Christ myth theory

This article is about the view that Jesus never existed. For a discussion of Jesus in the context of comparative mythology, see Jesus Christ in comparative mythology.

The Christ myth theory (sometimes called the Christ myth, Jesus myth, or nonexistence hypothesis) is the contention that Jesus of Nazareth did not exist as a historical person, that the Jesus of early Christianity was a personification of an ideal saviour or mythical being to whom earthly events were later attached. Proponents of a mythical origin of Christianity occasionally allow that some gospel material may have been drawn from a historical preacher or preachers, but that these individuals were not in any sense "the founder of Christianity". Rather, they contend that Christianity emerged organically from Hellenistic Judaism.

The proponents of the theory trace the evolution of Christianity through a conjectural understanding of the evolution of the New Testament literature and thus give primacy to the epistles over the gospels in determining the views of the earliest Christians. Attention is often drawn to a lack of contemporary allusions to Jesus in literature produced in the first century and ostensible parallels between Jesus' biography and those of mythological figures popular at the time, such as Dionysis, Osiris, and Mithras.

The origins of the theory can be traced to the French Enlightenment thinkers Constantin-François Volney and Charles François Dupuis in the 1790s and the first academic advocate was the 19th century historian and theologian Bruno Bauer. Proponents such as Arthur Drews were notable in biblical studies during the early 20th century. And authors such as George Albert Wells, Robert M. Price, and Earl Doherty have recently re-popularised the theory among lay audiences.

The Christ myth theory is essentially without supporters in modern academic circles, biblical scholars and historians being highly dismissive of it, viewing it as pseudo-scholarship. Some of these specialists have even gone so far as to compare the theory's methodological basis with that of flat-earthism, Holocaust denial and moon landing skepticism.

History of advocacy

Early proponents

Doubt about the historical existence of Jesus emerged when critical study of the gospels developed in the 18th century, and some English deists towards the end of that century are said to have believed that no historical Jesus existed.

Constantin-François Volney and Charles François Dupuis

The "great forerunners" of the nonhistoricity hypothesis, though, are usually identified as two thinkers of the French Enlightenment, Constantin-François Volney and Charles François Dupuis. 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.

Dupuis identified pre-Christian rituals in Syria, Egypt and Persia which he believed represented the birth of a god to a virgin mother at the winter solstice and connected this to the winter rising of the constellation of Virgo. He believed that this and other annual occurrences were allegorised 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 equinox). 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 the "paschal lamb" at Easter represented the growth of the Sun's strength in the sign of Aries at the spring solstice. 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 current in Tacitus' own day.

Volney, who published before Dupuis but made use of a draft version of Dupuis' work, followed much of his argument. Volney differed, though, in thinking that the gospel story was not a conscientious extended allegory grounded in solar-myths, but was compiled organically/accidentally 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 may have been basing his opinion on Volney's work when he stated privately that the existence of Jesus was an open question. However, their influence even in France did not outlast the first quarter of the nineteenth century. They had based their views on limited historical data and later critics showed, for example, that the birth of Jesus was not placed in December until the 4th century.

Bruno Bauer

Main article: Bruno Bauer

Bruno Bauer

Scholarly attention to the possibility of Jesus' non-existence began with the 19th-century German historian Bruno Bauer. In a series of studies produced while he was teaching at the University of Bonn (1839–1842), Bauer disputed the historical value of the New Testament gospels. In his view, the Gospel of John was not a historical narrative but an adaptation of the traditional Jewish religio-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, but he rejected the standard view that they also drew upon a common tradition apart from Mark which is now lost—a source scholars generally call "Q". For Bauer, this latter possibility was ruled out by the incompatible stories of Jesus' nativity found in Matthew and Luke, as well as by the way 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. The entire gospel tradition could be traced to a single author (Mark), Bauer felt that the hypothesis of outright invention became credible. 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.

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 Bohn. In a revised edition of his work on the gospels, published in 1850–1851, Bauer dated all the New Testament epistles to the late 2nd century and concluded that Jesus had not existed. Bauer's own comprehensive explanation of Christian origins appeared in 1877. 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, with the Jewish theology of Philo as developed politically by pro-Roman Jews such as Josephus. Bauer held that Mark was an Italian who had been influenced by Seneca's Stoic philosophy, and that the Christian movement originated in Rome and Alexandria.

Bauer's views proved to be foundational for much of the Christ myth community of later generations. While subsequent arguments against a historical Jesus were not all directly dependent on Bauer's work, they usually echoed it on several general points: New Testament references to Jesus lacked historical value, the lack of 1st-century non-Christian references to Jesus was evidence against his existence, and Christianity originated through syncretism.

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.

Early 20th century

By the early twentieth century a number of writers had published arguments against Jesus' historicity, ranging from the fairly scholarly to the highly fanciful. For example, Edwin Johnson denied not only a historical Jesus but nearly all recorded history prior to the 16th century A.D. as well. 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. 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 a tempting target for the deniers of Jesus' historicity"—despite Schmiedel's intention that these passages serve as the foundation for a fuller reconstruction of Jesus' life. These authors also made use of the growing field of Religiongeschichte—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.

J. M. Robertson

Main article: J. M. Robertson

Against this intellectual backdrop, in 1900 J. M. Robertson, a British freethinker and journalist, began to promote his account of Christian origins. In Robertson's view, belief in a slain Messiah arose before the New Testament period within sects later known as Ebionites or Nazarenes. Robertson argued 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. He further felt that an additional but less significant basis for early Christian belief may have been the executed Jesus Pandira, placed by the Talmud in about 100 BCE.

Robertson noted that while the undisputed letters of Paul of Tarsus are the earliest surviving Christian writings, these epistles are 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 were 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, 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. The Gentile party 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). Such plays evolved over time into the gospels. Christianity sought to further enhance its appeal to Gentiles by adopting myths from pagan cults, albeit with some "Judaic manipulation"─thus 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 the Fourth Gospel's portrayal of Jesus as 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

Main article: 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 worshipped a divine being named Jesus in the centuries before the human Jesus was supposedly born. 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, as well as in passages in Acts. 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. In keeping with his theory, Smith also argued against the historical value of non-Christian writers regarding Jesus, particularly Josephus and Tacitus.

Arthur Drews

Arthur Drews

Main article: Arthur Drews

Whatever modest fame Robertson and Smith had achieved, they were soon over-shadowed by Arthur Drews, a professor of philosophy at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe, when he published Die Christusmythe ("The Christ Myth") in 1909. This work 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 claimed that his "purpose was to show that everything about the historical Jesus had a mythical character and thus it was not necessary to presuppose that a historical figure ever existed." His work proved popular enough in both his native Germany and abroad that prominent theologians and historians addressed Drews' arguments. Responses appeared in the Hibbert Journal, the American Journal of Theology, and other leading journals of religion. Further, at least two monographs on the historicity of Jesus were written partially in refutation of Drews. In response to his critics, Drews appeared at a series of public debates, the most famous of which occurred on January 31 – February 1, 1910 at the Berlin Zoological Garden against Hermann von Soden of the Berlin University.

Other writers

A variety of other less well known authors advocated versions of the Christ myth theory during this period as well. A. D. Loman argued that episodes in Jesus' life, such as the Sermon on the Mount, were fictions written to justify compilations of pre-existing liberal Jewish sayings. G. J. P. J. Bolland developed the hypothesis that Christianity evolved from Gnosticism and that Jesus was merely a symbolic figure representing Gnostic ideas about God. G. R. S. Mead took a somewhat different approach, not explicitly denying the historicity of Jesus but rather arguing that he 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. Peter Jensen saw Jesus as a Jewish adaptation of Gilgamesh whom Jensen regarded as a solar deity. And Joseph Wheless claimed 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. Even the celebrated philosopher Bertrand Russell, in his famous lecture "Why I Am Not a Christian", referred to the possible non-existence of a historical Jesus.

Soviet adoption

In addition to these men, the Christ myth theory had appealed to both Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, and it became something of an official view within Marxism. The government of the Soviet Union adopted the theory, promoting the work of Arthur Drews especially as a central element in its larger anti-religious campaign. In keeping with this campaign, the Christ myth theory was disseminated throughout the USSR by official mandate through secondary schools and university text books. Public debates were organized in the 1920s in which government operatives, including the Commissar of Education, Anatoly Lunacharsky, debated clergymen over the historical existence of Jesus. Academics in the Soviet Union would continue to promote the Christ myth theory throughout the nation's early history, only slowly revising their views in the later portion of the 20th century.

Recent proponents

John M. Allegro

Main article: John M. Allegro

The Dead Sea scrolls scholar John M. Allegro is likely the earliest well-known modern advocate of the Christ myth theory. In a number of books including The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross and The Dead Sea Scrolls & the Christian Myth, Allegro proposed that Christianity began as a shamanic cult centering around the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms. He claimed the faith had derived its central mythos from Essene sources.

George Albert Wells

Main article: George Albert Wells

G. A. Wells, professor of German at the University of London, quickly superseded Allegro as the premier advocate of the Christ myth theory. Emphasizing the New Testament epistles and the paucity of early non-Christian documents attesting to a historical Jesus, Wells originally argued that the Jesus of earliest Christianity was a pure myth, derived from mystical speculations stemming from the Jewish Wisdom tradition. According to this view, the earliest strata of the New Testament literature presented Jesus as "a basically supernatural personage only obscurely on Earth as a man at some unspecified period in the past".

In The Jesus Myth (1999), however, Wells drastically altered his position, contending that there were two distinct figures of Jesus: the mythic Jesus of Paul and a minimally historical Jesus found in the gospels. Wells spelled out his new position in Can We Trust the New Testament? (2003): "This Galilean Jesus [behind the gospels] was not crucified and was not believed to have been resurrected after his death. The dying and rising Christ—devoid of time and place—of the early epistles is a quite different figure, and must have a different origin." Robert Van Voorst has described this change of mind as an "about-face" and a rejection of the Christ myth, a sentiment shared by some within the Christ myth community itself.

An older man with a full beard grimacing playfully at the viewer

Robert M. Price

Robert M. Price

Main article: Robert M. Price

While not unequivocally supporting the Christ myth theory, Robert M. Price has sought to revive the thesis in a series of books including Deconstructing Jesus, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, and his contributions to The Historical Jesus: Five Views. In these works and elsewhere Price argues that Christianity is largely a Judaized and historicized synthesis of Egyptian, Greek, and Buddhist myths. Price further claims that if critical methodology is applied with "ruthless consistency", one is left in complete agnosticism regarding Jesus' historicity, and that therefore to assert such a person ever actually existed is "almost arbitrary."

Other writers

In addition to the academics and semi-academics mentioned above, the Christ myth theory has been advanced by several non-specialists in recent years, often through self-published books and websites. While largely uncredentialed, a few of these authors have achieved a degree of notability in their own right: Earl Doherty claims no historical Jesus stands behind even the most primitive hypothetical sources of the New Testament, since Jesus was originally a myth derived from Middle Platonism with some influence from Jewish mysticism, with belief in a historical Jesus only emerging among Christian communities well into the second century. Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy have stated that the gospels "can tell us nothing at all about an historical Jesus because no such man ever existed." They maintain that a Gnostic belief in a purely mythical Jesus was the original form of Christianity which was supplanted and then suppressed by the Catholic Church—a development the authors describe as "the greatest cover-up in history." D. M. Murdock (publishing in part pseudonymously as Acharya S) has argued that virtually all the New Testament documents are "forgeries", with the canonical gospels (all composed in the late second century) misrepresenting as historical a Jesus who was initially understood as a solar myth.

Popular culture

Finally, the Christ myth theory has entered popular culture through a variety of avenues. Films such as the conspiratorial Zeitgeist and the satirical Religulous discuss the theory at some length. Also, like Russell before him, "New Atheism" advocate Richard Dawkins has made passing reference to the theory in his book The God Delusion. Slogans such as "Jesus never existed" have become something of a meme, appearing in graffiti and on merchandise of various sorts.

Arguments

While the different proponents of the theory have held sometimes significantly differing views, a number of broadly identifiable themes appear with some regularity in literature advocating the Christ myth.

Evolution of New Testament literature

Many 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. 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.

Scarcity and unreliability of extra-biblical sources

Christ myth theorists often reject the testimony of the Apostolic Fathers, who seem to indicate an early belief in a historical Jesus (such as Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch), by either deeming their writings spurious forgeries or by bracketing off the most pertinent passages in their works as later interpolations.

Advocates also often cite the relative paucity of contemporary non-Christian sources that mention Jesus, arguing that such an absence of evidence constitutes evidence of absence. The few non-Christian sources that do, however, refer to Jesus are routinely deconstructed, with some (such as the remarks of Josephus) being rejected as corrupt and others (such as Tacitus’ passing reference) being relativized as dependent on the confused beliefs of later Christians and thus providing no independent corroboration of their claims.

Mythological parallels

Main article: Jesus Christ in comparative mythology

Symmetrical depictions of two mothers, seated, with their respective children on their laps

Isis & Horus and Mary & Jesus

Perhaps the most common argument 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. Parallels are often cited between Jesus and Old Testament figures such as Moses, Joseph, and Elisha and a wide range of pagan mythological personages. For example, exponents have claimed that, according to classical mythological sources, Mithras was born to a virgin mother, Horus had twelve disciples, Attis was crucified, Osiris was resurrected from the dead, and so on. Sometimes appeal is made to broader anthropological understandings of religion and ritual patterns of human behavior as postulated by James Frazer and others in such works as The Golden Bough. Christ myth advocates believe that the parallels demonstrate borrowing, with the early Christian community adapting existing mythologies to their particular socio-religious tastes. These parallels are further thought to extend to every identifiable element of Jesus' biography, rendering the biblical portrait of Jesus entirely explicable with reference to literary antecedents and thus making a historical figure superfluous.

Scholarly reception

Historical responses

Despite the efforts of its promoters, the Christ myth theory has never achieved mainstream academic credibility. 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) and "Grand Erratum" (1827) 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.

More sober refutations of the Christ myth were published at the dawn of the twentieth century. In 1914 Fred C. Conybeare published The Historical Christ in which he argued vigorously against Robertson, Drews, and Smith in favor of Jesus' historical existence. Conybeare was followed by the French biblical scholar Maurice Goguel, who published Jesus of Nazareth: Myth or History? in 1926. In this text, described by R. Joseph Hoffmann as "perhaps the best of its kind", 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.

Later editions of Albert Schweitzer's magisterial 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." Further refutations were produced by various scholars in response to novel articulations of the theory throughout the last century, with some of the more substantial contemporary treatments being 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.

Beyond these general treatments of the Christ myth theory as a whole, responses connected to specific exponents of the theory have also been offered. Of the theory's more recent advocates, John Allegro, G. A. Wells, Robert Price, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy and D. M. Murdock, and Earl Doherty have each been the subject of such critical comments.

Affirmation of a historical Jesus

Main article: Historicity of Jesus

The scholarly mainstream routinely notes 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. For example, Acts records such an appeal before King Agrippa: "For the king knows about these matters, and I speak to him also with confidence, since I am persuaded that none of these things escape his notice; for this has not been done in a corner.”Ac 26:26Template:Bibleverse with invalid book Further, early Christians opposed speculative and mythical notions by appealing to eyewitness accounts.

In addition to these preliminary points, a number of commonly accepted critical criteria establish the historicity of Jesus and thus oppose the Christ myth theory: the principles of multiple attestation, enemy attestation, and double dissimilarity (sometimes called the "principle of embarrassment").

• Multiple attestation

In contrast to Bruno Bauer, modern scholars believe that Mark is not the only source behind the synoptic gospels. The predominant view within the field is known as the Two-Source hypothesis. It 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"). On top of this, relatively early material related to a historical Jesus is also found in the Gospel According to John, and the epistles of Paul.

• Enemy attestation

Despite the misgivings of Christ myth theorists, mainstream scholarship believes the writings of Josephus contain multiple authentic references to Jesus. Josephus' allusion in The Antiquities of the Jews to the death of James is almost universally accepted as legitimate. This reference states that James was "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ." The fuller reference to Jesus, known as the Testimonium Flavianum, while suspected of containing later interpolations, is nevertheless believed by a large majority of scholars to also preserve a comment regarding Jesus original to the text.

• Embarrassment

Will Durant has stated, "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." If the gospels were entirely imaginative, these and other issues in the life of Christ likely would not exist: for example, his association in Mark and elsewhere with Nazareth instead of Bethlehem. Purely creative narratives 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.

Rejection of alleged mythological parallels

In addition to affirming the historical existence of Jesus on the basis of documentary evidence, mainstream critical scholarship rejects the central supportive argument of the Christ myth theory: that early material related to Jesus can be explained away with reference to pagan mythological parallels. Scholars believe that Jesus is to be understood against the backdrop of first century Palestinian Judaism, an emphasis on broader Hellenistic religious categories having been "largely abandoned." Further, mainstream scholarship generally rejects the whole concept of homogenous dying and rising gods— 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 nevertheless repudiate the idea that Jesus fits the wider pattern.

Attempts to equate elements of Jesus' biography with those of mythological figures are widely seen as inaccurate and historically slipshod. Often such supposed parallels are based on the interpolations of skeptical critics themselves: parts of Jesus' biography and early Christianity being inappropriately projected onto the stories of mythical pagan personages, only to be then "discovered" and cited as parallels. Scholars further note that the very idea that early Christians would consciously incorporate pagan myths into their religion is "intrinsically most improbable," given their cultural background, as evidenced by the strenuous opposition that Paul encountered from other Christians for even his minor concessions to gentile believers.

Methodological concerns

Aside from these specific arguments, scholars often note more basic methodological problems with the Christ myth theory. While advocates often rely heavily on arguments from silence (the lack of references to Jesus in histories produced during the period, and the silence of Paul regarding much of Jesus' life), experts regard such arguments with deep suspicion, noting that various sources may not mention Jesus for any number of reasons. Further, while many Christ myth theorists draw parallels between early Christianity and Hellenistic mystery religions, little is actually known about the beliefs and practices of the latter. As a result, Bart Ehrman has labeled such neccesarily speculative approaches "crazy".

Scholars from a range of ideological viewpoints have further suggested that since the Christ myth theory is plainly unsupported by the evidence, it can only be maintained through willful disregard of that evidence. Attempts to prove or disprove the existence of a historical Jesus in such a context, then, often degenerate into a methodological "black hole" in which all would-be evidence for a historical Jesus is deconstructed into irrelevancy. These issues have led a number of scholars to class the Christ myth theory as a form of denialism, comparing its evidential deconstructionism to that employed by flat-earthism, Holocaust denial and moon landing skepticism.

Modern scholarly consensus

For the above reasons the Christ myth theory is rejected by essentially all biblical scholars and historians. As N. T. Wright has stated:

How Do We Know that Jesus Existed? It is quite difficult to know where to start, because actually the evidence for Jesus is so massive that, as a historian, I want to say we have got almost as much good evidence for Jesus as for anyone in the ancient world. Obviously there are some characters from the ancient world for whom we have statues and inscriptions. On the other hand, we have statues of gods and goddesses in the ancient world too, and so you can never quite be sure. But in Jesus' case, the evidence all points firmly back to the existence of this great figure in the 20s through to around 30 of the first century. And all the evidence fits so well with what we know of the Judaism of the period (even though much of it was eventually written down a generation later) that I think there are hardly any historians today, in fact I don't know of any historians today who doubt the existence of Jesus. There are one or two. A man called [G. A.] Wells is the only one who has made much of it recently. From time to time you get someone like J. M. Allegro, who a generation ago wrote a book on the basis of the Dead Sea Scrolls saying that Christianity was all about a cult of the sacred mushroom. No Jewish, Christian, atheist, or agnostic scholars have ever taken that seriously since. It is quite clear that in fact Jesus is a very, very well documented character of real history. So I think that question can be put to rest.

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See also

• • Higher criticism
  • Historicity of Jesus
  • The Copenhagen School

• • Bible conspiracy theory
  • Jesus Christ in comparative mythology
  • Life-death-rebirth deity

• • List of virgin births
  • Panbabylonism

External links

• "The Jesus Puzzle: Was There No Historical Jesus?" a Christ myth theory advocacy site by Earl Doherty
• Did Jesus exist? a rebutting site by James Patrick Holding
• Jesus: Legend, Teacher, Critic, or Son of God? A moderated live debate between Robert M. Price and Greg Boyd over the Christ myth theory.