{"id":2034,"date":"2017-04-15T16:41:25","date_gmt":"2017-04-15T16:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/?p=2034"},"modified":"2017-04-15T16:44:14","modified_gmt":"2017-04-15T16:44:14","slug":"history-writer-jesus-probably-never-existed-heres-why-christianity-emerged-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/?p=2034","title":{"rendered":"History writer: Jesus probably never existed \u2014 here\u2019s why Christianity emerged anyway"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"jesus\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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With Easter coming, some people are debating whether the resurrection of Jesus really happened. Others are debating whether Jesus was even real.<\/em><\/p>\n

In ten years of writing for news and opinion sites, my most popular article about religion was one titled, \u201cFive Reasons to Suspect Jesus Never Existed<\/a>.\u201d The article emerged from a conversation with history writer David Fitzgerald<\/a> and was based on his book, Nailed<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Fitzgerald holds the controversial perspective that the figure of Jesus at the heart of Christianity is historicized mythology<\/em>, meaning that the original kernel was a set of ancient religious tropes or myths that got historical details added as they were told and retold by people who believed them to be real.<\/p>\n

By contrast, best-selling New Testament scholar\u00a0Bart Ehrman<\/a> (and most secular historians\u00a0and mainline Christian theologians) argue that an actual radical rabbi provided the kernel of the stories, but that accounts of his life then got overlaid with fragments of mythology drawn from Judaism and surrounding religions. In other words, they hold\u00a0that the Bible stories are mythologized history.<\/em><\/p>\n

The third perspective, of course, is that held by many (though not all) Christians\u2014that the gospel stories are gospel truth.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Outsiders can debate all they want<\/a>, but Christians need<\/em> to believe that Jesus was real, and defenders of the faith line up a series of proofs that they claim settle the question. Now Fitzgerald has produced a three-volume set, Jesus: Mything in Action<\/a>,<\/em> in which he tackles those proofs one by one and then lays out how Christianity could\u00a0have emerged even in the absence of a historical Jesus.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Tarico: What first made you wonder if, perhaps, Jesus never existed?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fitzgerald: It\u2019s funny; for the first thirty-five years of my life, the very idea that there might not<\/em> have been a real Jesus never occurred to me. Ironically enough, it wasn\u2019t until I became curious to know what Jesus really said and did that I began to seriously look at our evidence for Jesus. That\u2018s when the doubts set in. At first, I just wanted to figure out which parts of the gospels were later legendary add-ons. Over time I became increasingly convinced that Jesus himself is a completely mythical figure of the early Christians. That led me to write Nailed<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Tarico: What are a couple of the key points that took you from that first wild, trippy thought\u2014Whoa, what if Jesus never existed?<\/em>\u2014to your current position, that he probably didn\u2019t.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Fitzgerald: Honestly, I\u2019d put it even more strongly than that \u2013 now, I actually can\u2019t see how there even could<\/em> have been an actual Jesus. The first red flag for me was realizing just how little evidence actually holds up to inspection at all. Another was seeing how differently Christians talked about Jesus before and after the gospels were written. And then there\u2019s the general level of bluff and bluster and just ridiculously overstated claims of Christian biblical scholars. The closer you look into Jesus, the more the cracks in his story keep appearing.<\/p>\n

Tarico: Since writing Nailed<\/em>, you have spent several years amassing evidence in support of your argument. Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fitzgerald: Just to be clear; it\u2019s not my<\/em> argument \u2013 many of these ideas aren\u2019t even new. Critics have been pointing out some of these problems since the first and second centuries. Nailed <\/em>laid out the top ten ways the official story of Christianity just doesn\u2019t hold water. For the most part, I\u2019m incredibly pleased and gratified that the book has been so well-received by the secular community. But I was quite surprised by the reaction from some atheists. It wasn\u2019t that they just disagreed or thought I was wrong; that\u2019s not special. It was the ferocity with which they insisted there WAS a Jesus and it was crazy nonsense to think otherwise. So I wrote Jesus: Mything in Action <\/em>to answer my fellow atheists who think we have good reason to accept that Jesus was at least a real person, if not the Son of God. Spoiler alert: We don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Tarico: Why do you think there is so much resistance among non-believers to the idea that the person of Jesus could be a composite or a religious myth? Obviously, someone like Bart Ehrman would say that it\u2019s because the evidence is against you.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fitzgerald: I think there are several reasons, including the reaction I had when I first developed this growing realization: Hmmm\u2026 I\u2019m starting to think this guy never existed\u2026 at all!<\/em> The idea blew my mind; I couldn\u2019t get my head around it. How could we have this gargantuan, feuding Christian world if there had never been a Jesus? And I suspect for many atheists, such a jaw-dropping notion raises the same alarms they get when they see crackpots talking about Atlantis or Bigfoot being real, or the moon landings being fake. To be fair, there are<\/em> several Jesus myth theories that are just nonsense (for instance, the idea that Christianity was invented by the Romans as social control.)<\/p>\n

Tarico: But don\u2019t most secular historians also believe that Jesus actually existed in some form? Not the Christ of the gospels, I mean, but a reformist rabbi who amassed a following and got crucified by the Romans?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fitzgerald: Well, that is part of the problem Albert Schweitzer identified over a century ago. There\u2019s no consistency to the portrayal of Jesus in the gospels. Mark\u2019s Jesus is a humble, fallible, suffering human. Matthew\u2019s Jesus is a new and improved take on Mark\u2019s, correcting his mistakes. By comparison, Luke\u2019s Jesus is a Zen master and John\u2019s is a ridiculously egotistical SuperJesus, repeatedly making blasphemous comments that should have had him stoned to death right out of the gate.<\/p>\n

Consequently, the hypothetical reconstructions of Jesus we see proposed by different historians are radically different from each other and often fundamentally incompatible. With that little convergence between scholars, it becomes clear that whether intentionally or not, Jesus historians are making things up.<\/p>\n

Whatever you want to say Jesus said or did or was, our first question should be: what is our source for that claim? And the second is: how reliable is that source? The answers to these questions don\u2019t bode well for any certainly about Jesus \u2013 whether he actually existed or not.<\/p>\n

For starters, we have no ancient sources that corroborate Christian claims about Jesus. In my books I detail why the most cited so-called sources outside the New Testament are considered forgeries and why the rest only provide evidence for the existence of Christianity <\/em>rather than Jesus himself. They all draw their information about Jesus from Christian sources.<\/p>\n

Of course, among non-secular scholars, the situation is still worse. It should surprise no one that the majority of biblical studies departments are in religiously affiliated universities and seminaries. Equally unsurprising, Christian biblical scholars have a serious bias problem against any Jesus myth theory. What is<\/em> surprising is that this bias is not just from their faith (already a considerable hurdle) but to a considerable extent, is compelled by their conditions of employment. In many cases, scholars are required to sign and adhere to statements of faith that set\u00a0constraints around the range of questions they can entertain. Even in the absence of these, biblical scholars are under tremendous pressure to toe various theological lines. So perhaps the question shouldn\u2019t be: \u201cHow many historians reject mythicism?\u201d but: \u201cHow many historians are contractually obligated<\/em> to publicly reject mythicism?\u201d<\/p>\n

I discuss the problematic state of modern Jesus studies a great deal in Jesus: Mything in Action. <\/em>Basically, more than a few secular historians have inherited the automatic Christian dismissal of any kind of myth theory. Ultimately, however, this isn\u2019t a fight between mythicists and historicists; it\u2019s a fight between those that take mythicism seriously (mythicists and historicists alike) and those that simply dismiss it out of hand as something long-since settled.<\/p>\n

Tarico: Walk us through how Christianity could have emerged if Jesus never existed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fitzgerald: There\u2019s nothing implausible about Christianity beginning with a wandering teacher and his followers. And it\u2019s no skin off my nose if there was \u2013 but that\u2019s not what our evidence points to. The further we go back in Christian history, the more diverse it appears, and the less likely it began with a single founder. Instead there are abundant indications that its origins are tied to the pagan mystery faiths.<\/p>\n

Not that Christianity is some cookie-cutter copy of the mystery faiths \u2013 it is<\/em> a mystery faith; a uniquely Jewish version of this Hellenistic theology. When the Gospel of Mark is written generations later, the mystery faith savior of Paul, the book of Hebrews, and the earliest Christians becomes an allegorical figure built from pastiches from the Hebrew scriptures. Jesus doesn\u2019t fulfill prophecy; Jesus is a collage constructed from prophecy and other writings. And his story grows by leaps and bounds in the second century.<\/p>\n

As Bart Ehrman and other biblical scholars have demonstrated beyond a doubt, most of our New Testament books are forgeries<\/a>. None are written by anyone who actually knew a Jesus. The only genuine books are seven of the letters attributed to Paul (though even these have been tampered with). And of course, Christian scriptures were edited and re-edited to suit the needs of different religious factions over centuries. We have no way of knowing how much has changed from the original writings; for the first 150-200 years, we have a blackout period with nothing but tiny fragments of New Testament texts until complete books begin to appear at the end of the second century<\/a>. Our earliest complete New Testaments only go back to the 4th<\/sup> century; although they differ from each other \u2013 and from ours.<\/p>\n

And of course Christianity continues to evolve and mutate for the next two millennia, a process still alive and well \u2013 a perfect textbook example of Darwinian evolution in action. Modern Christians would have a hard time recognizing their religion in the beliefs of their earliest spiritual ancestors. In fact, most Christians of today would be the heretics of 500 years ago. Please note that all these problems of evidence remain \u2013 whether there was a Jesus or not<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Tarico: As a non-scholar, I myself am agnostic on this question, and I generally defer to the preponderance of relevant experts. But you are pretty convinced. How would you persuade a Christian that their savior is a myth?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fitzgerald: Personally, I don\u2019t think the historical Jesus question is worth debating with believers, precisely because it is such a discussion-killer. Nontheists don\u2019t need Jesus to be a myth. If it turns out folks like me are wrong and one day some good evidence for a real Jesus gets uncovered, it\u2019s not as if Christianity will suddenly start making sense. We\u2019ll still be just fine. Christians, however, can\u2019t say that. They can\u2019t even enjoy a relaxed agnosticism about the mere possibility<\/em> of mythicism. They need Jesus NOT to be a myth.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unfortunately for them, their Jesus is<\/em> a myth, and that\u2019s true, no matter whether it\u2019s the mythicist camp or the historicist camp that ultimately comes out on top. The \u201cJesus of Faith\u201d gets debunked either way.<\/p>\n

Tarico: Apart from the question of whether or not the god-man of Christian theology existed\u2013and died to save our souls\u2013, does it really matter whether there was an actual human at the heart of the myth? Not only does it seem unknowable, but as a former Evangelical who left biblical Christianity for what I see as very\u00a0solid reasons<\/a>, I find it somewhat hard to care. Do you think the existence or non-existence of an historic Jesus is important?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fitzgerald: Only if Jesus is important; and honestly, maybe he isn\u2019t so much, anymore. The number of Christians \u2013 actually, the religious population across the board \u2013 seems to be in a steady decline in America and elsewhere.<\/a> What is<\/em> important about this argument \u2013and what makes it worth arguing about\u2013is that it shows what we can and can\u2019t know about who or what Jesus really was<\/a>. Everything we learn from the back and forth of this historical argument \u2013 on both sides \u2013 helps us call the bluff of anyone who says they know how Jesus wants you to behave or think or vote.<\/p>\n

And that<\/em> is a very valuable thing for all of us \u2013 believers and nonbelievers alike.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

This interview is the first in a series of four articles challenging what we think we know about Jesus as a historical figure.<\/em><\/p>\n

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of <\/i>Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>Deas and Other Imaginings<\/em><\/a>, and the founder of <\/em>www.WisdomCommons.org<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Her articles about religion, reproductive health, and the role of women in society have been featured at sites including AlterNet, Salon, the Huffington Post, Grist, and Jezebel.\u00a0 Subscribe at <\/em>ValerieTarico.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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  With Easter coming, some people are debating whether the resurrection of Jesus really happened. Others are debating whether Jesus was even real. In ten years of writing for news and opinion sites, my most popular article about religion was one titled, \u201cFive Reasons to Suspect Jesus Never Existed.\u201d The article emerged from a conversation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2035,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2034"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2037,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034\/revisions\/2037"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}