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The idea that elements of beliefs about Jesus, and the Jesus narrative in the New Testament, are actually syncretisms from myths of his era is a theory usually associated with a skeptical position on the historicity of Jesus. When taken to its extreme - the idea of Jesus as myth rather than having any genuine historic existence - its advocates often refer to beliefs about Jesus as the Jesus-Myth.

The theory is based on apparent similarities between early Christian accounts of Jesus and pre-existing mystery religions, and at the more extreme limit of the theory (that Jesus is 100% myth) is also based in part on the lack of extant evidence about his life outside the Gospels. The extreme limit of the theory has not found widespread acceptance among Bible scholars and historiansMichael Grant, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels; Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus and the Word; Robert Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the Gospels, and Graham Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus. and there is no formally peer-reviewed work advocating this extreme limit of the Jesus-Myth theory.

The question of whether Jesus derives to some extent from myth (including 100% from it) requires academic analysis of the available evidence from times near-contemporary with the dates for Jesus' life, and on analysis of how reliable such evidence is, and what their biases are. The relevant evidence concerning Jesus can be broken down into Christian and non-Christian texts; the only surviving Christian texts close enough to the era being the books within the New Testament itself. The earliest part of the New Testament, and thus the most important to answer the question, are the Pauline Epistles, though as these contain very little actual narrative concerning Jesus, the later accounts in the Gospels are also of significance.

Using this evidence, the theory is mainly concerned with asking the following:

  • what did Christians believe about Jesus in the years after Jesus supposedly lived but before the canonical Gospels existed?
  • how much of the narrative could just be a non-factual framing story as a literary device to deliver a series of wisdom teachings?
  • what naturalistic explanations are there for Jesus appearing to fulfil several Jewish prophecies?
  • could any of the narratives concerning Jesus actually be versions of earlier Biblical stories, artificially altered by the Gospel author(s) to place Jesus into them?
  • could any of the narratives concerning Jesus actually be versions of prominent non-Jewish myths from the region and era, that have been adjusted to meet Jewish sensibilities?
  • is there actually a historic individual named Jesus left once all the additional non-historic material is removed?

History of the theory

Some have suggested that the idea dates to New Testament times, citing 's "many deceivers * are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." Scholars of the period believe that these early quotes refer to docetism, the belief that Jesus appeared to people but lacked a genuinely physical body, rather than a belief that Jesus was a completely fabricated figure.

The first proponent of this theory was probably nineteenth century historian Bruno Bauer, a Hegelian thinker who argued that the true founder of Christianity was the Alexandrian Jew Philo, who had adapted Judaic ideas to Hellenic philosophy. His arguments made little impact at the time. Other authors included Edwin Johnson, who argued that Christianity emerged from a combination of liberal trends in Judaism with Gnostic mysticism. Less speculative versions of the theory developed under writers such as A.D. Loman and G.I.P. Bolland. Loman argued that episodes in Jesus's life, such as the Sermon on the Mount, were in reality fictions to justify compilations of pre-existing liberal Jewish sayings. Bolland developed the theory that Christianity developed from Gnosticism and that "Jesus" was a symbolic figure representing Gnostic ideas about godhead.

Jesus-Myth theories often draw on nineteenth century scholarship on the formation of myth, in the work of writers such as Max Müller and James Frazer. Müller argued that religions originated in mythic stories of the birth, death and rebirth of the sun. Frazer further attempted to explain the origins of humanity's mythic beliefs in the idea of a "sacrificial king", associated with the sun, vegetation, or a "year-daemon" as a dying and reviving god. According to his major book on the subject, The Golden Bough, the king's death and rebirth was connected to the regeneration of the earth in springtime and was often required for the continuity of a ritual-based community. A critic of the religious beliefs of his contemporaries, Frazer wrote The Golden Bough partly to discredit Christianity by illustrating its similarity to the beliefs and rituals of other cultures.Ronald Hutton, Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 113-117.

By the early twentieth century a number of writers had published arguments in favour of the Jesus-Myth theory. These treatments were sufficiently influential to merit several book-length responses by traditional historians and New Testament scholars. The most influential of the books arguing for a mythic Jesus was Arthur Drews's The Christ-Myth (1909) which argued that Christianity had been a Jewish Gnostic cult that spread by appropriating aspects of Greek philosophy and Frazerian death-rebirth deities. This combination of arguments became the standard form of the mythic Christ theory.

While aspects of the theory were influential, mainstream scholars at the time rejected the notion. Since Frazerian theories about myth have been largely debunked, and the priority of Gnosticism seriously questioned, the Jesus-Myth theory has dwindled in importance.

In recent years, the Jesus-Myth has had few proponents in academia but has been advanced by William B. Smith, George Albert Wells (The Jesus Legend and The Jesus Myth), and John Marco Allegro (The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross and The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth), as well as by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy (co-authors of The Jesus Mysteries and Jesus and the Lost Goddess), and Earl Doherty (author of The Jesus Puzzle).

The evidence and approaches to its analysis

There are several issues, from a scientific point of view, with taking the evidence of the New Testament, and appropriate external sources, at face value. While assuming Biblical inerrancy is a perfectly valid axiom in theology, it is one of the least appropriate for a scientific approach to analysisl; to answer questions in the mould of is Jesus a myth, starting from a standpoint of no or yes results in a fatally flawed circular argument - logic dictates that to avoid prejudicing the outcome the starting point should be maybe.

When following purely critical thought a scholar may still come to conclude that their copy of the New Testament produces an answer in alignment with their theology, but it does not mean that the original version of the New Testament would have the same result; it is perfectly possible to forge a copy of the New Testament that fits the scholar's theology and then unsurprisingly discover that the answer is as desired. It is academically better to be aware of what the original text is most likely to have said, and use that as the basis of the argument - a first hand witness is better than using the statement of the 200th person in a chain of chinese whispers.

Sources outside the New Testament

Despite several significant events surrounding Jesus being described by the bible to have had large numbers of witnesses, such as the feeding of the multitude, and ascension, or to have been extremely notable, such as the resurrection, levitating on a lake, and prominent public conflicts with temple priests and Pilate, not one mention is made of them in surviving writings from the era outside the Bible. Judea was, at the time, a location with a good degree of communication infrastructure (compared with, for example, the Tocharians), and several Roman historians and commentators of the time could plausibly be argued to have been expected to have written about such significant and well witnessed events.

However, as far as is known at present, there are only about six or seven short passages that might reference Jesus, out of the entire non-Christian writing of the era, most of which say next to nothing about Jesus, and most of which are regarded as dubious at best by a majority of academics.Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament. This is despite the high degree of literacy in the Roman world, and despite the relatively large number of Roman and Jewish commentators and historians writing in the first century. This is taken by advocates of the non-historicity of Jesus as an argument from silence which counts in their support, while more mainstream scholars merely argue that it casts doubt on the historicity of the miraculous events themselves.

Consistency of methodology

Although seldom remarked on by most New Testament scholars, some advocates of the Jesus-Myth theory argue that historians lack any reliable and widely accepted methodology for determining what is historical and what is not. As J. D. Crossan, a well respected scholar of early Christianity, comments, I do not think, after two hundred years of experimentation, that there is any way acceptable in public discourse or scholarly debate, by which you can go directly into the great mound of the Jesus tradition and separate out the historical Jesus layer from all later strata.

While this is not directly an argument that parts of Jesus are based on myth, or that he did not exist at all, any more than is an argument that Napoleon did not exist, advocates of the Jesus-Myth theory have argued that it calls into question the results of previous historical inquiry into Jesus of Nazareth. Opponents of the Jesus-Myth theory, on the other hand, including liberal commentators such as the Jesus Seminar, argue that some reliable information can be extracted from the New Testament if a consistent critical methodology is used. Both advocates and opponents agree that previous historical inquiry needs revisiting and being filtered to take account of the methodology in use, rather than simply accepting.

Translation issues

Although seemingly unchanging to the untrained eye, the New Testament has historically varied in often substantial ways. The oldest copies are written in Koine Greek, which in the case of most New Testament books appears to be the original language, and in a form of Syriac; consequently translation into other languages, such as english, has resulted in several variations.

Translating the text by trying to preserving the meaning has the flaw that it interprets the text before translating it, and thus relies on the interpretation being correct; although word-for-word translations are less susceptible to this flaw, when the translation for certain words are not completely unambiguous in the original text, an element of interpretation is also required. In consequence, relying on a particular translation relies on trusting the translator to capture the intended meaning; to avoid unduly trusting translations from their own theological viewpoint, many scholars serious about analysing the evidence of the New Testament learn Koine Greek, and rely more directly on the ancient manuscripts.

Reliability of copies

Before the printing press was invented, the New Testament survived by being hand copied, and imperfect copying, and sometimes deliberate fraud, allowed several errors to creep into various manuscript versions of the text, on which later copies were then based (even with the printing press, error sometimes occurred). Though apparent forgeries such as the Pericope Adulterae and Comma Johanneum have since been discovered, and are consequently left out of many modern translations, or marked as dubious, it is unknown how many forgeries and errors remain in the text. Sometimes such discoveries have little impact, while others have the potential to be substantial, such as the lack of the traditional ending for Mark 16 in most of the earliest manuscripts could be considered to form an argument from silence against the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus.

Reliability of the original

According to many critical scholars, the apparent narrative inconsistencies between different parts of the New Testament make the New Testament somewhat unreliable, and casts doubt on its ability to provide meaningful historical information about Jesus and the time he is alleged to have lived (although it still remains useful as a source of information about its authors). Many scholars with a strong skeptical view of Jesus' historicity take such issues of historiography further, with writers such as Price arguing that the inconsistencies between the Gospels, birth stories, genealogies, and chronologies, makes the New Testament worthless as a historical document*.

Authorship and origin

The oldest part of the New Testament, and the earliest references to Jesus, are widely considered to be the epistles of Paul. When analysing these it is important to note that most scholars question the authorship of the Pauline epistles, only seven of the epistles being considered genuine by almost everyone (consequently being known as the undisputed epistles), while conversely the Pastoral Epistles are considered by over two thirds of scholars to be unlikely to be genuine. For some writers, including some significant and well respected scholars of early Christianity, it is almost as if the disputed group were written specifically to counter the group thought to be genuine.Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Paul

The canonical Gospels present a more complicated picture. According to a majority of scholars, the synoptic problem--the strong similarities between three of the gospels--is most accurately resolved by the two-source hypothesis, according to which most of the content of Matthew and Luke were copied wholesale from the Gospel of Mark and a lost collection of quotations known as the Q document (the currently hypothetical Q document is very similar in nature and partly in content to the Gospel of Thomas). Consequently when analysing the Synoptic Gospels it is more appropriate, from an academic point of view, to analyse the Gospel of Mark and the sayings that hypothetically originate in Q, than it is to separately analyse each Gospel as a whole.

If the two-source picture is accurate, the parts of Luke and Matthew deriving from Q, and the elements of Mark that might, in retrospect, also derive from Q, should be discounted as informative historical witnesses to Jesus. This is due to their nature as pure quotations without context; there is no reason to assume that a collection of quotations would be more likely to be genuine quotes from a single individual, rather than being an accretion over time from several independent sources. Among the narratives affected by this are the Sermon on the Mount, Sermon on the Plain, the versions of the Temptation of Christ in Matthew and Luke, and several of the narratives introducing and explaining parables; under the two-source picture, these are all usually argued to be fairly thin framing storys for the quotations.

As for the other canonical Gospel, that of John, its authorship has been questioned by a large number of scholars. Not only do many scholars find the quality of language, theology, and use of Greek, unrealistic for someone supposedly a poor fisherman living close to the time of Jesus, but the Gospel also appears to contain several direct attacks on alternative forms of Christianity that only arose to prominence in the mid second century (including the opening words, which directly contradict Arianism), suggesting it was written to counter them, i.e. that it is mid second century in date.

A late date would make the Gospel no longer count as an early witness, and although P52 would seem to suggest that a small part of the Gospel is towards the early part of the second century (and a few scholars posit a date in the late first centuries), it is quite possible that the current Gospel was based on an earlier text more amienable to alternative beliefs about Jesus. When studying the Jesus as Myth theory, most advocates of the proposition, that Jesus is based at least partly on myth, completely discount the Gospel of John as propaganda, unreliable due to late dating, and/or unreliable due to several places where it appears to contradict with the Synoptic Gospels.

Influences on the earliest Christianity

According to conservative Christian apologists, the earliest Christianity developed directly from the ministry of Jesus and his Twelve Apostles, without much in the way of external influences. Conservative Christian apologists also assert that the New Testament is an accurate historic record of Jesus. More critical and secular approaches argue that the earliest Christianity did not develop in a religious vacuum, but in the cosmopolitan and many-religioned world of a hellenised Judea under the auspices of the Roman Empire. Consequently critical approaches, including those associated with the theory of Jesus as myth, argue that it remains plausible for early Christianity to have developed under the influence of external religions, and that it would be unusual for the New Testament narratives to not even have been remotely touched by such a cosmopolitan background.

The influence of the Old Testament

It is widely accepted that the Gospel accounts were influenced by the Old Testament. In particular, many quotations attributed to the Q document, which the Gospels attribute to Jesus, find parallels in several places of the Old Testament. Some scholars believe that certain elements of the gospels are not history but a type of midrash: creative narratives based on the stories, prophecies, and quotes in the Hebrew Bible.

The Gospel of Matthew is widely considered the most "Jewish" of the canonical Gospels, and in the small amount of material unique to the Gospel of Matthew (i.e. not mentioned by the other canonical Gospels), Jesus is presented in a way that often has strong parallels with significant Old Testament figures. Most noticeable are the similarities with Moses, whose birth narrative and sojourn in the wilderness as a youth are alleged by textual critics to have been the basis from which Matthew derived its account of the nativity of Jesus, rather than Matthew basing it on the actual events of the birth of Jesus. *

Though conceding that the gospels may contain some creativity and midrash, scholarly opponents of the Jesus-as-myth stance argue that the gospels are more akin to ancient Graeco-Roman biographies. Although scholars do not agree on the exact nature of this genre, associated works attempted to impart historical information about historical figures, but were not comprehensive and could include legendary developments. Nevertheless, as ancient biographies, proponents of Jesus' existence believe they contain sufficient historical information to establish his historicity.

Although there are many types of midrash, the Toledot Yeshu jumps out as being the most similar to the proposal that characters and situations were invented wholesale according to religious dogma and Old Testament prophecy. However, those opposed to the existence of such strong Old Testament influences have argued that the closest parallels, to potential Moses-based embellishment of the Jesus narrative, are inapplicable. Although agreeing that there are many examples of ancient Jewish and Christian literature that shaped their stories and accounts according to Old Testament influence, such opponents argue that even under this influence there is nevertheless often some accurate historical information at the core *; for example, in 1 Maccabees, Judas and his battles are described in terms which parallel those of Saul's and David's battles against the Philistines in 1 and 2 Samuel, but nevertheless 1 Maccabees has a degree of respect amongst historians as having a reasonable degree of historical reliability (John R. Bartlett, The First and Second Books of Maccabees, p. 15-17).

Gnostic themes

Although there are occasional references in the disputed group of Pauline Epistles to a flesh-and-blood Jesus, the undisputed epistles contain only limited mention of Jesus as a historic figure. Even though Paul's letters are widely regarded as the earliest Christian documents, they contain very few references to Jesus' actual life and ministry, which only appear in detail in the later Gospels. Christian apologists claim that Paul's letters were written in response to specific problems unrelated to the details of the life of Jesus, and so the occasional and epistolary nature of Paul's correspondence are sufficient explanations for the lack of detail of Jesus' life. However, proponents of the theory that Jesus has a basis in myth counter that there are an abundance of missed rhetorical opportunities in his epistles to reinforce points by quoting statements that the Gospels later claim that Jesus said, or citing events in his life mentioned later by the Gospels that were directly relevant to the topics Paul was discussing, and presumably must have been known about in the period between the events happening and the Gospels being written.

Several commentators, from writers whose theories have not received widespread acceptance, such as Earl Doherty, to widely respected academics and experts in the field, such as Harvard professor Elaine Pagels, have argued that the Pauline epistles, or at least the genuine ones, should be interpreted as gnosticism. Christianity arose under a heavy Hellenic culture, Paul himself growing up in Tarsus, the centre of one of the major mystery religions of the time, and Pagels and Doherty (and others) believe that Paul's writing should be viewed in the context of the Hellenic culture which formed his background. One consequence of parts of the New Testament being written as Gnostic documents is that the narratives involved would not have been intended as descriptions of historic events but as non-historic allegory and metaphor.

Gnosticism, an umbrella term for a diverse set of groups within early Christianity (that were ultimately suppressed), frequently used allegory and metaphor to guide its initiates towards an esoteric salvation, which Gnosticism viewed as a form of knowledge (gnosis), not unlike Buddhist enlightenment. Many of the most prominent strands of Gnosticism interpreted the Gospels as Gnostic documents, and their narratives as allegorical rather than historic, often drawing profound meaning from the events in Jesus' life. Many Gnostic groups even regarded Jesus himself as an allegory, rather than historic, and docetism was rife in Gnostic groups. Thus whether or not parts of the New Testament were written as Gnostic documents, is a matter of substantial impact on the question of the historicity of Jesus, and on what elements can be considered to be based on a historic figure.

How much influence gnosticism had on Christianity, and how much Christianity originated in gnosticism, are thus questions which have historically been quite volatile. Advocates of a position arguing that many elements of Jesus are derived from myth holdthat those references in the undisputed epistles that appear to refer to events on earth, and a physical historic Jesus, should instead be regarded as allegorical metaphors *.

Parallels with Mediterranean mystery religions and other non-Abrahamic sources

The question of what connection Christianity has to Mediterranean mystery religions has been a controversy since the early centuries of Christianity. Although such questions subsided and were suppressed as the power of the Church grew, they have returned as the knowledge about the mystery religions was rediscovered. Whether this connection exists, and who copied who, is at the core of the question of Jesus as myth.

Most of the mystery religions of the Mediterranean in the time of early Christianity were centred on a single divine figure (in the case of Orphism, the central figure is essentially an avatar of his own master, Dionysus), who had in most cases originally been a minor deity, whose mythology contained a narrative involving the deities death. In several cases, the original mythology seems to have been completely hijacked and abruptly altered, often bearing very little relation to the original myth; this is particularly noticeable in the way that Mithra somehow became Mithras. A number of the Mediterranean mystery religions of the period contain several similarities to each other, such as a prominent life-death-rebirth narrative, and the central deity being semi-human; this group (including the religions of Osiris-Horus, Dionysus, Mithras, Aion, Adonis, and Attis) were identified as connected in early times, and as a group were named Osiris-Dionysus after the two earliest groups.

Modern scholars have argued that most of these Osiris-Dionysus religions evolved when earlier Osiris-Dionysus religions spread into a new region and localised themselves by hijacking convenient local deities; this is most evident in how Sabazios, originally a Phrygian deity, became another name for Dionysus, as did Bacchus, originally a Roman deity of wine; it is also evident in how Orphicism developed with the central figure of Orpheus, supposedly a priest of Dionysus, but essentially Dionysus himself. Most scholars that have an opinion on the matter argue that the earliest form of this religion was the Osiris-Horus form of ancient Egyptian religions, and that the others developed from there, having been transferred by merchants. Notably, although a form of Osiris-Dionysus was present in most nations around the Mediterranean, particularly in the east, at first glance no such form appears to have existed in Roman Palestine. A central contention of the Jesus-as-myth argument is that Jesus, or at least much of the Gospel narrative about him, and early Christian tradition concerning him, is the form of Osiris-Dionysus localised for Roman Palestine.

Pythagorean elements

Enough has survived from the comments of their enemies (for example, Origen and Irenaeus), and a few relics of their own, for scholars to be fairly certain that many of the mystery religions were, at least by the first century, Pythagoreanist and Neo-Platonic reinterpretations of earlier myths; i.e. earlier myths became, in the mystery religions, allegory and metaphor, concerning universal truths, rather than something considered literally true. Exactly what connection exists between Gnosticism and the Mediterranean mystery religions is an unsolved question, but it is certain that they would have shared considerably similar teaching methods, soteriology, and mysticism. Thus to approach the question of whether Christianity borrowed from mystery religions (and vice versa), comparisons should be made not only between early Christianity and Mediterranean myths, but also between early Christianity and Pythagoreanism.

Aside from potential parallels with Gnosticism, which can be investigated more directly, other significant features of Pythagoreanism might have entered into early Christianity, and their presence would add support to a position advocating that significant parts of early Christianity, or all of it, derived from mystery religion. Pythagoreans were vegetarian, so much so that until the 18th century all vegetarians were not called vegetarian but Pythagorean. Many scholars and theologians believe that the earliest Christians were vegetarian, as the Desert Fathers almost definitely were, and some significant early Christian groups even had versions of the Gospel of Matthew that clearly point to Jesus being vegetarian - the Gospel of the Ebionites differs from the now traditional version of Matthew in places referring to meat by using similarly spelt vegetarian friendly terms; there is no academic consensus as to which version has the more original wording. As the canonical New Testament seems to argue that vegetarianism is a personal choice, and many early Christian writers also stated that it was, the early Christians would seem to have taken this position without a New Testament based theological motivation for doing so. Modern Christian vegetarianism argues that passages from the Old Testament and Book of Enoch assert that vegetarianism was God's ideal, but there is no evidence either for or against the idea that early Christians used the same argument, and there is the alternative possibility that early Christian vegetarianism originated due to the influence of Pythagoreanism.

Pythagoreanism also saw deep value in mathematics; geometry was seen as having a high spiritual significance in and of itself, as well as being a mechanism to encode mystical teachings. The Feeding of the 5000 and of the 4000 have long been thought to encode some deeper meaning; more mainstream interpretations regard the numbers involved as references to the Torah feeding the Jews and Jesus' ministry feeding the Gentiles, but it has also been argued that they encode instructions for a mystical diagram. The use of numbers as cryptic references to deeper teaching could be argued to demonstrate Pythagorean influence in and of itself, but the encrypted presence of mystical diagrams would be a much stronger argument in favour of the existence of such influence. The Catch of 153 fish is one of the most notable situations where a diagram can be derived from the text following basic consistent rules; using the Isopsephia of the text to dictate sizes, the account of the event can be described geometrically - the resulting diagram not only describes the event, but simultaneously has another, more mystical, interpretation as described in Plato's Timaeus. 153 itself is a significant number in Pythagoreanism, and had a strong connection to fish, as it was one part of the 'measure of the fish - a reference to the Vesica Piscis (whose name means flesh of the fish) and the square root of 3.

Parallels with non-Christian myths from the first century

Parallels between Jesus and the various religions of the Osiris-Dionysus group are a popular topic for internet sites sceptical of Christianity. A more constrained set of parallels have also been proposed by various scholars advocating the Jesus-as-myth theory. The most powerful groups in early Christianity were the Christians centred in Alexandria (in Egypt) and those in Rome, and so the form of Osiris-Dionysus at these two locations could reasonably be expected to have had the greatest influence. In Alexandria it was Osiris-Horus, a partial merging of the identities of Osiris and Horus (usually seen as fairly separate in more traditional ancient Egyptian religion); Osiris dying and being resurrected as Horus. In Rome, it was originally Dionysus, but by the third century the state religion was that of Sol Invictus, originally just a standard Solar Deity, but by then had formed a syncretism with Mithraism, which also continued to exist separately among males in the military of the Roman Empire.

The most prominent narratives in Christianity alleged by advocates of the Jesus as Myth theory to be copied from traditions of Osiris-Horus are mostly centred around the earlier part of Jesus' life:

  • Christ as a title - when treated as a partial merge of Osiris and Horus, Osiris-Horus was sometimes referred to as the embalmed Horus, describing Horus taking the place of Osiris in the death parts of the narrative. The embalmed Horus was written in Egyptian as HR KRST (probably pronounced har karast), and although Christ has a highly plausible etymology making it a cognate with Chrism (ointment), as a Greek attempt at translating the Hebrew term Messiah, a number of advocates of the Jesus as myth theory, including theology professor Tom Harpur, argue that this was just a happy co-incidence, and the term is actually derived from the Karast title of Horus. Use of this title, rather than directly copying any of the other titles of Horus, is argued by advocates of the Jesus myth, to be due to the convenient implications of its false cognate Chrism. If this is true, rather than covered in ointment, i.e. anointed, the literal meaning of Christ would really be covered in balm, i.e. embalmed.
  • Parentage
    • By the first century the identity of Osiris had absorbed that of Ptah (with early stages of this absorption being known as Ptah-Seker-Osiris), the great creator deity. In traditional egyptian religion Osiris had become seen as the father of Horus, and hence Horus was the son of the creator deity, like Jesus was seen as son of God the Father.
    • By the first century Isis was seen as the mother of Horus. She was traditionally known as Meri, meaning beloved, which is phonetically near-identical to Mary, the name of the mother of Jesus, and was the most common recipient of the epithet - if Meri was used without a particular deity being mentioned it usually referred to Isis.
    • Pharaohs sometimes portrayed themselves or their children as an incarnation of Horus. The mother involved was usually referred to as Meri (i.e. beloved), and was human, hence giving a semi-human incarnation of Horus a human mother called Meri.
  • The Nativity of Jesus - some of the more detailed versions of the birth of Horus have been argued to parallel the Nativity of Jesus, namely the versions of Horus' birth that derive from when Horus' mother was said to be Neith (whose identity later became absorbed into that of Isis). This is most obvious in a set of pre-Christian carvings from a temple in Luxor portraying Akhenaten as an incarnation of Horus, according to which:
    • The future birth of Horus was announced in advance (an annunciation) by Thoth, whom the Greeks identified as Hermes and was in the first century seen as the messenger of the Gods, a role taken by the Archangel Gabriel in Jewish thought.
    • The mother became pregnant by virtue of the breath of life being sent into her. The breath of life in question was Kneph, a concept depicted anthropomorphically (like Mediaeval depictions of death) rather than a deity, which Plutarch states had the same meaning to the Egyptians as Pneuma had to the Greeks. Pneuma translates as spirit, so one can argue that the mother is being depicted as becoming pregnant by the holy spirit, which Christians usually argue is how Mary became pregnant.
    • The mother became pregnant while remaining a virgin (particularly as Neith was believed to have given birth to the first males, and hence existing before them). The doctrine of Virgin Birth is prominent in early Christianity.
    • The mother is human (at least in the Luxor carving)
    • There is a star which signifies his birth. In the Jesus narrative this is the Star of Bethlehem, which isn't identified very clearly and there is much debate as to what it was meant to refer to. In the Osiris-Horus narrative this is Sothis, a not-completely identified star generally thought to be the same as Sirius. Sirius gained its importance in relation to Osiris-Hours as its first appearance each year co-incides with the date of the annual Nile flooding. Sirius reaches its highest Zenith on January 6th, the day that some ancient Christian traditions (including modern Eastern Orthodox churches) believe Jesus was born.
    • Three visitors aim for a star, indicating where the birth is, and after the birth the three visitors each give gifts; in the Jesus narrative there are three gifts and an unidentified number of visitors (who are Magi), the number of visitors simply being a very long-standing tradition; in the Osiris-Horus narrative the three visitors are anthropomorphisms of the three stars in the belt of the constellation Orion, which point directly towards Sirius, and were named Mintaka, Anilam, and Alnitak (more accurately, consonant-only records name them as MNTK, ANLM and ALNTK, and Egyptologists estimate the full spelling).
    • Being placed in a manger - according to Jesus rested in a manger shortly after his birth. Horus was also said to have been placed in a manger as a baby, though in earlier times the feature had been attributed to Ra instead, having transferred to Horus when the identities of Horus and Ra merged as Ra-harakhty; the belief originated due to the Egyptian word for manger, Apta, being a homonym for the Egyptian word for mountain peak, a location that Ra, as a solar deity, was considered to have been born at. The Egyptian belief concerning Horus/Ra's birth in a manger was so prominent that mangers were for a time annually paraded around the streets in a festival celebrating the sun H. P. Blavatsky: Collected Writings.
  • Birth town - Horus was, by the first century, considered to have been born at Heliopolis, the main centre of his cult. Heliopolis had been the Egyptian capital and winter grain store, and hence was regarded as the house of bread (several copies of the Book of the dead refer to it by this name). In Hebrew, house of bread is Bethlehem, the same name as the town that Jesus was said to have been born in. The narratives explaining why Jesus came to be born in Bethlehem but didn't grow up there are often regarded by critical scholars as peculiarly contrived (and don't seem to agree), suggesting non-historicity, particularly as a number of archaeologists think that the Palestinian Bethlehem didn't even exist during the first century.
  • The feeding of the multitude - a similar narrative is told of Horus in some versions of the Book of the Dead, as Horus was the patron deity of Heliopolis, at one point the Egyptian capital, and hence grain store, the source of bread in winter and poor harvests.
  • The raising of Lazarus - many versions of the Legend of Osiris and Isis see Horus as having raised Osiris from the dead.
    • In Egyptian Osiris was named A-S-R (as a consonantal language, vowels were not written down), thought to be pronounced Aser or Asar (Osiris is the Greek version of the name), and by merely adding Hebrew theophory to convert it to a normal Hebrew name, and adding a standard Greek suffix to then convert it to the Koine Greek of the New Testament, one arrives at Elazaros; by a standard Elision this turns into Lazaros (Lazarus is how this was translated into Latin for the Vulgate, on which early English translations were based)
    • The location of the resurrection of Osiris is Heliopolis (a Greek name), which the Egyptians called Annu (and the Hebrew Bible refers to as On). Treating Annu as a proper name, and regarding house of Annu as the place, this becomes BethAnnu in Hebrew. This is phonetically near-identical to Bethany in first century Hebrew (u and y being difficult to distinguish, in the same way as modern Japanese speakers find r and l difficult to distinguish), which is where Jesus is said to have raised Lazarus.
  • The divine opponent - the similarity in name between Satan, the adversary of Jesus in the narrative of his temptation, and Set, the adversary of Horus, has not been lost on advocates of the Jesus as myth position. Among the narratives describing the contest between Horus and Set for the crown of all Egypt (thought to be based on the historic rivalry between Upper and Lower Egypt) are a number of narratives in which Set tempts Horus to renounce his claim in return for various gifts. Although conservative Christians and Jews argue that Judaism, and hence the idea of Satan, developed completely independently of Egyptian religion, the fact that the ancient Egyptian Empire extended into the Levant during the New Kingdom has lead a number of scholars to argue that a total lack of influence on Judaism from the Egyptian religion is implausible.

The most prominent narratives in Christianity alleged by advocates of the Jesus as Myth theory to be copied from traditions of Dionysus are, conversely, centred on later aspects of Jesus' life:

  • The Marriage at Cana, during which the New Testament states that Jesus turned water into wine, is similar to a narrative concerning Dionysus, who was originally the god of wine. In the pre-Christian Dionysus version, priests attending to a wedding at which Dionysus is present bring vessels of water to a building, which is then sealed, and when later reopened the water has been turned to wine. As the earliest surviving record of this miracle of Dionysus is from the late first century writings of Tatius, Christian apologists have argued that it was copied from Jesus' actions. However, as Jesus' miracle is only reported by the Gospel of John, which is dated by most scholars to 95-115 AD, advocates of the Jesus myth counter that the earliest surviving evidence, of a water into wine at a wedding miracle, concerns Dionysus not Jesus.Bowersock 125-8; Morton Smith. In the case of Dionysus it is his own marriage to Ariadne, which differs from the traditional explanation of Jesus simply being a guest at the Cana wedding, though a minority of modern scholars (and a few notable fiction writers) have suggested the Cana marriage was actually that of Jesus to Mary Magdalene.
  • The Passion of Jesus has a number of features which are argued by Jesus-Myth-theory advocates to be borrowed from Dionysus. Just before his actual crucifixion, the narrative portrays Jesus as being tortured - during which his captors make him wear a purple robe and crown of foliage, both of which were said to be ordinarily worn by Dionysus (due to being imperial symbols). According to Christian apologists the temporary similarity is co-incidental and due to universals*, but advocates of the theory that Jesus was derived from myth contend that although temporary, the similar appearance during the torture scene was a deliberate reference by the early gospel writers to Dionysus, in a similar manner to plays and dramas when an actor breaks the fourth wall and reveals their disguise to the audience.
  • In nearly all Christologies, Jesus is a mortal men but in some way also divine (the most popular Christologies in modern Christianity, including Trinitarianism, argue that he was also fully a deity, while even docetism and adoptionism argues that the divine possessed the mortal). In the play, Dionysus, a deity, comes to earth as a fully mortal man, claiming to have done so in order to make his Godhead manifest to the mortals.
  • The return to Jerusalem, subsequent Trial of Jesus before Pilate, and execution, have supposed parallels with an account of Dionysus in a pre-Christian play named The Bacchae. In both the Gospels and the play, the central character (Jesus/Dionysus) rides into the royal town on the back of a donkey and is greeted by crowds waving foliage, is soon after arrested by the authorities, put on trial before the ruler, during which he mostly avoids answering the questions, and is condemned and executed, before returning from the dead. Unlike the later Gospels, the play argues that Dionysus willingly let these things happen in order to later humiliate (and ultimately kill) Pentheus, the ruler who tried him; though some Christian apologists argue that this purpose invalidates the parallel, it is perfectly possible for the Gospel writers to simply have dropped this purpose in order to adopt the narrative for their own aims. It is also possible that Euripides, the author of the play, based his narrative on stories from the Dionysus mystery religion, but, in order to keep the actual teachings of the mystery religion a mystery, and to improve the dramatic appeal, changed the reasoning behind it.
Christian apologists have also argued that since the foliage waved during entry into the town (in Jesus' case being Jerusalem) were palm fronds, rather than the ivy of The Bacchae, this is merely a universal narrative, especially as ivy are plants of religious significance to the Dionysus mysteries, while palms are of national significance to Judaism tektonics.org (as above); their opponents contest that the intertwining of religion and nation in Judaism has meant that the palms are simply the plants which Judaism gives the same religious significance to as the Dionysus religion gave to ivy. Donkeys, and mules, also were strongly associated with Dionysus, in particular due to the Sileni, but they have very little significance to Judaism, and are merely a form of transport.

Mithraism, according to the Jesus-as-myth theory, adds to these further elements of the nativity. While the alleged Osiris-Horus parallels mostly concern the nativity according to the Gospel of Matthew, the alleged Mithras parallels mostly concern the version of the nativity in the Gospel of Luke; this somewhat reflects the groups who appear to be these Gospels' intended audiences - Matthew's audience being closer to Egypt (where Osiris-Horus was prominent), and Luke's being the Hellenic world (where Mithras was more significant):

  • Birth in a cave - although modern traditions depict the event happening in a free-standing structure, in early Christian tradition Jesus was depicted as being born in a cave, and the official location of his birth in Roman Catholicism, Islam, and Eastern Orthodoxy, remains the particular cave which lies at the heart of the 4th century Church of the Nativity. This early tradition is thought to derive from the Bible, which does not mention a stable, but instead only refers to the location with a term ambiguously meaning either gathering room (which was an upstairs room) or cave. In Mithraism, Mithras was said to have been born in a cave, which scholars think was an allegory for the universe, as well as a meta-reference to Plato's Allegory of the cave.
  • Birth in a stable - though the Bible does not specifically mention an inn or a stable, Jesus is traditionally depicted as having been born in a stable. Though it would be odd for a stable to be placed in a gathering room (an upstairs meeting-room), in Roman Palestine, caves (which are common in the region) often housed stables, and it is plausible that the association between caves and stables lead to the tradition of Jesus being born in a stable. An alternative origin for the tradition is that advocated by supporters of the Jesus-as-myth theory, namely that it originates with the belief that Mithras was born in a stable. Mithras was considered, allegorically, to be a solar deity, and hence was said to have been born during the winter solstice (the darkest point of the year); in the classical era the winter solstice occurred when the sun was in the constellation that was then known as the Augean Stable (and is now named Capricorn). Early Christian apologists admitted the parallel involved, Justin Martyr, for example, stated that Jesus was born when the sun had its birth in the Augean Stable.
  • Ox and Ass - Traditionally Jesus' birth is depicted as being accompanied by an ass and an ox, and though this is not mentioned in the canonical Gospels, the tradition is long-standing and has its first written mention in the Arabic Infancy Gospel. Mithras was also, metaphorically, said to be born in the company of an ass and an ox, as aside from Capricorn, the Augean Stable, Auriga was also known as a stable, since in classical times this was the constellation in which the sun reached the summer solstice (the other point on the ecliptic at which the sun's zenith appears to rest for about 3 days); either side of Auriga are constellations that the classical world named Taurus, meaning bull, which in a more feminine scene is depicted as an ox, and Ass of Typhon (now known as Ursa Major). In Mithraism they had a greater significance - the bull was the one which Mithras was destined to slay (and was considered to be a meta-reference to Mithras himself), and Typhon was the closest figure in Greek mythology to Satan, hence his Ass was seen as a sort-of spy.
  • Burial in a cave, and subsequent resurrection. The Gospels state that after his death, Jesus was buried in a cave, and subsequent narratives state that after this tomb was found to be empty, Jesus was seen to be resurrected. Mithraism also sometimes held that after the death of Mithras, he was buried in a cave, from where he was resurrected; this is thought by scholars to derive from the earlier idea that Mithras had been born from a rock, an allegory for the universe as seen from outside it, while the cave represented the universe from the inside, hence the death in the cave being the in-universe equivalent to the birth from the rock - thus birth coming from death.

Priorities and Practices

If Christianity had originally evolved as a localised mystery religion, then not only should there be parallels between the scriptural narratives of Christianity and myths from the mystery religions, but there should also be parallels with more outwardly things such as religious rituals, and imagery. The existence of such parallels has been admitted by prominent Christian apologists since ancient times, for example, Tertullian, arguing that the devil had founded the mystery religions, wrote

The devil, whose business is to pervert the truth, mimics the exact circumstances of the Divine Sacraments. He baptises his believers and promises forgiveness of sins from the Sacred Fount, and thereby initiates them into the religion of Mithras. Thus he celebrates the oblation of bread, and brings in the symbol of the resurrection.

Many art historians acknowledge that early Marian Iconography was heavily influenced by Egyptian depictions of Isis and Horus as a baby, veneration of Mary having first rose to prominence among the Alexandrian Christians (Christians based in the see of Alexandria, Egypt); the Jesus-as-myth position goes one step further and argue that this is due to Mary herself deriving from worship of Isis. Historians in general have often argued that many religious rituals, images, and festivals associated with Christianity, are a result of Christianization of elements from earlier non-Christian religions; this has historically lead to some of these features being criticised by certain Christian groups, particularly protestants, as being heathen superstitions, with, for example, the Puritans banning Christmas for this reason. It is the contention of the Jesus-as-myth theory that certain of these parallels (such as the date of Christmas, importance of Sunday, and use of the labarum) are not borrowings, as many historians see them, or co-incidences, as Christian apologists see them, but instead are due to Christianity being just another form of the mystery religions and thus sharing a common source.

The question ultimately comes down to priority - who copied from whom. Although a few modern Christian apologists argue that such parallels as do exist were copied by the mystery religions from Christianity, ancient Christian apologists openly acknowledged that the mystery religions had got there first; however, to the early apologists such as Tertullian and Justin Martyr, this wasn't evidence that Christianity was derived from the mystery religions, but that the mystery religions had been an evil-hearted prophecy of Christianity:

Having heard it proclaimed through the prophets that the Christ was to come and that the ungodly among men were to be punished by fire, the wicked spirits put forward many to be called Sons of God, under the impression that they would be able to produce in men the idea that the things that were said with regard to Christ were merely marvellous tales - Justin Martyr, First Apology

The opponents of early Christianity suggested that Christianity was a result of failure to correctly interpret the mystery religions, and the attempts to circumvent the fact that the beliefs of the mystery religions pre-dated it, by claiming that they were simply prophecies, were cases of simply ignoring the obvious (i.e. ignoring Ockham's Razor). Celsus, a second century anti-Christian writer, wrote that Christianity:

continues to spread amongst the vulgar, nay one can even say it spreads because of its vulgarity, and the illiteracy of its adherents. And while there are a few moderate, reasonable, and intelligent people who are inclined to interpret its beliefs allegorically, yet it thrives in its purer form among the ignorant Origen, Contra Celsum (Origen was anti-Celsus)

More recently, advocates of the Jesus-as-myth theory have argued that the ease with which Christianity was abruptly imposed by the Theodosian decree - the lack of anti-Christian riots, and the smooth change of mithraeums (and other pre-Christian holy places) into Churches - points to a high degree of similarity between Christianity and its main rival at the time (Mithras Sol Invictus). Many historians argue that this similarity was partly due to the influence of Constantine I, life-long chief priest (pontifex maximus) of the Sol Invictus religion, and, according to Christian legend, a convert to Christianity on his death-bed; Constantine viewed variety as a dangerous political risk, and spent a great deal of time standardising things, including convening the First Ecumenical Council in order to resolve a dispute within early Christianity over the nature of Jesus. According to Christian apologists, Constantine was secretly a Christian for much longer than his last breath, and his influence was mostly one way, remoulding the religion of Mithras Sol Invictus to closely mirror Christianity. According to advocates of the Jesus-as-myth position, Constantine did very little remoulding, the two religions had always been similar, due to Christianity being based on that of Mithras Sol Invictus; as Thomas Paine put it: The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun.Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

Notes

See also

References

  • Allegro, John M.. 1970. The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. Hodder and Stoughton. ISBN 0340128755
  • Allegro, John M. 1992. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth. Prometheus Books; 2nd revised edition. ISBN 0879757574
  • Atwill, Joseph. 2005. The Roman Origins of Christianity.
  • Atwill, Joseph. 2005. Caesar's Messiah.
  • Brodie, Thomas L. 2000. The Crucial Bridge: the Elijah-Elisha Narrative as an interpretive synthesis of Genesis-Kings and a literary model for the Gospels. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press.
  • Doherty, E.,The Jesus Puzzle (1999; revised edition 2000) ISBN 0968601405
  • Ellegard, Alvar. 1999. Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ. London: Century.
  • France, R. T. The Evidence for Jesus.
  • Freke, T. and Gandy, P. The Jesus Mysteries, by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, ISBN 0609807986
  • McDowell, Josh & Wilson, Bill. He Walked Among Us, Evidence for the Historical Jesus. San Bernardino, CA, Here’s Life Publishers, Inc. 1988, ISBN 0898402301
  • Meier, John. 1987. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. Volume One: The Roots of the Problem and the Person. Anchor Bible Reference Library. New York: Doubleday.
  • Price, Robert. 2004. New Testament Narrative as Old Testament Midrash. In Neusner, J., Avery-Peck, A., eds. The Encyclopedia of Midrash: Biblical Interpretation of Formative Judaism.
  • Price, Robert. 2003. The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.
  • Price, Robert. 2000. Deconstructing Jesus. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.
  • Sanders, E. P. 1995. The Historical Figure of Jesus. Penguin.
  • Sherwin-White, A. N. 1963. Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament. Oxford.
  • Theissen, G., and Merz, A. 1998. The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide. Minneapolis: Fortress
  • Thompson, Thomas L. 2005. The Messiah Myth. New York: Basic Books.
  • Van Voorst, Robert E. 2000. Jesus Outside the New Testament. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
  • Wells, G. A. 1999. The Jesus Myth. Peru, IL: Open Court (Carus Publishing)
  • Wells, G. A. The Historical Evidence for Jesus.
  • Whealey, Alice. 2003. Josephus on Jesus: The Testimonium Flavianum Controversy from Late Antiquity to Modern Times. Peter Lang Publishing.
  • G.L. Borchert, "Docetism" in Elwell Evangelical Dictionary; Catholic Encyclopedia, 1909/2003; D.C. Duling & N. Perrin, The New Testament: Proclamation and Parenesis, Myth and History, 1993; "Docetism", Encyclopædia Britannica, 2006; J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines. "Book 24 - John's Second Letter". J.B.Phillips, "The New Testament in Modern English", 1962 edition.

External links

Supporting a Jesus-Myth theory

Supporting a historical Jesus

Jesus | Biblical criticism

Thèse mythiste (Jésus non historique) | Mito di Gesù

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Jesus as myth".

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