Jesus Christ - Myth, Legend or Historical Person

First of all, I want to affirm that I am not a Christian, but I do respect Christianity as a world religion that has overall made a good and positive impact on the world. I can also say that organizations, institutions and individuals espousing this religion have also done terrible deeds and committed egregious crimes over the centuries. I feel more sympathetic to those who practice a form of esoteric Christianity than those who promote a form of literalism, fundamentalism and aggressive proselytizing. There are elements of Christianity that have greatly benefited the world and other elements that we could have done without. I am not the kind of pagan who believes that the world would have been better off without the advent and rise of Christianity, but I do believe that much was lost when the old pagan world began its slow and torturous march to total conversion. So, these are my sentiments about Christianity. I was raised in a nominal Christian family, although my father was an avowed agnostic and my mother’s involvement in attending church was more about singing in the choir than being a pious adherent. I was pretty much left to my own designs in regards to religious matters, since no one enforced any kind of religious doctrine or dogma on me. I was able to discover witchcraft and paganism almost in a kind of natural manner, without much in the way of books or people to talk to about it.

That being said, I broke off any kind of formal relationship with Christianity when I was teenager, but I have had to study many details of history, theology and philosophy that have caused me to re-examine Christianity and to know both the Bible and other tenets more intimately than I might have imagined years ago. I learned my Latin, Greek and Hebrew in college because I wanted to read the old grimoires and master the Qabbalah in its original tongue, but I also was exposed to a lot of interesting material on the history of those times, as well as theological considerations and actual textual critiques of the sacred writings. So I have unwittingly become more of an expert in Christianity than I would have deemed either necessary or even desirable years ago when I began my pagan path. What this means is that I am still looking at and examining various theories and perspectives from a historical as well as a theological and philosophical point of view. I have done this not only try to determine what paganism was like in late antiquity, but also how Christianity evolved into a world religion from an obscure Judean cult.

One of the most interesting and compelling theories that has been in and out of popular consensus (but seldom with religious scholars and historians) is the notion that somehow the erstwhile and unwitting founder of Christianity, namely Jesus of Nazareth, never really existed, that he was (and is) a completely mythical character who acquired a historical and legendary fame over time. Several authors have written about this theory, some claiming it to be valid, others debunking it. Religious scholars and historians have not accepted this theory as a compelling argument because most of the theories have been proposed by individuals who are not part of that academic clique. These theories have also been proposed with weak arguments and poor scholarship that has easily been deflected by the vested leaders of religious and historical studies. You can examine a rather biased report on these theories here.

Perhaps the weakest aspect of these arguments is this major stumbling block - if Jesus of Nazareth was a mythic character invented by Jewish messianic adherents, then where did the various sources of the stories that produced the narrative of his life come from? The theorists have pointed to the pagan world, with its various heros, mystery cults and demigods as the source. But of course, for messianic Jews living in the first century, such sources would have been both inimical and foreign to them. Perhaps only Paul was exposed enough to the pagan world and its mysteries (Tarsus was home to several mystery cults) to be able to use ideas from some of them to round out his teachings and make them more presentable to pagan gentiles. A recent book by Hiyam Maccoby, entitled “The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity” deals with this topic quite thoroughly. You can find it here.

However, the cult of Christianity was already fully formed by the time Paul became a member. That Paul appeared to create the Christian religion from both pagan and Jewish sources is still a contested theory, but one that seems to be gaining in strength and plausibility. This is because before Paul aggressively proselytized Christianity amongst pagan gentiles, the cult of Christianity was wholly a marginal Jewish offshoot. Jewish Christians from Judea were completely Jewish, and practiced all of the rituals, attended the synagogue, piously obeyed the laws and studied the Torah just like other Jews of that time. Such a group of conservative and religious individuals would have objected to any foreign influences or pagan incursions into their faith, and justifiably so. There were reports of tensions between Paul and the other apostles living in Judea based on whether Christianity should embrace or exclude many Jewish laws and practices. Obviously, Paul chose to part with many Jewish practices that would have been inconvenient and offensively foreign to pagans living in the Roman world. In doing so, he created a new religion, but not without a great deal of friction with the original apostles.

The Jewish revolt that occurred in the late 60's soon orchestrated a Roman response that caused the complete destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the diaspora of Jews throughout the Roman world. This, of course, ended the dispute between the Judean faction of Christianity and the faction led by Paul. It was also the birth of a new religion that was only remotely related to Judaism. They shared the same sacred texts, but interpreted them in very different ways.

Yet the question still remains, how did the Jewish messianic cult of Christianity begin and where did it get the story of its founder, Jesus of Nazareth? Because this question was not adequately answered by those who espoused that Jesus was not a real historical person, the theory seemed to be doomed to being picked apart by scholars and historians. While I may have found the argument compelling, I had dismissed it as not being very probable. Then, I very recently discovered three articles on the web written by an obscure individual whose name is R. G. Price. This individual is not a biblical scholar or a historian, he is, in fact the writer of articles about politics and economics. For some reason, he took it upon himself (back in 2007) to write three associated articles that have, at least for me, solved much of the puzzle.

Mr. Price has written, and I believe has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the first gospel, which was supposedly written by someone named Mark in the early 70's CE, was a fictional allegory filled with literary allusions taken from biblical sources in the old Testament, and filled in with sources from the epistles of Paul. He has shown that most of these literary allusions are taken almost word for word from their biblical sources. According to Price, the source for the Jesus narrative has its roots in the old testament, and that prior to the writing of this gospel, Christianity held a concept of the messiah that was immaterial, cosmic and godlike, unlike the typical Jewish idea of the messiah being a king, war leader and successful deliverer. When one carefully examines the historically validated epistles of Paul, this immaterial “Christ Jesus” seems to be the central tenet of Paul’s theology. He never mentions that Jesus was a historical person or that there will be a second coming, so the crucifixion becomes an allegory and a mystic symbol instead of a historical occurrence.

Price has concluded that the cult of Jesus Christ in Jewish circles evolved in the following manner.

I think that an apocalyptic Christ cult or movement developed among some Jewish subgroup and that at some point someone named James became the head of this group in Jerusalem. This group was primarily a Jewish group at this point. James, John, and Peter were all prominent Jewish members of this group. The primary belief held by this group, and what set it apart, was the belief in a heavenly messiah, in contradiction to the more traditional belief in an earthly messiah, or king.

The more traditional belief, though still not universal among Jews, was that a person known as the messiah would come along and unite and strengthen the Jews and be their god's representative on earth, and that this king would usher in a time of universal peace and justice and perfection, either by leading the Jews to military victory over everyone else in the world or by simply being accepted as the ruler of everyone else in the world, or some variation of this. The important part is that this would be a human being and that perfection would be reached on earth.

In contrast to this the apocalyptic and messianic movement that is associated with Jesus believed that the earth and the entire material world was hopelessly corrupt and that the material world must be destroyed in order to make way for a new paradise. They believed in a heavenly messiah, who would come to destroy the world in order to re-create a new perfect spiritual world.

Somewhere along the line this cult began spreading out and being adopted by non-Jews as well. The extent to which this happened before Paul is impossible to know. At any rate, Paul came along at some point and began vigorously evangelizing to non-Jews and developing his own theology, much of which denounced or did away with traditional Jewish practices (this was also part of a larger movement among Jews who were integrating into non-Jewish cultures).

This created conflict within the movement between a Jewish oriented group led by James, and a "Gentile" oriented group led by Paul.

The core of the early followers, however, were followers of the Jewish oriented group led by James. Peter seems not to have been a leader of any group, but rather more of a public relations figure. Peter seems to have been a high level person who interacted with others, such as Paul, more than James because James was the head of the group. The result being that Paul had more contact and interaction with Peter, even though Peter was not as high-level of a figure as James.

After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, however, this group was decimated and the Pauline group had grown larger outside the boundaries of the narrowly defined and geographically constricted Jewish oriented group.

Someone who was a follower of the Pauline sect, probably a Jew living in Rome, but its impossible to say, then wrote what we now call "The Gospel of Mark" during or after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The story was itself a parable and an allegory about the folly of the Jamesean/Peterine branch of the group and about the Judean Jews who contributed to the conflict with Rome. The writer of the Gospel of Mark, whether a Jew or not (probably a Jew), held a universalistic view that integrated the "Gentiles", just as Paul did. The writer of this story cast Peter as the main apostle because Peter figures more prominently in Paul's letters.

Of course, what happened next is that the Gospel of Mark, rather than being appreciated in its context as a fictional allegory, was taken literally, and quickly became the narrative of a historical leader instead of an allegorical and mythical personage. By the beginning of the second century CE, any knowledge of the mythical quality of Jesus was completely lost and other gospels had already been written to attempt to alter and amend the narrative that had begun with the Gospel of Mark. By that time, the church fathers held the belief that the first (and one of the best) gospels of that time was the Gospel of Matthew, and the Gospel of Mark was relegated to a lesser degree of precedence and importance than the other three. It was not until centuries later that biblical scholars came to agree that Mark was indeed the first and original gospel, the others used it as their source and expanded on it. Obviously, if the Gospel of Mark was a fictional allegory, then the fact that the three other gospels were based on it would be quite a source of irony.

After reading all three documents, I was amazed at how many of the questions and inconsistencies found in the Jesus narrative were answered and made plain to me. I feel that Price’s theory is quite compelling and perhaps even correct. The few historical mentions that do exist about Jesus have also been adequately explained and shown to be later inclusions, particularly the two mentions made by Flavius Josephus in his contemporaneous writings. Once these few historical references have been dealt with and shown to be spurious, then there is no historical or corroborative evidence for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth whatsoever.

You can find these web based documents here, so read them and make your own judgment.

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_history.htm
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_followup.htm
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/gospel_mark.htm

One last point that I would like to make. If indeed Price is correct and there was no historical Jesus who was the founder of the Christian religion, what impact does that have on the faithful followers today. I believe that unless one is a literalist and fundamentalist, it has no impact whatsoever. All religions evolve and their original creed is usually quite different from what eventually becomes adopted as a mass religion. This was especially true of Christianity because it was so protean and had little basis in the material world. The fact that there was no historical Jesus allowed for a wide range of beliefs, legends, practices and organizations to develop. The ultimate Roman Catholic hegemony eliminated all competitive ideologies until the reformation, so all of these diverse variations of belief and practice were expunged from the Roman, and later, European world. There is a wealth and a diversity of belief and practice today in the Christian world, and the fact that the crucified founder (who was supposedly a pious Jewish reformer) was actually invented out of whole cloth should be neither discrediting nor troubling to the millions of faithful believers.

If Jesus had existed, was a mortal man and an historical individual, then it’s doubtful that he would have sanctioned what ultimately became the Christian religion. From my perspective, Christianity is just as mythic and allegorical as my own beliefs and practices - there is no difference between Jesus, Dionysus, or Krishna. These are, of course, my opinions and nothing more. I am certain that many will dispute and dismiss them as heretical, unsound and consisting of poor scholarship, but I do expect that someday Price’s theories will get a proper hearing, and then, who knows what will happen.

Frater Barrabbas