The Jesus Myth: An unrelenting case for history

[Physics Guy]

The fact that Jesus's crucifixion was a horrible surprise for his disciples is no revisionist reading. It's clear in Christian tradition. Some gospel verses represent Jesus as telling his inner group about it in advance, at least vaguely, but even these texts show the disciples resisting the idea. The gospels criticise the disciples for not understanding where Jesus's mission was really going, in spite of Jesus's own words and the supposedly clear and abundant prophecies, but this still says first of all that, whether or not the disciples should have expected or even welcomed the crucifixion, they definitely didn't. The tradition of the anguish in Gethsemane even implies that Jesus himself wasn't sure what would happen to him until the last moment.

There are even awkward details preserved in the gospels that still hint at confusion among the disciples in the aftermath. Most of the accounts of post-resurrection appearances have people struggling to recognize Jesus, for example.

Up to a point you could say that this was all a myth, and the disciples are in the myth as a dimwitted chorus to emphasise the cosmic atonement dramatically by failing to understand it until the resurrection makes it clear even to them. If that was the plan of the gospels, though, it wasn't well executed. The story drags on for too long with preaching-and-miracles stuff that doesn't build up the cosmic significance of the passion, but even distracts from it. The non-atonement part of the Jesus story doesn't work well as mere scaffolding for the cosmic atonement. It all really reads more as though the non-atonement material was just there, and well enough known to the target audience that it could be spun, to try to make sense of the crucifixion, but not simply suppressed.

[Kishkumen]

The fact that Jesus's crucifixion was a horrible surprise for his disciples is no revisionist reading. It's clear in Christian tradition. Some gospel verses represent Jesus as telling his inner group about it in advance, at least vaguely, but even these texts show the disciples resisting the idea. The gospels criticise the disciples for not understanding where Jesus's mission was really going, in spite of Jesus's own words and the supposedly clear and abundant prophecies, but this still says first of all that, whether or not the disciples should have expected or even welcomed the crucifixion, they definitely didn't. The tradition of the anguish in Gethsemane even implies that Jesus himself wasn't sure what would happen to him until the last moment.

There are even awkward details preserved in the gospels that still hint at confusion among the disciples in the aftermath. Most of the accounts of post-resurrection appearances have people struggling to recognize Jesus, for example.

Up to a point you could say that this was all a myth, and the disciples are in the myth as a dimwitted chorus to emphasise the cosmic atonement dramatically by failing to understand it until the resurrection makes it clear even to them. If that was the plan of the gospels, though, it wasn't well executed. The story drags on for too long with preaching-and-miracles stuff that doesn't build up the cosmic significance of the passion, but even distracts from it. The non-atonement part of the Jesus story doesn't work well as mere scaffolding for the cosmic atonement. It all really reads more as though the non-atonement material was just there, and well enough known to the target audience that it could be spun, to try to make sense of the crucifixion, but not simply suppressed.

Excellent points, PG. As someone who thinks Jesus lived, I see your post as arguing in favor of the same view. There was a guy named Jesus who was crucified. His execution was a horrible blow to his followers, and they struggled with the tragedy’s impact on their beliefs. That is not the profile of a myth that was rewritten to read like a historical biography.

That said, there was a story about a god who came to earth in the guise of one of his own priests. He was captured by city authorities, but he miraculously escaped and engineered the execution of his persecutor at the hands of his own mother.

I am referring, of course, to Euripides’ Bacchae, a Greek tragedy about Dionysus’ return to Thebes written in the late fifth to early fourth century BC. It is interesting how similar it is to the Gospels up to the point that the god Jesus is executed and his substitute, Barabbas, is released.

[Physics Guy]

There was a guy named Jesus who was crucified. His execution was a horrible blow to his followers, and they struggled with the tragedy’s impact on their beliefs. That is not the profile of a myth that was rewritten to read like a historical biography.

Right, that's how I see it, too.

I don't remember even hearing about Bacchae before. It's an interesting parallel—up to a point, as you say. From a brief online summary, I gather that Dionysius is a demigod who returns incognito to his human mother's birthplace, which should be especially devoted to him but instead rejects his cult and libels his dead mother. The authorities see him as a mere rabble-rouser leading their women astray; they arrest him and try to punish him.

Up to that point the stories of Jesus and Dionysius have some resemblance. A divine being rightfully claims devotion but is treated as a mere human criminal. It's a fairly big change of genre, though, from Greek demigod to Jewish messiah, let alone monotheistic God incarnate. Not so much like a DC superhero movie stealing a plot from a Marvel film—more like stealing it from a Bond film, or something.

If the initial setup of Bacchae somewhat resembles the premise of the gospels, on the other hand, the main stories are radically different. Most of Bacchae seems to be about Dionysius's divine invulnerability and grim retribution. The climax of the play is the impious ruler who disrespected Dionysius's mom getting killed by his own maenad mother.

The dramatic emphasis of the play itself tells us that that kind of thing is what Dionysius's deity means, and what it means for humans to slight him. So to me it's not even just that the two stories are only similar up to a point and thereafter diverge. Knowing where the two stories go from their initial premises makes the premises themselves seem less alike, to me. We can say that Jesus and Dionysius are both slighted gods, but what it means for Jesus to be divine and rejected doesn't seem so close to what those things meant for Dionysius, after all.