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The covenant of circumcision is the biblical covenant between Abraham and Yahweh involving circumcision, and making Abraham the father of great nations. It is of prime importance in many Abrahamic religions like Judaism and Islam, but not in Christianity. It is described in Tanakh and the Old Testament. {{citation}}: Empty citation (help)

Encounter between Abraham and Yahweh

Abraham (the founding father of all Abrahamic religions) was a friend of Yahweh and the Covenant of Circumcision was the first of many covenants between them. Yahweh personally made this pact with Abraham during an encounter between them.

Judaism

It is of prime importance to Judaism because it is the first Covenant of their everlasting pact with Yahweh. It is the basis for their claim as a nation and the mark of their faithfulness to the pact.

Islam

It is the basis for the practice of circumcision in Islam.

Christianity

Christianity dropped this practice from the beginning itself and it is banned in Christianity.

The Christ myth theory (also known as the Jesus myth theory and the nonexistence hypothesis) is the idea that Jesus of Nazareth was not a historical person, but is a fictional or mythological character created by the Early Christian community. Some proponents argue that events or sayings associated with the figure of Jesus in the New Testament may have been drawn from one or more individuals who actually existed, but that those individuals were not in any sense the founder of Christianity.

The history of the idea can be traced to the French Enlightenment thinkers Constantin-François Volney and Charles François Dupuis in the 1790s. Notable proponents include Bruno Bauer in the 19th century, Arthur Drews in the 20th century, and more recently—to varying degrees—professor of German G.A. Wells, professor of English Alvar Ellegård, and New Testament scholar Robert M. Price. The theory has come to public attention through the work of New Atheist writers such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and the French philosopher Michel Onfray.

Arguments in support of the theory emphasize the absence of extant reference to Jesus during his lifetime and the scarcity of non-Christian reference to him in the first century. Some proponents contend that Christianity emerged organically from Hellenistic Judaism, and draw on perceived parallels between the biography of Jesus and those of Greek, Egyptian, and other gods, especially myths about dying and rising deities.

The idea remains a minority one. Alvar Ellegård argues that theologians have failed to question Jesus's existence because of a lack of communication between them and other scholars, causing some of the basic assumptions of Christianity to remain insulated from general scholarly debate. The vast majority of scholars who specialize in the study of biblical history reject the theory and believe the existence of Jesus can be established using documentary and other evidence.

Context

Jesus

"Cristo crucificado" by Diego Velázquez (c. 1632). Jesus is said to have been crucified around 30 CE.

Further information: Jesus and history, Jesus in Christianity, Jesus in Islam, Jesus in Judaism, and Paul of Tarsus and Judaism

Those who argue that Jesus existed say he was born a Jew between 7 and 4 BCE—according to the gospels of Matthew and Luke, he was born during the reign of Herod the Great, who died in March 4 BCE—and died around 30 CE, during the administration of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Iudaea province. See Chronology of Jesus for details.

Biblical scholar L. Michael White, not himself a Christ-myth theorist, writes that, so far as is known, Jesus did not write anything, nor did anyone who had personal knowledge of him. There is no archeological evidence of his existence. There are no contemporaneous accounts of his life or death: no eyewitness accounts, or any other kind of first-hand record. All the accounts of Jesus come from decades or centuries later; the gospels themselves all come from later times, though they may contain earlier sources or oral traditions. White writes that the earliest writings that survive are the letters of Paul of Tarsus, and they were written 20–30 years after the dates given for Jesus's death. Paul was not a companion of Jesus; nor does he ever claim to have seen Jesus.

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Definition of the theory

Further information: Jesus Christ in comparative mythology

The idea that Jesus might not have existed has been expressed in a variety of ways and given a number of different names. Philosopher George Walsh argues that Christianity can be regarded as originating in a myth later dressed up as history, or with an historical being mythologized into a supernatural one: he calls the former the Christ myth theory, and the latter the historical Jesus theory. I. Howard Marshall, a biblical scholar, describes two views that stand at the opposite ends of a spectrum of opinion: at one end is the view that the gospels describe an essentially fictional person, and at the other that each event depicted in the New Testament is the literal truth. John Dominic Crossan, a religious scholar and former Catholic priest, prefers to call the Christ myth theory the "Jesus parable," because the argument is that we have a purely parabolic Jesus, not an historical one.

Paul Eddy, a biblical scholar, and Gregory Boyd, a theologian and pastor, break the spectrum of opinion into four positions that they say are a useful, if simplistic, heuristic. They group the first three into what they call a "legendary-Jesus thesis," namely that the picture of Jesus in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke is mostly or entirely historically inaccurate.

The Return of Persephone by Frederic Leighton (1891). Robert Price writes that a central plank of the Christ myth theory is that Jesus is one of a number of dying-and-rising gods.

• The Christ myth theory, or what Eddy and Boyd call the "mythic-Jesus thesis": the gospels describe a virtually, and perhaps entirely, fictitious person. There are no grounds for supposing that any aspect of the Jesus narrative is rooted in history, a view represented by writers such as Bruno Bauer, Arthur Drews, and G.A. Wells. Boyd and Eddy say Robert Price can be included in this category as an example of "Jesus agnosticism," the position that we lack sufficient evidence to be able to say whether he existed or not.
• There is enough evidence to conclude that Jesus existed, but the reports are so unreliable that very little can be said about him with confidence. This position is represented by Rudolf Bultmann and Burton Mack.
• Historical research can reveal a core of historical facts about Jesus, but he is very different from the Jesus of the New Testament. His sayings and miracles are myths. Robert Funk and Crossan are representatives of this view, one that Eddy and Boyd write is increasingly common among New Testament scholars.
• Finally, there is the position that the gospels are reliable historical sources, and that critical historiography should not rule out the possibility of supernatural occurrence. This view is represented by John Meier and N.T. Wright.

Three pillars of the theory

New Testament scholar Robert Price, who argues it is quite likely there never was an historical Jesus, writes that the traditional Christ myth theory is based on three pillars:

• There is no mention of a miracle-working Jesus in secular sources.
• The Pauline epistles, earlier than the gospels, do not provide evidence of a recent historical Jesus.
• The story of Jesus shows strong parallels to Middle Eastern religions about dying and rising gods, symbolizing the rebirth of the individual as a rite of passage. He writes that Christian apologists have tried to minimize these parallels.

Development of the theory

18th and 19th centuries

Volney and Dupuis

French philosopher Constantin-François Chassebœuf (known as Volney) argued that Jesus was based on an obscure historical figure and solar mythology.

Serious doubt about the historical existence of Jesus emerged when critical study of the gospels developed during the Enlightenment in the 18th century. The primary forerunners of the Christ myth theory are identified as two French philosophers, Charles François Dupuis (1742–1809) and Constantin-François Chassebœuf (1757–1820), the latter known as Volney.

Napoleon Bonaparte may have echoed Volney when he privately questioned the existence of Jesus.

Dupuis rejected the historicity of Jesus entirely, explaining a reference to Jesus by the Roman historian Tacitus (56–117)—in around 116, Tacitus mentioned a Christus who had been convicted by Pontious Pilate—as nothing more than an echo of the inaccurate beliefs of Christians at the time. In Origine de tous les cultes (1795), he identified pre-Christian rituals in Greater Syria, Ancient Egypt and Persia that he believed represented the birth of a god to a virgin mother at the winter solstice, and argued that these rituals were based upon the winter rising of the constellation Virgo. He believed that these and other annual occurrences were allegorized as the histories of solar deities, such as Sol Invictus, who passed their childhoods in obscurity (low elevation of the sun after the solstice), died (winter) and were resurrected (spring). He argued that Jewish and Christian scriptures could also be interpreted according to the solar pattern: the Fall of Man in Genesis was an allegory of the hardship caused by winter, and the resurrection of Jesus represented the growth of the sun's strength in the sign of Aries at the spring equinox.

Other Religions

other religions have various positions.