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JESUS-MYTHERS: WHY THEY ARE NOT TAKEN SERIOUSLY
This is a post by a friend of mine (who posts under the handle, Layman) that I thought was so well written and researched that I thought I would piggy-back on his work for a week or so.
Another poster (IntenSity) asked:
I have been seeking all over the web for refutations directed to christ-myth hypotheses by scholars who hold the idea that a historical Jesus more likely than not existed.
Are there any serious scholars who have advanced arguments against the christ-myth hypothesis? Does any of you have any trenchant argument that can shatter the idea of Jesus having been mythical?
Layman:Most historians and NT scholars relevant to the topic think Jesus-Mythers are idiots and have better things to do with their time.
I. Howard Marshall points out that in the early-to-mid 20th century, one of the few "authorities" to consider Jesus as a myth was a Soviet Encyclopedia. He then goes on to discuss the then recent work of G.A. Wells:
There is said to be a Russian encyclopedia in current use which affirms in a brief entry that Jesus Christ was the mythological founder of Christianity, but it is virtually alone in doing so. The historian will not take its statement very seriously, since ... it offers no evidence for its assertion, and mere assertion cannot stand voer against historical enquiry.
But more than mere assertion is involved, for an attempt to show that Jesus never existed has been made in recent years by G.A. Wells, a Professor of German who has ventured into New Testament study and presents a case that the origins Christianity can be explained without assuming that Jesus really lived. Earlier presentations of similar views at the turn of the century failed to make any impression on scholarly opinion, and it is certain that this latest presentation of the case will not fare any better.
Professor Marshall was correct. Niether any earlier attempt nor Wells have swayed scholarly opinion. This remains true whether the scholars were Christians, liberals, conservatives, Jewish, atheist, agnostic, or Catholic.
Atheist historian Michael Grant completely rejected the idea:
This skeptical way of thinking reached its culmination in the argument that Jesus as a human being never existed at all and is a myth.... But above all, if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned. Certainly, there are all those discrepancies between one Gospel and another. But we do not deny that an event ever took place just because some pagan historians such as, for example, Livy and Polybius, happen to have described it in differing terms.... To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars.' In recent years, 'no serous scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus' -- or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary....
Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels, at 199-200.
Secular scholar Will Durant, who left the Catholic Church and embraced humanism, also dismisses the idea:
The Christian evidence for Christ begins with the letters ascribed to Saint Paul. Some of these are of uncertain authorship; several, antedating A.D. 64, are almost universally accounted as substantially genuine. No one has questioned the existence of Paul, or his repeated meetings with Peter, James, and John; and Paul enviously admits that these men had known Christ in his flesh. The accepted epistles frequently refer to the Last Supper and the Crucifixion....
Will Durant, Caesar and Christ, at 555.
The contradictions are of minutiae, not substance; in essentials the synoptic gospels agree remarkably well, and form a consistent portrait of Christ. In the enthusiasm of its discoveries the Higher Criticism has applied to the New Testament tests of authenticity so severe that by them a hundred ancient worthies--e.g., Hammurabi, David, Socrates--would fade into legend. Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed--the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus' arrest, Peter's denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them.
That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so loft an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospel. After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature of the history of Western man.
Even the famously liberal Professor Bultmann, who argued against the historicity of much of the gospels, is quite adamant that Jesus-mythers are "insane."
"Of course the doubt as to whether Jesus really existed is unfounded and not worth refutation. No sane person can doubt that Jesus stands as founder behind the historical movement whose first distinct stage is represented by the Palestinian community.
Rudolf Bultman, Jesus and the Word, at 13.
It is also obvious that the diverse and all-but completely unanimous opinion of modern Jesus scholars and relevant historians remain completely unconvinced by the Jesus-myth arguments -- whatever their background.
Contemporary New Testament scholars have typically viewed their arguments as so weak or bizarre that they relegate them to footnotes, or often ignore them completely.... The theory of Jesus' nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question.
Robert Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament, at 6, 14.
Today, nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed and that the gospels contain plenty of valuable evidence which as to be weighed and assessed critically. There is general agreement that, with the possible exception of Paul, we know far more about Jesus of Nazareth than about any first or second century Jewish or pagan religious teacher.
Graham Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, at 140-41.
But back to your question. Like I said, most scholars find the Jesus-myth position so stupid they do not bother to write books about it. They are more interested in the real scholarly action. However, one bona fide scholar who did stoop to write a response to G.A. Wells may be of interest to you: R.T. France, The Evidence for Jesus.
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