The Myth of "The Myth of the Mythical Jesus"

Choice Reviews Online, 2008

The term "legend" has various meanings in different contexts. In some academic circles, i.e., certain sectors of folkloristics, the term has come to refer to a transmitted story set in the relatively recent, or at least the historical, past that, though believed to be true by the teller, may or may not be rooted in actual history. On the multiple uses and definitional complexities of the term "legend"-including its relationship to "history"-see L. Degh and A. Vazsonyi, "Legend and Belief, " in Folklore Genre, ed.

A question important to Christology today is one that, potentially, could spell the end of Christianity as we know it. Did the historical Jesus exist? Was there a man called Jesus who lived in 1st century Palestine, preached a unique message of compassion and love, gathered a following of faithful disciples, was arrested and then later crucified by Roman authorities. Is this so called Jesus of history genuine and easily supported by historical evidence? The purpose of this study is to look at the available evidence, both biblical and non-biblical, presenting original manuscripts, commentary and current scholarship. What does come through strongly is the inability to make a water tight case for the existence of an historical Jesus. Furthermore, the possibility that the Jesus story may be a reworking of ancient pagan mythologies is particularly challenging.

Historical Jesus studies have not hewn to the cannons of the philosophy of science, and invariably have committed the fallacy of “ignotum per ignotius”—trying to explain the unknown in terms of the even more unknown. That is because no physical or documentary evidence from the time Jesus supposedly lived has ever been discovered. In science, the burden of proof rests upon the person asserting the existence of a thing, condition, or process at some time in the past, present, or future. Scientific theories must in principle be subject to falsification as a result of new evidence or observations. Claims that cannot be tested even in the imagination can be neither true or false—they are scientifically meaningless. Virtually all Historical Jesus studies quickly fall into the logical chasm of meaninglessness. Christian origins must be studied with the aid of a plectic (braid-like) model instead of the traditional dendritic (tree-like) model.

Review of "Mythologizing Jesus: From Jewish Teacher to Epic Hero" by Dennis R. MacDonald.

Theological Studies, 1993

F OR TWO CENTURIES theologians and biblical scholars have investi- gated and debated the various problems that attend research on the life of Jesus. Perusal of the scholarly literature that has been produced over this period of time reveals several interesting trends and, with respect to thle topic of mythology, seems to suggest that we have moved in the last ten or twenty years into a new era in historical-Jesus research. 1 It would appear that there has been a major shiftfrom an agenda shaped in large measure by concerns with mythology to a new agenda that makes little or no reference to mythology. The purpose of this article is to assess that shift, including its antecedent and subsequent developments. A clearer understanding of the path that has been trod and the new path that lies ahead should assist us in perceiving better the problems that attend research concerned with the historical Jesus. This essay is not a history of the scholarly quest, for many of its major contributors and issues will not be touched upon; 2 rather it is an investigation into the role that myth has played in the scholarly quest. With the posthumous (and anonymous) publication of several fragments of Hermann Reimarus's lengthy manuscript Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes? the historicity of 1

2023

Was Jesus of Nazareth a historical figure? When performing a horizontal reading of the Canonical Gospels, the contradictions that surface while comparing their narratives are significant. If we cannot know for sure what is the true history of Jesus, how can we even be sure that he ever existed? This thesis aims to offer an exploration of the scholarly views of the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth. Starting from a base of ten New Testament scholars, this work seeks to understand the reconstruction of the traditions of Jesus that are more likely to go back to the period Jesus supposedly lived. I will also try to understand if the story of Jesus is more likely to be part of history, to be a legend, or to be a body of myths with little connection to reality. Following said analysis, I examine some of the problems related to the life of Jesus to which we do not yet have an answer or whose answers are not satisfactory. Lastly, I gather a collection of arguments for and against the idea of Jesus as a character of history, as a legendary figure, and as a mythological being. Key words: Jesus, New Testament, historicity, legend, myth

My research on the conformity of Jesus Christ and John the Baptist with revolutionary teachers Judas the son of Zipporah and Matthias the son of Margaloth is new and readable news. That son of Mary and Joseph who was named Judas, has been hidden under the name of Jesus Christ.

In conformity with the appropriate method, the study proceeds through four chapters of unequal length. 1. The chosen starting point is the present Eucharist. It is as far as possible from the historical Jesus, but at the same time it is the most real element of Christianity: a presence of Jesus Christ and the formation of a community through the fulfilment of a certain Scripture, here and now. This evidently involves a vision of the human being, which it is necessary to clarify. In addition, it is a matter of an institution, that is to say precisely of a structure or of a model, which brings together by agreement a group of elements in which Scripture holds a privileged place. These elements will subsequently be explained in detail one by one, and then analyzed by going back in time. 2. At the other extremity are found the rather remote Jewish realities that surrounded Jesus in the first century, for which the work of Flavius Josephus constitutes a first-rate source. They are gathered together under two headings: first the sacred library, which was not at all at that time an archive rigidly set for centuries, but a still fluid collection with flexible contours; then Galilee, a small rural province with strong Pharisaic and Babylonian ties, as distrustful of Rome as of Jerusalem. 3. Between the two preceding poles appear the four canonical gospels that effectively resist all attempts at harmonization. In order to gauge the gap between the historical Jesus and the Christ that was later preached, they are first examined from a limited angle, by seeking to determine how the disciples became apostles. The conclusion that emerges is that the Gospel of John is the most Jewish and that of Mark to be the least useful in assessing the original milieu, which makes it necessary to reconsider certain current theories on the formation of the Gospels. 4. After these points as well as some others on the way the New Testament is used, to which other sources can be added, we finally reach the life of Jesus. We begin with the elements essential for the confession of the Christian faith (origin, baptism and passion of Jesus), and deal only at the end with his activity and his teaching, on which the Epistles and the Credo are remarkably silent. The conclusion is very modest, but precise: if we remain hesitant or ignorant in regard to the material details of many of the facts, we see on the contrary very well – and this is the essential – how they escaped being forgotten, that is to say how they have given rise to a word, because they have been understood, memorized and especially transmitted. Taken in a very broad sense, the fulfilment of Scripture has played – and still plays – an essential role. Abraham gives us this to understand in the parable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus (Luke. 16:31): “If they do not listen to Moses or the Prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” There are finally two Appendices. The first proposes a collection of non-biblical texts that help in being more specific about the silhouette of Jesus and of his circle. The second provides elements of a French bibliography; in fact, to lighten the presentation, all annotation has been omitted and the technical discussions have been reduced to a minimum, but most of the considerations and the options presented here have been studied and justified in more detail elsewhere; it is fair to add that many are subject to controversy. The chosen starting point indicates clearly that nothing can be demonstrated more geometrico. It is a matter first of all of reflections of a believer for believers. In regard to non-believers or of “misinformed-believers,” the only really useful Christian apologetic is a mixture of testimony and announcement of the Gospel, which moreover necessarily gives rise to objections. Even if it has long been asserted – and Paul recalls this – that the human being has the natural capacity to know God, it is evident that a positive mind can declare, in good faith and with good arguments, that Christianity is a deception, or at least an illusion. Such a one should congratulate herself/himself, since the Christian language offers its services, like a parable; it honours the demands of reason, but it cannot be imposed for fear of reducing the Gospel to a theorem, namely a cultural fact to master.

In the early twentieth century, New Testament scholar, theologian, and missionary Albert Schweitzer concluded his Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906) by famously declaring, "there is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the Life of Jesus." Historical Jesus scholarship has only succeeded in creating a "Jesus of its own making." 1 Over a century later, in Jesus, Skepticism & the Problem of History, Darrell L. Bock, J. Ed Komoszewski, and a host of other New Testament scholars attempt to offer a more positive assessment. Many of the essays in this collection seem to be a response to another edited volume, namely Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne's Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity, published in 2012 (Clark). In this book, Keith and Le Donne argue that the traditional "criteria of authenticity," which have been used in New Testament scholarship since the 1970s, have failed to deliver on their promises. For decades the criteria of authenticity, which include such criteria as "dissimilarity," "embarrassment," "historical plausibility," and "multiple attestation," have been advocated by scholars as the only tools for reconstructing the life of Jesus. But according to Keith and Le Donne, the criteria are mere literary tools that have only succeeded in substituting "the historical Jesus for the pre-literary oral tradition." 2 The criteria, therefore, cannot give us the historically authentic elements of the Gospels. Indeed, this line of scholarship has only produced preconceived reconstructions of the historical Jesus, thus creating many "Jesuses" rather than revealing the real Jesus of history. In short, Keith and Le Donne and others have reached the same negative conclusions Schweitzer did at the beginning of the twentieth century. By contrast, Bock and Komoszewski and the other contributors in their recent collection argue that such tools remain useful, whatever their limitations. As well-known New Testament scholar and theologian N. T. Wright aptly observes in the foreword to this volume, "Christianity appeals to history," and therefore "to history it must go" (10). Like any such volume, the quality of Jesus, Skepticism & the Problem of History is often uneven. Some chapters read like seasoned scholarship; others like