The myth of the “Christ-myth” theory
You might have read this in Dan Brown’s The da Vinci Code:
“Nothing in Christianity is original. The pre-Christian god Mithras—called the Son of God and the Light of the World—was born on December 25, died, was buried in a rock tomb, and then resurrected in three days. By the way, December 25 was also the birthday of Osiris, Adonis, and Dionysus. The newborn Krishna was presented with gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”[i]
Many similar details circulate on websites and blogs, and sceptics often claim that the New Testament narratives must have been fabricated because they contain details that are found in pre-Christian pagan myths. But does the evidence support this assertion? There are two aspects to consider: Jesus’s existence as a historical person and the facts that the gospels supposedly borrowed from mythology.
For a start, Jesus’s existence was recorded in the second century by historians and critics of the church:
· The Roman historian Tacitus wrote, “Christus . . . suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.”[ii]
· The Jewish historian Josephus wrote, “There was about this time Jesus, a wise man . . . He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles . . . Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross.”[iii]
· The Greek critic Celsus, who was a bitter enemy of Christians, described Jesus as “a most degraded man, who was punished by scourging and crucifixion,” after having “gathered around him ten or eleven persons of notorious character, the very wickedest of tax-gatherers and sailors.”[iv] He mocked Christians for paying “excessive reverence to one who has but lately appeared among men.”[v]
· The satirist Lucian of Samosata ridiculed Christians for worshipping a crucified sage.
The crucial point is that these writers clearly regarded Jesus as a real man, not a mythological figure. If the vehement opponent Celsus had been able to discredit Christians by saying they were worshipping a figment of their imagination, he would certainly have done so.[vi] In the twelfth century, the highly respected Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides also described Jesus as a historical person: a Nazarene who “impelled people to believe that he was a prophet and the Messiah” until Jewish leaders “meted out fitting punishment to him.”[vii]
Only in the 18th century atmosphere of the Enlightenment do we first find the claim that Jesus never existed. Two Frenchmen, Volney and Dupuis, started the ball rolling with their “Christ-myth” theory that Jesus was a mythological sun-god. But these men were not historians or scholars of mythology operating in a spirit of academic objectivity: they were implacable enemies of religion. To support their argument that Christianity had borrowed from oriental legends, they made many false connections. For example:
· Dupuis claimed that the god Mithra was like Christ in that he was crucified, descended into hell, and rose to life. But Mithra does not die in any way in any of the mythologies.
· Dupuis interpreted the Christian word “hallelujah” as being based on the pagan hilaries days of rejoicing.[viii] But “hallelujah” has a Jewish basis, combining the Hebrew word for praise (hillel) with the name of God.
· Volney claimed that Christ and Krishna must have been the same god because their names are based on the same root word, “chris,” which means preserver.[ix] But the Greek christos means “anointed one,” and the Sanskrit Krishna means “black” or “dark.” There is no link between the names.
These two men compiled a host of incorrect “facts” that were repeated and extended in the nineteenth century by three English writers Higgins, Graves and Massey, who once again were not recognised scholars or historians. Their works contain laughably blatant inventions, such as the claims that Krishna, Hercules and Buddha were crucified, even though the written traditions explicitly describe different deaths for these figures. Higgins admitted that no text records Krishna being crucified, yet he offered this unashamed response regarding his fabricated claim: “How very extraordinary that all of the writers in these works should have been ignorant of so striking a fact!”[x]
In a campaign to discredit Christianity, these and other writers have extracted details from the gospels and randomly attributed them to various pagan gods, even though these details are not found in the recorded mythologies. These fictions then get repeated so that a claim that is said to be found in works by three or four authors can inevitably be traced back to one person’s invention that was never drawn from mythology. It is ironic that conspiracy theorists who challenge the teachings of the church don’t apply the same healthy scepticism to these falsifications about pagan gods. Here are just a few of the many popular but totally false claims that keep being recirculated:
· The wine-god Dionysus was not born on December 25 (this was Graves’s invention), was not laid in a manger as a child, did not turn water into wine at a wedding (Dupois’ claim) and was not crucified.
· Krishna did not have wise men attend his birth, his mother was not a virgin (he was the eighth child), and his father was not a carpenter.
· The Egyptian god Horus was not born of a virgin, did not turn water into wine, did not offer the bread of life, and did not rise from death at Easter (Massey’s fabrications).
· Mithra was not born to a virgin (he emerges fully grown from rock), and he was not slain to make atonement for the sins of the world and then resurrected (Higgins’s claim), because he does not experience any form of death. Even the vociferous second-century critic Celsus never suggested there was any similarity between Jesus and Mithra, and Professor of Roman history Attilio Mastrocinque has made this adamant statement: “we should get rid of the preconceived idea that the mysteries of Mithra were a sort of pagan Christianity.”[xi]
· The historical Buddha was not a carpenter, was not transfigured on a mountain, was not (as Graves claimed) born on December 25, and was not the son of a virgin—his mother had been married for many years.
In the very few cases where there are legitimate connections between pagan rituals and the New Testament, it is evidence of influence from Christianity to paganism, not in the other direction.
· A Mithraic inscription in Rome translates: “you have saved us . . . shedding of the eternal blood.”[xii] But this is dated two hundred years after the time of Jesus.
· Zoroaster is supposed to have said: “He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation.”[xiii] But this description is found in a medieval Christian text about supposed pagan practices during this late period.
· The priests of the god Attis said: “Your god is saved; for us also there shall be salvation from ills.” But this is found in a fourth-century work that described pagan practices long after the rise of Christianity.[xiv]
Professor of ancient history, Glen Bowersock, points out that there is evidence of Christian influence on other religions, and he notes the “absorption of Christian elements in late antique paganism, especially soteriological elements” related to salvation.[xv]
In short, the so-called links between Jesus and pagan gods are spurious. The gospel writers did not borrow details of Jesus’s life from mythology, and evidence instead supports Jesus’s historicity and the reliability of the New Testament. It’s worth noting the opinions of four objective academics:
· Jewish scholar Joseph Klausner: “Of course, there can be no toleration whatever of the idea that Jesus never existed.”[xvi]
· Professor of Literature C. S. Lewis on the New Testament: “I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this.”[xvii]
· Albert Einstein: “No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life . . . No man can deny the fact that Jesus existed.”[xviii]
· Historian Michael Grant: “Modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory.”[xix]
The New Testament is not a fabrication. Rather, it is the “Christ-myth” theory that is the mythological invention.
[i]. Brown, Da Vinci Code, 232.
[ii]. Tacitus, Annals 15.44
[iii]. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews. 18.3.3 §63–64.
[iv]. Origen, Against Celsus 2.31, 1.62.
[v]. Origen, Against Celsus 8.12.
[vi] It is sometimes claimed that in a second-century work by the Christian Justin Martyr, a Jewish character Trypho said of Jesus, “if he has indeed been born.” However, Trypho was denying that Jesus was the expected Messiah because “Christ—if He has indeed been born, and exists anywhere—is unknown, and does not even know Himself, and has no power until Elias come to anoint Him” (Dialogue 8). Trypho’s arguments challenged the Christian claim about Jesus’s status, but not his existence: “Render us the proof that this man who you say was crucified and ascended into heaven is the Christ of God . . . show us that this man is He” (Dialogue 39).
[vii]. Maimonides, Epistle to Yemen.
[viii]. Dupuis, The Origin of All Religious Worship, 255.
[ix]. Volney, The Ruins, 168.
[x]. Higgins, Anacalypsis, 159.
[xi]. Mastrocinque, Mysteries of Mithras, 92.
[xii]. This Mithraic inscription is on the wall of the Santa Prisca Mithraeum in Rome.
[xiii]. Vermaseren, Mithras, 104. This quote is from the manuscript Ms. Syr. 142 (Mingana collection).
[xiv]. Willoughby, Pagan Regeneration 5.3.
[xv]. Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity, 44.
[xvi]. Klausner, Jesus to Paul, 107.
[xvii] Lewis, Miracles, 154.
[xviii]. Quoted by George Viereck, in “What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck,” The Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929.
[xix]. Grant, Jesus: Historian’s Review, 199.