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Christ myth theory

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This article is about the view that Jesus never existed. For a fuller discussion of the documents used to establish Jesus' existence, see Historicity of Jesus. For a discussion of Jesus in the context of comparative mythology, see Jesus Christ in comparative mythology.
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The Christ myth theory (also known as the Jesus myth theory and the nonexistence hypothesis) is the argument that Jesus of Nazareth never actually existed as a historical person at all, but is a fictional or mythological character created by the early Christian community.[1] Additionally, some proponents of the theory believe that some of the events or sayings associated with the Jesus figure in the New Testament may have been drawn from one or more individuals who actually existed, but that those individuals were not in any sense the founder of Christianity.

The theory emphasizes the absence of extant reference to Jesus during his lifetime and the scarcity of non-Christian reference to him in the first century. It gives priority to the epistles over the gospels in determining the views of the earliest Christians, contends that Christianity emerged organically from Hellenistic Judaism, and draws on perceived parallels between the biography of Jesus and those of Greek, Egyptian, and other pagan gods.

The history of the idea can be traced to the French Enlightenment thinkers Constantin-François Volney and Charles François Dupuis in the 1790s. Academic such as Bruno Bauer and Arthur Drews advocated the theory in the 19th and early 20th centuries. And authors such as G.A. Wells, Robert M. Price, and Earl Doherty have popularized the theory in recent years.

While the hypothesis has at times attracted scholarly attention, it nevertheless remains essentially without support among biblical scholars and classical historians,[2] many of whom regard the Christ myth theory as pseudoscholarship.[3]

Context and definition

Further information: Historicity of Jesus, Jesus Christ in comparative mythology, Historical Jesus, Chronology of Jesus, and Quest for the historical Jesus
a graphic depiction of the relationship of the Christ myth theory to historical Jesus concontructions
The Christ myth theory is an alternative explanation of Christian origins to the historical Jesus.[4] The Christ myth theory is to be distinguished even from biblical minimalism,[5] with fundamentalism occupying the extreme maximalist pole of the historical Jesus spectrum.[6]

Modern scholarship generally believes that Jesus was born between 7 and 4 BC and was crucified around AD 30.[7] Multiple documents written during the first century purport to describe Jesus' ministry, but no extant writings from Jesus himself are known. Further, no account of Jesus' actions and teachings were produced during his lifetime.[7] Given the quality of the evidence concerning Jesus' life, different scholars affirm the historicity of Jesus' traditional biography to differing extents. Minimalists, such as Rudolf Bultmann and Thomas L. Thompson, concede that Jesus did exist but argue that virtually nothing can be known about him with certainty and that many (perhaps all) of the episodes in the gospels are legendary.[8] At the other extreme, fundamentalists such as Charles L. Feinberg and Charles Ryrie affirm the literal historicity of each discreet event depicted in the New Testament. Taken together, these two position represent the twin poles of the spectrum of views regarding the historical Jesus, with many intermediate positions falling in between.

The Christ myth theory, however, stands entirely outside this continuum.[4] It argues that Jesus of Nazareth, the central figure of the Christian faith, simply never existed at all.[9]

Advocates

Main article: Quest for the historical Jesus

18th and 19th centuries

The denial of Jesus' existence was first postulated in the 18th century.[10] A small number of English deists towards the end of that century are said to have believed that no historical Jesus existed.[11]

Volney and Dupuis

a sketch of a bust of Constantin-François Chassebœuf
Constantin-François Chassebœuf, comte de Volney

The primary forerunners of the nonhistoricity hypothesis, though, are usually identified as two thinkers of the French Enlightenment, Constantin-François Chassebœuf, known as Volney, and Charles François Dupuis.[12] In works published in the 1790s, both argued that numerous ancient myths, including the life of Jesus, were based on the movement of the sun through the zodiac.[13]

Dupuis identified pre-Christian rituals in Syria, 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 life-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). Dupuis 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 Christ as the "paschal lamb" at Easter represented the growth of the Sun's strength in the sign of Aries at the spring equinox.[14] Drawing on this conceptual foundation, Dupuis rejected the historicity of Jesus entirely, explaining Tacitus' reference to Jesus as nothing more than an echo of the inaccurate beliefs of Christians in Tacitus' own day.[15]

painted portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte

Volney, who published before Dupuis but made use of a draft version of Dupuis' work,[16] followed much of his argument. Volney differed, though, 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.[17] 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.[18]

The works of Volney and Dupuis moved rapidly through numerous editions, allowing the thesis to circulate widely.[19] Napoleon may have been basing his opinion on Volney's work when he stated privately that the existence of Jesus was an open question.[20] However, their influence even within France did not outlast the first quarter of the nineteenth century,[19] as later critics [who?] argued that they had based their views on limited historical data, by demonstrating, for example, that the birth of Jesus was not placed in December until the 4th century.[21]

Bruno Bauer

drawn portrait of Bruno Bauer
Bruno Bauer

In a series of studies produced while he was teaching at the University of Bonn (1839–1842), the German historian Bruno Bauer followed D. F. Strauss in disputing the historical value of the New Testament gospels. In Bauer's view, the Gospel of John was not a historical narrative but an adaptation of the traditional Jewish religious and political idea of the Messiah to Philo's philosophical concept of the logos.[22]

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 which is now lost—a source scholars call the Q document, Q source, or just Q. 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 instead 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.[22] He further believed that 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.[23]

While Bauer initially left open the question of whether a historical Jesus existed at all, his published views were sufficiently unorthodox that in 1842 they cost him his lectureship at Bonn.[24] In A Critique of the Gospels and a History of their Origin, published in 1850–1851, Bauer concluded that Jesus had not, in fact, existed. Bauer's own comprehensive explanation of Christian origins appeared in 1877 in Christ and the Caesars. He argued 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.[25] In keeping with his pervasive anti-Semitism,[26] Bauer held that Mark was in fact an Italian who had been influenced by Seneca's Stoic philosophy,[27] and that the Christian movement originated in Rome and Alexandria, not Palestine.[28]

While subsequent arguments against a 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.[29]

Radical Dutch school

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 in 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, S. Hoekstra and Samuel Adrian Naber, while others came close to that position but concluded that the gospels contained a core of historical fact.[30]

20th century

By the early 20th century several writers had published arguments against Jesus' historicity, ranging from the scholarly to the highly fanciful. In an example of the latter, the English historian Edwin Johnson denied not only a historical Jesus but much of recorded history prior to the 16th century AD as well.[31] Despite their unevenness, these treatments were sufficiently influential to merit several book-length responses by historians and New Testament scholars. Proponents of the Christ myth theory increasingly 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 within the canon to Mark and the hypothetical Q document.[32] Thus when the Zurich professor Paul Wilhelm Schmiedel identified just nine "pillar passages" in the gospels which he thought early Christians could not have invented, they proved to be tempting targets for Christ myth theorists—despite Schmiedel's intention that these passages serve as the foundation for a fuller reconstruction of Jesus' life.[33]

These authors also made use of the growing field of Religionsgeschichtliche—the "history of religions"—which seemed to find sources for many Christian ideas in Greek and Oriental mystery cults, rather than in the life of Jesus and Palestinian Judaism.[34] 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."[35]

J. M. Robertson

J. M. Robertson, a Scottish journalist who later 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 possibly based on a conjectured divinity of that name reflected in the biblical Joshua.[36] 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.[37]

Robertson wrote that while the undisputed letters of Paul of Tarsus are the earliest surviving Christian writings, these epistles 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".[38] As a result, Robertson concluded that those elements of the Gospel narrative which attribute such characteristics to Jesus must have developed later, probably among Gentile believers who were converted by Jewish evangelists like Paul.[39] 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).[40] According to Robertson, such plays would have evolved over time into the gospels.[41] Christianity would have sought to further enhance its appeal to Gentiles by adopting myths from pagan cults, albeit with some "Judaic manipulation"— 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.[42] And while John's portrayal of Jesus as the logos was ostensibly Jewish, Robertson argued that the underlying concept ultimately derived from the function of Mithras, Thoth, and Hermes as representatives to humanity from the supreme god.

William Benjamin Smith

At around the same time, William Benjamin Smith, 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 therefore believed that Christianity's origins lay in a pre-Christian Jesus cult—that is, in a Jewish sect that had worshiped a divine being named Jesus in the centuries before the human Jesus was supposedly born.[43] Evidence for this cult was supposedly found in Hippolytus' mention of the Naassenes and Epiphanius' report of a Nazaraean or Nazorean sect that existed before Christ.[44] In this view the seemingly historical details in the New Testament were built by the early Christian community around narratives of the pre-Christian Jesus.[45] Smith also argued against the historical value of non-Christian writers regarding Jesus, particularly Josephus and Tacitus.[46]

Arthur Drews

Arthur Drews

Die Christusmythe ("The Christ Myth"), first published in 1909 by Arthur Drews, a professor of philosophy at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe,[47] 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 ever existed.[48]

His work proved popular enough in both his native Germany and abroad that prominent theologians and historians addressed his arguments in the Hibbert Journal, the American Journal of Theology, and other leading journals of religion.[49] At least two monographs on the historicity of Jesus were written partially in refutation of Drews.[50] In response to his critics, Drews participated 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. The New York Times called it 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" and "ruthless" that several women had to be carried from the hall screaming hysterically, while one woman stood on a chair and invited God to strike Drews down.[51]

Marx, Lenin, Soviet adoption

portrait photograph of Valdimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin

The theory was picked up by Karl Marx and became the official view of Marxism.[52] Several editions of Drews's The Christ Myth were published in the Soviet Union from the early 1920s onwards, and were used in the state's anti-religion campaigns; Lenin argued that it was imperative in the struggle against religious obscurantists to form a union with people like Drews.[53] Lenin, who led the Soviet state from 1917 to 1924, approached Drews's account as an established fact in his 1922 essay "On the importance of militant materialism."[54] That year, all religious books were removed from public libraries and bookshops, and Drews's theory was elevated to the rank of objective truth, included in school and university textbooks.[55] Public meetings asking "Did Christ live?" were organized in which the Commissar of Education, Anatoly Lunacharsky debated with clergymen.[56]

Academics in the USSR continued to promote the theory throughout the state's early history, and although the theory was never discarded, it came to be replaced by the explanation offered by Engels in his 1895 essay, "On the Early History of Christianity." The existence of Jesus was accepted, but the mythological aspects of the narrative were stressed, as was the debt owed to the Jews, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.[57]

John M. Allegro

Dead Sea Scrolls scholar John M. Allegro 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,[58] and that it had derived its central mythos from Essene sources. In a forward to The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth, Mark Hall writes that Allegro suggested the scrolls all but proved that a historical Jesus never existed. "According to Allegro," he wrote, "the Jesus of the gospels is a fictional character in a religious legend, which like many similar tales in circulation at the turn of the era, was merely an amalgamation of Messianic eschatology and garbled historical events".[59]

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,[60] 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).

Wells writes that there are three broad approaches to the historicity of Jesus—(1) that Jesus is almost or entirely fictional; (2) that he did exist but that reports about him are so saturated by myth that very little can be said of him with any confidence; and (3) that he not only existed, but that a core of historical facts can be disclosed about him.[61]

When Wells first addressed the issue in the 1970s, he saw the Jesus of the gospels as no more than a myth, but in the mid-1990s moved toward the second position, seeing the gospels as traceable to a Galilean preacher of the early first century whose teachings were preserved in the hypothetical Q document, the inferred source common to Matthew and Luke. This is the position he adopts from 1996 onwards.[62]

In The Jesus Myth, he argues that two Jesus narratives fused into one: Paul's mythical Jesus and a minimally historical Jesus.[63] Because he accepts some minimal historicity, he argues that he should not now be dubbed a "mythicist tout court", but nevertheless maintains that the historical evidence refers to "a personage who is not to be identified with the dying and rising Christ of the early epistles."[64]

Other writers

Other writers argued along similar lines during the 20th century. A. D. Loman wrote that episodes such as the Sermon on the Mount were fictions written to justify compilations of pre-existing liberal Jewish sayings. G. J. P. J. Bolland argued that Christianity evolved from Gnosticism and that Jesus was merely a symbolic figure representing Gnostic ideas about God.[65]

G. R. S. Mead wrote that Jesus was based on an obscure personage recorded in the Talmud who lived around 100 BCE. 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.[66] Peter Jensen saw Jesus as a Jewish adaptation of Gilgamesh whom Jensen regarded as a solar deity.[67] 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.[68]

The philosopher Bertrand Russell said in his 1927 lecture "Why I Am Not a Christian" that historically it is quite doubtful that Christ ever existed at all.[69] Similarly, Michael Martin dedicated the first half of his book, The Case Against Christianity, to expounding Wells' theories, concluding that the "argument against the historicity of Jesus is sound."[70]

21st century

By the 21st century, the non-existence of Jesus had become a dead thesis within academia.[71] Nevertheless, a number of proponents continued to advocate the theory, often through the internet.[72]

Robert M. Price

Robert M. Price at a microphone
Robert M. Price

American Theologian 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), and in his capacity as a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, a group that studies the historicity of Jesus' received biography. Price argues that Christianity is largely a Judaized synthesis of Egyptian, Greek, and Buddhist myths,[73] and that the New Testament's picture of Jesus is the historicization of a mythic dying-and-rising deity.[74] He bases his argument on the absence of contemporaneous sources who discuss a miracle-working Jesus, and argues that the epistles, written before the gospels, do not constitute evidence of his existence.[75]

Price believes that if critical methodology is applied with ruthless consistency, one is left in complete agnosticism regarding Jesus' historicity.[76] He argues that while it is possible that a historical Jesus stands behind the origins of the Christian movement, it is "almost arbitrary to think so"[77] and that "unless someone discovers his diary or his skeleton, we'll never know."[78] While recognizing that he stands against the majority view of scholars, he cautions against attempting to settle the issue by appeal to the majority, arguing that received opinion or the consensus of scholars may be wrong, and that appealing to it is an abdication of responsibility:[79] "I am glad to confess that the opinion of the majority of scholars makes no difference whatever to me. In fact, in the gospels, after all, it's the consensus of scholars in the Sanhedrin that condemns Jesus to death."[80]

Earl Doherty

Canadian writer Earl Doherty argues in a series of writings, including Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus (2009) and The Jesus Puzzle (2005), that no historical Jesus stands behind even the most primitive hypothetical sources of the New Testament.[81] He argues that Jesus was originally a myth derived from Middle Platonism with some influence from Jewish mysticism, and that belief in a historical Jesus emerged only among Christian communities in the second century.[82]

Doherty further argues that none of the major apologists before the year 180, except for Justin and Aristides of Athens, included an account of a historical Jesus in their defences of Christianity. Instead, he states, 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 a historical figure crucified and resurrected, and that the name Jesus does not appear in any of them.[82]

Other writers

Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy write that the gospels maintain that a Gnostic belief in a purely mythical Jesus was the original form of Christianity, which was supplanted then suppressed by the Catholic Church.[83] D. M. Murdock argues that virtually all the New Testament documents are "forgeries," with the gospels (all composed in the late second century) misrepresenting as historical a Jesus who was initially understood as a solar myth.[84]

Historical responses

The Christ myth theory has never achieved mainstream academic acceptance.[85] From its very inception it provoked scholarly refutations, often of rather dismissive sorts. The earliest of these were satirical treatments by Richard Whately and Jean-Baptiste Pérès entitled "Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Buonaparte" (1819)[86] and "Grand Erratum" (1827)[87] respectively. These works utilized the skepticism of Dupuis and others in a tongue-in-cheek fashion to argue against the historical existence of Napoleon Bonaparte—who was still alive at the time Whately published.[88]

In 1914, Fred C. Conybeare published The Historical Christ, in which he argued against Robertson, Drews, and Smith in favor of Jesus' historical existence.[89] Conybeare was followed by the French biblical scholar Maurice Goguel, who published Jesus of Nazareth: Myth or History? in 1926.[90] In this text, described by R. Joseph Hoffmann as "perhaps the best of its kind",[91] Goguel rejected arguments for a "pre-Christianity" and argued that prima facie evidence for a 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.[90]

Later editions of Albert Schweitzer's The Quest of the Historical Jesus likewise contained a lengthy section on the Christ myth theory, ultimately concluding, "... that Jesus did exist is exceedingly likely, whereas its converse is exceedingly unlikely."[92] Further refutations were produced in response to novel articulations of the theory 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. Responses to particular exponents of the theory have also been offered. Of the theory's more recent advocates, John Allegro,[93] G. A. Wells,[94] Robert Price,[95] Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy,[96] D. M. Murdock,[97] and Earl Doherty have each been the subject of such critical commentary.[98]

Arguments and counter-arguments

Further information: Historicity of Jesus

For the theory

Scarcity and unreliability of extra-biblical sources

Christ myth theorists often cite the lack of contemporaneous non-Christian sources that mention Jesus.[99] The few non-Christian sources that do refer to Jesus are rejected as corrupt (such as the remarks of Josephus) or viewed as dependent on the beliefs of later Christians (such as Tacitus’s passing reference to a Christ), and thus providing no independent corroboration.[100]

Advocates also sometimes reject the testimony of the Apostolic Fathers such as Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch, which seem to indicate an early belief in a historical Jesus. Their writings are either dismissed as forgeries, or the most pertinent passages in their works are bracketed as later interpolations.[101]

Evolution of New Testament literature

Proponents of the Christ myth theory note that among the New Testament documents, the epistles—specifically the undisputed epistles of Paul—constitute the oldest sources related to Jesus. Advocates also note that within this earliest stratum of Christian literature, references to biographical details and teachings associated with Jesus are relatively rare.[102] Further, the fuller depictions of Jesus’ life and ministry found in the gospels demonstrate a textual interdependence which Christ myth theory advocates argue undermines the notion that multiple independent sources stand behind the accounts. On this basis, proponents often theorize that the epistles present an early belief in a purely mythical savior-figure who was subsequently historicized (perhaps in a conscientiously allegorical fashion) by the Gospel According to Mark, with Matthew, Luke, and John further imaginatively embellishing Mark’s narrative in their own derivative gospels.[22]

Mythological parallels

Main article: Jesus Christ in comparative mythology
Depictions of two mothers, seated, with their respective children on their laps
Isis & Horus and Mary & Jesus

An argument commonly presented in connection with the Christ myth theory is that the biblical material related to the life of Jesus bears allegedly striking similarities to both Jewish and pagan stories which preceded it.[103] Parallels are often cited between Jesus and Old Testament figures such as Moses, Joseph, and Elisha and a wide range of pagan mythological personages.[104] For example, proponents have claimed that, according to classical mythological sources, Mithras was born to a virgin mother,[105] Horus had twelve disciples,[106] Attis was crucified,[107] and Osiris was resurrected from the dead.[108] Sometimes appeal is made to broader anthropological understandings of religion and ritual patterns of human behavior and generic dying and rising gods as postulated by James Frazer and others in such works as The Golden Bough.[109] Christ myth advocates believe that the parallels demonstrate borrowing, with the early Christian community adapting existing mythologies to their particular socio-religious tastes.[110] These parallels are further thought to extend to every identifiable element of Jesus' biography, rendering the biblical portrait of Jesus entirely explicable by reference to literary antecedents and thus making a historical figure superfluous.[111]

Against the theory

Multiple attestation among the gospels

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").[112] Additionally, mainsteam scholarship believes that relatively early material regarding the historical Jesus is found in the Gospel According to John.[113]

Pauline Epistles

a damaged portrait of the Apostle Paul
Apostle Paul, 1410s (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)

Contrary to the claims of advocates, many scholars turn to the epistles of Paul as evidence for a historical Jesus.[114] F. F. Bruce writes that according to the Apostle Paul, Jesus "was an Israelite, he says, descended from Abraham (Gal 3:16) and David (Rom. 1:3); who lived under the 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 His death (I Thess. 2:15); who was buried, rose the third day and was thereafter seen alive by many eyewitnesses on various occasions, including one occasion on which He was so seen by over five hundred at once, of whom the majority were alive twenty-five years later (I Cor. 15:4ff)."[115] In addition, the epistles testify that Paul knew of and had met important figures in Jesus' ministry including the apostle Peter and John as well as James the brother of Jesus, who is also mentioned in Josephus. Within his epistles, Paul on occasion alludes to and quotes the teachings of Jesus, and in 1 Corinthians 11 recounts the Last Supper.[115]

James D.G. Dunn has written that Christ myth theorist Robert Price with regard to the epistles ignores "what everyone else in the business regards as primary data." Dunn writes that Price's interpretation is "a ludicrous claim that simply diminishes the credibility of the arguments used in support."[116]

Principle of embarrassment

Along with others, the American philosopher and historian Will Durant has applied the criterion of embarrassment to the question of Jesus' existence, writing: "Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed—the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus' arrest, Peter's denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them."[117] He argues that if the gospels were entirely imaginative, these and other issues in the life of Christ would probably not exist; a purely creative narrative would likely present Jesus in strict conformity with preexisting messianic expectations. The fact that the New Testament documents record otherwise embarrassing elements therefore strongly indicates their rootedness in historical events.[118]

Josephus

Despite the misgivings of Christ myth theorists, Louis Feldman notes that mainstream scholarship believes the writings of the first century Jewish historian Josephus contain two authentic references to Jesus. One of these, Josephus' allusion in The Antiquities of the Jews to the death of James, is almost universally accepted as legitimate.[119] The reference, describing James as "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ", is seen as providing attestation independent of the early Christian community. Josephus' fuller reference to Jesus, known as the Testimonium Flavianum, while generally considered by specialists to contain later interpolations, is nevertheless believed by a solid majority of scholars to preserve an original comment regarding Jesus as well.[120]

Rejection of mythological parallels

A statue of a young man wearing a Phrygian cap, encased partly in rock, holding a knife and a torch
Mithras born from the rock

Mainstream critical scholarship rejects the argument that early material related to Jesus can be explained with reference to pagan mythological parallels.[121] Paula Fredriksen states that Jesus is to be understood against the backdrop of first century Palestinian Judaism and that "no serious work on Jesus places him outside that context",[122] an emphasis on broader Hellenistic religious categories having been largely abandoned within scholarly discussions.[123] Further, mainstream scholarship generally rejects the whole concept of homogenous dying and rising gods—[124] the validity of which is often presupposed by advocates of the Christ myth theory. The few academics who continue to support the "dying and rising gods" construct, such as Tryggve Mettinger, nevertheless repudiate the idea that Jesus fits the wider pattern.[125]

Edwin Yamauchi points out 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.[126] 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.[127] 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—[128] possibly after the rock had been inseminated.[129]

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,"[130] given their cultural background,[131] as evidenced by the strenuous opposition that Paul encountered from other Christians for even his minor concessions to Gentile believers.[132]

Methodological concerns

The church historian Geoffrey Bromiley writes that while many versions of the Christ myth theory assume that Christianity had obscure beginnings, such views fail to notice that early Christians appealed to historical events already known by the general public.[133] Further, early Christians opposed speculative and mythical notions concerning spiritual matters by appealing to eyewitness accounts of Jesus' life.[134]

While advocates rely on the absence of contemporaneous reference to Jesus,[135] and the silence of Paul regarding much of Jesus' life, specialists like R. T. France regard such arguments with deep suspicion, arguing that various sources may not mention Jesus for any number of reasons.[136] Further, while many Christ myth theorists draw parallels between early Christianity and Hellenistic mystery religions, relatively little is actually known about the beliefs and practices of the latter.[137] Scholars like Herbert George Wood have suggested that, given the above issues, the Christ myth theory can only be advocated in defiance of the available evidence.[138] A number of scholars, including Mark Allan Powell, the chairman of the Historical Jesus Section of the Society of Biblical Literature—a group of 8500 writers and scholars who study the biblical documents—classify it therefore as a form of denialism and compare it to a variety of fringe theories.[139]

Public opinion

A 2005 study conducted by Baylor University found that one percent of Americans in general and 13.7 percent of religiously unaffiliated Americans believe that Jesus is a fictional character.[140] Comparable figures in Britain indicated that 13 percent of the general population and 40 percent of atheists do not believe in the existence of Jesus, according to a 2008 ComRes poll,[141] while a 2009 McCrindle Research study found that 11 percent of Australians doubt that Jesus was a historical figure.[142]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Goguel 1926b, pp. 117–118; Meynell 1991, p. 166; Horbury 2003, p. 55
  2. ^ Stanton 2002, p. 145; Charlesworth 2006, p. xxiii; Ehrman 2007; Wells 1988, p. 218
  3. ^ McClymond 2004, pp. 23–24; Sloyan 1995, p. 9; Brunner 2002, p. 164; Wood 1934, pp. xxxiii & 54; Case 1912, pp. 76–77; Wright 2004, p. 48
  4. ^ a b Walsh 1998, p. 58
  5. ^ Goguel 1926b, p. 117-118
  6. ^ Macquarrie 1960, p. 93
  7. ^ a b White 2004, pp. 4, 12
  8. ^ E.g. Thompson 2005, p. 8
  9. ^ Meynell 1991, p. 166; Horbury 2003, p. 55
  10. ^ Goguel 1926a, p. 11; McClymond 2004, p. 24; cf. Bornkamm 1995, p. 28
  11. ^ Goguel 1926a, p. 14; Van Voorst 2003, p. 658
  12. ^ Schweitzer 2001, p. 355; Weaver 1999, p. 45
  13. ^ Wells 1969; Schweitzer 2001, p. 527 n. 1; Volney 1791; Dupuis 2007
  14. ^ Wells 1969, pp. 153–156
  15. ^ Wells 1969, pp. 159–160
  16. ^ Wells 1969, p. 151
  17. ^ Wells 1969, p. 155
  18. ^ Wells 1969, p. 157
  19. ^ a b Goguel 1926b, p. 117
  20. ^ Schweitzer 2001, p. 356
  21. ^ Solmsen 1970, pp. 277–279
  22. ^ a b c Schweitzer 2001, pp. 124–128
  23. ^ Schweitzer 2001, pp. 128–136
  24. ^ Schweitzer 2001, pp. 124, 139–140
  25. ^ Engels 1882; Pfleiderer 1893; Moggach 2003, p. 184
  26. ^ Fiensy 1995, p. 91
  27. ^ Pfleiderer 1893
  28. ^ Schweitzer 2001, pp. 140–141
  29. ^ Van Voorst 2003, p. 658
  30. ^ Schweitzer 2001, pp. 356, 527 n. 4; Van Voorst 2000, p. 10
  31. ^ Johnson 1887; unknown 1904
  32. ^ Weaver 1999, pp. 46–47; Schweitzer 2001, pp. 359–361
  33. ^ Weaver 1999, p. 47
  34. ^ Arvidsson 2006, pp. 116–117
  35. ^ Klausner 1989, pp. 105–106
  36. ^ Robertson 1902, pp. 6–12; Weaver 1999, p. 58
  37. ^ Robertson 1902, pp. 14–15
  38. ^ Robertson 1902, pp. 2–3
  39. ^ Robertson 1903
  40. ^ Robertson 1902, pp. 21, 32–33
  41. ^ Robertson 1902, pp. 87–89
  42. ^ Robertson 1902, pp. 22–25
  43. ^ Case 1911, p. 627
  44. ^ Schweitzer 2001, p. 375
  45. ^ Schweitzer 2001, p. 378
  46. ^ Van Voorst 2000, p. 12
  47. ^ Drews 1998
  48. ^ Weaver 1999, p. 50
  49. ^ Gerrish 1975, pp. 3–4
  50. ^ Case 1912; Conybeare 2009
  51. ^ Case 1911, p. 2 n. 1; unknown 1910, p. 1
  52. ^ Evans 1993, p. 7 n. 22
  53. ^ Haber 1999, p. 347
  54. ^ Thrower 1983, p. 426
  55. ^ Nikiforov 2003, p. 749; Metzger 1956, pp. 246–247
  56. ^ Peris 1998, p. 178
  57. ^ Thrower 1983, pp. 425 ff.
  58. ^ Allegro 1970
  59. ^ Allegro 1992, p. ix
  60. ^ Stanton & 2002 143
  61. ^ Wells 2009, pp. 327–328
  62. ^ Wells 2009, pp. 14–15
  63. ^ Wells 1999a
  64. ^ Wells 2000
  65. ^ Bolland 1907
  66. ^ Goguel 1926a, pp. 22–23; Schweitzer 2001, pp. 279–283
  67. ^ Goguel 1926a, p. 23; Schweitzer 2001, pp. 369–372
  68. ^ Wheless 1930
  69. ^ Russell 1967, p. 16
  70. ^ Martin 1930, p. 67
  71. ^ Dunn 1998, p. 191
  72. ^ Breen 2008, p. 138; McClymond 2004, pp. 23–24
  73. ^ Price 2009b
  74. ^ Price 2009a, pp. 75–77
  75. ^ Price 2009a, pp. 62–63
  76. ^ Price 2003, p. 351
  77. ^ Price 1999a
  78. ^ Quoted in Jacoby 2010, p. 97
  79. ^ Price 2009a, p. 61
  80. ^ Price 1999b, timestamp 22:42
  81. ^ Doherty & 2000?
  82. ^ a b Doherty 1997
  83. ^ Freke & Gandy 1999, p. 10
  84. ^ Murdock 1999, pp. 33 & 40; Murdock 1999, pp. 36–40; Murdock 1999, pp. 146 ff.
  85. ^ Evans 1993, p. 8
  86. ^ Whately 1874
  87. ^ Pérès 1905
  88. ^ Evans 1905, pp. 5 ff.
  89. ^ Conybeare 2009
  90. ^ a b Goguel 1926a
  91. ^ Hoffmann 2006, p. 34
  92. ^ Schweitzer 2001, pp. 435–436
  93. ^ Habermas 1996, p. 46
  94. ^ Marshall 2004, pp. 15–16
  95. ^ Dunn 2009, p. 98; Evans 2008, p. 25; Costa 2009
  96. ^ Wright 2004, p. 48
  97. ^ Ehrman 2007, p. 55
  98. ^ Crossan 2000
  99. ^ Eddy & Boyd 2007, p. 165; E.g. Wells 1971, p. 2
  100. ^ Eddy & Boyd 2007, p. 166; E.g. Van Voorst 2000, p. 12
  101. ^ E.g. Price 2000, p. 27; Price 1999b, timestamp 54:37; Murdock 2004, p. 412
  102. ^ Eddy & Boyd 2007, p. 201; E.g. Doherty & 2001?
  103. ^ Eddy & Boyd 2007, p. 133
  104. ^ Murdock 2007, pp. 114–122; Freke & Gandy 1999, pp. 4–6
  105. ^ Robertson 1903, pp. 338–340
  106. ^ Murdock 2009, pp. 261–284
  107. ^ Murdock 1999, pp. 107
  108. ^ Freke & Gandy 1999, p. 56
  109. ^ Drews 1998, pp. 66–67, et al.; this despite the fact that Frazer himself was quite dismissive of the theory: Frazer 1919, p. 311
  110. ^ Eddy & Boyd 2007, pp. 134 ff. E.g. Price 2009b
  111. ^ Price 2009a
  112. ^ Puskas & Crump 2008, pp. 53–54
  113. ^ Bauckham 2006, pp. 358 ff.
  114. ^ E.g. Barnett 2001, pp. 57–58
  115. ^ a b Bruce 1977, pp. 19–20
  116. ^ Dunn 2009, p. 96
  117. ^ Durant 1972, p. 557
  118. ^ Segal 2005
  119. ^ Feldman 1992, pp. 990–991
  120. ^ Quoted in Habermas & Licona 2004, pp. 268–269
  121. ^ Bromiley 1982, p. 1034; Dunn 1992, p. 566
  122. ^ Fredriksen 2000, p. xxvi; cp. Witherington 2009
  123. ^ Evans 1993, pp. 17–18
  124. ^ Smith 1994, p. 70; Mettinger 2001, p. 7
  125. ^ Mettinger 2001, p. 221
  126. ^ Yamauchi 1974
  127. ^ Bevan 1929, p. 105; Forbes 2009, timestamp 2:47
  128. ^ Ulansey 1991, p. 35
  129. ^ Burkert 1989, p. 155 n. 40
  130. ^ Brandon 1959, p. 128
  131. ^ Grant 1995, p. 199
  132. ^ Metzger 1968, p. 7
  133. ^ Bromiley 1982, p. 1034
  134. ^ Henry 1999, p. 162
  135. ^ John E. Remsburg's list of authors from the period who did not mention Jesus, published in his book The Christ, has been influential in this regard.
  136. ^ France 1986, pp. 19 ff.
  137. ^ Ehrman 2007, p. 55
  138. ^ Wood 1934, p. xxxiii; Köstenberger 1999, p. 216
  139. ^ Powell 1998, p. 168; cp. Bevan 1930, p. 256, Crossan 2000, McClymond 2004, pp. 23–24, Wright 2004, p. 48, Perrin 2007, pp. 31–32, McGrath 2010
  140. ^ Stark 2008, p. 63; Bader 2006, p. 14
  141. ^ ComRes 2008
  142. ^ Zwartz 2009; Centre for Public Christianity 2009

References

Further reading

Books
Papers/reviews
Debates
Advocacy and Rebutting Sites
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