Is Christ Myth Theory Credible?
Posted: August 17th, 2019, 2:00 am
[My own bias is that Christ Myth theory is not only credible, but that it is a nearly inevitable conclusion (and the wave of the future), given that the current state of data remains unchanged. Of course, as the cliche runs, "tomorrow we may find..." some record left by a first-generation disciple or, better yet, by a hostile witness to Jesus's supposed ministry. So I keep the historical Jesus on the back burner precisely because we cannot disprove Jesus's existence, and because an authentic discovery of it would invert Christ Myth theory.]
Core tenets of the theory:
1. The earliest known Christian texts - Paul's "seven authentic letters" - contain no unambiguous reference to a historical (or the Gospel) Jesus.
This is as remarkable as a book about Scientology never mentioning founder L. Ron Hubbard, or a book about the Gettysburg Address never mentioning Abraham Lincoln. It's not a matter of the cliched objection, "But Paul's letters were written as ad hoc crisis solutions, not biographies!", because Paul never mentions a historical Jesus at all - even when he could cite Jesus's example to sort out any number of church problems.
2. No non-Christian texts from the time in question survive, if indeed they existed in the first place. Had they existed, the two Jewish Wars would almost certainly have resulted in their loss or destruction.
3. Supposed non-Christian texts (both versions of Josephus for example) about Jesus are either scribal interpolations or forgeries; or they come far too late to shed any light on the historical Jesus. They consist of repetitions of things contemporary Christians were telling Hellenistic interlocutors what they believed about Jesus - beliefs that derived from proto-Gospel writings, not from venerable eyewitness testimony.
4. Proposition: "Jesus" was originally held to be a non-historical celestial angelic being - a preexistent, primordial "Son" who undertook a kind of "incarnation" - not on earth,but in the lower heavens, where he was "handed over" (either by God or by Satan) to the demonic "Powers and Principalities" who submitted him to suffering, death, burial (the heavens were held to contain gardens, temples, and even soil), and then raised by God.
Mythicism holds that the "Resurrection experience" on which earliest Christianity was founded consisted of private visions and revelations from the transcendental heavenly Christ - not from a resuscitated Jesus who had lived on earth. This was the original "Good News" or Gospel - the heavenly Jesus had defeated the Powers through his suffering, death and resurrection in the celestial realm.
5. Through a gradual process of "euhemerization", the previously spiritual Christ of Paul's letters was enhanced, solidified, reified - and eventually replaced in Christian theology - by a Gospel Jesus who was said to have lived on earth, chosen disciples, taught, performed cures and exorcisms, was a renewal movement founder within Judaism, a teacher of parables...and finally, an atoning blood sacrifice and risen savior (and coincidentally or not, the Passion Narratives just happen to be the earliest strata of the Gospels). Mark's Gospel is our first known account of this historicized Jesus.
6. Christ Myth theorists meet the common scholarly objection that mainstream exegetes' charge that Christ Myth is quirky and highly improbable with the retort that - as has been said about scientific discovery generally - "knowledge proceeds one funeral at a time". That is, Christ Myth's probity is not decided by committee or by popularity, but rather by critical historical procedures.
Two Questions:
That, in brief, is Christ Myth theory. If you are a historicist, the burden is on you to supply evidence of a historical Jesus without resorting to the insufficient sources mentioned above. Which leaves Paul's seven authentic letters as the primary source.
What do you think?
If you are a mythicist, the burden is on you to historically detail the putative euhemerization process mentioned above. Can you provide a "paper trail" that documents the evolution (devolution?) of Christ as a heavenly entity into a human being who lived on earth and at least part of whose story made its way into the Gospels?
That is, how did the Gospels become "history"?
I'm neither a scholar nor a historian, but I've been bitten by the Christ Myth "bug". I can't be a clearing house for a huge fund of Christ Myth information. My chief motive for this post is to see the issue kicked around - to see what readers think of this issue.
Core tenets of the theory:
1. The earliest known Christian texts - Paul's "seven authentic letters" - contain no unambiguous reference to a historical (or the Gospel) Jesus.
This is as remarkable as a book about Scientology never mentioning founder L. Ron Hubbard, or a book about the Gettysburg Address never mentioning Abraham Lincoln. It's not a matter of the cliched objection, "But Paul's letters were written as ad hoc crisis solutions, not biographies!", because Paul never mentions a historical Jesus at all - even when he could cite Jesus's example to sort out any number of church problems.
2. No non-Christian texts from the time in question survive, if indeed they existed in the first place. Had they existed, the two Jewish Wars would almost certainly have resulted in their loss or destruction.
3. Supposed non-Christian texts (both versions of Josephus for example) about Jesus are either scribal interpolations or forgeries; or they come far too late to shed any light on the historical Jesus. They consist of repetitions of things contemporary Christians were telling Hellenistic interlocutors what they believed about Jesus - beliefs that derived from proto-Gospel writings, not from venerable eyewitness testimony.
4. Proposition: "Jesus" was originally held to be a non-historical celestial angelic being - a preexistent, primordial "Son" who undertook a kind of "incarnation" - not on earth,but in the lower heavens, where he was "handed over" (either by God or by Satan) to the demonic "Powers and Principalities" who submitted him to suffering, death, burial (the heavens were held to contain gardens, temples, and even soil), and then raised by God.
Mythicism holds that the "Resurrection experience" on which earliest Christianity was founded consisted of private visions and revelations from the transcendental heavenly Christ - not from a resuscitated Jesus who had lived on earth. This was the original "Good News" or Gospel - the heavenly Jesus had defeated the Powers through his suffering, death and resurrection in the celestial realm.
5. Through a gradual process of "euhemerization", the previously spiritual Christ of Paul's letters was enhanced, solidified, reified - and eventually replaced in Christian theology - by a Gospel Jesus who was said to have lived on earth, chosen disciples, taught, performed cures and exorcisms, was a renewal movement founder within Judaism, a teacher of parables...and finally, an atoning blood sacrifice and risen savior (and coincidentally or not, the Passion Narratives just happen to be the earliest strata of the Gospels). Mark's Gospel is our first known account of this historicized Jesus.
6. Christ Myth theorists meet the common scholarly objection that mainstream exegetes' charge that Christ Myth is quirky and highly improbable with the retort that - as has been said about scientific discovery generally - "knowledge proceeds one funeral at a time". That is, Christ Myth's probity is not decided by committee or by popularity, but rather by critical historical procedures.
Two Questions:
That, in brief, is Christ Myth theory. If you are a historicist, the burden is on you to supply evidence of a historical Jesus without resorting to the insufficient sources mentioned above. Which leaves Paul's seven authentic letters as the primary source.
What do you think?
If you are a mythicist, the burden is on you to historically detail the putative euhemerization process mentioned above. Can you provide a "paper trail" that documents the evolution (devolution?) of Christ as a heavenly entity into a human being who lived on earth and at least part of whose story made its way into the Gospels?
That is, how did the Gospels become "history"?
I'm neither a scholar nor a historian, but I've been bitten by the Christ Myth "bug". I can't be a clearing house for a huge fund of Christ Myth information. My chief motive for this post is to see the issue kicked around - to see what readers think of this issue.
