THE JESUS MYTH

My readers will know that I am a sceptical humanist, with great interest in the ghostly sciences but wholly devoid of any faith. Before I am encouraged by others humbly to present myself at the Pearly Gates I wanted to explain my take on the Christian religion and why my admittance by the angelic host would be inappropriate and by me unwanted.

There are myriad objections to religions in general and Christianity in particular, but my road to scepticism is dominated by the alleged events of Jesus’ life and the extravagant conclusions derived from them by theologians on invisible evidence. The first myth is the accretion of supernatural events and qualities to the supposed person of Jesus. Even most modern theologians would agree with my assessment. The second myth is the historical existence of Jesus, which I deeply doubt; I am in a minority on this.

Information about the historical Jesus is almost all from Christian sources. The only “outsiders” are very oblique, single sentence, references in Tacitus, Josephus and Suetonius. Chronologically the first Christian source is St Paul in his epistles, probably written in about 45 AD, some 10 years after the supposed crucifixion. Paul’s attitude to Jesus is very odd. He writes of him as a remote historic personage, shows no interest in his person or ministry but only in his death and supposed resurrection. He preaches the risen Christ, the fulfilment of the Judaic Messiah fable.

The 3 “Synoptic” Gospels start with Mark in about 65 AD, with Matthew and Luke rather later essentially composing expansions of Mark, who seems to have had an undiscovered source known as Q. The Gospels (translated as Good News) are not biographical works but purport to describe the birth, teaching ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. None of the Evangelists saw Jesus or witnessed any of the events described, which had reached them from oral sources and community tradition. The story of the death of Jesus was slanted prudently to blame the Jews rather than the Romans who had destroyed the Temple in 70 AD, suppressed a Jewish revolt and Mark was probably writing his gospel in Rome itself. The gospel of St John, dating from about 100 AD is a quite different narrative from the other three, basically a theological treatise, expounding the Greek notion of the Logos and incorporating elements of Judaic, Samaritan and Gnostic philosophy.

From this rich stew, we are presented with the Good News that the Messiah is coming soon to expel evil demons (code for Romans) and bring justice and freedom to the world, especially to the Jews. The flavour is apocalyptic and the ethical injunctions are “eschatological” (that is, suitable for the short wait until the Second Coming.) There were many religions at this time with a sacrificial figure who rises from the dead, many eclectic cults borrowing from others and it was merely the fluke that Christianity penetrated Constantine’s imperial family in 312 AD that gave Christianity its prominence.

Constantine, the first Christian Emperor

By this time, the Jesus myth was well advanced. The Nativity, Epiphany, the miracle stories, the Resurrection and the Ascension, then boldly proclaimed, are now not accepted as literally true and all the later accretions like the Atonement, the Trinity, Mariolatry et al are speculative daydreams. Many scholars will claim that two seminal events have a basis in fact – the Baptism of Jesus and his Crucifixion. The reason they support the truth of these two events is the “embarrassment factor”: Christians would hardly admit to the submission of the supposedly omnipotent and all-blameless Jesus to the authority of another preacher, John the Baptist, were it not true. Similarly it is a miserable fate for a Messiah to be executed by crucifixion like a common criminal, ergo, it must be true! I do not find this convoluted logic to be compelling.

Moving on to the second myth, the historicity of Jesus, (whether he ever existed) I admit that evidence of the lives of many modest people in the ancient world is scanty. But the evidence for Jesus is gossamer-thin although an army of writers have sought to interpret and analyse the later Christian message.  There were doubtless many Jewish hedge-preachers in Galilee and the human capacity to distort and magnify such a life is considerable. The Gospel accounts of Jesus are flat and colourless giving no hint of personality. Honest Christian writers like Ernest Renan, David Strauss and Albert Schweitzer have plunged into the thankless task of tracing the origins of Jesus and writing his biography in the so-called “Quest”. Strauss’ reward in 1845 from the leading Anglican Lord Shaftsbury was to have his book described as “the most pestilential book ever to be vomited out of the jaws of hell!” which epitomises the passions aroused in those days.

I weary of all this palaver about events in first century Judea. Just as there is no Athena, goddess of Wisdom despite the Parthenon in Athens, and no Hera, wife of Zeus, despite her Heraion in Samos, there is no Jesus despite the splendours of St Peter’s in Rome. There is a sound philosophical rule called Occam’s Razor "Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity" (Non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate).  If there was no Christ, why waste our energies on investigating a supposed carpenter’s son from Nazareth?

I contend that all the theological battles of the last two millennia have been in vain. Christianity has brought much poetry, much beauty and much high-minded intelligence to our world but also too much suffering, too much prejudice and too much cruelty. But we have as civilised societies moved on and I apologise to those readers I may have offended. I cannot write otherwise.

SMD

14.09.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015

Sources

The classic works on Jesus are The Life of Jesus, critically examined (1835) by David Strauss translated into English by George Eliot and The Life of Jesus (1863) by Ernest Renan.

The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906) by Albert Schweitzer is much admired.

Progressive Anglican theology is represented by Saint Mark, (1963) with a magisterial preface by D.E.Nineham and by The Myth of God Incarnate (1977), 10 essays edited by John Hick.

Much the most lively atheistic protagonist is G.A.Wells, one-time professor of German at Birkbeck, whose Did Jesus Exist? (1975) stimulated the whole historicity debate and asked questions many Christian scholars were not able to answer.