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Christ myth theory |
|
Description | Jesus of Nazareth never existed, or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and the accounts in the gospels |
Early proponents | Thomas Paine (1737–1809) Charles François Dupuis (1742–1809) Constantin-François Volney (1757–1820) Richard Carlile (1790–1843) Bruno Bauer (1809–1882) Edwin Johnson (1842–1901) Dutch Radical School (1880–1950) Albert Kalthoff (1850–1906) W. B. Smith (1850–1934) J. M. Robertson (1856–1933) Thomas Whittaker (1856–1935) Arthur Drews (1865–1935) Paul-Louis Couchoud (1879–1959) Alvin Boyd Kuhn (1880–1963) |
Modern proponents | G. A. Wells, Tom Harpur, Michael Martin, Thomas L. Thompson, Thomas L. Brodie, Robert M. Price, Richard Carrier, Earl Doherty, Michel Onfray |
Subjects | Historical Jesus, early Christianity, ancient history |
The
Christ myth theory (also known as the
Jesus myth theory,
Jesus mythicism, or
Jesus ahistoricity theory) is "the view that the person known as
Jesus of Nazareth had no historical existence." Alternatively, in terms given by
Bart Ehrman as per his criticism of mythicism, "the historical Jesus did not exist. Or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the
founding of Christianity."
According to mythicists, the accounts of Jesus are mostly, or
completely, of a mythical nature; and if there was a historical Jesus,
close to nothing can be known about him. Most Christ mythicists follow a
threefold argument: they question the reliability of the
Pauline epistles and the
Gospels
regarding the historicity of Jesus; they note the lack of information
on Jesus in non-Christian sources from the first and early second
century; and they argue that early Christianity was
syncretistic
and mythological from the beginning, as reflected in both the Pauline
epistles and the gospels. Therefore, Christianity was not founded on the
shared memories of a man, but rather a shared
mytheme.
The Christ myth theory is a
fringe theory, supported by few
tenured or
emeritus specialists in
biblical criticism or cognate disciplines. It deviates from the
mainstream historical view,
which is that while the gospels include many legendary elements, these
are religious elaborations added to the accounts of a historical Jesus
who was
crucified in the 1st-century Roman province of
Judea.
Jesus and the origins of Christianity
The
origins and rapid rise of Christianity, as well as the historical Jesus and the
historicity of Jesus,
are a matter of longstanding debate in theological and historical
research. While Christianity may have started with an early nucleus of
followers of Jesus, within a few years after the presumed death of Jesus in
c. AD 33, at the time
Paul
started preaching, a number of "Jesus-movements" seem to have been in
existence, which propagated divergent interpretations of Jesus'
teachings. A central question is how these communities developed and what their original convictions were, as a wide range of beliefs and ideas can be found in
early Christianity, including
adoptionism and
docetism, and also
Gnostic traditions which used Christian imagery, which were all deemed
heretical by
proto-orthodox Christianity.
Mainstream scholarship views Jesus as a real person who was subsequently
deified,
whereas traditional Christian theology and dogmas view Jesus as the
incarnation of God/Christ on earth. Mythicists take yet another
approach, presuming a widespread set of Jewish ideas on personified
aspects of God, which were subsequently historicised when
proto-Christianity spread among non-Jewish converts.
Mainstream historical view
Jesus is being studied by a number of scholarly disciplines, using a variety of textual critical methods. These critical methods, and the
quest for the historical Jesus, have led to a
demythologization
of Jesus, and the mainstream historical view is that while the gospels
include mythical or legendary elements, these are religious
interpretations of the life and death of a historical Jesus who did live
in 1st-century Roman Palestine. While scholars differ on the historicity of specific episodes described in the Biblical accounts of Jesus, the baptism and the crucifixion are two events in the life of Jesus which are subject to "almost universal assent". According to historian
Alanna Nobbs,
While historical and theological
debates remain about the actions and significance of this figure, his
fame as a teacher, and his crucifixion under the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, may be described as historically certain.
New Testament scholar
Bart D. Ehrman states that Jesus "certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees,"
and also states that the existence of Jesus and his crucifixion by the
Romans is attested to by a wide range of sources including
Josephus and
Tacitus.
While there is widespread scholarly agreement on the existence of Jesus as a historical figure, the
portraits of Jesus have often differed from each other and from the image portrayed in the gospel accounts.
Traditional and modern Christian views
Traditional
Christian theology and
dogmas view Jesus as the incarnation of God/Christ on earth and as the
Messiah, whose death was a sacrifice that procured
atonement for all who believe Jesus to be the
Christ. According to Christian traditions, the Gospels and the Pauline epistles are inspired writings, which tell us in a reliable way about the birth and the life of Jesus, his ministry and sayings, and his
crucifixion and resurrection, according to God's plan.
Liberal theology, following the demythologization of Jesus, emphasises his earthly life as an exemplary model to be followed by Christians.
Christ myth theorists
Most mythicists, like mainstream scholarship, note that Christianity developed within
Hellenistic Judaism, which was influenced by
Hellenism.
Early Christianity, and the accounts of Jesus are to be understood in
this context. Departing from mainstream scholarship, mythicists argue
that the accounts of Jesus are mostly, or completely, of a mythical
nature, questioning the mainstream
paradigm of a historical Jesus in the beginning of the 1st century who was deified.
Carrier and other mythicists are critical of the conclusions and
presuppositions of historicity proponents, questioning the value of
consensus as a criterion for the historicity of Jesus.
Some moderate authors, most notably Wells, have argued that there
may have been a historical Jesus, but that this historical Jesus was
fused with another Jesus-tradition, namely the mythological Christ of
Paul. Others, most notably the early Wells and
Alvar Ellegård, have argued that Paul's Jesus may have lived far earlier, in a dimly remembered remote past.
The most radical mythicists hold, in terms given by Price, the "Jesus
atheism" viewpoint, that is, there never was a historical Jesus, only a mythological character, and the
mytheme of his incarnation, death, and exaltation. This character developed out of a
syncretistic fusion
of Jewish, Hellenistic and Middle Eastern religious thought; was put
forward by Paul; and historicised in the Gospels, which are also
syncretistic. Notable "atheists" are Paul-Louis Couchoud, Earl Doherty,
Thomas L. Brodie, and Richard Carrier.
Some other authors argue for the Jesus
agnosticism
viewpoint. That is, we cannot conclude if there was a historical Jesus.
And if there was a historical Jesus, close to nothing can be known
about him. Notable "agnosticists" are Robert Price, Thomas L. Thompson,
and Raphael Lataster.
While proponents like
Earl Doherty,
Price, and Carrier, are concerned with the origins of Christianity and
the genesis of the Christ-figure, the perception of and debate about the
Christ myth theory has increasingly turned to the simpler question
whether Jesus existed or not and consequently with some scholars proposing a more moderate position.
Arguments
According to New Testament scholar
Robert Van Voorst,
most Christ mythicists follow a threefold argument: they question the
reliability of the Pauline epistles and the Gospels regarding the
historicity of Jesus; they note the lack of information on Jesus in non-Christian sources from the first and early second century; and they argue that early Christianity was syncretistic and mythological from the beginning.
Overview of main arguments
Most Christ mythicists argue that the evidence for the existence of a historical Jesus Christ is weak at best, pointing at a series of perceived peculiarities in the sources which they regard as untrustworthy for a historical account. Early Christian and other sources lack biographical information on Jesus, the so-called argument from silence. Instead, the Christ of
Paul and the Jesus of the Gospels are of a
mythical and
allegorical nature. They further argue that the Gospels are a composite of various strands of thought, relying on Jewish writings, and note the similarities of early Christianity and the Christ figure with the
mystery religions of the
Greco-Roman world:
- Paul's Jesus is a celestial being, not a historical person, or may have lived in a dim past – the Pauline epistles are older than the gospels but, aside from a few passages which may have been interpolations, make no reference to a historical Jesus who lived in the flesh on Earth,
nor do they cite any sayings from Jesus. There is a complete absence of
any detailed biographical information such as might be expected if
Jesus had been a contemporary of Paul;instead, Paul refers to Jesus as an exalted being. Therefore, Paul is probably writing about either a mythical entity, a celestial deity, "a savior figure patterned after similar figures within ancient mystery religions" named Jesus; or a historical person who may have lived in a dim past, long before the beginnings of the Common Era;
- The Gospels are not historical records – although the Gospels seem to present an historical framework, they are not historical records, but theological writings, which are based on a variety of sources and influences, including Old Testament writings, Greek Stoic philosophy and the exegetical methods of Philo. The genre of the Gospels are myth or legendary fiction which have imposed "a fictitious historical narrative" on a "mythical cosmic savior figure" by weaving together various pseudo-historical Jesus traditions, most notably the "supernatural personage" of Paul's epistles and "ideas very important in the Jewish Wisdom literature";
- No independent eyewitness accounts – No independent eyewitness accounts survive, in spite of the fact that many authors were writing at that time. Early second-century Roman accounts contain very little evidence and may depend on Christian sources;
- Diversity in early Christianity, and parallels with other religions – Early Christianity was widely diverse and syncretistic, sharing common philosophical and religious ideas with other religions of the time.
Its origins cannot be traced to a single founding group, but must have
been rooted in a wider religious movement. It arose in the Greco-Roman
world of the first and second century AD, synthesizing Greek and Jewish philosophy of the Second Temple period. Parallels with other religions include the ideas of personified aspects of God, proto-Gnostic ideas, and salvation figures featured in mystery religions, which were often (but not always) a dying-and-rising god.
The Pauline epistles
Dating
Mainstream view
The seven undisputed Pauline epistles considered by scholarly consensus to be
genuine epistles
are generally dated to AD 50–60 (i.e. approximately twenty to thirty
years after the generally accepted time period for the death of Jesus
around AD 30–36) and are the earliest surviving Christian texts that may
include information about Jesus.
Mythicist views
Some
mythicists have questioned the early dating of the epistles, raising
the possibility that they represent a later, more developed strand of
early Christian thought.
Theologian
Willem Christiaan van Manen of the Dutch school of
radical criticism
noted various anachronisms in the Pauline Epistles. Van Manen claimed
that they could not have been written in their final form earlier than
the 2nd century. He also noted that the
Marcionite school was the first to publish the epistles, and that
Marcion (
c. 85 –
c. 160)
used them as justification for his gnostic and docetic views that
Jesus' incarnation was not in a physical body. Van Manen also studied
Marcion's version of
Galatians
in contrast to the canonical version, and argued that the canonical
version was a later revision which de-emphasized the Gnostic aspects.
Price wrote that "the historical Jesus problem replicates itself
in the case of Paul," and that the epistles have the same limitations as
the Gospels as historical evidence. Price sees the epistles as a
compilation of fragments (possibly with a Gnostic core),
and contends that Marcion was responsible for much of the Pauline
corpus or even wrote the letters himself, while criticizing the
circumstantial ad hominem fallacy of fellow Christ myth theorists holding the mid-first-century dating of the epistles (e.g. Galatians is conventionally dated
c. AD 53) for their own apologetical reasons. Price argues that passages such as
Galatians 1:18–20,
Galatians 4:4 and
1 Corinthians 15:3–11 are late Catholic interpolations and that
1 Thessalonians 2:14–16 was unlikely to have been written by a Jewish person.
Lack of biographical information
Mainstream view
Modern
biblical scholarship notes that "Paul has relatively little to say on
the biographical information of Jesus," viewing Jesus as "a recent
contemporary." Bishop and historian
Paul Barnett explains that
Paul's relative lack of detailed
reference to the historical Christ is usually explained in one of two
ways: either Paul knew only that there was such a man but knew (or cared
to know) little more (Bultmann), or he knew quite a lot but didn't need
to elaborate this in his letters beyond what his readers already knew.
Mythicist views
Wells
criticized the infrequency of the reference to Jesus in the Pauline
letters and has said there is no information in them about Jesus'
parents, place of birth, teachings, trial nor crucifixion.
Robert Price says that Paul does not refer to Jesus' earthly life, also
not when that life might have provided convenient examples and
justifications for Paul's teachings. Instead, revelation seems to have
been a prominent source for Paul's knowledge about Jesus.
Wells says that the Pauline epistles do not make reference to
Jesus' sayings,
or only in a vague and general sense. According to Wells, as referred
to by Price in his own words, the writers of the New Testament "must
surely have cited them when the same subjects came up in the situations
they addressed."
Brother of the Lord
1 Corinthians 9:5 and
Galatians 1:19
make reference to "the brothers of the Lord" and "James, the brother of
the Lord" respectively. Per Galatians 1:19, mainstream scholarship
holds that it attests that Paul met with
James, brother of Jesus.
Mythicists argue that 1 Corinthians 9:5 and Galatians 1:19 are references to a
fraternal brotherhood, or that "Brother of the Lord" connotes a meaning other than a male sibling of Jesus.
Jesus’ birth
Galatians 4:4 and
Romans 1:3 make reference to Jesus’ birth, being: "born (
Ancient Greek:
γενόμενον,
translit. genómenon,
lit. 'made') of [a] woman" and "born (
Ancient Greek:
γενομένου,
translit. genoménou,
lit. 'was
made') of [the] seed of David" respectively. Mainstream scholarship
holds that Galatians 4:4 attests that Paul knew Jesus was born of a
human mother and that per Romans 1:3, Paul says that Jesus was born a
descendant of David—a historical ancestor in Paul's view.
Doherty and Carrier hold that Paul's unique usage of the term
"made" in the context of these references is consistent with a
"Celestial Jesus" who was born/incarnated when a human body was made for
him.
Wells contends that Paul's reference to Davidic descent "is surely to
state an article of faith" and not an assertion of historical fact.
Eucharist
1 Corinthians 11:23–26
make reference to "the night" Jesus handled bread and wine, teaching
Christians the theological ritual of the Lord's supper. Mainstream
scholarship holds that it recalls the earthly life of Jesus "in the
context of cultic rites that assumed his divinity."
Mythicists argue that Paul's vision of Jesus inaugurating the Eucharist ritual is an
etiological myth.
Celestial being
Mainstream view
Most scholars view the Pauline letters as essential elements in the study of the historical Jesus, and the development of early Christianity. New Testament scholar
James Dunn states that in
1 Corinthians 15:3
Paul "recites the foundational belief," namely "that Christ died."
According to Dunn, "Paul was told about a Jesus who had died two years
earlier or so."
1 Corinthians 15:11 also refers to others before Paul who preached the creed.
The Pauline letters incorporate creeds, or confessions of faith,
that predate Paul, and give essential information on the faith of the
early Jerusalem community around James, 'the brother of Jesus'. The Pauline epistles contain elements of a Christ myth and its cultus, such as the Christ hymn of
Philippians 2:6–11, which portray Jesus as an incarnated and subsequently exalted heavenly being. These pre-Pauline creeds date to within a few years of Jesus' death and developed within the Christian community in Jerusalem.
Scholars view these as indications that the incarnation and exaltation
of Jesus was part of Christian tradition a few years after his death and
over a decade before the writing of the Pauline epistles.
Yet, the development of the early Christian views on Jesus'
divinity is a matter of debate within contemporary scholarship.
According to a longstanding consensus, the oldest Christology was an
"exaltation Christology," according to which Jesus was subsequently
"raised to divine status." This "exaltation Christology" may have developed over time, as witnessed in the Gospels, with the earliest Christians believing that Jesus became divine when he was resurrected.
Later beliefs shifted the exaltation to his baptism, birth, and
subsequently to the idea of his eternal existence, as witnessed in the
Gospel of John.
This "High Christology" is "the view that Jesus was a pre-existent
divine being who became a human, did the Father’s will on earth, and
then was taken back up into heaven whence he had originally come." Yet, as Ehrman notes, this subsequent "incarnation Christology" was also preached by Paul, and even predates him.
According to the "Early High Christology Club," this "incarnation
Christology" or "high Christology" did not evolve over a longer time,
but was a "big bang" which arose in the first few decades of the church,
as witnessed in the writings of Paul.
Scholars have also argued that Paul was a "mythmaker," who gave his own
divergent interpretation of the meaning of Jesus, building a bridge between the Jewish and Hellenistic world, thereby creating the faith that became Christianity.
Mythicist views
Christ myth theorists generally reject the idea that Paul's epistles refer to a real person.
According to Doherty, the Jesus of Paul was a divine Son of God, existing in a spiritual realm where he was crucified and resurrected. This mythological Jesus was based on exegesis of the Old Testament and
mystical visions of a risen Jesus.
Carrier argues that Paul is actually writing about a celestial
deity named Jesus: Carrier notes that there is little if any concrete
information about Christ's earthly life in the Pauline epistles, even
though Jesus is mentioned over three hundred times. According to Carrier, the genuine Pauline epistles show that the
Apostle Peter and the Apostle Paul believed in a visionary or dream Jesus, based on a
pesher of
Septuagint verses
Zechariah 6 and 3,
Daniel 9 and
Isaiah 52–53.
Carrier further argues that according to Paul (Philippians 2.7), Christ
"came 'in the likeness of men' (homoiomati anthropon) and was found 'in
a form like a man' (schemati euretheis hos anthropos) and (in Rom. 8.3)
that he was only sent 'in the likeness of sinful flesh' (en homoiomati
sarkos hamartias). This is a doctrine of a preexistent being assuming a
human body, but not being fully transformed into a man, just looking
like one".
The non-Pauline
Epistle to the Hebrews is also relevant per
Hebrews 5:7,
"in the days of his flesh" Jesus cried and prayed to God to save him.
Mythicists generally contend that this verse is anomalous with supposed
traditions underlying the synoptic gospels, however Doherty and Carrier
additionally hold that the phrase "in the days of his flesh" is
consistent with a celestial Jesus.
Jesus lived in a dim past
Mythicist views
The early Wells, and
Alvar Ellegård, have argued that Paul's Jesus may have lived far earlier, in a dimly remembered remote past.
Wells 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 and that—for Paul—Jesus may have existed
many decades, if not centuries, before.
According to Wells, 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.
Some myth proponents assert that the writings of
Epiphanius of Salamis makes reference to a group of
Jewish Christians who held that Jesus lived during the reign of
Alexander Jannaeus—"placing Jesus about 100 BCE"—and that this was also the view presented in the Jewish writings about
Jesus in the Talmud and the
Toledot Yeshu.
According to the
Panarion by Epiphanius, the Jewish-Christian sect known as the
Nazarenes (Ναζωραιοι) began as Jewish converts of the
Apostles. Richard Carrier contends that "Epiphanius, in
Panarion
29, says there was a sect of still-Torah-observant Christians who
taught that Jesus lived and died in the time of Jannaeus, and all the
Jewish sources on Christianity that we have (from the
Talmud to the Toledot Yeshu) report no other view than that Jesus lived during the time of Jannaeus".
Mainstream criticism
Theologian
Gregory A. Boyd and Paul Rhodes Eddy, Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at
Bethel University,
criticise the idea that "Paul viewed Jesus as a cosmic savior who lived
in the past," referring to various passages in the Pauline epistles
which seem to contradict this idea. In
Galatians 1:19, Paul says he met with
James, the "Lord's brother";
1 Corinthians 15:3–8 refers to people to whom Jesus' had appeared, and who were Paul's contemporaries; and in
1 Thessalonians 2:14–16
Paul refers to the Jews "who both killed the Lord Jesus" and "drove out
us" as the same people, indicating that the death of Jesus was within
the same time frame as the persecution of Paul. Boyd and Eddy doubt that Paul viewed Jesus similar to the savior deities found in ancient mystery religions.
The Gospels are not historical records
Dating and authorship
The general consensus of modern scholars is that Mark was the first gospel to be written and dates from no earlier than
c. AD 65, while Matthew and Luke, which use it as a source, were written between AD 80 and 85.
The composition history of John is complex, but most scholars see it
taking place in stages beginning as early as before AD 70 and extending
as late as the end of the century. None of the authors were eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus,
"(t)he common wisdom in the academy is that stories and sayings of
Jesus circulated for decades, undergoing countless retellings and
embellishments before being finally set down in writing." According to scholar in theology
Richard Bauckham the authors may have received their information very close to eyewitness reports.
According to Carrier, "The Gospels cannot really be dated, nor
are the real authors known. Their names were assigned early, but not
early enough for us to be confident they were accurately known. It is
based on speculation that Mark was the first, written between AD 60 and
70, Matthew second, between AD 70 and 80, Luke (and Acts) third, between
AD 80 and 90, and John last, between AD 90 and 100".
Genre
According to
Richard Burridge,
priest and biblical scholar, any study of the Gospels must first
determine the genre under which they fall, in order to interpret them
correctly, since genre "is a key convention guiding both the composition
and the interpretation of writings".
The gospels authors may have intended to write novels, myths,
histories, or biographies, which are different genres and have a
tremendous impact on how they ought to be interpreted. Among
contemporary scholars, there is consensus that the gospels are a type of
ancient biography, though theologian
Rudolf Bultmann notes that the gospel authors had no interest in history or in a historical Jesus. Michael Vines, Professor of Religious Studies at
Lees–McRae College, notes that the gospel of Mark may have aspects similar to a Jewish novel.
Some scholars have argued that the Gospels are symbolical
representations of the Torah, which were written in response to the
Roman occupation and the suppression of Jewish religiosity.
According to Paul Eddy and Gregory Boyd, mythicists argue that in
the gospels "a fictitious historical narrative" was imposed on the
"mythical cosmic savior figure" created by Paul.
Robert Price notes support for the view that the gospels are a fictional composition, arguing that the Gospels are a type of legendary fiction and that the story of Jesus portrayed in the Gospels fits the
mythic hero archetype.
Some myth proponents suggest that some parts of the New Testament were meant to appeal to
Gentiles as familiar allegories rather than history. According to Richard Carrier, the gospels are "essentially allegory and fiction".
Hebrew Bible parallels
Arguments
drawing comparisons between the New and Old Testaments have
traditionally been made by Christian theologians in defense of their
teachings, but without doubting a historical Jesus.
Some myth proponents note that some stories in the
New Testament seem to try to reinforce
Old Testament prophecies and repeat stories about figures like
Elijah,
Elisha,
Moses, and
Joshua in order to appeal to Jewish converts.
Price notes that almost all the Gospel-stories have parallels in Old
Testamentical and other traditions, concluding that the Gospels are no
independent sources for a historical Jesus, but "legend and myth,
fiction and redaction".
Greek influences
In
Christ and the Caesars (1877), philosopher
Bruno Bauer suggested that Christianity was a
synthesis of the
Stoicism of
Seneca the Younger, Greek
Neoplatonism, and the Jewish theology of Philo as developed by pro-Roman Jews such as
Josephus. This new religion was in need of a founder and created its Christ.
In a review of Bauer's work, Robert Price notes that Bauer's basic
stance regarding the Stoic tone and the fictional nature of the Gospels
are still repeated in contemporary scholarship.
Weaving together various traditions
According to Wells, a minimally historical Jesus existed, whose teachings were preserved in the
Q document.
According to Wells, the Gospels weave together two Jesus narratives,
namely Paul's mythical Jesus and the Galilean preacher of the Q
document. Doherty disagrees with Wells regarding this teacher of the Q-document, arguing that he was an allegoral character who
personified Wisdom and came to be regarded as the founder of the Q-community. According to Doherty, Q's Jesus and Paul's Christ were combined in the
Gospel of Mark by a predominantly Gentile community.
No independent eyewitness accounts
Lack of surviving historic records
Mainstream biblical scholars point out that much of the writings of antiquity have been lost and that there was little written about any Jew or Christian in this period.
Ehrman points out that we do not have archaeological or textual
evidence for the existence of most people in the ancient world, even
famous people like Pontius Pilate, whom the myth theorists agree to have
existed.
Robert Hutchinson notes that this is also true of Josephus, despite the fact that he was "a personal favorite of the Roman Emperor
Vespasian".
Hutchinson quotes Ehrman, who notes that Josephus is never mentioned in
1st century Greek and Roman sources, despite being "a personal friend
of the emperor". According to
Classical historian and popular author
Michael Grant,
if the same criterion is applied to others: "We can reject the
existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical
figures is never questioned".
Myth proponents claim there is significance in the lack of
surviving historic records about Jesus of Nazareth from any non-Jewish
author until the second century, adding that Jesus left no writings or other archaeological evidence. Using the argument from silence, they note that Jewish philosopher
Philo of Alexandria did not mention Jesus when he wrote about the cruelty of Pontius Pilate around 40 AD.
Josephus and Tacitus
There
are three non-Christian sources which are typically used to study and
establish the historicity of Jesus—two mentions in Josephus and one
mention in the
Roman source
Tacitus. According to
John Dominic Crossan:
That [Jesus] was crucified is as
sure as anything historical can ever be, since both Josephus and Tacitus
[...] agree with the Christian accounts on at least that basic fact.
Josephus
Josephus'
Antiquities of the Jews, written around 93–94 AD, includes two references to the biblical Jesus in Books
18 and
20. The general scholarly view is that while the longer passage in book 18, known as the
Testimonium Flavianum,
is most likely not authentic in its entirety, it is broadly agreed upon
that it originally consisted of an authentic nucleus, which was then
subject to Christian interpolation or forgery. Myth proponents also argue that the
Testimonium Flavianum may have been a partial
interpolation or forgery by Christian apologist
Eusebius in the 4th century or by others.
The other mention in Josephus is as follows:
...the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James
According to Josephus scholar
Louis H. Feldman, "few have doubted the genuineness" of Josephus' reference to Jesus in
Antiquities 20, 9, 1 and it is only disputed by a small number of scholars.
Paul Eddy and Gregory Boyd, who are critical of Christ myth
theorists, note that Josephus "mentions twenty-one other people with the
name Jesus," and argue that when Josephus called
James the "brother" of Jesus "called Christ" in the
Antiquities, he did so to distinguish him "from the other persons named 'Jesus' he had already mentioned."
Richard Carrier disagrees, proposing that the original text referred to a brother of the high priest
Jesus son of Damneus, named James, who is mentioned in the same narrative, in which James (the brother of Jesus) is executed by
Ananus ben Ananus.
Carrier further argues that the words "the one called Christ" likely
resulted from the accidental insertion of a marginal note added by some
unknown reader.
Others speculate that he was referring to a mythic Christ that had already been historicized, or to
fraternal brotherhood rather than a literal sibling.
This is dismissed by some in mainstream academia on the grounds that
there is no evidence of a supposed "Jerusalem brotherhood".
Tacitus
Roman historian Tacitus referred to "Christus" and his execution by Pontius Pilate in his
Annals (written
c. AD 116),
book 15, chapter 44:
...a class hated for their
abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the
name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of
Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.
The very negative tone of Tacitus' comments on Christians make most
experts believe that the passage is extremely unlikely to have been
forged by a Christian scribe. The Tacitus reference is now widely accepted as an independent confirmation of Christ's crucifixion, although some scholars question the
historical value of the passage on various grounds.
Christ myth theory supporters such as G. A. Wells and Carrier
contend that sources such as Tacitus and others, which were written
decades after the supposed events, include no independent traditions
that relate to Jesus, and hence can provide no confirmation of
historical facts about him.
Other sources
In
Jesus Outside the New Testament
(2000), mainstream scholar Van Voorst considers references to Jesus in
classical writings, Jewish writings, hypothetical sources of the
canonical Gospels, and extant Christian writings outside the New
Testament. Van Voorst concludes that non-Christian sources provide "a
small but certain corroboration of certain New Testament historical
traditions on the family background, time of life, ministry, and death
of Jesus", as well as "evidence of the content of Christian preaching
that is independent of the New Testament", while extra-biblical
Christian sources give access to "some important information about the
earliest traditions on Jesus". However, New Testament sources remain
central for "both the main lines and the details about Jesus' life and
teaching".
Diversity and parallels
Early Christian diversity points to multiple roots
Early Christianity was wildly diverse, with proto-orthodoxy and "
heretical" views like gnosticism alongside each other. According to Mack, various "Jesus movements" existed, whose ideas converged in an early proto-orthodoxy.
According to Doherty, the rapid growth of early Christian
communities and the great variety of ideas cannot be explained by a
single missionary effort, but points to parallel developments, which
arose at various places and competed for support. Paul's arguments
against rival apostles also point to this diversity. Doherty further notes that
Yeshua
(Jesus) is a generic name, meaning "Yahweh saves" and refers to the
concept of divine salvation, which could apply to any kind of saving
entity or Wisdom.
Parallels with other religions
Doherty notes that, with the conquests of
Alexander the Great, the
Greek culture and
language spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean world, influencing the already existing cultures there. The Roman conquest of this area added to the cultural diversity, but also to a sense of alienation and pessimism. A rich diversity of religious and philosophical ideas was available and
Judaism was held in high regard by non-Jews for its monotheistic ideas and its high moral standards. Yet
monotheism was also offered by Greek philosophy, especially
Platonism, with its high God and the intermediary
Logos. According to Doherty, "Out of this rich soil of ideas arose Christianity, a product of both Jewish and Greek philosophy", echoing Bruno Bauer, who argued that Christianity was a synthesis of Stoicism, Greek Neoplatonism and Jewish thought.
Jewish belief in a celestial angel called Jesus
Mainstream
scholars have noted the extent and significance of Jewish belief in a
chief angel acting as a heavenly mediator during the
Second Temple period, as well as the similarities between Jesus and this chief celestial angel. Ehrman has even gone so far as to argue that Paul regarded Jesus to be an angel, who was incarnated on earth.
According to Carrier, originally "Jesus was the name of a celestial being, subordinate to God". According to Carrier, "This 'Jesus' would most likely have been the
same archangel identified by Philo of Alexandria as already extant in
Jewish theology". Philo knew this figure by all of the attributes Paul already knew Jesus by: the firstborn son of God (
Epistle to the Romans 8:29), the celestial image of God (
Second Epistle to the Corinthians 4:4) and God's agent of creation (
First Epistle to the Corinthians
8:6). He was also God's celestial high priest (Hebrews 2:17, 4:14,
etc.) and God's Logos. Philo says this being was identified as the
figure named Jesus in the
Book of Zechariah.
Personification of Logos and Wisdom
Separately from mythicism, scholar of ancient religious studies
Peter Schäfer
contends that Philo's Logos was likely derived from his understanding
of the "postbiblical Wisdom literature, in particular the Wisdom of
Solomon".
Professor of New Testament at Loyola University Urban C. von Wahlde
notes that the Wisdom literature and the philosophical writings of Philo
may furnish "the background to the Logos of the
Johannine Prologue".
According to mythicists, Christianity originated from a Jewish
sect in a
milieu where some
Jews practised a form of proto-gnosticism—seeking salvation by revealed
gnosis—via
a mediator between God and humans, i.e. an intermediary variously known
as "one like a son of man", "the divine Logos", etc. From the cultus of
Paul, a divergent form of this salvation theology was later promoted
for non-Jews.
According to Doherty, a somewhat similar idea to the Greek Logos was found in Judaism, where
Wisdom, a personified part of God, brought knowledge of God and the Law. Similar ideas were also developed in other cultures and religions.
According to Wells, the historical Jesus was derived from this Wisdom
traditions, the personification of an eternal aspect of God, who came to
visit human beings.
Doherty notes that the concept of a spiritual Christ was the result of
common philosophical and religious ideas of the first and second century
AD, in which the idea of an intermediary force between God and the
world were common. Doherty further notes that
divine inspiration was a common concept.
Jewish-Hellenistic mystery cult
According to Doherty, the Christ of Paul shares similarities with the
Greco-Roman mystery cults. Authors Timothy Freke and
Peter Gandy explicitly argue that Jesus was a deity, akin to the mystery cults, while
Dorothy Murdock argues that the Christ myth draws heavily on the Egyptian story of
Osiris and
Horus. According to Robert Price, the story of Jesus portrayed in the Gospels is akin to the
mythic hero archetype.
The mythic hero archetype is present in many cultures who often have
miraculous conceptions or virgin births heralded by wise men and marked
by a star, are tempted by or fight evil forces, die on a hill, appear
after death and then ascend to heaven.
According to Carrier, early Christianity was but one of several mystery
cults which developed out of Hellenistic influences on local cults and
religions.
Mainstream scholarship disagrees with this interpretation. Many
mainstream biblical scholars respond that most of these parallels are
either coincidences or without historical basis and/or that these
parallels do not prove that a Jesus figure did not live.
Christian theologians have cited the mythic hero archetype as a defense
of Christian teaching while completely affirming a historical Jesus.
Secular academics have also pointed out that the teachings of Jesus
marked "a radical departure from all the conventions by which heroes had
been defined".
18th- and 19th-century proponents
According to Van Voorst, "The argument that Jesus never existed, but
was invented by the Christian movement around the year 100, goes back to
Enlightenment times, when the historical-critical study of the past was
born," and may have originated with Lord Bolingbroke, an English deist.
According to Weaver and Schneider, the beginnings of the formal
denial of the existence of Jesus can be traced to late 18th-century
France with the works of
Constantin François Chassebœuf de Volney and
Charles-François Dupuis.
Volney and Dupuis argued that Christianity was an amalgamation of
various ancient mythologies and that Jesus was a totally mythical
character.
Dupuis argued that ancient rituals in Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia,
Persia, and India had influenced the Christian story which was
allegorized as the histories of
solar deities, such as
Sol Invictus.
Dupuis also said that the resurrection of Jesus was an allegory for the
growth of the sun's strength in the sign of Aries at the spring
equinox. Volney argued that
Abraham and
Sarah were derived from
Brahma and his wife
Saraswati, whereas Christ was related to
Krishna.
Volney made use of a draft version of Dupuis' work and at times
differed from him, e.g. in arguing that the gospel stories were not
intentionally created, but were compiled organically. Volney's perspective became associated with the ideas of the
French Revolution, which hindered the acceptance of these views in
England. Despite this, his work gathered significant following among British and American radical thinkers during the 19th century.
In 1835, German theologian
David Friedrich Strauss published his extremely controversial
The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined (
Das Leben Jesu).
While not denying that Jesus existed, he did argue that the miracles in
the New Testament were mythical retellings of normal events as
supernatural happenings.
According to Strauss, the early church developed these miracle stories
to present Jesus as a fulfillment of Jewish prophecies of what the
Messiah would be like. This
rationalist perspective was in direct opposition to the
supernaturalist view that the bible was accurate both historically and spiritually. The book caused an uproar across Europe, as
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury called it "the most pestilential book ever vomited out of the jaws of hell" and Strauss' appointment as chair of theology at the
University of Zürich caused such controversy that the authorities offered him a pension before he had a chance to start his duties.
German Bruno Bauer, who taught at the
University of Bonn, took Strauss' arguments further and became the first author to systematically argue that Jesus did not exist. Beginning in 1841 with his
Criticism of the Gospel History of the Synoptics,
Bauer argued that Jesus was primarily a literary figure, but left open
the question of whether a historical Jesus existed at all. Then in his
Criticism of the Pauline Epistles (1850–1852) and in
A Critique of the Gospels and a History of their Origin (1850–1851), Bauer argued that Jesus had not existed.
Bauer's work was heavily criticized at the time, as in 1839 he was
removed from his position at the University of Bonn and his work did not
have much impact on future myth theorists.
In his two-volume, 867-page book
Anacalypsis (1836), English gentleman
Godfrey Higgins
said that "the mythos of the Hindus, the mythos of the Jews and the
mythos of the Greeks are all at bottom the same; and are contrivances
under the appearance of histories to perpetuate doctrines" and that Christian editors “either from roguery or folly, corrupted them all”. In his 1875 book
The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors, American
Kersey Graves
said that many demigods from different countries shared similar
stories, traits or quotes as Jesus and he used Higgins as the main
source for his arguments. The validity of the claims in the book have
been greatly criticized by Christ myth proponents like Richard Carrier
and largely dismissed by biblical scholars.
Starting in the 1870s, English poet and author
Gerald Massey became interested in Egyptology and reportedly taught himself Egyptian hieroglyphics at the British Museum. In 1883, Massey published
The Natural Genesis where he asserted parallels between Jesus and the Egyptian god
Horus. His other major work,
Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World, was published shortly before his death in 1907. His assertions have influenced various later writers such as
Alvin Boyd Kuhn and
Tom Harpur.
Despite criticisms from Stanley Porter and Ward Gasque, Massey's
theories regarding Egyptian etymologies for certain scriptures are
supported by noted contemporary Egyptologists.
In the 1870s and 1880s, a group of scholars associated with the
University of Amsterdam,
known in German scholarship as the Radical Dutch school, rejected the
authenticity of the Pauline epistles and took a generally negative view
of the Bible's historical value.
Abraham Dirk Loman
argued in 1881 that all New Testament writings belonged to the 2nd
century and doubted that Jesus was a historical figure, but later said
the core of the gospels was genuine.
Additional early Christ myth proponents included Swiss skeptic Rudolf Steck, English historian
Edwin Johnson, English radical
Reverend Robert Taylor and his associate
Richard Carlile.
Early-20th-century proponents
During
the early 20th century, several writers published arguments against
Jesus' historicity, often drawing on the work of liberal theologians,
who tended to deny any value to sources for Jesus outside the New
Testament and limited their attention to Mark and the hypothetical
Q source. They also made use of the growing field of
religious history which found sources for Christian ideas in Greek and Oriental mystery cults, rather than 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".
The work of social anthropologist
Sir James George Frazer has had an influence on various myth theorists, although Frazer himself believed that Jesus existed. In 1890, Frazer published the first edition of
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. After a number of people
claimed that he was a myth theorist, in the 1913 expanded edition of
The Golden Bough he expressly stated that his theory assumed a historical Jesus.
In 1900, Scottish Member of Parliament
John Mackinnon Robertson argued that Jesus never existed, but was an invention by a first-century messianic cult. In Robertson's view, religious groups invent new gods to fit the needs of the society of the time.
Robertson argued that a solar deity symbolized by the lamb and the ram
had long been worshiped by an Israelite cult of Joshua and that this
cult had then invented a new messianic figure, Jesus of Nazareth. Robertson argued that a possible source for the Christian myth may have been the Talmudic story of the executed
Jesus Pandera which dates to 100 BC.
Robertson considered the letters of Paul the earliest surviving
Christian writings, but viewed them as primarily concerned with theology
and morality, rather than historical details. Robertson viewed
references to the twelve apostles and the institution of the
Eucharist as stories that must have developed later among gentile believers who were converted by Jewish evangelists like Paul.
The English school master
George Robert Stowe Mead argued in 1903 that Jesus had existed, but that he had lived in 100 BC. Mead based his argument on the Talmud, which pointed to Jesus being crucified
c. 100 BC. In Mead's view, this would mean that the Christian gospels are mythical.
Tom Harpur has compared Mead's impact on myth theory to that of Bruno Bauer and Arthur Drews.
In 1909, school teacher
John Eleazer Remsburg published
The Christ,
which made a distinction between a possible historical Jesus (Jesus of
Nazareth) and the Jesus of the Gospels (Jesus of Bethlehem). Remsburg
thought that there was good reason to believe that the historical Jesus
existed, but that the "Christ of Christianity" was a mythological
creation.
Remsburg compiled a list of 42 names of "writers who lived and wrote
during the time, or within a century after the time" who Remsburg felt
should have written about Jesus if the Gospels account was reasonably
accurate, but who did not.
Also in 1909, German philosophy Professor
Christian Heinrich Arthur Drews wrote
The Christ Myth
to argue that Christianity had been a Jewish Gnostic cult that spread
by appropriating aspects of Greek philosophy and life-death-rebirth
deities. In his later books
The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus (1912) and
The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus in Past and Present
(1926), Drews reviewed the biblical scholarship of his time as well as
the work of other myth theorists, attempting to show that everything
reported about the historical Jesus had a mythical character.
- Also see Wood, Herbert George: Christianity and the Nature of History. Cambridge University Press, 1934, p. xxxii.
- Arthur Drews: Die Christusmythe. Eugen Diederichs, 1910, published in English as The Christ Myth, Prometheus, 1910, p. 410. Drews met with criticism from Nikolai Berdyaev who claimed that Drews was an anti-Semite who argued against the historical existence of Jesus for the sake of Aryanism. Drews took part in a series of public debates with theologians and historians who opposed his arguments.
Drews' work found fertile soil in the
Soviet Union, where
Marxist–Leninist atheism was the official doctrine of the state. Soviet leader
Lenin argued that it was imperative in the struggle against religious obscurantists to form a union with people like Drews. Several editions of Drews'
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.
In 1927, British philosopher
Bertrand Russell stated in his lecture
Why I Am Not a Christian
that "historically it is quite doubtful that Jesus existed, and if he
did we do not know anything about him, so that I am not concerned with
the historical question, which is a very difficult one", though Russell
did nothing to further develop the idea.
Church of Scientology founder
L. Ron Hubbard was convinced that Jesus never existed, stating that Christianity evolved from the "
R6 Implant": "The man on the cross. There was no Christ! The
Roman Catholic Church, through watching the dramatizations of people picked up some little fragments of R6".
Modern proponents
Paul-Louis Couchoud
The French philosopher Paul-Louis Couchoud, published in the 1920s and 1930s, but was a predecessor for contemporary mythicists.
According to Couchoud, Christianity started not with a biography of
Jesus but "a collective mystical experience, sustaining a divine history
mystically revealed." Couchaud's Jesus is not a "myth", but a "religious conception".
Robert Price mentions Couchoud's comment on the Christ Hymn, one
of the relics of the Christ cults to which Paul converted. Couchoud
noted that in this hymn the name Jesus was given to the Christ after his
torturous death, implying that there cannot have been a ministry by a
teacher called Jesus.
George Albert Wells
George Albert Wells (1926–2017), a professor of German, revived the interest in the Christ myth theory. In his early work, including
Did Jesus Exist?
(1975), Wells argued that because the Gospels were written decades
after Jesus's death by Christians who were theologically motivated but
had no personal knowledge of him, a rational person should believe the
gospels only if they are independently confirmed. Wells was featured in the controversial UK television programme series,
Jesus: The Evidence (Channel 4: 1984), which caused a furore, being Channel 4's first major religious programme commission.
Atheist philosopher and scholar
Michael Martin
supported his thesis, claiming: "Jesus is not placed in a historical
context and the biographical details of his life are left unsuspecte
[...] a strong prima facie case challenging the historicity of Jesus can
be constructed". Martin adds in his book
The Case Against Christianity that "Well's argument against the historicity [of Jesus] is sound".
Later, Wells concluded that a historical Jesus figure did exist
and was a Galilean preacher, whose teachings were preserved in the Q
document, a hypothetical common source for the gospels of Matthew and
Luke.
However, he continued to insist that Biblical Jesus did not exist and
argued that stories such as the virgin birth, the crucifixion around
A.D. 30 under Pilate and the resurrection should be regarded as
legendary. Biblical scholar
Robert E. Van Voorst said that with this argument Wells had performed an about-face. However, other scholars continue to note Wells as a mythicist.
In his 2009 book
Cutting Jesus Down to Size,
Wells clarified that he believes the Gospels represent the fusion of
two originally independent streams: a Galilean preaching tradition and
the supernatural personage of Paul's early epistles, but he says that
both figures owe much of their substance to ideas from the Jewish wisdom
literature.
In 2000 Van Voorst gave an overview of proponents of the
"Nonexistence Hypothesis" and their arguments, and eight arguments
against this hypothesis as put forward by Wells and his predecessors:
- The "argument of silence" is to be rejected, because "it is
wrong to suppose that what is unmentioned or undetailed did not exist."
Van Voorst further argues that the early Christian literature was not
written for historical purposes;
- Dating the "invention" of Jesus around 100 CE is too late; Mark was
written earlier, and contains abundant historical details which are
correct;
- The argument that the development of the Gospel traditions shows
that there was no historical Jesus is incorrect; "development does not
prove wholesale invention, and difficulties do not prove invention;"
- Wells cannot explain why "no pagans and Jews who opposed Christianity denied Jesus' historicity or even questioned it;"
- The rejection of Tacitus and Josephus ignores the scholarly consensus;
- Proponents of the "Nonexistence Hypothesis" are not driven by scholarly interests, but by anti-Christian sentiments;
- Wells and others do not offer alternative "other, credible hypotheses" for the origins of Christianity;
- Wells himself accepted the existence of a minimal historical Jesus, thereby effectively leaving the "Nonexistence Hypothesis."
According to Graham Stanton, writing in 2002, Wells advanced the most
sophisticated version of the Christ myth theory, noting that "[t]his
intriguing theory rests on several pillars, each of which is shaky." According to Maurice Casey, Wells' work repeated the main points of the
Religionsgeschichtliche Schule,
which are deemed outdated by mainstream scholarship. His works were not
discussed by New Testament scholars, because it was "not considered to
be original, and all his main points were thought to have been refuted
long time ago, for reasons which were very well known."
Earl Doherty
Canadian writer
Earl Doherty (born 1941) was introduced to the Christ myth theme by a lecture by Wells in the 1970s.
Doherty follows the lead of Wells, but disagrees on the historicity of
Jesus, arguing that "everything in Paul points to a belief in an
entirely divine Son who "lived" and acted in the spiritual realm, in the
same mythical setting in which all the other savior deities of the day
were seen to operate". According to Doherty, Paul's Christ originated as a myth derived from
middle Platonism with some influence from
Jewish mysticism and belief in a historical Jesus emerged only among Christian communities in the 2nd century.
Paul and other writers of the earliest existing proto-Christian
documents did not believe in Jesus as a person who was incarnated on
Earth in a historical setting, rather they believed in Jesus as a
heavenly being who suffered his sacrificial death in the lower spheres
of heaven, where he was crucified by demons and then was subsequently
resurrected by God. This mythological Jesus was not based on a
historical Jesus, but rather on an
exegesis
of the Old Testament in the context of Jewish-Hellenistic religious
syncretism and what the early authors believed to be mystical visions of
a risen Jesus.
Doherty agrees with Bauckham that the earliest Christology was
already a "high Christology," that is, Jesus was an incarnation of the
pre-existent Christ, but deems it "hardly credible" that such a belief
could develop in such a short time among Jews.
Therefore, Doherty concludes that Christianity started with the myth
of this incarnated Christ, who was subsequently historicised.
According to Doherty, the nucleus of this historicised Jesus of
the Gospels can be found in the Jesus-movement which wrote the Q source.
According to Doherty, the Q-authors may have regarded themselves as
"spokespersons for the Wisdom of God", with Jesus being the embodiment
of this Wisdom, who was added in the latest phase of the development of Q.
Q then started to take the form of a "foundation document", in response
to a concurring sect who saw John the Baptist as its founder. Eventually, Q's Jesus and Paul's Christ were combined in the Gospel of Mark by a predominantly gentile community. In time, the gospel-narrative of this embodiment of Wisdom became interpreted as the literal history of the life of Jesus.
New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman quotes Doherty from
The Jesus Puzzle as maintaining that it was Paul's view that Jesus' death took place in the spiritual not the earthly realm,
but according to Ehrman, not only is there "no evidence to support
Doherty's assertion of what Paul's view of Jesus was", but there are
also "a host of reasons for calling Doherty's view into serious
question."
In a book criticizing the Christ myth theory, New Testament scholar
Maurice Casey describes Doherty as "perhaps the most influential of all the mythicists", but one who is unable to understand the ancient texts he uses in his arguments.
Robert M. Price
American New Testament scholar and former
Baptist pastor Robert M. Price (born 1954) was a fellow of the
Jesus Seminar,
a group of writers and scholars who study the historicity of Jesus and
who argue that the Christian image of Christ is a theological construct
into which traces of Jesus of Nazareth have been woven. He was also a member of the
Jesus Project.
Price questioned the historicity of Jesus in a series of books, including
Deconstructing Jesus (2000),
The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man (2003),
Jesus Is Dead (2007) and
The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems (2011), as well as in contributions to
The Historical Jesus: Five Views
(2009), in which he acknowledges that he stands against the majority
view of scholars, but cautions against attempting to settle the issue by
appeal to the majority. Price notes that "consensus is no criterion" for the historicity of Jesus.
In
Deconstructing Jesus, Price points out that "the Jesus
Christ of the New Testament is a composite figure", out of which a broad
variety of historical Jesuses can be reconstructed, any one of which
may have been the real Jesus, but not all of them together.
According to Price, various Jesus images flowed together at the origin
of Christianity, some of them possibly based on myth, some of them
possibly based on "a historical Jesus the Nazorean".
Price admits uncertainty in this regard, writing in conclusion: "There
may have been a real figure there, but there is simply no longer any way
of being sure".
According to Price, the accounts of Jesus are derived from Jewish writings,
which show Greek influences and similarities with Pagan saviour
deities. Christianity is a historicized synthesis of mainly Egyptian,
Jewish, and Greek mythologies. Price maintains that there are three key points for the traditional Christ myth theory:
- 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 and all that can be taken from the
epistles, Price argues, is that a Jesus Christ, son of God, lived in a
heavenly realm, there died as a sacrifice for human sin, 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.
Citing accounts that have Jesus being crucified under
Alexander Jannaeus (83 BC) or in his 50s by
Herod Agrippa I under the rule of
Claudius
(AD 41–54). Price argues that these "varying dates are the residue of
various attempts to anchor an originally mythic or legendary Jesus in
more or less recent history".
Thomas L. Thompson
Thomas L. Thompson (born 1939), Professor emeritus of theology at the
University of Copenhagen, is a leading
biblical minimalist of the Old Testament. According to Thompson, the accounts of Jesus are derived from Jewish writings. In his 2007 book
The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David,
Thompson argues that the biblical accounts of both King David and Jesus
of Nazareth are mythical in nature and based on Mesopotamian, Egyptian,
Babylonian and Greek and Roman literature. For example, he argues that
the resurrection of Jesus is taken directly from the story of the dying
and rising god,
Dionysus.
However, Thompson does not draw a final conclusion on the historicity
or ahistoricity of Jesus, but argued that any historical person would be
very different from the Christ (or Messiah) identified in the Gospel of
Mark.
Thompson coedited the contributions from a diverse range of scholars in the 2012 book
Is This Not the Carpenter?: The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus.
Writing in the introduction, "The essays collected in this volume have a
modest purpose. Neither establishing the historicity of a historical
Jesus nor possessing an adequate warrant for dismissing it, our purpose
is to clarify our engagement with critical historical and exegetical
methods."
In a 2012 online article, Thompson defended his qualifications to
address New Testament issues and he rejected the label of "mythicist"
and reiterated his position that the issue of Jesus' existence cannot be
determined one way or the other. Thompson contends that the present
state of New Testament scholarship viz. Bart Ehrman "is such that an
established scholar should present his Life of Jesus, without
considering whether this figure, in fact, lived as a historical person"
and that such assumptions "reflect a serious problem regarding the
historical quality of scholarship in biblical studies".
Thomas L. Brodie
In 2012, the Irish Dominican priest and theologian
Thomas L. Brodie (born 1943), holding a PhD from the
Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in
Rome and a co-founder and former director of the
Dominican Biblical Institute in
Limerick, published
Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery.
In this book, Brodie, who previously had published academic works on
the Hebrew prophets, argued that the Gospels are essentially a rewriting
of the stories of Elijah and Elisha when viewed as a unified account in
the
Books of Kings. This view lead Brodie to the conclusion that Jesus is mythical.
Brodie's argument builds on his previous work, in which he stated that
rather than being separate and fragmented, the stories of Elijah and
Elisha are united and that 1 Kings 16:29–2 Kings 13:25 is a natural
extension of 1 Kings 17–2 Kings 8 which have a coherence not generally
observed by other biblical scholars. Brodie then views the Elijah–Elisha story as the underlying model for the gospel narratives.
In response to Brodie's publication of his view that Jesus was
mythical, the Dominican order banned him from writing and lecturing,
although he was allowed to stay on as a brother of the Irish Province,
which continued to care for him.
"There is an unjustifiable jump between methodology and conclusion" in
Brodie's book—according to Gerard Norton—and "are not soundly based on
scholarship". According to Norton, they are "a memoir of a series of
significant moments or events" in Brodie's life that reinforced "his
core conviction" that neither Jesus nor Paul of Tarsus were historical.
Richard Carrier
American independent scholar Richard Carrier (born 1969) reviewed Doherty's work on the origination of Jesus and eventually concluded that the evidence actually favored the core Doherty thesis. According to Carrier, following Couchoud and Doherty, Christianity started with the belief in a new deity called Jesus, "a spiritual, mythical figure." According to Carrier, this new deity was fleshed out in the Gospels, which added a narrative framework and
Cynic-like teachings, and eventually came to be perceived as a historical biography.
According to Carrier, for such a person to be considered "the
historical Jesus in any pertinent sense", such a person must comply with
his definition of a minimal historical Jesus.
According to Carrier, many studies by mainstream scholars have
shown that the current consensus of a historical Jesus is based on
invalid methods. Carrier also claims that
historical methodologies often use
fallacious reasoning and that they must be drastically revised.
Carrier argues in his book
On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt that there is insufficient
Bayesian probability,
that is evidence, to believe in the existence of Jesus. Furthermore,
Carrier argues that the Jesus figure was probably originally known only
through private revelations and hidden messages in scripture which were
then crafted into a historical figure to communicate the claims of the
gospels allegorically. These allegories then started to be believed as
fact during the struggle for control of the Christian churches of the
first century. He argues that the probability of Jesus' existence is
somewhere in the range from 1/3 to 1/12000 depending on the estimates
used for the computation.
His methodology was reviewed by Aviezer Tucker, a prior advocate of using
Bayesian techniques
in history. Tucker expressed some sympathy for Carrier's view of the
Gospels, stating: "The problem with the Synoptic Gospels as evidence for
a historical Jesus from a Bayesian perspective is that the evidence
that coheres does not seem to be independent, whereas the evidence that
is independent does not seem to cohere". However, Tucker argued that
historians have been able to use theories about the transmission and
preservation of information to identify reliable parts of the Gospels.
He said that "Carrier is too dismissive of such methods because he is
focused on hypotheses about the historical Jesus rather than on the best
explanations of the evidence".
In the peer-reviewed scholarly
Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus Daniel N. Gullotta, reviewing Carrier's
On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt,
says he finds Carrier's arguments "problematic and unpersuasive", his
use of Bayesian probabilities "unnecessarily complex" and criticizes
Carrier's "lack of evidence, strained readings and troublesome
assumptions." Gullotta also states that there is absolutely no evidence
whatsoever, either documentary or archaeological, that there was a
period when Christians believed that Jesus only existed in heaven rather
than living as a human being on earth, which is Carrier's
"foundational" thesis.
Other modern proponents
In his books
The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (1970) and
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth (1979), the British archaeologist and philologist
John M. Allegro advanced the theory that stories of early Christianity originated in a
shamanistic Essene clandestine cult centered around the use of
hallucinogenic mushrooms. He also argued that the story of Jesus was based on the crucifixion of the
Teacher of Righteousness in the
Dead Sea Scrolls. Allegro's theory was criticised sharply by Welsh historian
Philip Jenkins, who wrote that Allegro relied on texts that did not exist in quite the form he was citing them.
Based on this and many other negative reactions to the book, Allegro's
publisher later apologized for issuing the book and Allegro was forced
to resign his academic post.
Using a reverse-translation mechanism,
Bernard Dubourg's
two-volume work in French on the New Testament (1987/1989) argued that
the Greek text was originally composed in Hebrew instead of Greek,
according to the traditional procedures of midrash. Following Paul
Vulliaud, Dubourg emphasized the importance of gematria in showing the
coherence of his back-translated text. He concludes that Paul is as
mythical as Jesus.
Alvar Ellegård, in
The Myth of Jesus (1992), and
Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ. A Study in Creative Mythology
(1999), argued that Jesus lived 100 years before the accepted dates,
and was a teacher of the Essenes. According to Ellegård, Paul was
connected with the Essenes, and had a vision of this Jesus.
Timothy Freke and
Peter Gandy, in their 1999 publication
The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God? propose that Jesus did not literally exist as an historically identifiable individual, but was instead a
syncretic re-interpretation of the fundamental pagan "godman" by the
Gnostics, who were the original sect of Christianity. The book has been negatively received by scholars, and also by Christ mythicists.
Influenced by Massey and Higgins,
Alvin Boyd Kuhn
(1880–1963) argued an Egyptian etymology to the Bible that the gospels
were symbolic rather than historic and that church leaders started to
misinterpret the New Testament in the third century. Author and ordained priest
Tom Harpur dedicated his 2004 book
The Pagan Christ to Kuhn, suggesting that Kuhn has not received the attention he deserves since many of his works were self-published.
Building on Kuhn's work, Harpur listed similarities among the stories
of Jesus, Horus, Mithras, Buddha and others. According to Harpur, in the
second or third centuries the early church created the fictional
impression of a literal and historic Jesus and then used forgery and
violence to cover up the evidence. Harpur's book received a great deal of
criticism, including a response book,
Unmasking the Pagan Christ: An Evangelical Response to the Cosmic Christ Idea.
Fellow mythicist Robert M. Price also wrote a negative review, saying
that he did not agree that the Egyptian parallels were as forceful as
Harpur thought. In 2007, Harpur published a sequel,
Water Into Wine.
David Fitzgerald has self-published several works in defense of the Christ myth theory, including
Nailed: 10 Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All (2010), and
Jesus: Mything in Action, Vols. I–III (2017).
In his 2017 book
Décadence, French writer and philosopher
Michel Onfray
argued for the Christ myth theory and based his hypothesis on the fact
that—other than in the New Testament—Jesus is barely mentioned in
accounts of the period.
The Christ myth theory enjoyed brief popularity in the
Soviet Union, where it was supported by
Sergey Kovalev,
Alexander Kazhdan,
Abram Ranovich,
Nikolai Rumyantsev and
Robert Vipper. However, several scholars, including Kazhdan, later retracted their views about mythical Jesus and by the end of the 1980s
Iosif Kryvelev remained as virtually the only proponent of Christ myth theory in Soviet academia.
Reception
Popular reception
In a 2015 poll conducted by the
Church of England, 40% of respondents indicated that they did not believe Jesus was a real person.
Ehrman notes that "the mythicists have become loud, and thanks to the Internet they've attracted more attention". Within a few years of the inception of the
World Wide Web (c. 1990), mythicists such as Earl Doherty began to present their argument to a larger public via the internet. Doherty created the website
The Jesus Puzzle in 1996, while the organization
Internet Infidels has featured the works of mythicists on their website and mythicism has been mentioned on several popular news sites.
According to Derek Murphy, the documentaries
The God Who Wasn't There (2005) and
Zeitgeist (2007) raised interest for the Christ myth theory with a larger audience and gave the topic a large coverage on the Internet.
Daniel Gullotta notes the relationship between the organization
"Atheists United" and Carrier's work related to Mythicism, which has
increased "the attention of the public".
According to Ehrman, mythicism has a growing appeal "because
these deniers of Jesus are at the same time denouncers of religion".
According to Casey, mythicism has a growing appeal because of an
aversion toward Christian fundamentalism among American atheists.
Scholarly reception
In modern scholarship, the Christ myth theory is a
fringe theory and finds virtually no support from scholars.
Lack of support for mythicism
According
to New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman, most people who study the
historical period of Jesus believe that he did exist and do not write in
support of the Christ myth theory.
Maurice Casey,
theologian
and scholar of New Testament and early Christianity, stated that the
belief among professors that Jesus existed is generally completely
certain. According to Casey, the view that Jesus did not exist is "the
view of extremists", "demonstrably false" and "professional scholars
generally regard it as having been settled in serious scholarship long
ago".
In his 1977 book
Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels, classical historian and popular author
Michael Grant concluded that "modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory". In support of this, Grant quoted
Roderic Dunkerley's 1957 opinion that the Christ myth theory has "again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars".
At the same time, he also quoted Otto Betz's 1968 opinion that in
recent years "no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the
non-historicity of Jesus—or at any rate very few, and they have not
succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant,
evidence to the contrary". In the same book, he also wrote:
If
we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria
as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical
material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the
existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical
figures is never questioned.
Graeme Clarke, Emeritus Professor of Classical Ancient History and Archaeology at
Australian National University
has stated: "Frankly, I know of no ancient historian or biblical
historian who would have a twinge of doubt about the existence of a
Jesus Christ—the documentary evidence is simply overwhelming".
R. Joseph Hoffmann, who had created the
Jesus Project,
which included both mythicists and historicists to investigate the
historicity of Jesus, wrote that an adherent to the Christ myth theory
asked to set up a separate section of the project for those committed to
the theory. Hoffmann felt that to be committed to mythicism signaled a
lack of necessary skepticism and he noted that most members of the
project did not reach the mythicist conclusion.
Questioning the competence of proponents
Critics of the Christ myth theory question the competence of its supporters. According to Ehrman:
Few
of these mythicists are actually scholars trained in ancient history,
religion, biblical studies or any cognate field, let alone in the
ancient languages generally thought to matter for those who want to say
something with any degree of authority about a Jewish teacher who
(allegedly) lived in first-century Palestine.
In a response, Thompson questioned the polemical nature of this
qualification, pointing at his own academic standing and expertise.
According to Thompson, Ehrman "has attributed to my book arguments and
principles which I had never presented, certainly not that Jesus had
never existed". Thompson questions Ehrman's qualifications in regard to
Old Testamentical writings and research, as well as his competence to
recognize the problems involved in "reiterated narrative" and "the
historicity of a literary figure", stating that Ehrman had "thoroughly
[...] misunderstood [...] the very issue of the historicity of the New
Testament figure of Jesus".
Maurice Casey has criticized the mythicists, pointing out their
complete ignorance of how modern critical scholarship actually works. He
also criticizes mythicists for their frequent assumption that all
modern scholars of religion are Protestant fundamentalists of the
American variety, insisting that this assumption is not only totally
inaccurate, but also exemplary of the mythicists' misconceptions about
the ideas and attitudes of mainstream scholars.
Questioning the mainstream view appears to have consequences for one's job perspectives.
According to Casey, Thompson's early work, which "successfully refuted
the attempts of Albright and others to defend the historicity of the
most ancient parts of biblical literature history", has "negatively
affected his future job prospects". Ehrman also notes that mythicist views would prevent one from getting employment in a religious studies department:
These
views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real
experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in
an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely
to land on in a bona fide department of biology.
Opponents
Few
scholars have bothered to criticise Christ myth theories. Robert Van
Voorst has written "Contemporary New Testament scholars have typically
viewed (Christ myth) arguments as so weak or bizarre that they relegate
them to footnotes, or often ignore them completely...The theory of
Jesus' nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question."
Paul L. Maier,
former Professor of Ancient History at Western Michigan University and
current professor emeritus in the Department of History there has
stated "Anyone who uses the argument that Jesus never existed is simply
flaunting his ignorance." Among notable scholars who have directly addressed the Christ myth are Bart Ehrman, Maurice Casey and Philip Jenkins.
Bart Ehrman
In this book,
Bart Ehrman
surveys the arguments "mythicists" have made against the existence of
Jesus since the idea was first mooted at the end of the 18th century. To
the objection that there are no contemporary Roman records of Jesus'
existence, Ehrman points out that such records exist for almost no one
and there are mentions of Christ in several Roman works of history from
only decades after the
death of Jesus. The author states that the authentic letters of the apostle
Paul in the New Testament were likely written within a few years of Jesus' death and that Paul likely personally knew
James, the brother of Jesus. Although the
gospel
accounts of Jesus' life may be biased and unreliable in many respects,
Ehrman writes, they and the sources behind them which scholars have
discerned still contain some accurate historical information. So many independent attestations of Jesus' existence, Ehrman says, are actually "astounding for an ancient figure of any kind". Ehrman dismisses the idea that the story of Jesus is an invention based on
pagan myths of dying-and-rising gods, maintaining that the early Christians were primarily influenced by
Jewish ideas, not Greek or Roman ones,
and repeatedly insisting that the idea that there was never such a
person as Jesus is not seriously considered by historians or experts in
the field at all.
Maurice Casey
In
Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths? (2014), scholar of New Testament and early Christianity
Maurice Casey
treats the historical method, the reliability of the Gospels, the
argument from silence from both the Gospels and the Pauline epistles,
and the similarities with other religions of the time.
According to Casey, many mythicists seem to object to fundamentalist
perceptions of Christianity, while ignoring or being ignorant of liberal
forms of Christianity.
Philip Jenkins
Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History at
Baylor University,
has written "What you can’t do, though, without venturing into the far
swamps of extreme crankery, is to argue that Jesus never existed. The
“Christ-Myth Hypothesis” is not scholarship, and is not taken seriously
in respectable academic debate. The grounds advanced for the
“hypothesis” are worthless. The authors proposing such opinions might be
competent, decent, honest individuals, but the views they present are
demonstrably wrong....Jesus is better documented and recorded than
pretty much any non-elite figure of antiquity."
Traditional and Evangelical Christianity
Alexander
Lucie-Smith, Catholic priest and doctor of moral theology, states that
"People who think Jesus didn’t exist are seriously confused," but also
notes that "the Church needs to reflect on its failure. If 40 per cent
believe in the Jesus myth, this is a sign that the Church has failed to
communicate with the general public."
Stanley E. Porter, president and dean of
McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, and Stephen J. Bedard, a Baptist minister and graduate of McMaster Divinity, respond to
Harpur's ideas from an evangelical standpoint in
Unmasking the Pagan Christ: An Evangelical Response to the Cosmic Christ Idea,
challenging the key ideas lying at the foundation of Harpur's thesis.
Porter and Bedard conclude that there is sufficient evidence for the
historicity of Jesus and assert that Harpur is motivated to promote
"universalistic spirituality".
Documentaries
Since 2005, several English-language documentaries have focused—at least in part—on the Christ myth theory: