The question is harder to answer than might first be suspected. I’ve been waiting a few years for the word “mythicist” to appear in dictionaries—applied, that is, to the Christ myth theory. To my knowledge, it hasn’t yet. “Mythicist” in mainstream dictionaries still refers to 1. a student of myths, or 2. an interpreter of myths. Wikipedia makes a disparaging nod in the direction of mythicism by calling it a “19th century theology.” Those who hold the view today are, presumably, passé.
About a century ago, “mythicist” (Eng.) and “mythiste” (Fr.) did refer to those espousing the Christ myth theory. But thereafter the mythicist point of view was effectively forced out of discussion. Since the closing decades of the 20th century, mythicists have been slowly and laboriously clawing their way back into the discussion. Of course, we still aren’t quite there yet. Landmarks in the New Mythicism are largely anglo-American: the books of G. A. Wells in Britain (1970s -present), Doherty’s “The Jesus Puzzle” (1999/2009), Price’s books including “Deconstructing Jesus” (2000), Zindler’s “The Jesus the Jews Never Knew” (2003), and my “The Myth of Nazareth” (2008).
The word “mythicist” is still neither used by, nor even known to, the majority of biblical scholars. It appears almost exclusively in discusssions by mythicists themselves, and they are relatively few in number. It is still very much a technical term on the fringe of biblical studies. At the beginning of the new millennium there was not even consensus on the form of the word: “mythist” or “mythicist.” The latter has prevailed, and “mythist” is sometimes used today more or less in caricature by those who seek to delegitimize Jesus mythicism.
With the appearance of Bart D. Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist? (2012) mythicism took a significant step closer to the mainstream of discussion. Ehrman’s book is (predicably) selling well and has functioned to bring Jesus mythicism before a general readership for the first time in history. DJE? seeks to defend the historicity of Jesus, but it has not been altogether successful if one judges by the varied reactions. As of this writing, the 92 customer reviews on amazon.com average out to three stars out of five—mediocre. The 80+ reviews by mythicists themselves, of course, are uniformly critical.
With mythicism receiving more exposure, I recently took a closer look at the word and the ways in which it is being used. What I discovered was in some ways surprising.
Semi-mythicism and euhemerism
A mythicist is one who concludes that Jesus of Nazareth never existed and also that no human prophet lay at the origin of Christianity.
That is how I define a “mythicist.” The definition has two components. For those who, like myself, embrace only the first part but not the second, I use a different term: “semi-mythicist.” I personally have concluded that Jesus of Nazareth never existed, yet I also suspect that a human prophet (the Teacher of Righteousness? John the Baptist?) lay at the root of the Christian religion. Of course, I am quite convinced that the biography of Jesus of Nazareth was invented out of whole cloth. So in my view the following sequence obtains:
(1) a prophet –>
(2) a false biography (Jesus of Nazareth) –>
(3) the second member of the divine Christian trinity.
The above makes me a euhemerist, and so we see that there is no conflict between euhemerism and mythicism. Anyone who thinks that a human lies at the root of Christianity (even if that human was not Jesus of Nazareth) is a euhemerist—for that human was eventually deified. The Christians get around this by saying that Jesus was God from the start. I happen to be an atheist and don’t buy into that doctrine nor deification—nor into the false biography of Jesus. But I am still both a euhemerist and a semi-mythicist. This is altogether too nuanced for most people and so, in casual parlance, I am simply a “mythicist”—one who denies the existence of Jesus of Nazareth (the “common” definition of mythicism).
Mythicism and docetism
Mainstream scholarship (as noted above) still hardly recognizes the term “mythicism” and its cognates. The reason is clear: scholarship is not ready to seriously engage with the issue (and will put off doing so as long as possible). Such engagement would not only acknowledge the existence of the mythicist view but would also accord it a measure of legitimacy. However, times are changing.
Scholarship has since ancient times (I include here the Church Fathers as “scholars”) been enamored of a somewhat related term: “docetist” (from the Greek, dokein “to seem”). The use of this term in reference to Jesus (the only use it’s ever had, AFAIK) has always appeared odd to me. Wikipedia defines docetism as: “the doctrine according to which the phenomenon of Christ, his historical and bodily existence, and thus above all the human form of Jesus, was altogether mere semblance without any true reality” (Norbert Brox). It continues: “Broadly it is taken as the belief that Jesus only seemed to be human, and that his physical body was a phantasm.” Wow. According to this definition, we are supposed to believe that there were people in antiquity who thought Jesus was a disembodied spirit that haunted the Galilee and Judea talking with Scribes, Pharisees, disciples, and sinners… Furthermore, there were so many such ghost-believers that they constituted a particularly dangerous threat to the new religion, as evidenced by the repeated obloquy cast upon them by the Church Fathers. I find all this hard to believe. For me, it just doesn’t add up.
It has long been my suspicion that the reason the Church Fathers were so incensed at “docetists” is because those people were going around saying that Jesus of Nazareth didn’t exist, period. Some of those naysayers may have lived in Palestine in the time of Pontius Pilate, or had parents who did. They knew better. These people immediately gave the lie to Christianity and were poised to pop the new religion’s balloon at any time. Indeed, hardly a greater threat to the new religion could be imagined. The good deal of virulent anti-”docetist” literature stresses the corporeality of Jesus. This in itself proves to me that the docetists were in fact ancient mythicists.
This explains, IMO, the extraordinary threat posed by “docetists” vis-a-vis incipient Christianity. In other words, the docetists weren’t merely a bunch of loonies who thought Jesus “existed” as a phantasm. Rather, the docetists were the mythicists of early Christianity.
Scholarship will certainly vehemently oppose this equating of docetism with mythicism. After all, to admit such a definition of docetism would be to admit that there were Jesus mythicists in ancient times. This is even more dangerous than admitting the existence of modern mythicists!
Some technical definitions
(1) Jesus mythicist—Concludes that Jesus of Nazareth never existed as a human being. He was invented. [Jesus mythicists may believe that “Jesus” was also purely spiritual—see next entry.]
(2) Docetist—Believes that “Jesus” was/is purely a spiritual entity. [Hence, docetists were/are also Jesus mythicists.]
(3) Semi-mythicist—Concludes that Jesus of Nazareth never existed as a human being (see 1 & 2), but also maintains that a human prophet lay at the origin of Christianity (e.g., the Teacher of Righteousness, John the Baptist).
(4) Mythicist—Concludes that Jesus of Nazareth never existed and also that no human prophet lay at the origin of Christianity.
At this time, the above terminology is probably too complex to be workable for more than just a few people. “Mythicist” will no doubt continue to function as a shorthand term for all the above four categories, with the current focus on number (1), and the remaining categories generally not clarified.
The tradition uses the term “mythicist” only for modern deniers of the historicity of Jesus. For convenience it rejects the existence of such deniers in ancient times and prefers the loose term “docetist,” with its somewhat ridiculous implications. However, there certainly were Jesus mythicists, semi-mythicists, and mythicists in the early Christian centuries. Whether there were any “docetists” (as the modern and ancient church tradition defines them) I am not so sure.
