This article originally appeared on AlterNet.
Most antiquities scholars think that the New Testament gospels are
“mythologized history.” In other words, they think that around the
start of the first century a controversial Jewish rabbi named Yeshua ben
Yosef gathered a following and his life and teachings provided the seed
that grew into Christianity.
At
the same time, these scholars acknowledge that many Bible stories like
the virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, and women at the tomb borrow
and
rework mythic themes that
were common in the Ancient Near East, much the way that screenwriters
base new movies on old familiar tropes or plot elements. In this view, a
“historical Jesus”
became mythologized.
For
over 200 years, a wide ranging array of theologians and historians—most
of them Christian—analyzed ancient texts, both those that made it into
the Bible and those that didn’t, in attempts to excavate the man behind
the myth. Several current or recent bestsellers take this approach,
distilling the scholarship for a popular audience. Familiar titles
include
Zealotby Reza Aslan and
How Jesus Became Godby
Bart Ehrman.
But
other scholars believe that the gospel stories are actually
“historicized mythology.” In this view, those ancient mythic templates
are themselves the kernel. They got filled in with names, places and
other real world details as early sects of Jesus worship attempted to
understand and defend the devotional traditions they had received.
The notion that Jesus never existed is a minority position.
Of course it is! says David Fitzgerald, author of
Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All.For
centuries all serious scholars of Christianity were Christians
themselves, and modern secular scholars lean heavily on the groundwork
that they laid in collecting, preserving, and analyzing ancient texts.
Even today most secular scholars come out of a religious background, and
many operate by default under historical presumptions of their former
faith.
Fitzgerald is an atheist speaker and writer, popular with secular students and community groups. The internet phenom,
Zeitgeist the Movie introduced
millions to some of the mythic roots of Christianity. But Zeitgeist and
similar works contain known errors and oversimplifications that
undermine their credibility. Fitzgerald seeks to correct that by giving
young people interesting, accessible information that is grounded in
accountable scholarship.
More academic arguments in support of the
Jesus Myth theory can be found in the writings of Richard Carrier and
Robert Price. Carrier, who has a Ph.D. in ancient history
uses the
tools of his trade to show, among other things, how Christianity might
have gotten off the ground without a miracle. Price, by contrast,
writes from
the perspective of a theologian whose biblical scholarship ultimately
formed the basis for his skepticism. It is interesting to note that some
of the harshest debunkers of fringe Jesus myth theories like those from
Zeitgeist or Joseph Atwill (who tries to argue that the Romans invented
Jesus) are from serious Mythicists like Fitzgerald, Carrier and Price.
The
arguments on both sides of this question—mythologized history or
historicized mythology—fill volumes, and if anything the debate seems to
be heating up rather than resolving. A growing number of scholars are
openly questioning or actively arguing against Jesus’ historicity. Since
many people, both Christian and not, find it surprising that this
debate even exists—that credible scholars might think Jesus never
existed—here are some of the key points that keep the doubts alive:
1. No first century secular evidence whatsoever exists to support the actuality of Yeshua ben Yosef. In the
words of Bart
Ehrman: “What sorts of things do pagan authors from the time of Jesus
have to say about him? Nothing. As odd as it may seem, there is no
mention of Jesus at all by any of his pagan contemporaries. There are no
birth records, no trial transcripts, no death certificates; there are
no expressions of interest, no heated slanders, no passing references –
nothing. In fact, if we broaden our field of concern to the years after
his death – even if we include the entire first century of the Common
Era – there is not so much as a solitary reference to Jesus in any
non-Christian, non-Jewish source of any kind. I should stress that we do
have a large number of documents from the time – the writings of poets,
philosophers, historians, scientists, and government officials, for
example, not to mention the large collection of surviving inscriptions
on stone and private letters and legal documents on papyrus. In none of
this vast array of surviving writings is Jesus’ name ever so much as
mentioned.” (pp. 56-57)
2.
The earliest New Testament writers seem ignorant of the details of Jesus’ life, which become more crystalized in later texts.Paul
seems unaware of any virgin birth, for example. No wise men, no star in
the east, no miracles. Historians have long puzzled over the “Silence
of Paul” on the most basic biographical facts and teachings of Jesus.
Paul fails to cite Jesus’ authority precisely when it would make his
case. What’s more, he never calls the twelve apostles Jesus’ disciples;
in fact, he never says Jesus HAD disciples –or a ministry, or did
miracles, or gave teachings. He virtually refuses to disclose any other
biographical detail, and the few cryptic hints he offers aren’t just
vague, but contradict the gospels. The leaders of the early Christian
movement in Jerusalem like Peter and James are supposedly Jesus’ own
followers and family; but Paul dismisses them as nobodies and repeatedly
opposes them for not being true Christians!
Liberal theologian Marcus Borg
suggests that
people read the books of the New Testament in chronological order to
see how early Christianity unfolded. “Placing the Gospels after Paul
makes it clear that as written documents they are not the source of
early Christianity but its product. The Gospel — the good news — of and
about Jesus existed before the Gospels. They are the products of early
Christian communities several decades after Jesus’ historical life and
tell us how those communities saw his significance in their historical
context.”
3.
Even the New Testament stories don’t claim to be first-hand accounts. We
now know that the four gospels were assigned the names of the apostles
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, not written by them. To make matter
sketchier, the name designations happened sometime in second century,
around 100 years or more after Christianity supposedly began. For a
variety of reasons,
the practice of pseudonymous writing was common at the time and many
contemporary documents are “signed” by famous figures. The same is true
of the New Testament epistles except for a handful of letters from Paul
(6 out of 13) which are broadly thought to be genuine. But even the
gospel stories
don’t actually say, “I was there.” Rather, they claim the existence of other witnesses, a phenomenon familiar to anyone who has heard the phrase,
my aunt knew someone who . . . .
4.
The gospels, our only accounts of a historical Jesus, contradict each other.If you think you know the Jesus story pretty well, I suggest that you pause at this point to test yourself with the
20 question quiz at ExChristian.net.
The gospel of Mark is thought to be
the earliest existing “life of Jesus,” and linguistic analysis suggests
that Luke and Matthew both simply reworked Mark and added their own
corrections and new material. But they contradict each other and, to an
even greater degree contradict the much later gospel of John, because
they were written with different objectives for different audiences.
The
incompatible Easter stories offer one example of how much the stories disagree.
5.
Modern scholars who claim to have uncovered the real historical Jesus depict wildly different persons.
They include a cynic philosopher, charismatic Hasid, liberal Pharisee,
conservative rabbi, Zealot revolutionary, nonviolent pacifist to borrow
from a much longer list
assembled by Price.
In his words (pp. 15-16), “The historical Jesus (if there was one)
might well have been a messianic king, or a progressive Pharisee, or a
Galilean shaman, or a magus, or a Hellenistic sage. But he cannot very
well have been all of them at the same time.”
John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar grumbles that “the stunning diversity is an academic embarrassment.”
For David Fitzgerald, these issues and more lead to a conclusion that
he finds inescapable:
Jesus
appears to be an effect, not a cause, of Christianity. Paul and the
rest of the first generation of Christians searched the Septuagint
translation of Hebrew scriptures to create a Mystery Faith for the Jews,
complete with pagan rituals like a Lord’s Supper, Gnostic terms in his
letters, and a personal savior god to rival those in their neighbors’
longstanding Egyptian, Persian, Hellenistic and Roman traditions.
In a soon-to-be-released follow up to
Nailed, entitled
Jesus: Mything in Action,
Fitzgeraldargues
that the many competing versions proposed by secular scholars are just
as problematic as any “Jesus of Faith:” Even if one accepts that there
was a real Jesus of Nazareth, the question has little practical meaning:
Regardless of whether or not a first century rabbi called Yeshua ben
Yosef lived, the “historical Jesus” figures so patiently excavated and
re-assembled by secular scholars are themselves fictions.
We may never know for certain what put Christian history in motion. Only time (or perhaps time travel) will tell.
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