THE MYTH THAT JESUS NEVER EXISTED
By Anthony Robert Greco
In June 2005, Brian Flemming released a film titled “The God
Who Wasn’t There.” The basis of this film is that Jesus, the man who is known
as the founder of Christianity, never actually existed. This belief is based on alleged similarities
between the story of Jesus and older Pagan myths, the claim that Saint Paul
believed Jesus existed in a mythical realm because of the supposed lack of
gospel elements in his letters, the allegation that at least one of the
second-hand non-Christian references to Jesus is a forgery, and the lack of
such first-hand references to him. We are going to examine each of these
premises.
The premise that
Jesus is based on older Pagan myths is based on overstatements and misrepresentations.
The examples that will be used are Dionysus, Innana, Krishna, Mithra, and
Osiris. The allegations that have been made are that these figures were either
born of a virgin, crucified, rose from the dead, or any combination of the few.
In the later
story of Dionysus that had religious connections, he is born as a result of an
adulterous affair between Zeus and Persephone. Hera, Zeus’s jealous wife and sister,
has Dionysus torn apart by titans as an infant. Zeus saves his son’s heart and
uses it to have his birth redone through a mortal woman named Semele. In the
earlier version, Dionysus is born as a result of an adulterous affair between
Zeus and Semele. As ordered by Hera, Semele is killed by Zeus’s lightning bolts.
Dionysus is rescued and formed in his thigh. As you can see, Dionysus did not die and rise,
he just had the process of his birth done over.
Innana is a deity
from Mesopotamian culture. She was the goddess of love, sex, and fertility. Her
lover was Damuzi. According to tradition, she descended to the underworld with
the intention of overthrowing her sister, who was its ruler. When she arrives,
the sister kills her by giving her the look of death. After she had been missing
for three days and nights, one of her servants sends demons to search for her.
They find her and help revive her, but she can only leave the underworld if she
can find someone to be her replacement. She goes to Damuzi and finds him celebrating
her death. This enrages her and she has the demons kill him. He in turn becomes
her replacement. (4, 5)
Krishna is a
figure from Hinduism who was an incarnation of Vishnu, born of a woman named Devaki
when she was in prison. Vasedeva, Devaki’s husband, was his father. Krishna was
a mischievous child and a womanizer. He was also a warrior who murdered his
evil half-uncle, king Kamsa. He was accidentally killed by a hunter while under
a tree. Since Devaki was married, she could not have been a virgin. The part of
the story where Krisha was traded for another couples’ daughter to protect him
from Kamsa, who killed six of her sons out of fear that one would murder him,
has been compared to the event of Mary and Joseph going to Egypt with Jesus to
protect him from king Herod. According to the gospel of Matthew, Herod ordered
the massacre of male children under three living in the village of Bethlehem
because he was angry that he had been deceived about Jesus’ whereabouts. When Kamsa found out about the exchange with the
couple that became Krishna’s foster parents, he ordered demons to kill all
recently born infants because of his fear. In this part of the story, the
concept of killing children is a common element, if not in a superficial way. (3, 7)
Mithra was the
Iranian god of salvation, contracts, and friendship. He is from Zoroastrianism,
a monotheistic faith that could be as old as Judaism. He was connected to the
sun. The Romans connected him to the sun god, Sol. In the Parthian epoch, he
was born from a rock or inside a cave. He slayed a divine bull who’s blood was
used to create all plants and animals that benefit humans. He then ascended to
heaven. Mithraism became popular among Roman soldiers around 80 CE. It was
attacked by Christians in the fourth century because they saw the Mithric baptism
and Eucharist as being diabolical parodies of those from Christianity. They
also thought them to be inspired by Satan. After this happened, it is likely
that institutional Christianity absorbed some Mithric elements. Mithraism could
be where the idea of celebrating Jesus’ birthday on December 25th
came from in the third century.
Osiris was the
husband or lover of Isis. He was murdered and dismembered by his brother Seth.
He would later be rejuvenated for a new existence in the realm of the dead. This
is where some compare his story to Jesus’ when Osiris did not actually come
back from the dead to be on earth, he was just given a new life for the
underworld. He became king of that realm
while him and Isis’s son, Horus, became king of the living and would later
avenge his father’s death.
It is also
worth mentioning that most of the figures that Jesus is compared to were known
only as deities, not historical persons. The only possible exception in the
above examples is Krishna. Most of them were not even considered messiahs. To
be fair, one could compare the later myth where Zeus makes Dionysus rebirth
happen through Semele to Mary having Jesus as a result of God’s intercession,
but it does not say anything about her being a virgin like Mary is alleged to
have been. Same thing goes for Vishnu interceding so Devaki would give birth to
Krishna and Innana coming back to life. Plus, it seems likely that later on,
Christianity got the word “hell” from Norse mythology, which used the word
“hel” for its version of the underworld. In the earlier texts of the New Testament,
the word “gehenna” was used. (4, 5,7)
The second
premise that Saint Paul believed Jesus existed in a mythical realm because he knew
nothing about him as he was made out to be in the gospels is based on
misrepresentation and extreme speculation.
One of the arguments for this premise is that Paul says that he received
the information in a vision. If you are a non-believer, a simple alternate
explanation is that he got it from witnesses and only said the former to have the
divine element. There are plenty of elements from the gospels in his letters
which show he did indeed believe that Jesus existed as a person. In 1
Corinthians 11:23-30, he mentions the betrayal and talks extensively about the
Last Supper. In chapter 15:3-7, he references Jesus’s death, burial, and
alleged resurrection. He also mentions the apostles, with Peter being the only
one identified by name. In Galatians 4:4, he mentions that a woman gave birth
to Jesus under the law. (7)
The third
premise that at least one of the second-hand secular references to Jesus is a
forgery is based on overstatements. The
Jewish historian named Flavius Josephus mentions him in a passage titled the
“Testonium Flavium” and makes a small reference in a later passage. These can
be found in his work from the 90s CE, “Antiquities of the Jews.” There was a
lot of skepticism about the passage, first referenced by the church father Eusebius
in his writings, because it confirmed Jesus as the risen Messiah. As a
traditional Jew, Josephus would not have said this. However, other versions were found that merely
confirmed Jesus as being the founder of a new movement. Since the passage was
not mentioned by any church father before Eusebius, some scholars believe that
he was the one who tampered with it because without the words that are believed
to have been added, it makes the passage sound too indifferent towards Jesus
for any church father to want to reference it. There are also some scholars who
think that Josephus never mentioned Jesus, therefore the passage is a total
fake. This is unlikely since Origen, another church father, indicated in his
writings that Josephus did not believe Jesus was the Messiah when he was
talking about the smaller reference to him in ‘Antiquities.” If Josephus had
not mentioned Jesus, Origen would not have known this because he lived longed
after Josephus was alive. Of course,
since Josephus was a Jew, Origen may have just assumed it. (6, 8)
Another reference
is from the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus, written around 115 CE in his
work titled “Annals.” In his passage, he speaks of Christians being persecuted
by Nero because of the fire that took place in Rome and that Jesus, referred to
as ‘Christus,” was where the name of the movement originated. He even says how
they spread a “pernicious superstition” after Jesus was killed. The church
fathers left this one out because of how negative it is towards Christianity.
Lastly, there is sort of an indirect reference from another Roman historian
named Suetonius that was also written around 115 CE. He talks about Nero’s
persecution of Christians, “a class of men given to a new and mischievous
superstition.” Since Nero started persecuting Christians in 64 CE, this one shows
that Christianity already had the ball rolling by that time. There would have been at least a few witnesses
to Jesus who were still alive. (2)
The fourth
premise that there are no first-hand secular references to Jesus is an
overstatement. During his ministry, Jesus was not a very important figure
outside of his circle. He seems more important than he was in the gospels
because they were written by his followers. Many point out there being no
records of Jesus’s execution in Roman archives; but the Romans executed a lot
of unknown men, such as the two that were executed along side Jesus, and they
were not even the ones who wanted him dead, the Jews did. If the Christian
movement was based on a conspiracy instead of an historical figure, Christians
would have definitely tampered with the works of historians who were writing
when Jesus was alive to make what they were preaching seem more credible. However, there are no such forged supplements
to any of these historians’ writings. (1, 7)
While there
might not be a way to “prove” that Jesus was an historical person in a way that
some people want, all of this definitely points towards him at least having
existed as a human being. As with a lot of ancient history, it is hard to come
up with undeniable proof. Was Jesus divine? That depends on your faith.
For more information:
1“Crassus and the Defeat of
Spartacus” (N.S. Gill on About.com)
2EarlyChristianWritings.com
3Encyclopedia for Epics of
Ancient India (Mythfolklore.net)
4Encyclopedia Mythica” (Pantheon.org)
5Encyclopedia of World
Religion (Mircea Eliade)
6Infidels.org
7Jewish Virtual Library
(JewishVirtualLibrary.org)
8Wikipedia Encyclopedia (Wikipedia.org)