentile believers.

See also

• Bible conspiracy theory
• Biblical criticism
• Christian mythology
• Panbabylonism
• The Bible and history
• The God Who Wasn't There

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Further reading

Books and papers

• Brunner, Constantin. "Criticism", appendix to Our Christ: the revolt of the mystical genius, accessed August 5, 2010.
• Case, Shirley Jackson. "The Historicity of Jesus: An Estimate of the Negative Argument", The American Journal of Theology, Vol. 15, No. 1, January 1911, pp. 20–42.
• Case, Shirley Jackson. "Jesus' Historicity: A Statement of the Problem", The American Journal of Theology, Vol. 15, No. 2, April 1911, pp. 626–628.
• Case, Shirley Jackson. "Recent books on the question of Jesus' existence", The American Journal of Theology, Vol. 15, No. 4, October 1911, pp. 626–628.
• Clemen, Carl. Der geschichtliche Jesus: Eine allgemeinverständliche Untersuchung der Frage: Hat Jesus gelebt, und was wollte er?. Töpelmann, 1911.
• Evans, Elizabeth Edson Gibson. The Christ Myth: A Study, Book Tree 2000; first published 1900.
• Habermas, Gary R. The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ. College Press, 1996.
• Fau, Guy. La fable de Jésus-Christ. Éditions de l'Union rationaliste, 1964.
• Mangasarian, Managasar Mugwiditch. The truth about Jesus. Is he a myth?. Princeton Theological Seminary Library, 1909.
• Alfaric, Prosper. Jésus a-t-il existé?. Coda Publishing 2005; first published 1932.
• Prosper, Alfaric. Le problème de Jésus. Cercle Ernest-Renan, 1954.
• Robertson, John Mackinnon. The Jesus problem; a restatement of the myth theory, 1917.
• Rossington, Herbert J. Did Jesus really live? a reply to The Christ myth, 1911.
• Taylor, Robert (1829). The Diegesis. A. Kneeland 1834; composed while Taylor was in Oakham Goal after being convicted of blasphemy, 1829.
• Telford, John and Barber, Benjamin Aquila. The London quarterly review, volume 4, 1912, p. 191.
• Troeltsch, Ernst. Die Bedeutung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu für den Glauben. Mohr, 1911.
• Zindler, Frank R. The Jesus the Jews Never Knew. American Atheist Press, 2003.

Debates

• Australian Broadcasting Company (2005–2006). Jesus–History or Myth?, debate organized by ABC between David H. Lewis—drawing on the work of G.A. Wells—and William Loader, December 2005–May 2006, accessed June 18, 2010.
• Humphreys, Kenneth and Holding, J. P. "Did Jesus Exist?", Premier Christian Radio, a live radio debate, accessed June 18, 2010.
• Barker, Dan and Forbes, Chris. "Jesus: Man or Messiah?", a moderated live debate, accessed June 18, 2010.
• Price, Robert M. and Boyd, Greg. "Jesus: Legend, Teacher, Critic, or Son of God?", a moderated live debate, accessed June 18, 2010.

Other external links

• Barker, Dan. "Debunking the Historical Jesus", Freedom from Religion Foundation, January 30, 2006, accessed August 5, 2010.
• Carrier, Richard. "Did Jesus Exist? Earl Doherty and the Argument to Ahistoricity", infidels.org, accessed August 5, 2010.
• Craig, William Lane. "The Evidence For Jesus", leaderu.com. accessed June 18, 2010.
• Habermas, Gary. The Historical Jesus", garyhabermas.com, accessed August 5, 2010.
• Holding, James Patrick. "Did Jesus exist?", tektonics.com, accessed June 18, 2010.