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The study of Jesus from a mythographical perspective is the examination of the narrative of Jesus, the Christ ("the Anointed") of the gospels, Christian theology and folk Christianity as a central part of Christian mythology. Such study may also involve comparison between Christian beliefs about Jesus and beliefs about other gods or mythological characters.

Examination of such parallels may seek to uncover common elements of human myth-making or analyse mythemes (the component elements of myth) in the gospel presentation of Jesus. Alternatively it may identify historically specific parallels in contemporary mystery religions of the Roman Empire such as Mithraism and the myths of rebirth deities and sacral kingship. The New Testament narrative explicitly employs earlier mythology, notably claiming fulfillment of Messianic prophecies of Hebrew mythology, and by Paul the Apostle in Athens as he took up the motif of the "Unknown God" (Acts 17:16–34).

The study of Jesus Christ as myth is popularly associated with a skeptical position toward the historicity of Jesus. Proponents of a mythical origin of Christianity allow that some gospel material may have been drawn from a historical preacher or preachers, but they hold that these preachers were not in any sense "the founder of Christianity"; rather they contend that Christianity emerged organically from Hellenistic Judaism, dubbed the "Christ myth theory". However, the study of parallels between the narrative of Christ and other mythological figures does not prejudice Jesus' historicity, and is open to several interpretations besides ahistoricity:

1. Christianity's influence on the Mystery religions (so Augustine of Hippo)
2. interpretation of mythological parallels as "diabolical imitation" of Christ (so Justin Martyr)
3. interpretation of pre-Christian myth as a product of degraded Urmonotheismus (various 20th century Christian apologetics)
4. interpretation of the Christ narrative as "true myth" (so C. S. Lewis)
5. admission of a historical Jesus, who is however of lesser interest to Christianity than the Christ myth (so C. G. Jung)

Contents 1 Mythemes of the Biblical account 2 Predecessors and parallels 2.1 Myths in the ancient Roman, Hellenistic and Semitic world 2.1.1 Mesopotamia 2.1.2 Greek mysteries 2.1.3 Mithras 2.1.4 Old Testament 2.2 Eastern, American and other religions 2.2.1 Buddhism 2.2.2 Quetzalcoatl 3 Influence on other mythologies 4 Interpretations 4.1 History 4.2 Demonic imitation 4.3 Jesus as "true myth" 4.4 Jesus as historical nucleus of Christian myth 4.5 Jesus as unhistorical myth 5 Footnotes 6 See also 7 Further reading 8 External links

[edit] Mythemes of the Biblical account

According to the New Testament, Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

He is a scion of the royal blood of David, King of the Jews, King of Kings, and the divine Word incarnated. He is the predestined Saviour, recognized at birth by magi, but has to avoid being killed by Herod, by fleeing into exile. As an infant, he is part of the Holy Family often associated with the Holy Trinity in Christian symbolism.

As a grown man, he is baptized by John the Baptist. Jesus is identified as the Son of God and receives the Spirit of God in a form similar to a dove. After withstanding temptation to abuse his divine powers, he attracts a body of followers, the Twelve Apostles, and wanders around the land preaching and performing miraculous healing. In one instance, his transfiguration in front of his closest followers again reveals him as the Son of God, conversing with two important prophets of the Old Testament, Moses and Elijah.

At the same time as the Son of God, Jesus is also the Son of Man, he is essentially both Man and God incarnate, transcending the status of demigod of half-man and half-god by being fully God and fully man at the same time in hypostatic union.

Following a triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and the Last Supper where he gives a final sermon, he is betrayed, apprehended, flogged, and driven out to the place of execution, where he is crucified, accompanied by dark omens, both chthonic (earthquakes) and celestial (eclipse).

He dies and his body is prepared for internment and placed in a tomb. On the third day he rises from the dead and appears bodily resurrected to his followers, before miraculously ascending to heaven. For his death to atone for humanity, he is given the title Lamb of God, after the sacrificial lamb of Hebrew tradition, and as the Christ (Messiah, Anointed) in reference to his fulfilling of prophecies of a royal saviour. His followers are given the divine spirit in order to carry on his mission, and are charged with ritually commemorating his death in the sacrament of the Eucharist, involving symbolic ingestion of Christ's body.

A triumphal Second Coming of Christ is prophesized in Christian eschatology, when he will preside over the Last Judgment and heralding in a golden Messianic Age or Kingdom of God for the faithful.

[edit] Predecessors and parallels

[edit] Myths in the ancient Roman, Hellenistic and Semitic world

Aspects of the Gospel stories of Jesus have parallels with life-death-rebirth gods in the widespread mystery religions prevalent in the Hellenistic culture amongst which Christianity is assumed to be born. Closely related to this are mythemes of sacral kingship and "theophagy", the eating of the body of a fertility god, traced by Walter Burkert to a neolithic fertility rite surrounding a god who needs to die and rise again in order to feed the community, sublimated in the Christian eucharist.

Several prominent early Christians, like Irenaeus and Justin Martyr, actually acknowledged the existence of many parallels, complaining that the earlier religions had copied Christian religion and practices, predicted in Hebrew sacred texts, before Jesus was even born, as some form of diabolically inspired pre-cognitive mockery.

In comparative mythology, there is always the danger of parallelomania, as Samuel Sandmel (1962) calls it, the excessive and superficial identification of what are really mythic universals. Sandmel cautions that

"We might for our purposes define parallelomania as that extravagance among scholars which first overdoes the supposed similarity in passages and then proceeds to describe source and derivation as if implying a literary connection flowing in an inevitable or predetermined direction."^[1].

[edit] Mesopotamia

Tammuz-Adonis is the Mesopotamian archetype of the dying and risen-again fertility god. His cult involved ritual mourning.^[2][3] The Pan-Babylonianist school in particular derives many later myths from this complex, popularized by Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers, which further parallels Tammuz and Christ with Joseph and Osiris. Tammuz is paralleled to Christ in particular by his epithet, the shepherd.

[edit] Greek mysteries

The Greek Eleusinian Mysteries were an initiation cult surrounding Demeter, her daughter Persephone, and the agricultural hero Triptolemus. The derived Hellenistic Orphic traditions syncretized Greek traditions with Egyptian and Mesopotamian elements. In the Orphic tradition, it is Dionysus who is killed and resurrected. Orphism puts strong emphasis on salvation in the afterlife. Orphism and Hermeticism strongly influenced Platonist mysticism which in turn was a formative influence on late antique Christian theology. Among other Hellenic figures who may be compared with Jesus Christ is Pythagoras : for, just as Pythagoras is named for the serpent-god Pythōn, so likewise "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up" (Gospel according to John 3:14).

[edit] Mithras

The worship of Mithras was widespread in much of the Roman Empire from the mid-2nd century CE,^[4][5] The Mithra cult in the Roman Empire was a syncretism of different religious motifs, centered on the god Mithras who emerges from a rock. Its closest similarities to Christianity are the story of the slaying of the bull by Mithras; a bull is captured and killed by Mithras when he plunges a knife into it and from the dead bull grain and plants are produced, that symbolize life. Sol.^[6]

[edit] Old Testament

The gospels present Jesus as a figure rooted in and foretold by the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible, notably the Book of Isaiah and the Book of Daniel. Thus, Jesus' nativity is placed in Bethlehem to comply with Micah 5:2, and Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem is designed to answer Zechariah 9:9-10.

A small amount of material is unique to the gospel of Matthew, that is, not reconstructed for the hypothetical source document of the synoptic gospels ("Q"). In this Jesus is presented with strong parallels to Old Testament figures, most noticeably Moses. Matthew appears to have used Moses' birth narrative and sojourn in the wilderness as the basis for the narrative of Jesus,^{[citation needed]} in the tradition of midrash creative narratives based on the stories, prophecies, and quotes in the Hebrew Bible, in particular Toledot Yeshu.

Work done by prominent Q scholars such as John Kloppenborg identifies Q's genre as ancient Near-Eastern "instruction", which consistently attributes its wisdom to a human figure and not the personified Wisdom that one finds in the biblical book of Proverbs.^[7]

Also included among the Messianic prophecies was Virgil's Eclogue IV, which significantly contributed to Virgil's status as a virtuous pagan.

[edit] Eastern, American and other religions

While historians of early Christianity concentrate on parallels with myths current in the Greco-Roman and Semitic cultures of the 1st century, parallels were also claimed to have also been found in the Indian religions, and even in myths of the Aztecs of Central America. In some cases, these have been interpreted as having a direct influence on early Christianity. In other cases, they have been interpreted by Christians as part of a divine plan to prepare the way for Christianity; or as demonic imitation of the Christian religion.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Buddhism

The possible influence of Buddhism on Christianity (and possibly of the Essenes) has been suggested, but with more emphasis on doctrine than mythology. Nevertheless, it has been noted that the life of Christ bears strong similarities to the life of Buddha. This was initially interpreted by Catholic missionaries in terms of the "demonic imitation" theory.^[8] More recently it has been taken by some scholars as far as a "Copycat Christ" theory, postulating that Jesus is simply a Judaistic retelling of the story of Buddha. Thus, T. W. Doane in his 1882 Bible Myths opined that "nothing now remains for the honest man to do but acknowledge the truth, which is that the history of Jesus of Nazareth as related in the books of the New Testament, is simply a copy of that of Buddha, with a mixture of mythology borrowed from other nations." (p. 286)

Max Müller in his 1873 Introduction to the Science of Religion noted that

"Between the language of The Buddha and his disciples, and the language of Christ and his apostles, there are strange coincidences. Even some Buddhist legends and parables sound as if taken from the New Testament, though we know that many of them existed before the beginning of the Christian era."

Th. J. Plange in 1906 concluded that early Christianity was the product of Buddhist missionaries. Such ideas were critically reviewed by Richard Garbe in his 1914 Indien und das Christentum. Garbe noted that the similarities between Christian and Buddhist tradition have invited much dilettante speculation, but he nevertheless acknowledged some possible influence, in particular on later Christian legend (suggesting that Josaphat is a corrupted form of Bodhisattva, and identifying Eustachius and Hubertus with Samantabhadra). Garbe accepted the historicity of Christ, but identified four passages in the gospel narrative as borrowed from Buddhist scripture.

[edit] Quetzalcoatl

The myth of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl has been identified as parallel to that of Jesus, though there is some dispute about the extent to which written versions of the myth have been influenced by Christianity. The story that Montezuma identified Cortez as the returned Quetzalcoatl was interpreted by Catholic missionaries as evidence of divine preparation for the Christianization of the Americas. The myth is also commonly pointed to by some within the Mormon faith, which holds that Christ visited America shortly after his resurrection.^[9] In the nineteenth century the myth was reconfigured as evidence that an ancient Christian missionary had evangelized among Mesoamerican peoples, who later distorted his message.^[10]

[edit] Influence on other mythologies

Jesus has in turn left traces in other mythologies. This holds for 2nd to 3rd century mystery religions and the emergence of Gnosticism; in Reinventing Jesus, the authors put forth the position that "Only after 100 A.D. did the mysteries begin to look very much like Christianity, precisely because their existence was threatened by this new religion. They had to compete to survive."^[11].

Other arguable traces of the Christ mytheme can be found in Norse (Viking Age) Balder and Odin and the 7th century Kalki Purana, which has parallels to Revelation (in particular the "White Rider" of Revelation 19:11). It is also carried into Islam as the Mahdi prophecy and the Ahmadi myths of Jus Asaf.

Within Christian culture, the Christ myth is reflected in many allegories or mythologies, in post-Nicean apocrypha such as the Acts of Pilate, in medieval Mystery plays, Piers Plowman, The Pilgrim's Progress, Milton's Paradise Lost (and, more pertinent to Christ, Paradise Regained), sometimes advocated as historical (such as the "Jesus bloodline" theories), sometimes ostensibly "pure myth" or Biblical speculative fiction (such as C. S. Lewis' Narnia).

[edit] Interpretations

The mythological parallels discussed above can be interpreted in diametrically different ways. Christian interpretations may either consider non-Christian parallels demonic mockery, or intuitive glimpses of truth by virtuous pagans. Secular interpretations will simply treat Christian myth as one stage in a long unbroken tradition, while sceptical or atheist criticism may argue that Christianity loses credibility by its "copying" earlier mythemes.

[edit] History

Current theories surrounding the mythological aspects of the Christ arose from 19th 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 as a dying and reviving god and its connection to the regeneration of the earth in springtime.^[12] Frazer did not doubt the historicity of Jesus, however, stating, "my theory assumes the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth [...] The doubts which have been cast upon the historical reality of Jesus are [...] unworthy of serious attention."^[12]

The first scholarly proponent of the theory was probably Bruno Bauer, a Hegelian thinker who argued that the true founder of Christianity was an Alexandrian Jew, Philo, who had adapted Judaic ideas to Hellenic philosophy.

Other authors included Edwin Johnson, who argued that Christianity emerged from a combination of liberal trends in Judaism and Gnostic mysticism. Less speculative versions of the theory developed under Bible scholars 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 fictions written to justify compilations of pre-existing liberal Jewish sayings. Bolland developed the theory that Christianity evolved from Gnosticism and that "Jesus" was a symbolic figure representing Gnostic ideas about God.

The most influential of the books arguing for a mythic Jesus was Arthur Drews's The Christ-Myth (1909) which brought together the scholarship of the day in defence of the idea 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. In Why I Am Not a Christian (1927), Bertrand Russell stated that even if Jesus existed, which he doubted, the public does not "know anything" about him. Some like Joseph Wheless in his 1930 Forgery In Christianity went even further and claimed there was an active effort to forge documents to make the myth seem historical beginning as early as the 2nd century.

Rudolf Bultmann in his 1941 lecture New Testament and Mythology: The Problem of Demythologizing the New Testament Message called on interpreters to replace traditional theology with the philosophy Martin Heidegger, an endeavor intending to translate what Bultmann considered "theology in story form" into a format palatable to a literate modern audience.

John M. Allegro in 1970 proposed that Christianity began as shamanic religion based on the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms.^[13]

Pinchas Lapide in the 1970s and 1980s was a strong proponent of recovering historical, Jewish, Jesus from beneath the layers of Christian mythology. Lapide saw the historical Jesus as a rabbi in the Hasidean tradition of Hillel and Hanina Ben Dosa, and in the context of Jewish independence struggle against Roman occupation. In The Myth of God Incarnate (1977), edited by John Hick, a team of seven British theologians argued from a position within the Church that God's incarnation in Christ is mythical.

[edit] Demonic imitation

The basic theme of demonic imitation is that the devil also imitated the prophecies in the Old Testament so that he had a collection of stories similar to the ones told about Jesus. The purpose of this would be to mislead those seeking salvation either to follow false gods or to deny that in Jesus's case these events really occurred.

He taught us these things for the conversion and restoration of the human race: and (thirdly) that before He became a man among men, some, influenced by the demons before mentioned, related beforehand, through the instrumentality of the poets, those circumstances as having really happened, which, having fictitiously devised, they narrated, in the same manner .... Those who believe these things we pity, and those who invented them we know to be devils.... But those who hand down the myths which the poets have made, adduce no proof to the youths who learn them; and we proceed to demonstrate that they have been uttered by the influence of the wicked demons, to deceive and lead astray the human race. For 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, they put forward many to be called sons of Jupiter, under the impression that they would be able to produce in men the idea that the things which were said with regard to Christ were mere marvellous tales, like the things which were said by the poets. And these things were said both among the Greeks and among all nations where they [the demons] heard the prophets foretelling that Christ would specially be believed in; but that in hearing what was said by the prophets they did not accurately understand it, but imitated what was said of our Christ, like men who are in error, we will make plain. The prophet Moses, then, was, as we have already said, older than all writers; and by him, as we have also said before, it was thus predicted: "There shall not fail a prince from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until He come for whom it is reserved; and He shall be the desire of the Gentiles, binding His foal to the vine, washing His robe in the blood of the grape." Genesis 49:10 The devils, accordingly, when they heard these prophetic words, said that Bacchus was the son of Jupiter, and gave out that he was the discoverer of the vine, and they number wine [or, the ass] among his mysteries; and they taught that, having been torn in pieces, he ascended into heaven. And because in the prophecy of Moses it had not been expressly intimated whether He who was to come was the Son of God, and whether He would, riding on the foal, remain on earth or ascend into heaven, and because the name of "foal" could mean either the foal of an ass or the foal of a horse, they, not knowing whether He who was foretold would bring the foal of an ass or of a horse as the sign of His coming, nor whether He was the Son of God, as we said above, or of man, gave out that Bellerophon, a man born of man, himself ascended to heaven on his horse Pegasus. And when they heard it said by the other prophet Isaiah, that He should be born of a virgin, and by His own means ascend into heaven, they pretended that Perseus was spoken of. And when they knew what was said, as has been cited above, in the prophecies written aforetime, "Strong as a giant to run his course," they said that Hercules was strong, and had journeyed over the whole earth. And when, again, they learned that it had been foretold that He should heal every sickness, and raise the dead, they produced Æsculapius. And the devils, indeed, having heard this washing published by the prophet, instigated those who enter their temples, and are about to approach them with libations and burnt-offerings, also to sprinkle themselves...From what has been already said, you can understand how the devils, in imitation of what was said by Moses, asserted that Proserpine was the daughter of Jupiter, and instigated the people to set up an image of her under the name of Kore,...

--Justin Martyr, First Apology [1] ^[14]

[edit] Jesus as "true myth"

Contemporary to Rudolf Bultmann's interpretation of the New Testament narrative as valid theology in story form, Christian mythologists such as C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien understood the narrative of Christ's sacrificial death of atonement for humanity as a "true myth" with the special property that it had been enacted historically in time and space. Lewis wrote, "The story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened."[2] In this view, mythological predecessors of the "drama" of Christ were inspired glimpses of divine truth that would only become fully manifest at an appointed moment and place, viz. in Roman Judea. For these authors, the mythological elements in the story of the Christ do not undermine but rather enhance the transcendental truth of the gospel.

Different from Bultmann, Lewis and Tolkien did not intend to demythologize the gospel, understanding myth as an intrinsic component of its truth. Instead, they felt a challenge to make use of their "subcreative" powers to rework these mythemes into mythologies of their own in their works of fiction.

In 1977, this line of argument received attention from academic theology, The Myth of God Incarnate, edited by John Hick. In this volume, a team of seven British theologians takes a position from within the Church to the effect that God's incarnation in Christ is mythical. They argue that

New Testament scholarship has shown how fragmentary and ambiguous are the data available to us as we try to look back across nineteen and a half centuries, and at the same time how large and variable is the contribution of the imagination to our "pictures" of Jesus [...] The metaphysical uniqueness of Jesus, as traditionally taught, has always been taken to have carried with it a unique moral perfection [...] It is impossible to justify any such claim on purely historical grounds, however wide the net for evidence is cast. So far as the gospels are concerned, the material in them is too scanty, and too largely selected and organized with reference to other considerations, to provide the necessary evidence.

Michael Green edited a response from evangelical theologians entitled 'The Truth of God Incarnate'.

[edit] Jesus as historical nucleus of Christian myth

Regardless of the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth, the titles accorded to him in the New Testament and later literature clearly establish him in the tradition of both Hebrew and Hellenistic mythology, as a semi-divine or deified hero or sacred king (Christ or Messiah), and as a saviour (soter). This circumstance is by no means in contradiction to a historical figure as outlined by the gospel, it is rather the predictable interpretation of a story of a "dead and risen Son of God" by the Hellenistic public of the early centuries AD, and during the Constantinian shift (between the Edict of Milan of 313 and the prohibition of pagan cults by Theodosius I in 391) even a conscious amalgamation of the tenets of the early Church Fathers with established cult practice of Roman imperial cult. The identification of Christ with Sol Invictus and the establishment of the Pontifex Maximus as the "steward of Christ" in the Roman church is a result of this process of amalgamation. Similarly, Christian liturgy and liturgical calendar were modelled after Roman examples, e.g. the adoption of the festival of Sol Invictus to commemorate the Epiphany of Christ.

These aspects were taken up in Germanic Christianity and combined with Germanic myth, giving rise to heroic poetry surrounding Christ and his sacrificial death, such as The Dream of the Rood.

[edit] Jesus as unhistorical myth

Opinions of a purely or primarily mythical Christ originate in the late 18th century with Charles François Dupuis.^[15] In works published in the 1790s, both argued that numerous ancient myths, including the life of Jesus, were based on the movement of the sun through the zodiac.^[16][17][18] Dupuis identified pre-Christian rituals in Syria, Egypt and Persia as representing the birth of a god to a virgin at the winter solstice, and connected this to the winter rising of the constellation of Virgo. The first academic advocate was the 19th century historian and theologian Bruno Bauer. Proponents such as Arthur Drews were influential in biblical studies during the early 20th century. The hypothesis is mostly considered obsolete in current scholarhip,^[19][20] but a number of authors such as George Albert Wells, Earl Doherty and Robert M. Price have discussed similar ideas in popular literature in the 1970s to 2000s.

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] See also

• Christian mythology
• Historicity of Jesus
• Christian mysticism
• Esoteric Christianity
• Jesus-myth hypothesis
• Secular theology

[edit] Further reading

• Grant, Michael (1999) [1977]. Jesus. London: Phoenix. ISBN 0-75380-899-4. 
• John Warwick Montgomery (ed.), Myth, Allegory and Gospel: An Interpretation of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, Charles Williams, Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1974.
• Price, Robert M. (2000). Deconstructing Jesus. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-758-9. 
• Price, Robert M. (2005). "New Testament narrative as Old Testament midrash". in Jacob Neusner and Alan J. Avery-Peck. Encyclopaedia of Midrash: Biblical Interpretation in Formative Judaism. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 90-04-14166-9. 
• Sanders, E. P. (1993). The Historical Figure of Jesus. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 0-7139-9059-7. 
• Seznec, Jean. 1972, The Survival of the Pagan Gods, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0691017832
• Thompson, Thomas L. (2005). The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-08577-6. 

[edit] External links

• Why Has God Incarnate Suddenly Become Mythical? by John Warwick Montgomery
• "A History of Scholarly Refutations of the Jesus Myth" by Christopher Price

Eclogue IV