Christ myth theory

Christ myth theory
The Resurrection of Christ by Noel Coypel (1700). Christ myth theorists see this as one of a number of stories about dying and rising gods.
Description	The New Testament account of the life of Jesus is a myth ranging from historical to so filled with myth and legend as well as internal contradictions and historical irregularities that at best no meaningful verification regarding Jesus of Nazareth (including his very existence) can be extracted from them.
Early proponents	Charles François Dupuis (1742–1809) Constantin-François Volney (1757–1820) Bruno Bauer (1809–1882) Arthur Drews (1865–1935)
Modern proponents	G.A. Wells, Alvar Ellegård, Robert M. Price, Richard Carrier, Earl Doherty
Subject	Ancient history

The term Christ myth theory (also known as the Jesus myth theory, Jesus Myth, and Christ Myth) in its broadest context refers to the idea that the person named Jesus referred in the Gospels is a myth.

However, there is ambiguity in the meaning of the word myth:

• It can refer to the story of a historical person or event that ranges from almost totally accurate to nearly entirely false

• It can refer to a fictional story that may or may not have historical details (including actual people) woven into it.

Thus, there is a large variance regarding how the Gospel Jesus is a myth; for instance:

• The Jesus character could be a pure allegoric myth to which historical details (possibly including an actual obscure 1st century teacher of the same name) were added later, forming a composite character. Some scholars contend that Christianity emerged organically from Hellenistic Judaism, drawing on perceived parallels between the early stories of Jesus and the gods of Greek, Egyptian, and other cultures (especially dying and rising deities).
• The Jesus character could be a myth that grew up around a historical Jesus who devised the founding tenets of his new religion. Some scholars accept that Jesus did live in the 1st century but that the Gospel version is a composite character made of several would-be Christs and that no one particular person can be said to be the founder of Christianity, while others say that the Gospel version is based on a single individual who lived around 100 BCE and who was made to seem of the 1st century CE.

• The Gospel account of Jesus is so full of myth and legend that determining the historical accuracy of anything reasonably close to the man described is impossible.

Supporters of the various Christ myth theories point to the lack of any known written references to Jesus before his crucifixion, the fact that almost all sources after the crucifixion are by Christians, and the relative scarcity and disputed veracity of non-Christian references to him in the 1st century.

The majority of historians agree with the existence of an historical Jesus, although G. A. Wells commented about the New Testament as being treated in a "very special and privileged way, not accorded to secular documents, nor even to the early documents of any other religion; for no Christian historian would be willing to accept as completely true any non-Christian document which abounded in miracles." Nearly all Bible scholars involved with historical Jesus research maintain that the existence of the New Testament Jesus can be established using documentary and other evidence, although they differ on the degree to which material about him in the New Testament should be taken at face value.

There is no independent archaeological evidence to support the historical existence of Jesus Christ. The discovery in 2002 of the alleged James Ossuary containing the inscription Ya'akov bar-Yosef akhui diYeshua (In English, "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus") would have been regarded as evidence had the artifact been deemed authentic. The recent 2007 claim about the Talpiot Tomb, originally discovered in 1980, that it contained the remains of Jesus Christ based upon the inscription "Jesus, son of Joseph" could also have been deemed as evidence, had the claims been accepted by mainstream archaeologists and Biblical scholars.

Context

Because the term "Christ Myth" has been used to refer to the story that grew up around a man named Jesus, as well as to the idea that the man did not exist as a flesh and blood person, there is great confusion in the literature regarding the meaning of the term "Christ myth theory". Authors such as John Remsburg and Dan Barker make a distinction between the Jesus of the Gospels and Christianity (Jesus of Bethlehem), and a possible Jesus of history (Jesus of Nazareth), but many other authors do not, creating confusion over the definition of "Christ myth".

Ambiguity in the meaning of "myth" and "mythicist"

Main article: Mythology

Further information: Jesus Christ in comparative mythology

Folklorists define myths as "tales believed as true, usually sacred, set in the distant past or other worlds or parts of the world, and with extra-human, inhuman, or heroic characters". Other fields sometimes use other definitions of "myth". For example, the Oedipus story is often called a myth even though for folkorists it falls into the category of folktale. "Myth" and "legend" have been used as synonyms, as with the stories of King Arthur and Robin Hood. "Myth" has also been used in reference to stories of the Spanish Inquisition using torture devices such as the Iron maiden and Choke pear, and the power it supposedly had in medieval Spain.

In his 1909 book, The Christ the religious skeptic John Eleazer Remsburg made a clear distinction between a possible Jesus of history (Jesus of Nazareth), and the Jesus of the New Testament and Christianity (Jesus of Bethlehem), saying that the latter was a mythical character who did not exist.

Remsburg then went further using David Strauss and John Fiske to explain that there were three kinds of myths: Historical, Philosophical, and Poetical.

• A Historical myth is "a real event colored by the light of antiquity, which confounded the human and divine, the natural and the supernatural. The event may be but slightly colored and the narrative essentially true, or it may be distorted and numberless legends attached until but a small residuum of truth remains and the narrative is essentially false. A large portion of ancient history, including the Biblical narratives, is historical myth. The earliest records of all nations and of all religions are more or less mythical."

• "A Philosophical myth is an idea clothed in the caress of historical narrative. When a mere idea is personified and presented in the form of a man or a god it is called a pure myth. Many of the gods and heroes of antiquity are pure myths."

• "A Poetical myth is a blending of the historical and philosophical, embellished by the creations of the imagination. The poems of Homer and Hesiod, which were the religious text books of the ancient Greeks, and the poetical writings of the Bible, which helped to form and foster the Semitic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism, belong to this class."

Remsburg stated that "(i)t is often difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish a historical from a philosophical myth. Hence the non-agreement of Freethinkers in regard to the nature of the Christ myth. Is Christ a historical or a philosophical myth? Does an analysis of his alleged history disclose the deification of a man, or merely the personification of an idea?" Remsburg pointed to Strauss' "Leben Jesu" as an example of the historical myth and the ideas of Thaddeus B. Wakeman as an example of philosophical myth regarding Jesus.

Remsburg concluded the chapter by saying that while all Freethinkers could agree that the Christ of the New Testament was a myth, there was disagreement regarding whether there was an actual man behind that myth, and as to how much of the myth was genuine history.

In 1946 Archibald Robertson published Jesus: Myth or History?. There he defined mythicist as simply being "the upholder of the theory that Jesus is a myth" and acknowledged that in his 1900 Christianity and mythology the mythicist "(John M.) Robertson is prepared to concede the possibility of an historical Jesus, perhaps more than one man having contributed something to the Gospel story."

In 1989 the then senior editor of Free Inquiry magazine, Gorden Stein, wrote "Not all mythicists agree with each other about what they view as the correct explanation of the origin of Christianity and of the Jesus myth. (...) The mythicist denies the supernatural aspect of Jesus. He may also deny the "great moral teacher" aspect of Jesus. Some mythicists would also try to deny that even an ordinary man (a traveling magician, perhaps) existed and served as a basis for the myth that predated him and grew around him. Other mythicists would claim that whether a mere man named Jesus ever existed at the time then the Christian era began is an impossible thing to either prove or disprove today"

In 2004 Biblical scholar I. Howard Marshall maintained that the term "historical Jesus" has two meanings: that Jesus existed, rather than being a totally fictional creation like King Lear or Dr. Who, or that the Gospel accounts give a reasonable account of historical events, rather than being unverifiable legends such as those surrounding King Arthur. Because of this ambiguity in the meaning of "historical Jesus", Marshall states, "We shall land in considerable confusion if we embark on an inquiry about the historical Jesus if we do not pause to ask ourselves exactly what we are talking about. This echoes Remsburg's range of historical myth going from a 'slightly colored but essentially true narrative' to a 'narrative so distorted by legend as to be essentially false'.

Meaning of "fiction"

In the Jesus: Fact or Fiction? debate between Robert M. Price and Rev. John Rankin, Price states "there are four senses in which Jesus Christ may be said to be a 'fiction:'"

1. "the central figure of the gospels is not based on any historical individual", i.e. the Gospel is little more than "a synthetic construct of theologians, a symbolic 'Uncle Sam' figure."
2. "the "historical Jesus" reconstructed by New Testament scholars is always a reflection of the individual scholars who reconstruct him" to the point that "even if there was a historical Jesus lying back of the gospel Christ, he can never be recovered. If there ever was a historical Jesus, there isn't one any more."
3. "Jesus as the personal savior, with whom people claim, as I used to, to have a 'personal relationship' is in the nature of the case a fiction, essentially a psychological projection, an 'imaginary playmate.'"
4. "Christ is a fiction in that Christ functions, in an unnoticed and equivocal way, as shorthand for a vast system of beliefs and institutions on whose behalf he is invoked."

Meaning of the whole term

Sources that try to actually define the entire term "Christ Myth theory" and "Jesus Myth Theory" only add to the confusion in that the supplied definitions are either vague or conflict with other equally reliable references.

For example, the 1988 edition of the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia defines Christ Myth Theory thus: "(the) view states that the story of Jesus is a piece of mythology, possessing no more substantial claims to historical fact than the old Greek or Norse stories of gods and heroes, and its basis is sought in the parallels, actual or legendary, to the Gospel records concerning Jesus", and then presents Lucian, G. A. Wells, Bertrand Russell, and P Graham as examples of this concept. Lucian, however, never said that Jesus did not exist as a flesh and blood man, but rather mocked the story of Jesus and the belief of Christians; Wells has stated, even in his pre-Jesus Legend works, that Paul's Jesus was mythical in the legendary sense of the word (ie historical myth); and Russell and Graham both "left open the question of whether there was such a figure as Jesus of Nazareth as the Gospels portray Him." Furthermore, both Greek and Norse myth stories have a huge range of theories regarding their origins including distortions of actual historical events As late as 1919 it was stated "Osiris, Attis, Adonis were men. They died as men; they rose as gods" and these three with Mithras are the cults Bromiley says that Jesus' death and resurrection story suggests to some minds as being a variant of. So you are left uncertain if Martin are defining Christ myth theory in terms of historical or philosophical myth.

George Walsh in The Role of Religion in History takes a different tack: "[W]e have to explain the origin of Christianity, and in so doing we have to choose between two alternatives. One alternative is to say that it originated in a myth which was later dressed up as history. The other is to say that it originated with one historical individual who was later mythologized into a supernatural being. The theory that Jesus was originally a myth is called the Christ-myth theory, and the theory that he was an historical individual is called the historical Jesus theory." This leaves the issues of Robertson, Mead, and Ellegård, who suggested that there may have at least one flesh and blood Jesus behind the myth, being called "Christ mythers", and Wells stating his current mythical Jesus of Paul coming first as not being part of the Christ myth because it now accepts a 1st century Jesus as being behind the Q Gospel. Furthermore, there is the matter of C.H. Dodd who in the 1938 University of Chicago published History and the gospel under the page heading of "Christ Myth theory" stated "Or alternatively, they seized upon the report of an obscure Jewish holy-man bearing this name, and arbitrarily attached the "cult-myth" to him."

There are several scholars that define the Christ myth theory as Jesus not existing as a human being at all;; however, this doesn't agree with "Christ mythers" such as Volney, Robertson, Mead, Ellegård, and Pre-Jesus Legend Wells who held there was at least one flesh and blood man involved.

Most works define the term Christ myth theory vaguely as "Jesus never existed" with no details as to what that actually means.

Spectrum of Historicity of Jesus

"Cristo crucificado" by Diego Velázquez (c. 1632). Tradition dates the crucifixion of Jesus to around 30 CE.

Further information: Chronology of Jesus, Jesus and history, and Origins of Christianity

Biblical scholar I. Howard Marshall wrote there are "two views of the historical Jesus which stand at the opposite ends of a spectrum of opinion about him." At one extreme is the view that Jesus never existed, and that the gospels describe an essentially fictional person. At the other extreme is the view that the gospels portray events exactly as they happened, and each event depicted in the New Testament is the literal truth. The question then arises of, when talking about a historical Jesus, is one talking about the man existing or of the Gospel account of him being reasonably accurate?

It is unhelpful that breaking this spectrum down into categories tends to be dependent on the author in question.

The Return of Persephone by Frederic Leighton (1891).

Biblical scholars Paul Eddy and Gregory Boyd, who break the spectrum of opinion into four ideal-typical positions as a useful heuristic, call the first three the "legendary-Jesus thesis," namely that the picture of Jesus in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke is mostly or entirely historically inaccurate.

• 1. Mythic-Jesus theory: the gospels describe a virtually, and perhaps entirely, fictitious person, or the Gospel accounts are so filled with legend, myth, and contradictions that there is no reliable way to show that any of it, including the very existence of the man described, is rooted in history. This view is represented to varying degrees by Bruno Bauer, Arthur Drews, G.A. Wells, and Robert Price. Wells' Jesus Myth and Jesus Legend, which accept a historical Jesus behind Q, are cited as examples of this Mythic-Jesus theory.
  2. 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 view is represented by Rudolf Bultmann and Burton Mack.
  3. 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 represent this view, one that Eddy and Boyd write is increasingly common among New Testament scholars.
  4. The gospels are reliable historical sources, and critical historiography should not rule out the possibility of supernatural occurrence, a view represented by John P. Meier and N.T. Wright.

For comparison, the categorizes of Remsburg (1909) are as follows:

• 1. "Jesus Christ is a pure myth — he never had an existence, except as a Messianic idea, or an imaginary solar deity."
  2. "Many radical Freethinkers believe that Christ is a myth, of which Jesus of Nazareth is the basis, but these narratives are so legendary and contradictory as to be almost, if not wholly, unworthy of credit.
  3. "Jesus of Nazareth is a historical character and these narratives, eliminating the supernatural elements, which they regard as myths, give a fairly authentic account of his life."
  4. "Christ is a historical character, supernatural and divine; and the New Testament narratives, which purport to give a record of his life and teachings, contain nothing but infallible truth."

Those of Dan Barker (2006)are:

• 1. "Jesus never existed at all and the myth came into being through a literary process."
  2. "Other skeptics deny that the Jesus character portrayed in the New Testament existed, but there could have been a first century personality after whom the exaggerated myth was patterned."
  3. "Jesus did exist, and some parts of the New Testament are accurate, although the miracles and the claim to deity are due to later editing of the original story." (Barker)
  4. "The New Testament is basically true in all of its accounts except that there are natural explanations for the miracle stories."

Volney, Frazer, Remsburg, Robertson, Mead, Ellegård, and Wells, who accepted the possibility of a historical Jesus being involved in the myth, have been put into some form of the Christ Myth theory category.

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.

Three pillars of the theory

While versions of the Christ Myth theory range from the position that Jesus existed, but the Gospels tell us next to nothing about the actual man, to the idea that the Jesus of the Gospels is a pure allegoric myth, they all have three pillars, according to the New Testament scholar Robert M. Price, who argues it is likely there never was an historical Jesus, and that the Gospel version is in essence a composite character and therefore impossible to verify as a single historical person:

• The Pauline epistles, earlier than the gospels, do not provide evidence of a recent historical Jesus.
• There is no mention of a miracle-working Jesus in secular sources.
• 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.

Price writes that Christian apologists have tried to minimize these parallels. In Deconstructing Jesus, Price argues that, unlike Alexander the Great, Caesar Augustus, Cyrus, and King Arthur, Jesus has no residue that does not fit the myth cycle nor is he intricately woven into the history of the time. Price concludes that "Jesus must be categorized with other legendary founder figures including the Buddha, Krishna, and Lao-tzu. There may have been a real figure there, but there is simply no longer any way of being sure.”

Pauline epistles

Paul, 1410s (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)

The composition of the letters of Paul of Tarsus is generally dated between 49 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 known 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 a 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 allegedly 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.

Argument from Silence

Supporters of the various versions of the Christ Myth theory point out that if the Gospel account was historically accurate then there would be independent secular sources referencing the events described. However as Biblical scholar L. Michael White admits, so far as we know, 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. The earliest writings that survive are the letters of Paul of Tarsus, written 20–30 years after the dates given for Jesus's death. Paul was not a companion of Jesus, White writes, nor does he ever claim to have seen Jesus before his death.

However apologists do point to several sources as evidence: Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Thallus, and Pliny the Younger. Christ Myth theory supporters point out that all these sources are written at decades after the supposed events, only Josephus and Tacitus appear to have any clear reference to the Gospel Jesus, and only Josephus used the name "Jesus" rather than the title "Christ" and was actually written in the 1st century CE.

Josephus

Further information: Josephus on Jesus

Louis Feldman argues that the writings of the 1st century Jewish historian Josephus (37 – c.100) contain two references to the Jesus character. One of them, Josephus' allusion in The Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94) to the death of James, describes James as "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ", provides alleged attestation independent of the early Christian community; however several scholars have pointed out the end of the passage seems to identify this Jesus as the son of Damneus and that he was made high priest. It has also been pointed out this account dates the event to c64 CE while the accounts regarding the death of James given by Hegesippus, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, and Early Christian tradition all date the event to c70 CE.

Earlier manuscripts of works by Josephus also contained other references to Jesus Christ that have not survived in our current versions (notably a reference mentioned by Saint Jerome, ignored by modern scholars).

Two manuscripts located in the Bibliothèque nationale de France by John of Damascus entitled "On the Orthodox Faith" contain references to Josephus describing the appearance of Jesus: "...since also Josephus the Jew, as some say... records in the same way that the Lord appeared with joined eyebrows, beautiful eyes, a long aspect [or face], both humped over and well grown."; this passage is no longer included in current translations of John of Damascus. Andrew of Crete added that Josephus "also describes the appearance of the Mother of God."

The fuller reference to Jesus contained in our existing manuscripts, the famous and disputed passage known as the Testimonium Flavianum, considered by many specialists to contain later interpolations, is nevertheless believed by some scholars to preserve an original comment regarding Jesus as well, although there has been no consensus on which portions of it have been altered, or to what degree, with different scholars presenting their own independent versions of the Testimonium.

John Remsburg in his 1909 book The Christ presents many notable scholars of his day such as Rev. Dr. Giles, Rev. S. Baring-Gould, Dr. Chalmers, Dean Milman, Canon Farrar, Theodor Keim, Adolph Hausrath, Rev. Dr. Hooykaas, and Alexander Campbell, who rejected the Testimonium Flavianum in whole or in part. Of the phrase "who was called the Christ" he says: "(n)early all the authorities that I have quoted reject it" and claims "(t)o identify the James of Josephus with James the Just, the brother of Jesus, is to reject the accepted history of the primitive church which declares that James the Just died in 69 A.D., seven years after the James of Josephus was condemned to death by the Sanhedrin." Remsburg then states "The fact that the early fathers, who were acquainted with Josephus, and who would have hailed with joy even this evidence of Christ's existence, do not cite it, while Origen expressly declares that Josephus has not mentioned Christ, is conclusive proof that it did not exist until the middle of the third century or later."

Similarly in The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus (1912) Arthur Drews stated: "(i)n the edition of Origen published by the Benedictines it is said that there was no mention of Jesus at all in Josephus before the time of Eusebius (about 300 A.D., Ecclesiast. Hist., 1, 11). Moreover, in the sixteenth century Vossius had a manuscript of the text of Josephus in which there was not a word about Jesus" as proof that both the "who was called Christ" phrase and the Testimonium Flavianum were interpolations.

Several scholars have pointed that even if the "who was called Christ" phrase was genuine there are still many interpretations that make it useless as evidence. Drews in The Witness To The Historicity of Jesus says "brother" could have just mean the James referred to here belonged to a sect that venerated a Messiah called Jesus. Similarly Mason in Josephus and the New Testament admits that Christ simply means "wetted" or anointed, and this was the practice by which kings and high priests of Israel were installed (per Exodus 29:9 and 1 Samuel 10:1), and this could have simply been a nickname rather than a title. Logically this means that the "who was called Christ" could refer to Jesus son of Damneus and have no connection to the Jesus of the Bible.

G. A. Wells has noted that the Testimonium was unknown to Origen, stating "Origen could not have known it because in his polemic against Celsus he professes admiration for Josephus 'although he did not believe in Jesus as Christ', whereas in the interpolated passage [the Testimonium] Josephus is made expressly to say of Jesus 'he was the Christ'." Wells further observed that "Origen's comments on Josephus' mention of James do not square with the passage on James from the Antiquities of the Jews," adding "the passage about James that is in the extant manuscripts of Josephus does not link his murder with the siege of Jerusalem."

Contemporary Biblical scholars like John P. Meier argue part of the reason why the passages about Christianity in Josephus are authentic is because they exist in all relevant manuscripts - Clare K. Rothschild (Associate Professor of Theology at Lewis University) has censured this argument on the basis that "the earliest manuscript dates from the eleventh century", the Ambrosianus 370 (F 128) being the earliest; preserved in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. Clare Rothschild has also cited the account by J. Spencer Kennard, who wrote "that Thomas Gale of Cambridge had large Greek fragments of Josephus not in the textus receptus: we do not know what became of them, and we are left to wonder whether their suppression was not deliberate."

Philo of Alexandria

Further information: Philo

Just as apologists have their list of sources, Christ Mythers have their list of people who, if one assumes the Gospels' account is reasonably accurate, should have written about Jesus but didn't (usually a variant of the list Remsburg produced in 1909), and topping this list is Philo of Alexandria:

Philo was born before the beginning of the Christian era, and lived until long after the reputed death of Christ. He wrote an account of the Jews covering the entire time that Christ is said to have existed on earth. He was living in or near Jerusalem when Christ's miraculous birth and the Herodian massacre occurred. He was there when Christ made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. He was there when the crucifixion with its attendant earthquake, supernatural darkness and resurrection of the dead took place——when Christ himself rose from the dead and in the presence of many witnesses ascended into heaven. These marvelous events which must have filled the world with amazement, had they really occurred, were unknown to him. It was Philo who developed the doctrine of the Logos, or Word, and although this Word incarnate dwelt in that very land and in the presence of multitudes revealed himself and demonstrated his divine powers, Philo saw it not.

Apologists who acknowledge the issue with Philo point out that he lived in Alexandria, and the actual Jesus may have been so minor at that time that Philo simply missed him. Some Christ Myth supporters point out that in Philo's Embassy to Gaius (c40 CE), in addition to claiming that he was part of a embassy sent by the Alexandrian Jews to Emperor Caligula regarding his plans to erect a statue of himself in the temple of Jerusalem (showing that he and other Alexandrians were aware of major events in both Rome and Jerusalem), he writes about the cruel and poor leadership of Pontius Pilate for a full chapter and yet there is not one mention of Jesus. They also point out that his On Providence seems to indicate that Philo did personally visit Jerusalem near the end of his life.

Other Christ mythers point out that in Flaccus IV (c39 CE) Philo talks about Carabbas whose treatment by his tormentors eerily mirrors that of Jesus in Matthew:

Flaccus IV; Philo

Gospel of Matthew

(36) There was a certain madman named Carabbas ... this man spent all his days and nights naked in the roads, minding neither cold nor heat, the sport of idle children and wanton youths; (37) and they, driving the poor wretch as far as the public gymnasium, and setting him up there on high that he might be seen by everybody, flattened out a leaf of papyrus and put it on his head instead of a diadem, and clothed the rest of his body with a common door mat instead of a cloak and instead of a scepter they put in his hand a small stick of the native papyrus which they found lying by the way side and gave to him; (38) and when, like actors in theatrical spectacles, he had received all the insignia of royal authority, and had been dressed and adorned like a king, the young men bearing sticks on their shoulders stood on each side of him instead of spear-bearers, in imitation of the bodyguards of the king, and then others came up, some as if to salute him, and others making as though they wished to plead their causes before him, and others pretending to wish to consult with him about the affairs of the state. (39) Then from the multitude of those who were standing around there arose a wonderful shout of men calling out Maris!; and this is the name by which it is said that they call the kings among the Syrians; for they knew that Agrippa [King Herod of the Jews] was by birth a Syrian, and also that he was possessed of a great district of Syria of which he was the sovereign;

27:26 Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. 27:27 Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers. 27:28 And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe. 27:29 And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!

and yet Philo again makes no mention of Jesus despite the similarities with Carabbas. The question that these Christ mythers ask is: how did Philo, who took the time to note some obscure naked crazy man, miss the actions of Jesus who by the Gospel account attracted thousands, was tried by the local Priests on the eve of one of their most Holy days, and Pontius Pilate tried to save by offering a murderer of Roman citizens to the mob which the priests had stirred up?

Mythological parallels

While the idea that the story of Jesus had mythological parallels can be traced as far back as Celsus (c180 CE) actual modern scholarship on the idea goes only back to Volney and Dupuis. However, due to the quality of the material then available various parallels to dying and rising gods were made that later scholarship showed didn't exist.

However, in his 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces Joseph Campbell advanced the theory that a single myth stood behind the stories of Krishna, Buddha, Apollonius of Tyana, Jesus and other hero stories. In his later The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology Campbell stated "(i)t is clear that, whether accurate or not as to biographical detail, the moving legend of the Crucified and Risen Christ was fit to bring a new warmth, immediacy, and humanity, to the old motifs of the beloved Tammuz, Adonis, and Osiris cycles."

Marvin Meyer, Professor of Bible and Christian Studies at Chapman University, identifies a number of similarities, and says that the resemblance between Christianity and Mithraism is close enough to make Christian apologists scramble to invent creative theological explanations to account for the similarities.

Some 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 1st 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 University, is one of the academics who supports the "dying and rising gods" construct, but he argues that Jesus does not fit the wider pattern.

Christian apologist 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 argues 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.

The solar deity connection

Volney and Dupuis were the first modern scholars to claim a connection between Jesus and previous solar deities. However, later scholarship showed that various details required for these connections were flawed due to the lack of available accurate information on which to base the theories. In particular, the December 25 date for Jesus' birth was found to have not been part of the original oral tradition but rather an Emperor decree made in 334 CE.

In fact, before this decree there was a great deal of debate regarding exactly when Jesus had been born. Some held it was January 6 (the actual birthday of Osiris), while others using Luke's reference of shepherds keeping watch over their flocks at night stated that meant that it had to be somewhere between March and November. Tertullian and Hippolytus of Rome held for March 25th, while Clement of Alexandria argued for May 20, and still others pointed to the Essene custom of couples having sex in December so that the child would be born in September and that Mary's immaculate conception was in January to argue for a September to October birth month.

However, despite the evidence of the December 25 date being added several centuries after external evidence for the Gospel birth story of Jesus existing (c180), this, along with other controversial and debated claims (such as the conception of Horus as outlined in the Myth of Osiris and Isis), is still presented by some supporters of the Christ Myth theory as valid evidence such as demonstrated by the works of Acharya S and the movie Zeitgeist (2007)

History of the concept

2nd through 17th centuries

Docetism

Docetism is the belief that Jesus' physical existence was an illusion, holding that he was incorporeal, a pure spirit, and hence could not physically die.

In 1977, Classicist Michael Grant seemed to make a connection between the various versions of the Christ myth theory and docetism:

"This skeptical way of thinking reached its culmination in the argument that Jesus as a human being never existed at all and is a myth. In ancient times, this extreme view was named the heresy of docetism (seeming) because it maintained that Jesus never came into the world "in the flesh", but only seemed to; (I John 4:2) and it was given some encouragement by Paul's lack of interest in his fleshly existence. Subsequently, from the eighteenth century onwards, there have been attempts to insist that Jesus did not even "seem" to exist, and that all tales of his appearance upon the earth were pure fiction. In particular, his story was compared to the pagan mythologies inventing fictitious dying and rising gods.

Celsus (c180 CE)

One of the earlier statements to the idea that nearly the entire Jesus story was a myth is attributed to Celsus (c180 CE), who is said to have argued that Jesus was the bastard son of Mary and a Roman soldier named Panthera, used magic to deceive people into believing he was the son of a god, that there was no real difference between Christianity and many of the mystery religions existing at that time, and that some of the elements (such as the resurrection and virgin birth) could be found in older myths.

Paganism and Christianity

Following the persecution of early Christians owing to the conflict with Roman society, Christianity picked up various Pagan elements regarding Jesus that were not in the writing about him, and that would cause confusion centuries later. The biggest of these was the December 25 birth date. To compete with the Sol Invictus cult that had been made the official religion of Rome by Aurelian in 274 CE, Jesus' birth date (debated to be anywhere between March and September) was decreed to be December 25 some 60 years later. The situation that resulted was such that Pope Leo I in the 5th century would try to explain why many Christians revered both Jesus and Sol Invictus together on December 25, thus adding to the confusion seen in the quest for the historical Jesus centuries later.

Theodosius I's declaration of a particular form of Christianity being the official religion of Rome, and the outlawing of both paganism and heretical versions followed by the collapse of the Western Empire, resulted in the Europeanization of Jesus and intermixing of local pagan traditions into Christianity; this resulted in a Jesus of Faith and a lack of any further analysis of the Gospel account for centuries.

18th and 19th centuries

Volney and Dupuis

French philosopher Constantin-François Chassebœuf, Comte de Volney, argued that Jesus was based on an obscure historical figure and solar mythology.

Reexamination of the idea that Jesus was a myth 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, Comte de Volney (1757–1820).

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 one Chrestus, who had been convicted by Pontius Pilate, as nothing but 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. He argued that Jewish and Christian scriptures could 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.

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.

Bruno Bauer

In 1842 Bruno Bauer's unorthodox views 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 taught 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, having traced the entire gospel tradition 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 (ruled 14 AD to 37 AD), 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 explanation of Christian origins appeared in 1877 in Christ and the Caesars. He proposed the religion as a synthesis of the Stoicism of Seneca the Younger and of the Jewish theology of Philo as developed by pro-Roman Jews such as Josephus. While subsequent arguments against an historical Jesus did not directly depend on Bauer's work, they usually echoed it on several 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.

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").

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, 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 2nd century, and doubted that Jesus was an historical figure, but later said the core of the gospels was genuine.

James George Frazer

In 1890 the social anthropologist Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941) published the first edition The Golden Bough which attempted to define the shared elements of religious belief. This work became the basis of many later authors who argued that the story of Jesus was a fiction created by Christians. Though Frazer himself did not share that view, enough people claim that he did that in the 1913 expanded edition of The Golden Bough he expressly stated that his theory assumed a historical Jesus. However, after this some people (like Schweitzer) still classified Frazer's ideas as belonging to the same class as those of John M. Robertson, William Benjamin Smith, and Arthur Drews.

20th century

During the early 20th century, several writers published arguments against Jesus' historicity. 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 apostles and Jesus's 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.

In his 1946 book Jesus: Myth Or History Archibald Robertson stated

(John) Robertson is prepared to concede the possibility of an historical Jesus, perhaps more than one, having contributed something to the Gospel story. "A teacher or teachers named Jesus, or several differently named teachers called Messiahs " (of whom many are on record) may have uttered some of the sayings in the Gospels.

1 The Jesus of the Talmud, who was stoned and hanged over a century before the traditional date of the crucifixion, may really have existed and have contributed something to the tradition.

2 An historical Jesus may have "preached a political doctrine subversive of the Roman rule, and . . . thereby met his death "; and Christian writers concerned to conciliate the Romans may have suppressed the facts.

3 Or a Galilean faith-healer with a local reputation may have been slain as a human sacrifice at some time of social tumult; and his story may have got mixed up with the myth.

4 The myth theory is not concerned to deny such a possibility. What the myth theory denies is that Christianity can be traced to a personal founder who taught as reported in the Gospels and was put to death in the circumstances there recorded.

William Benjamin Smith

At around the same time William Benjamin Smith (1850–1934), a professor of mathematics at Tulane University in New Orleans, 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 in Karlsruhe, Germany, 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 life-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. Nikolai Berdyaev observed that Drews, "in his capacity as a religious anti-Semite", argued against the historical existence of Jesus "for the religious life of Aryanism."

Lenin accepted Drews's arguments.

His work proved popular enough that prominent theologians and historians addressed his arguments in several 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 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 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, where Marxist–Leninist atheism was the official doctrine of the state. Lenin (1870–1924) Soviet leader from 1917 until his death, 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 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), 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 material from Josephus, the Talmud, Tacitus, and Suetonius as evidence. Turning to the New Testament, 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

G. R. S. Mead (1863–1933), a member of the Theosophical Society, wrote in Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.? (1903) that Jesus was an historical figure but that the Talmud points to him being crucified c100 BCE, meaning that the Gospel version was a mythical construct. Harry Elmer Barnes in his 1929 The Twilight of Christianity and Tom Harpur in his 2006 Pagan Christ: Is Blind Faith Killing Christianity? have said that Mead, along with Bruno Bauer, Arthur Drews, and John M. Robertson, was among the "eminent scholars and critics who have contended that Jesus was not historical" Robert Price cites Mead as one of several examples of alternative traditions that place Jesus in a different time period than the Gospel account, and wrote that the "varying dates are the residue of various attempts to anchor an original mythic or legendary Jesus in more or less recent history."

G. J. P. J. Bolland (1854–1922) argued in 1907 that Christianity evolved from Gnosticism, and that Jesus was simply a symbolic figure representing Gnostic ideas about God.

John Eleazer Remsburg (1848–1919), an ardent religious skeptic, in 1909 put out a book called The Christ which explored the range and possible origins of the "Christ Myth". While The Christ along with The Bible and Six Historic Americans is regarded as an important freethought book, Remsburg made the distinction between a possible Jesus of history ("Jesus of Nazareth") and the Jesus of the Gospels ("Jesus of Bethlehem") saying that while there was good reason to believe the former existed the latter was most definitely a mythological creation. Regarding Jesus of Nazareth Remsburg stated in the "Silence of Contemporary Writers" chapter that he may have existed but we know nothing about him, and provided a list of over 40 names of "writers who lived and wrote during the time, or within a century after the time" who he felt should have written about Jesus if the Gospels account was reasonably accurate but who did not. This Remsberg list has appeared in a handful of self published books regarding the nonhistoricity hypothesis by authors such as James Patrick Holding, Hilton Hotema, Jawara D. King, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, and Asher Norman.

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 Russell did nothing to develop the idea.

Dead Sea Scrolls scholar John M. Allegro (1923–1988) argued in 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. 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.

Philosopher George Walsh argues that Christianity can be seen as originating in a myth dressed up as history, or with a historical being mythologized into a supernatural one: he calls the former the Christ myth theory, and the latter the historical Jesus theory. Walsh also states "My present opinion is that, in the case of Jesus, we simply do not know for certain anything about his biography, not even that he existed."

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 1st 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 and the Gospels to be works of historical fiction. 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 Doherty presented it as another example of the view that the Gospel Jesus did not exist, Carrier classifying it (along with Wells' later Can we trust the new Testament?) as a book Defending ahistoricity in his May 30, 2006 Stanford University presentation, and Eddy-Boyd presenting it as an example of a Christ myth theory book.

Wells 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. He argues, for example, that the story of the execution of Jesus under Pilate is not an historical account. He wrote in 2000: "[J. D. G. Dunn] objected [in 1985] that, in my work as then published, I had, implausibly, to assume that, within 30 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. AD. 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."

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 2nd or early 1st 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. He accuses modern theologians 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.

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. A former Baptist pastor, Price writes that he was originally an apologist on the historical-Jesus question but became disillusioned with the arguments. As the years went on, he found it increasingly difficult to poke holes in the position that questioned Jesus's existence entirely. Despite this, he still took part in the Eucharist every week for several years, seeing the Christ of faith as all the more important because, he argued, there was probably never any other.

Price believes that Christianity is a historicized synthesis of mainly Egyptian, Jewish, and Greek mythologies. He writes that everyone who espouses the Christ myth theory bases their arguments on three key points:

• There is no mention of a miracle-working Jesus in secular sources.
• 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 Jesus narrative is paralleled in Middle Eastern myths about dying and rising gods; Price 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. Price alleges that Christian apologists have tried to minimize these parallels. He argues that if critical methodology is applied with ruthless consistency, one is left in complete agnosticism regarding Jesus's historicity.

Price argues that "the varying dates are the residue of various attempts to anchor an originally mythic or legendary Jesus in more or less recent history" citing accounts that have Jesus being crucified under Alexander Jannaeus (83 BCE) or in his 50s by Herod Agrippa I under the rule of Claudius Caesar (41-54 CE)

Price points out "(w)hat one Jesus reconstruction leaves aside, the next one takes up and makes its cornerstone. Jesus simply wears too many hats in the Gospels – exorcist, healer, king, prophet, sage, rabbi, demigod, and so on. The Jesus Christ of the New Testament is a composite figure (...) The historical Jesus (if there was one) might well have been a messianic king, or a progressive Pharisee, or a Galilean shaman, or a magus, or a Hellenistic sage. But he cannot very well have been all of them at the same time."

Later on Price states "I am not trying to say that there was a single origin of the Christian savior Jesus Christ, and that origin is pure myth; rather, I am saying that there may indeed have been such a myth, and that if so, it eventually flowed together with other Jesus images, some one of which may have been based on a historical Jesus the Nazorean."

Price acknowledges that he stands against the majority view of scholars, but cautions against attempting to settle the issue by appeal to the majority.

Other 21st-century writers

Thomas L. Thompson, retired 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.

Richard Dawkins writes that a serious case can be made that Jesus never existed, but his own opinion is that Jesus probably existed.

Canadian writer Earl Doherty argues in The Jesus Puzzle (2005) and Jesus: Neither God Nor Man—The Case for a Mythical Jesus (2009) argues that Jesus originated as 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 2nd century. He writes 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 defenses 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 a historical figure crucified and resurrected, and that the name Jesus does not appear in any of them.

Acharya S maintains the position that the canonical gospels represent a middle to late 2nd-century creation utilizing Old Testament "prophetic" scriptures as a blueprint, in combination with a collage of other, older Pagan and Jewish concepts, and that Christianity was thereby fabricated in order to compete with the other popular religions of the time.

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 late British writer Christopher Hitchens. 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. Hitchens argues that there is little or no evidence for the life of Jesus, unlike for the prophet Muhammad. Using the modern John Frum cargo cult as an example Dawkins states

"Unlike the cult of Jesus, the origins of which are not reliably attested, we can see the whole course of events laid out before our eyes (and even here, as we shall see, some details are now lost). It is fascinating to guess that the cult of Christianity almost certainly began in very much the same way, and spread initially at the same high speed. (...) John Frum, if he existed at all, did so within living memory. Yet, even for so recent a possibility, it is not certain whether he lived at all."

Films that refer to the issue are The God Who Wasn't There (2005), Zeitgeist (2007), and Religulous (2008).

The Jesus Project

Further information: Jesus Seminar

The Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER), part of the Center for Inquiry, announced the Jesus Project at a conference in the University of California Davis in December 2007. The Project envisaged 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 Hoffmann of CSER was the project's director. The project was temporarily halted in June 2009 when its funding was suspended, and shortly thereafter Hoffmann resigned, which effectively brought it to an end. He wrote that he no longer believed it was possible to answer the historicity question, because of the extent to which history, myth, and religious belief are intertwined. He argues that the New Testament documents 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 said there were problems with the media and blogs sensationalizing stories about the project, with the only possible newsworthy outcome being the conclusion that Jesus had not existed, a conclusion which (he writes) the majority of participants would not have reached. When one Jesus-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. However, in his A Credible Christianity: Saving Jesus from the Church former University Pastor and Director of a United Campus Ministry at Michigan State University Walter Kania was highly critical of the study saying "the statistics and conclusions in the book were made of fundamentalist concoctions and cooked statistics."

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. The case was then appealed to the European Court of Human Rights as Cascioli v Italy case # 14910/06 but the file was closed due to the time required to file necessary documentation.

Further information

Although many biblical scholars agree that Jesus did exist, Joseph Hoffmann has stated that the issue of historicity of Jesus has been long ignored due to theological interests. The New Testament scholar Nicholas Perrin has argued that since most biblical scholars are Christians, a certain bias is inevitable, but he does not see this as a major problem. Donald Akenson, Professor of Irish Studies in the department of history at Queen's University has argued that, with very few exceptions, the historians of Yeshua have not followed sound historical practices. He has stated that there is an unhealthy reliance on consensus, for propositions which should otherwise be based on primary sources, or rigorous interpretation. He also holds that some of the criteria being used are faulty. He says that the overwhelming majority of biblical scholars are employed in institutions whose roots are in religious beliefs. Because of this, more than any other group in present day academia, biblical historians are under immense pressure to theologize their historical work. It is only through considerable individual heroism that many biblical historians have managed to maintain the scholarly integrity of their work. John Meier, Professor of theology at University of Notre Dame, has said "...people claim they are doing a quest for the historical Jesus when de facto they’re doing theology, albeit a theology that is indeed historically informed..." Dale Allison, Professor of New Testament Exegesis and Early Christianity at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary too says, "...We wield our criteria to get what we want...We all see what we expect to see and what we want to see...." However, the Old Testament scholar Bertil Albrektson has stated that a great many biblical scholars do not accept any creed as the foundation of their work and they do in fact honestly try to investigate scientifically the basic documents of Christianity in the same way as other texts from antiquity.

See also

• Criticism of Jesus
• Jesus Christ in comparative mythology
• Bible conspiracy theory
• Biblical criticism
• Christian mythology
• Panbabylonism
• The Bible and history
• The God Who Wasn't There
• Positive Christianity
• Race of Jesus
• Acharya S

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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. Syntagma of the Evidences of the Christian Religion. London 1828.
• Taylor, Robert. The Diegesis: Being a Discovery of the Origin, Evidences, and Early History of Christianity. 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.
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• 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.
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• 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.
• Murphy, Derek. "Crash Course on the Literary Jesus", Holy Blasphemy, accessed March 2, 2011.