(Mods, I’m definitely asking this as a question and not a debate-starter, but I can easily seeing it moving that direction, so feel free to move if needed).
So, I was reading Cecil’s take on whether Jesus was a myth inspired by gods like Horus, as cited in Religulous. While reading up on it, I will be the first to say the Horus-Jesus connection is silly, but found some other aspects of the Jesus Myth theory that were more interesting.
The big stumbling block for me is that, as far as I can tell, there are no contemporary accounts of Jesus from the time he lived and was actually walking around doing stuff - the Gospels all tend to be placed around 60-100 AD or later, and non-Christian writers referencing Jesus such as Josephus and Tacitus were born after Jesus died. Yet I often see statements such as “virtually all scholars involved with historical Jesus research believe his existence can be established using documentary and other evidence” (Wikipedia). Cecil’s own column ends with “The simplest explanation for this is that the New Testament is largely about a real person, with embellishments added to impress the rubes or make a doctrinal point.”
So what am I missing? Is the historical Jesus really not established, and the “most historians agree” shouldn’t be taken at face value? Or is there a reason that to believe that the historical Jesus existed and Jesus Myth theory is bunk?
As far as I’m aware – and I’ve done a fair amount of reading on this – you are quite right that there are no truly contemporary documents to indicate the historicity of Jesus. Nor, were he real, ought we to expect any, even if he was a Miracle Man. Records of individuals from that far back are pretty rare, and the ancient world had more than its share of what it considered prodigies.
I’m not surprised that theologians think that Jesus existed – they certainly have a stake in that question. I’m surprised that more secular histiorians either don’t, or aren’t very outspoken about it. Certainly, this being a touchy issue, a lot of people tiptoe around it or use ambiguous languge, as Albert Schweitzer did. It’s interesting that one of the most outspoken writers about the non-historicity of Jesus, G.A. Wells, is a professor of German, not of history or theology. But he makes some excellent arguments in his several books on the topic.
I am an Atheist, but harbor little doubt that there was a historical Jesus. I just don’t believe in his divinity. Even Islam talks about him(ISSA). To make as big of an impact as he did, I think that would be hard to fake. While I refute his divinity the message is a whole nother ball game. Do unto others… Let he who is without sin… Love thy neighbor…etc are revolutionary yet universal ideas, the man changed a big part of the world, yep pretty sure he was real IMHO
The problem with almost any ancient history is that almost everything is a mixture of fact and things that contemporaries believed were factual, but were not. For that reason, even the best historians and folklorists (i.e. those who study ancient facts and those who study ancient non-facts) have to use a bit of logical guesswork. The scenario where Jesus is 100% myth is less plausible than the scenario where mythic and legendary ideas are attached to a historical figure. Ergo, there is little reason to assume there is no historical Jesus, and rather a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest that there was one.
If you can come up with a model that posits no historical Jesus and yet is consistent with the early Christian textual sources, and makes more sense than the current model, I assure you that it would not be disregarded.
There is reason to believe that some of the mythical elements; virgin birth, gods siring children with mortals, miraculous production of food, etc. were added, or at least paid more attention to, because the folks the Christians were trying to convert already had those exact same elements in their religion(s).
False dichotomy. They’re both right. The “Jesus Myth” theory refers to the conception of Jesus as God. It is not incompatible with the existence of a real person around whom the theology posthumously accreted.
And now many Buddhists (depends on the sect) worship Siddhartha Gautama as something functionally indistinguishable from a god. Buddha never claimed to be a god or even a god’s prophet (in Buddhism, the gods exist but are beside the point – they’re in the same fix we are or worse, and you can’t get enlightenment by praying to them). He was just a guy who sat down and worked out some things and preached them. But how he’s a god. That’s just how it goes.
You are mistaken – the Jesus myth theory is most certainly that the gospels describe a fictitious person. The idea that Jesus was a real person, extensively mythologized, about whom almost nothing true is known, steps over the line into “Historical Jesus” theory, which includes the entire array of beliefs from “he was real, and that’s all we can say about him” to “he was real, and we can determine some things about him from the gospels” to “he was real, and the gospels are a mostly reliable guide to his life and words.”
It’s entirely possible that there were earlier accounts that no longer exist, possibly because they were superseded in a way by the Gospels we do have. After all, Luke begins his account by noting
If that interests you, read Gore Vidal’s historical novel Creation. Cyrus Spitama, grandson of the prophet living in the Persian Empire during the reigns of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darius_I]Darius and Xerxes (some theories place Zoroaster centuries earlier than that, but never mind), travels to India, China, and later Greece. He encounters Hindus, early Buddhists (the Buddha is already dead, but within living memory), early Jainists, Lao-Tze and Confucius, examining and comparing their ideas. (He also meets a Jewish banker, Egibi of Babylon, but does not discuss theology with him; monotheistic doctrines other than Zoroaster’s are nowhere touched on. He also, as Persia’s ambassador in Athens, meets young working-stonemason Socrates, who does not impress him, nor discuss philosophy with him.)
Try the new book out by Bart Ehrman, “Did Jesus Exist? the Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth”. The man teaches religious studies at UNC Chapel Hill. Realy knows his stuff. He used to be a born again evangelical but now is an agnostic.
Somebody started the damn religion. The evidence that it was someone called Jesus, an itinerant preacher who lived at around the start of the first century, and came from Nazareth, although far from incontrovertible (and mixed up with implausible, mythological elements), is really quite extensive. There is really no evidence whatsoever to suggest that it was someone else. By far the most plausible hypothesis, under the circumstances, is that the religious movement that led to Christianity was started by someone called Jesus. If you want to argue that it was not, then you owe us a plausible, evidence-backed account of who did start it, and of why none of their followers ever gave them due credit for it.
I know a professor in English Literature who has studied a lot of African folk tales and oral histories and he’s described to me how you go about analyzing oral history to separate fact from fiction, it really is something historians aren’t bad at. A big part of the reason many historians are very comfortable with the historical existence of a Jesus character is because in the field of history anything from ancient times you have to rely on some oral histories in many cases to “bridge the gap” between things we have physical documentation for and things we do not. There is a real structured, established way of analyzing things we only know through oral histories and determining how they match up to what we know for sure.
We’re fairly certain there was a Socrates, but there is actually little direct evidence he ever existed, and some people have always made the decent argument that Socrates may have just been a “character” that Plato used in his writings and not a genuine man. And Socrates was being written about by persons who at least claimed to have learned from him directly.
It’s not surprising there isn’t any first hand accounts of Jesus or any writings Jesus himself wrote. In the ancient world he was not important in his life time, he was (as best we can tell) the leader of a very small cult. In the Roman Empire mystery cults and such that developed by amalgamating various belief systems were extremely common. Paul, who was really the guy responsible for Christianity becoming a major world religion most likely was also the guy who has done the most “marketing” of Jesus early on. If Jesus was fake, it would seem most likely to me he was invented by Paul who mostly spread the word to people who would be in no position to verify whether this Jesus figure existed. However, it’s most likely that Jesus was real and that as Paul traveled through the Empire and into areas with Hellenistic traditions he started “sexing up” Jesus story to be more appealing to people more used to Hellenistic pagan religious traditions and myths.
But, Plato was not the only contemporary who wrote about Socrates and whose writings have survived. There was also (admiringly) Xenophon, and (satirically) Aristophanes.
WRT Plato, there is controversy over which of his Dialogues fairly report Socrates’ thought, and which use him as a mouthpiece for Plato’s. See Socrates: A Man for Our Times, by Paul Johnson.
Paul according to Wikipedia was an approximate contemporary of Jesus, died 67AD, converted somewhere C 31-36AD; so if there was no Jesus, he was in on the con. How much more contemporary do you need than someone who mingled with the players and acquaintances of Jesus? It’s not like Luke collecting the data or copying other gospels. Paul’s epistles are thought to be C50-62AD.
I’m atheist, but it seems that there’s just too much evidence for it to be “concocted” in such a manner. More likely, as in the referenced column, Jesus like George Washington was a real person who has had unreal myths attached to him over the centuries. Admittedly this is all church/religion elements; but there’s no doubt (I assume) that the church did grow and spread across the eastern Roman empire in the 30AD-70AD time frame. Keep in mind that the world was much smaller. All the thinking/monied class were a lot more connected. You weren’t going to convince someone in Tripoli or Damascus that Jesus existed if he didn’t. He could ask his cousin Josef or nephew Abraham who travelled to Jerusalem regularly to trade carpets, if he was being fed a line of pork. No doubt they’d already heard about the latest religious fad through this grapevine before some guy arrived to tell they why they should convert.
OTOH, the official histories don’t list Jesus but the don’t list Abraham the carpet merchant, or those two thieves who were crucified on Golgotha, or Barabbas, either (pretend those were real). As far as Roman history goes, Jesus was probably at this point small potatoes.
Islam doesn’t just talk about him- outside of Mohammed, he’s pretty much the most important guy. Islam considers Jesus a major prophet, states that he was assumed directly into heaven, and he’ll be in charge of the the whole judgement day thing. This makes a great deal of sense, since Islam built off of both Judaism and Christianity much like Christianity drew off of Judaism. The only thing Islam really has an issue with is the idea that Jesus is God or the son of God, since Islam is pretty strongly monotheist and a divine Jesus doesn’t fit their concept of that.