User:Joshua Jonathan/List of Christ myth proponents

The Christ myth theory (also known as the Jesus myth theory, Jesus mythicism, mythicism, or Jesus ahistoricity theory) is the proposition that "the historical Jesus of Nazareth did not exist, or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity." According to mythologists "Jesus was originally a [deity] who was later historicized" in the Gospels, which are "essentially allegory and fiction."

Arguments

The main arguments from the mythicists are the lack of biographical information on Jesus from the early Christian sources, the socalled argument from silence, and the mythical and allegorical nature of the Christ of Paul and the Jesus of the Gospels. Most Christ mythicists agree that the evidence for the existence of a historical Jesus Christ is weak at best, pointing at a series of perceived peculiarities in the sources which they regard as unthrustworthy for a historical account, and noting the similarities of early Christianity and the Christ figure with contemporary mystery religions:

• The Pauline epistles are dismissed because, aside from a few passages which may have been interpolations, they contain no references to an earthly Jesus who lived in the flesh. There is a complete absence of any detailed biographical information such as might be expected if Jesus had been a contemporary of Paul, and he may as well be writing about a mythical Jesus, a celestial deity or "a savior figure patterned after similar figures within ancient mystery religions" named Jesus.
• The Gospels are no historical records, but theological writings, which are based on a variety of sources and influences, including Old Testamentical writings, Greek stoic philosophy, and the exegetical methods of Philo. The Gospels weave together various Jesus-traditions, and may be regarded as myth or legendary fiction which have imposed "a fictitious historical narrative" on this "mythical cosmic savior figure."
• Christianity arose in the Greco-Roman world of the first and second century CE, synthesizing Jewish and Greek philosophy. Early Christianity shared common philosophical and religious ideas with other religions of the time, including the ideas of personified aspects of God, and of a dying-and-arising savior deity.
• No independent eyewitness accounts survive, in spite of the fact that many authors were writing at that time. Early second-century Roman accounts contain very little evidence, and may depend on Christian sources.

Some mythicists hold — in terms given by Robert M. Price — the "Jesus agnosticism" viewpoint, while others go further and hold the "Jesus atheism" viewpoint. Some scholars have made the case that there are a number of plausible "Jesuses" that could have existed, but that there can be no certainty as to which Jesus was the historical Jesus. Others have said that Jesus may have lived far earlier, in a dimly remembered remote past. A number of writers adduce various arguments to show that Christianity has syncretistic or mythical roots. As such, the historical Jesus should not be regarded as the founder of the religion, even if he did exist.

In modern scholarship, the Christ Myth Theory is a fringe theory, and is accepted by only a small number of academics. The Christ myth theory contradicts the mainstream historical view, which is that while the gospels include many mythical or legendary elements, these are religious elaborations added to the biography of a historical Jesus who did live in 1st-century Roman Palestine, was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate.

18–19th centuries proponents

The beginnings of the formal denial of the existence of Jesus can be traced to late 18th-century France, and the works of Constantin François Chassebœuf de Volney and Charles-François Dupuis. Volney and Dupuis argued that Christianity was an amalgamation of various ancient mythologies and that Jesus was a totally mythical character.

Constantin François Chassebœuf de Volney	Volney argued that Abraham and Sarah were derived from Brahma and his wife Saraswati, and that Christ was related to Krishna. Volney made use of a draft version of Dupuis' work, but at times differed from him, e.g. in arguing that the gospel stories were not intentionally created, but were compiled organically. Volney's perspective became associated with the ideas of the French Revolution, which hindered the acceptance of these views in England. Despite this, his work gathered significant following among British and American radical thinkers during the 19th century.
Charles-François Dupuis	Dupuis argued that ancient rituals in Syria, Egypt and Persia had influenced the Christian story which was allegorized as the histories of solar deities, such as Sol Invictus. He said that the resurrection of Jesus was an allegory for the growth of the sun's strength in the sign of Aries at the spring equinox.
David Friedrich Strauss	In 1835, German theologian David Friedrich Strauss published his extremely controversial The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined (Das Leben Jesu). While not denying that Jesus existed, he did argue that the miracles in the New Testament were mythical retellings of normal events as supernatural happenings. According to Strauss, the early church developed these miracle stories to present Jesus as a fulfillment of Jewish prophecies of what the Messiah would be like. This rationalist perspective was in direct opposition to the supernaturalist view that the bible was accurate both historically and spiritually. The book caused an uproar across Europe. Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury called it "the most pestilential book ever vomited out of the jaws of hell," and Strauss' appointment as chair of theology at the University of Zürich caused such controversy that the authorities offered him a pension before he had a chance to start his duties.
Bruno Bauer	German Bruno Bauer, who taught at the University of Bonn, took Strauss' arguments further and became the first author to systematically argue that Jesus did not exist. Beginning in 1841, in his Criticism of the Gospel History of the Synoptics, Bauer argued that Jesus was primarily a literary figure. However, he left open the question of whether a historical Jesus existed at all. Finally, in his Criticism of the Pauline Epistles (1850-1852) and in A Critique of the Gospels and a History of their Origin (1850–1851), Bauer argued that Jesus had not existed. Bauer's work was heavily criticized at the time; in 1839 he was removed from his position at the University of Bonn, and his work did not have much impact on future myth theorists.
Godfrey Higgins	In his two-volume, 867-page book Anacalypsis(1836), English gentleman Godfrey Higgins said that "the mythos of the Hindus, the mythos of the Jews and the mythos of the Greeks are all at bottom the same; and ... are contrivances under the appearance of histories to perpetuate doctrines," and that Christian editors “either from roguery or folly, corrupted them all.”
Kersey Graves	In his 1875 book The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors, American Kersey Graves said that many demigods from different countries shared similar stories, traits or quotes as Jesus. Graves used Higgins as the main source for his arguments. The validity of the claims in the book have been greatly criticized by Christ myth proponents like Richard Carrier and largely dismissed by biblical scholars.
Gerald Massey	Starting in the 1870s, English poet and author Gerald Massey became interested in Egyptology and reportedly taught himself Egyptian hieroglyphics at the British Museum. In 1883, he published The Natural Genesis where he asserted parallels between Jesus and the Egyptian god Horus. His other major work, Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World, was published shortly before his death in 1907. His assertions have influenced various later writers such as Alvin Boyd Kuhn and Tom Harpur. Despite criticisms from Stanley Porter and Ward Gasque, Massey's theories regarding Egyptian etymologies for certain scriptures are supported by noted contemporary Egyptologists.

Radical Dutch school and others

In the 1870s and 1880s, a group of scholars associated with the University of Amsterdam, known in German scholarship as the Radical Dutch school, rejected the authenticity of the Pauline epistles, and took a generally negative view of the Bible's historical value. Abraham Dirk Loman argued in 1881 that all New Testament writings belonged to the 2nd century, and doubted that Jesus was a historical figure, but later said the core of the gospels was genuine.

Additional early Christ myth proponents included Swiss skeptic Rudolf Steck, English historian Edwin Johnson, English radical Rev. Robert Taylor, and his associate Richard Carlile.

Early 20th century proponents

During the early 20th century, several writers published arguments against Jesus' historicity, often drawing on the work of liberal theologians, who tended to deny any value to sources for Jesus outside the New Testament, and limited their attention to Mark and the hypothetical Q source. They also made use of the growing field of religious history which found sources for Christian ideas in Greek and Oriental mystery cults, rather than Judaism. Joseph Klausner wrote that biblical scholars "tried their hardest to find in the historic Jesus something which is not Judaism; but in his actual history they have found nothing of this whatever, since this history is reduced almost to zero. It is therefore no wonder that at the beginning of this century there has been a revival of the eighteenth and nineteenth century view that Jesus never existed."

Sir James George Frazer	The work of social anthropologist Sir James George Frazer has had an influence on various myth theorists, although Frazer himself believed that Jesus existed. In 1890 he published the first edition of The Golden Bough which attempted to define the shared elements of religious belief. This work became the basis of many later authors who argued that the story of Jesus was a fiction created by Christians. After a number of people claimed that he was a myth theorist, in the 1913 expanded edition of The Golden Bough Frazer expressly stated that his theory assumed a historical Jesus.
John Mackinnon Robertson	In 1900, Scottish MP John Mackinnon Robertson argued that Jesus never existed but was an invention by a first-century messianic cult. In Robertson's view, religious groups invent new gods to fit the needs of the society of the time. Robertson argued that a solar deity symbolized by the lamb and the ram had long been worshiped by an Israelite cult of Joshua and that this cult had then invented a new messianic figure, Jesus of Nazareth. Robertson argued that a possible source for the Christian myth may have been the Talmudic story of the executed Jesus Pandera which dates to 100 BCE. Robertson considered the letters of Paul the earliest surviving Christian writings, but viewed them as primarily concerned with theology and morality, rather than historical details. He viewed references to the twelve apostles and the institution of the Eucharist as stories that must have developed later among gentile believers who were converted by Jewish evangelists like Paul.
George Robert Stowe Mead	The English school master George Robert Stowe Mead argued in 1903 that Jesus had existed, but that he had lived in 100 BCE. Mead based his argument on the Talmud, which pointed to Jesus being crucified c. 100 BCE. In Mead's view, this would mean that the Christian gospels are mythical. Tom Harpur has compared Mead's impact on myth theory to that of Bruno Bauer and Arthur Drews.
John Eleazer Remsburg	In 1909, school teacher John Eleazer Remsburg published The Christ, which made a distinction between a possible historical Jesus ("Jesus of Nazareth") and the Jesus of the Gospels ("Jesus of Bethlehem"). Remsburg's thought that there was good reason to believe that the historical Jesus existed, but that the "Christ of Christianity" was a mythological creation. Remsburg compiled a list of 42 names of "writers who lived and wrote during the time, or within a century after the time" who Remsburg felt should have written about Jesus if the Gospels account was reasonably accurate but who did not.
Christian Heinrich Arthur Drews	Also in 1909, German philosophy professor Christian Heinrich Arthur Drews wrote The Christ Myth to argue that Christianity had been a Jewish Gnostic cult that spread by appropriating aspects of Greek philosophy and life-death-rebirth deities. In later books (The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus (1912) and The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus in Past and Present (1926)) Drews reviewed the biblical scholarship of his time as well as the work of other myth theorists, attempting to show that everything about the historical Jesus had a mythical character. Drews met with criticism from Nikolai Berdyaev who claimed that Drews was an anti-Semite who argued against the historical existence of Jesus for the sake of Aryanism. Drews took part in a series of public debates with theologians and historians who opposed his arguments.
Marxist-Leninist Study of Religion and Atheism	Drew's work found fertile soil in the Soviet Union, where Marxist–Leninist atheism was the official doctrine of the state. Soviet leader Lenin argued that it was imperative in the struggle against religious obscurantists to form a union with people like Drews. Several editions of Drews's The Christ Myth were published in the Soviet Union from the early 1920s onwards, and his arguments were included in school and university textbooks. Public meetings asking "Did Christ live?" were organized, during which party operatives debated with clergymen. Drews also influenced French philosopher Paul-Louis Couchoud.
Bertrand Russell	In 1927, British philosopher Bertrand Russell stated in his lecture Why I Am Not a Christian that "historically it is quite doubtful that Jesus existed, and if he did we do not know anything about him, so that I am not concerned with the historical question, which is a very difficult one", though Russell did nothing to further develop the idea.
L. Ron Hubbard	Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard was convinced that Jesus never existed, stating that Christianity evolved from the "R6 Implant": "The man on the cross. There was no Christ! The Roman Catholic Church, through watching the dramatizations of people picked up some little fragments of R6."

Prominent modern proponents

George Albert Wells

English professor of German George Albert Wells (1926-2017) had a profound impact on the Christ myth theory, according to New Testament scholar Graham Stanton. British theologian Kenneth Grayston advised Christians to acknowledge the difficulties raised by Wells.

In his early work, including Did Jesus Exist? (1975), Wells argued that the Gospels were written decades after Jesus's death by Christians who were theologically motivated, but had no personal knowledge of him. Therefore, he concluded that a rational person should believe the gospels only if they are independently confirmed. Atheist philosopher and scholar Michael Martin supported his thesis, claiming: "Jesus is not placed in a historical context and the biographical details of his life are left unsuspected...a strong prima facie case challenging the historicity of Jesus can be constructed". He adds, in his book 'The Case Against Christianity' "Well's argument against the historicity [of Jesus] is sound".

Later, Wells admitted that a historical Jesus figure did exist. His Jesus was a Galilean preacher, whose teachings were preserved in the Q document, a hypothetical common source for the gospels of Matthew and Luke. However, he continued to insist that Biblical Jesus did not exist. He argued that stories such as the virgin birth, the crucifixion around A.D. 30 under Pilate, and the resurrection, should be regarded as legendary.

Biblical scholar Robert Van Voorst said that with this argument Wells had performed an about-face. However, scholars such as Earl Doherty, Richard Carrier, Paul Eddy, and Gregory Boyd continue to regard Wells as a Christ myth theorist.

In his 2013 book Cutting Jesus Down to Size, Wells clarified that he believes the Gospels represent the fusion of two originally independent streams: a Galilean preaching tradition, and the supernatural personage of Paul's early epistles. However, he says that both figures owe much of their substance to ideas from the Jewish wisdom literature.

Earl Doherty

Canadian writer Earl Doherty (b.1941) was introduced to the Christ myth theme by a lecture by Wells in the 1970s. Doherty follows the lead of Wells, but disagrees on the historicity of Jesus, arguing that "everything in Paul points to a belief in an entirely divine Son who "lived" and acted in the spiritual realm, in the same myhtical setting in which all the other savior deities of the day were seen to operate." According to Doherty Paul's Christ originated as a myth derived from Middle Platonism with some influence from Jewish mysticism, and belief in a historical Jesus emerged only among Christian communities in the 2nd century. Paul and other writers of the earliest existing proto-Christian documents did not believe in Jesus as a person who was incarnated on Earth in an historical setting; rather, they believed in Jesus as a heavenly being who suffered his sacrificial death in the lower spheres of heaven, where he was crucified by demons and then was subsequently resurrected by God. This mythological Jesus was not based on a historical Jesus, but rather on an exegesis of the Old Testament in the context of Jewish-Hellenistic religious syncretism, and what the early authors believed to be mystical visions of a risen Jesus.

According to Doherty, the nucleus of the "historical Jesus" of the Gospels can be found in the Jesus-movement which wrote the Q source. According to Doherty the Q-authors may have regarded themselves as "spokespersons for the Wisdom of God," with Jesus being the embodiment of this Wisdom, who was added in the latest phase of the development of Q. Q then started to take the form of a "foundation document," in response to a concurring sect who saw John the Baptist as its founder. Eventually, Q's Jesus and Paul's Christ were combined in the Gospel of Mark by a predominantly gentile community. In time, the gospel-narrative of this embodiment of Wisdom became interpreted as the literal history of the life of Jesus.

Robert M. Price

American New Testament scholar Robert M. Price.

American New Testament scholar and former Baptist pastor Robert McNair Price (b.1954) was a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, a group of writers and scholars who study the historicity of Jesus and who argue that the Christian image of Christ is a theological construct into which traces of Jesus of Nazareth have been woven. He was also a member of the Jesus Project. Price believes that Christianity is a historicized synthesis of mainly Egyptian, Jewish, and Greek mythologies.

Price questioned the historicity of Jesus in a series of books, including Deconstructing Jesus (2000), The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man (2003), Jesus Is Dead (2007), and The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems (2012), as well as in contributions to The Historical Jesus: Five Views (2009), in which he acknowledges that he stands against the majority view of scholars, but cautions against attempting to settle the issue by appeal to the majority.

In Deconstructing Jesus Price points out, "(w)hat one Jesus reconstruction leaves aside, the next one takes up and makes its cornerstone. Jesus simply wears too many hats in the Gospels—exorcist, healer, king, prophet, sage, rabbi, demigod, and so on. The Jesus Christ of the New Testament is a composite figure (...) The historical Jesus (if there was one) might well have been a messianic king, or a progressive Pharisee, or a Galilean shaman, or a magus, or a Hellenistic sage. But he cannot very well have been all of them at the same time." Price also states "I am not trying to say that there was a single origin of the Christian savior Jesus Christ, and that origin is pure myth; rather, I am saying that there may indeed have been such a myth, and that if so, it eventually flowed together with other Jesus images, some one of which may have been based on a historical Jesus the Nazorean." But Price admits uncertainty in this regard. He writes in conclusion, "There may have been a real figure there, but there is simply no longer any way of being sure."

Citing accounts that have Jesus being crucified under Alexander Jannaeus (83 BCE) or in his 50s by Herod Agrippa I under the rule of Claudius Caesar (41–54 CE). Price argues that these "varying dates are the residue of various attempts to anchor an originally mythic or legendary Jesus in more or less recent history."

Price maintains that there are three key points for the traditional Christ myth theory:

• There is no mention of a miracle-working Jesus in secular sources.
• The epistles, written earlier than the gospels, provide no evidence of a recent historical Jesus; all that can be taken from the epistles, Price argues, is that a Jesus Christ, son of God, lived in a heavenly realm, there died as a sacrifice for human sin, was raised by God and enthroned in heaven.
• The Jesus narrative is paralleled in Middle Eastern myths about dying and rising gods; Price names Baal, Osiris, Attis, Adonis, and Dumuzi/Tammuz as examples, all of which, he writes, survived into the Hellenistic and Roman periods and thereby influenced early Christianity. Price alleges that Christian apologists have tried to minimize these parallels.

Thomas L. Thompson

Thomas L. Thompson (b.1939), Professor emeritus of theology at the University of Copenhagen, is a leading biblical minimalist of the Old Testament. In his 2007 book The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David, Thompson argues that the biblical accounts of both King David and Jesus of Nazareth are mythical in nature and based on Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Greek and Roman literature. For example, he argues that the resurrection of Jesus is taken directly from the story of the dying and rising god, Dionysus. Thompson however, does not draw a final conclusion on the historicity or ahistoricity of Jesus, but argued that any historical person would be very different from the Christ (or messiah) identified in the Gospel of Mark.

Thompson coedited the contributions from a diverse range of scholars in the 2012 book Is This Not the Carpenter?: The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus. Writing in the introduction, "The essays collected in this volume have a modest purpose. Neither establishing the historicity of an historical Jesus nor possessing an adequate warrant for dismissing it, our purpose is to clarify our engagement with critical historical and exegetical methods."

In a 2012 online article, Thompson defended his qualifications to address New Testament issues. He rejected the label of "mythicist", and reiterated his position that the issue of Jesus' existence cannot be determined one way or the other.

Thomas L. Brodie

In 2012, the Irish Dominican priest and theologian Thomas L. Brodie (b.1943,) holding a PhD from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome and a co-founder and former director of the Dominican Biblical Institute in Limerick, published Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery. In this book, Brodie, who previously had published academic works on the Hebrew prophets, argued that the gospels are essentially a rewriting of the stories of Elijah and Elisha when viewed as a unified account in the Books of Kings. This view lead Brodie to the conclusion that Jesus is mythical. Brodie's argument builds on his previous work, in which he stated that rather than being separate and fragmented, the stories of Elijah and Elisha are united and that 1 Kings 16:29–2 Kings 13:25 is a natural extension of 1 Kings 17–2 Kings 8 which have a coherence not generally observed by other biblical scholars. Brodie then views the Elijah–Elisha story as the underlying model for the gospel narratives.

In response to Brodie's publication of his view that Jesus was mythical, the Dominican order banned him from writing and lecturing, although he was allowed to stay on as a brother of the Irish Province, which continued to care for him. "There is an unjustifiable jump between methodology and conclusion" in Brodie's book, according to Gerard Norton, and "are not soundly based on scholarship." They are, according to Norton, "a memoir of a series of significant moments or events" in Brodie's life that reinforced "his core conviction" that neither Jesus nor Paul of Tarsus were historical.

Richard Carrier

American historian Richard Carrier.

Atheist activist Richard Carrier (b.1969) reviewed Earl Doherty's work on the origination of Jesus, and eventually concluded that the evidence actually favored the core Doherty thesis. Carrier argues in his book On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, that there is insufficient Bayesian probability, that is evidence, to believe in the existence of Jesus. Furthermore, he argues that the Jesus figure was probably originally known only through private revelations and hidden messages in scripture which were then crafted into a historical figure, to communicate the claims of the gospels allegorically. These allegories then started to be believed as fact during the struggle for control of the Christian churches of the first century. He argues that the probability of Jesus' existence is somewhere in the range from 1/3 to 1/12000 depending on the estimates used for the computation.

His methodology was reviewed by Aviezer Tucker, a prior advocate of using Bayesian techniques in history. Tucker expressed some sympathy for Carrier's view of the Gospels, stating: "The problem with the Synoptic Gospels as evidence for a historical Jesus from a Bayesian perspective is that the evidence that coheres does not seem to be independent, whereas the evidence that is independent does not seem to cohere." However, Tucker argued that historians have been able to use theories about the transmission and preservation of information to identify reliable parts of the Gospels. He said that "Carrier is too dismissive of such methods because he is focused on hypotheses about the historical Jesus rather than on the best explanations of the evidence."

Other modern proponents

John M. Allegro	In his books The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (1970) and The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth (1979), the British archaeologist and philologist John M. Allegro advanced the theory that stories of early Christianity originated in a shamanistic Essene clandestine cult centered around the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms. He also argued that the story of Jesus was based on the crucifixion of the Teacher of Righteousness in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Allegro's theory was criticised sharply by Welsh historian Philip Jenkins who wrote that Allegro relied on texts that did not exist in quite the form he was citing them. Based on this and many other negative reactions to the book, Allegro's publisher later apologized for issuing the book and Allegro was forced to resign his academic post.
Tom Harpur	Influenced by Massey and Higgins, Alvin Boyd Kuhn (1880–1963) argued an Egyptian etymology to the Bible, that the gospels were symbolic rather than historic, and that church leaders started to misinterpret the New Testament in the third century. Author Tom Harpur dedicated his 2004 book The Pagan Christ to Kuhn, suggesting that Kuhn has not received the attention he deserves since many of his works were self-published. Building on Kuhn's work, Harpur listed similarities among the stories of Jesus, Horus, Mithras, Buddha and others. According to Harpur, in the second or third centuries, the early church created the fictional impression of a literal and historic Jesus and then used forgery and violence to cover up the evidence. Harpur's book received a great deal of criticism, including a response book, Unmasking the Pagan Christ: An Evangelical Response to the Cosmic Christ Idea. Fellow mythicist Robert M. Price also wrote a negative review, saying that he did not agree that the Egyptian parallels were as forceful as Harpur thought. Harpur published a sequel,Water Into Wine in 2007.
Soviet Union	The Christ myth theory enjoyed brief popularity in the Soviet Union, where it was supported by Sergey Kovalev, Alexander Kazhdan, Abram Ranovich, Nikolai Rumyantsev, and Robert Vipper. Later, however, several scholars, including Kazhdan, retracted their views about mythical Jesus and by the end of the 1980s Iosif Kryvelev remained as virtually the only proponent of Christ myth theory in Soviet academia.

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