Mythicism, Minimalism, and its Detractors

By Thomas Verenna

Mythicism and Me

The term ‘mythicism’ has more than one use. It can refer to the mythicizing of a historical figure or it could refer to its opposite, euhemerizing, which is the process of forcing the mythical figure into history. It has been referenced in works which deal with discussions of mythology, mythological concepts, and mythological characters. But the term itself is hardly understood, and when it is read, often it is misunderstood. (Which, perhaps, is worse then having no understanding at all?) It has also been applied to the position of the denunciation of Jesus’ figure as historical. It is this later instance in which I will be leading this discussion, in a very similar manner to that of Philip R. Davies and his brilliant article defending his position against insults far worse then those I have yet received.

I wish to start out with a grievance. In the case of a historical Jesus, it should be made clear that we are not talking about a ‘myth’ at all, but rather as the folklorist would scold us on, we are discussing ‘legend.’ The difference is two-fold. First, mythology is more concerned about origins (generally worldly origins) than it is about characters. Sometimes a legend can contain trace elements of myth. For example, in common literature, the story of the spider biting Peter Parker’s hand is a myth – it is the origin story of Spiderman, who is the legend. Another way to understand the difference between a mythological story and a legendary story is to compare the book of Genesis, which is mythology, to the Gospel of Mark. Mark has very distinct traits that Genesis lacks.  Instead of focusing on several thousand years, or even a few generations, Mark focus’ on one life, over a span of what seems like a short time, until the death of his character Jesus when the story ends abruptly. Mark does not concern himself with origins of the universe, he does not even have an origin story for Jesus, who just appears out of nowhere (in a very Marcion manner) in his opening chapter. You can see this sort of legendary creation in the stories of Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan, both of whom have no real origin story (originally).

The second instance in which myth and legend differ is the manner in how the story is told. Legendary stories use four specific attributes in their story-telling: (1) interpreting, reinventing, or challenging common folklore, (2) interpreting, reinventing, or challenging stereotypes, (3) use of tropes or metaphors, (4) contains moral teachings. Myth, on the other hand, does not need to focus on these four aspects. The necessity of moral teachings in the origins of man is not always easy to ascertain, because in early ancient Near Eastern myths, it is the Gods – not man – who can’t get along. Often times it is the God’s folly that leaves man in their predicament with no real way to atone. Ironically, it is the development of legendary stories where you see the origin of atonement take shape. In the story of Moses, it is he who comes to atone the sins of Israel and releases them from their imprisonment, symbolic of the fall of man, and brings them into a renewed covenant with God as Abraham had done with Yahweh in Genesis. What follows from Genesis is a continuous development of legend, not myth, where understanding the plight of mankind becomes a way to teach ethics as well as the means by which to explain the folklore of Genesis.

This misrepresentation (that myth and legend are synonymous)–made by early scholars of the Redaktiongeschichte Schule of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries–has only aided in the continuous misrepresentation of mythicists and the various mythicist positions. It often leads people to assume that Jesus mythicists are comparing Jesus to, say, Horus—an Egyptian god vital to their origin traditions. In fact, the truth of the matter is that Jesus is more like the Jewish legendary traveler—in the purely Odyssean manner—Tobit. In a large sense, mythicists are really legendists, but like all originally-derogatory labels, it is ‘mythicist’ that we are stuck with. I do use the term to describe my understanding of the Jesus legend, but perhaps like Philip R. Davies and his use of minimalism, in my mind I often imagine saying it with quotes surrounding the word.

So then, what is a mythicist? To be clear, mythicism is only defined by the denouncement or even skepticism of the historicity of the figure of Jesus. What this means, plainly, is that if you do not hold that there was a man named Jesus by which the Gospel stories were based on, you are a mythicist. There is no more to it than that. Suffice it to say, the methods, theology, interpretations, criticisms and beliefs of individual mythicists are vast and complex and often times conflicting! (We’ll get into this below) So now with that behind us, it is time to move onto what mythicists are often accused of and expose the flaws with these criticisms.

Mythicism and Religion, Old Scholarship, and the Appeal to Popularity

The major criticisms I receive are often not about my research. In fact the most heard argument against mythicism is that it’s a minority opinion. This is never said matter-of-factly, but often with the fiction that the mythicist is a “dogmatist.” (G. Vermes, 2008 ) I say ‘fiction’ because there is no inherent dogmatism in accepting mythicism. This can be observed simply by reading mythicist material. If there were some sort of dogmatism, you would expect everyone to have the same perspectives and viewpoints, often out of ignorance and appeals to popularity of particular positions (which you find so often in scholarship, today), and it would have been something taught through education of some sort, passed down from mentor to student, forming some sort of “school of thought”, like the Bultmann school or the Käsemann school, or the much despised (by me) neoAlbrightian school. So let’s review the data.

Acharya S is a mythicist, but many know my disagreements with her are quite extensive and we differ greatly. She willingly admits to submitting to some “new age” thinking (which I find shocking and downright scary), claiming, of course, that it does not influence her work (which I do not believe). In terms of her mythicism, I might go so far as to say she is the most ‘dogmatic’ (although I would never say it without clarification). I say this due to the fact that she does not sway opinions easily, and often holds onto concepts (like Horus being the sun-god, who was crucified, resurrected after 3 days, has 12 disciples, etc,…) in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary (a read through the ANET’s Egyptian mythology section is more than enough to refute a large majority of her claims outright).   She has gotten better over the course of time, but she isn’t there yet.  When reading her books, I would advise caution and a thorough review of her claims in modern, up-to-date resources instead of her grossly out-of-date material…Gerald Massey, Dorothy? Really? *sigh* (I would also add that many scholars in the field associate mythicism with this type of dated scholarship–that is what worries me and what I hope the Jesus Project will rectify by allowing mythicists with credible perspectives to be able to voice them openly in a critical community)

Bob Price and I are friends, so perhaps people think I subscribe to everything Bob says, but Bob will openly admit we have disagreements, especially on the subject of Paul and the Epistles, their value, and their dating—as well as how intact they are, what redactions occurred in them, and what should be dismissed entirely. However unlike Acharya, I find a lot of Bob’s ideas compelling and generally correct. His discussion about Marcion and the development of Luke-Acts in his book The Pre-Nicene New Testament is very interesting and he is probably onto something.  His perspectives on the development of the Q document (if there indeed had been such a thing) deserve to be taken seriously.

Earl Doherty also comes to mind.  While I do not agree with his criticism of the Jesus Project, overall I  enjoy what it is Earl has to say.  This does not imply that I agree with it all. At one point Earl had presented a case for removing Galatians 4:4, which I do not agree with (it seems to fit the context perfectly). He has also made some suggestions about redating some of the Gospels to a later period which I also find unnecessary and unhelpful (for the moment I remain unconvinced, but am open to it if it were argued more convincingly), aside from Luke-Acts which I do agree came late, probably early-mid second century CE.  So any attempt to link my ideas with Earl, despite my respect for him, would be an attempt founded on ignorance.

There are only a handful of mythicists who I would say I consider role models (those who have helped shape my interpretation of the Gospels and epistles).  Thomas L. Thompson and Richard Carrier have been very friendly, thoughtful guides on my journey through the available data.  Both Richard and Thomas feel as I do,;that the Gospels represent narrative.  This narrative had been created by authors whose intent was not to deceive but  to educate through mimetic edification (or as Dennis MacDonald would put it–emulation).  The three of us argue that Paul  and the Gospel authors interpreted Jewish scripture to create their Jesus’.  All three of us agree that somewhere along the way, the edifying character of Jesus (savior) became euhemerized into history.

I do not see any sort of dogmatic approach to this subject. Particularly when examining the extrabiblical evidence. Not everyone agrees that Tacitus, Pliny and Suetonius are forgeries, for example. Some have presented the case for this; I do not agree (as far as I know, Richard and Thomas don’t agree either). Unlike the opposite side of the coin, those who have accepted the historical Jesus have done so without regards for the direct questions asked in opposition to it.  When confronted with alternate interpretations of the date, appeals are often made. This, to me, is dogmatic.

Dogmatically, they claim that Jesus had to have existed. And accordingly they state—true to their dogmatic convictions—that “no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus.” (M. Grant, 1977; O. Betz, 1968) This is not just hyperbole, but a fiction. Are there serious scholars who postulate the non-historicity of Jesus? There certainly are. Some of them are named above. I would doubt anybody familiar with scholarship over the past forty years would suggest that Thomas L. Thompson is not a serious scholar. If anybody has read the works of Richard Carrier and Robert Price, they would not be able to make such a remark. So not only is this a fiction but also an Argument from Ignorance. In fact, I would like to flip this on its head and say that no historical Jesus scholar has seriously examined the case for ahistoricity, often times simply appealing to the maxim left by Bultmann over fifty years ago (R. Bultmann, 1941).

And speaking of Bultmann, it is interesting to note that unlike mythicists, the historical Jesus scholars of the Jesus Seminar vein  often do belong to schools of thought.  What one finds is that their arguments and perspectives reflect either Bultmann or Käsemann, some even resemble Albert Schweitzer. And people suggest that mythicists follow old and outdated sources? Yet all three quests are generically based off of the first, initiated by Strauss some two-hundred years ago. Indeed, each new generation of historical Jesus scholar seems to march to the same tune. I recall the first quest failing as a result of the scholars looking down the well of history, catching their own reflections, but thinking they saw Jesus. The same is true with Bultmann, Käsemann, and Bornkamm. The same is true for J.D. Crossan, Marcus Borg, and Bart Ehrman (as much as I respect them). All of them resort to insults instead of critiques. Bultmann stated that you’d have to be insane to think Jesus never existed without offering any argument or position as to why. Paul Maier has suggested that it is only those with the “shallowest of intellects” who do not accept historicity. Vermes claimed that “dogmatists” are the only ones who doubt that Jesus existed. And recently, Bart Ehrman stated basically the same thing that Michael Grant had said some 31 years ago. These are insults, not arguments. These are reactions. These sorts of statements are more akin to defence of dogmatism than the reasoned, often well-cited remarks of mythicists like Richard Carrier, Bob Price, and Thomas L. Thompson.

I would also note that an Appeal to Popularity does not work as well as some scholars would like. This is yet another fiction. By suggesting that “everyone believes Jesus existed” one is saying that there is an agreement. But really there isn’t. The reality is that the historical Jesus quest is far from uniform. Sure, everyone keeps asserting that Jesus was a historical person – but nobody can seem to find him anywhere! They’ve looked so hard they can’t understand why, in the end, the third quest to find Jesus has failed in the same way the first two before it had.

J.D. Crossan, an Irishman growing up under Imperialist Britain, can only see his Jesus as a Jew, growing up under an Imperialist Rome. Bart Ehrman, an agnostic-atheist who was formerly an evangelical, can only see Jesus as an apocalyptic preacher teaching about the end of the world. Marcus Borg and Shelby Spong, rather liberal Christians, can only see Jesus as a religious revolutionary and reformer. Luke Timothy Johnson, a very conservative Christian, can only see Jesus as the Christ of the Gospels. Geza Vermes, a Jew who became a Catholic priest wants to paint his Jesus as a religious zealot, perhaps even a Pharisee.

Each scholar would disagree with another on where exactly the historical Jesus fits into their Gospel and where the legendary Jesus takes his place. Nobody can decide where and to what extent the authors incorporated the historical teachings instead of the ‘kerugmatik’ ones. Why does this happen? Because the assumption they are making can only be made at the expense of taking for granted a large amount of data, ignoring very important emulations and allusions, and in their place, making larger assumptions.

My Purpose: Understanding the Authors of the Bible

I cannot speak for other mythicists, since all mythicists are different in purpose and intent.  Each of us comes to different conclusions based on our interpretation of the data.  In a manner that will hopefully bring about intellectual dialog, I will briefly lay out here my own interests as a mythicist. My position deals with a few questions: “Why were the Gospels written?”, “By whom were they written?”, “What genre do they best represent?”, “What is the author trying to tell us, especially if this is not history or memory recall?” and so on. I am not concerned with making assumptions about the author’s intent, nor am I primarily interested in presupposing the genre came to be ex nihilo.

I am not impressed by the argument that the Jesus of the Gospels is unhistorical (as those scholars of the Jesus Seminar seem to be). I need to know why that Jesus is unhistorical; I want to puzzle out why the authors changed, adjusted, or otherwise ignored history, purposefully changed other Gospel versions while creating their own.  Who was their audience and what did the authors and the audience really believe? I am not content with just accepting the fact that this Jesus is a legend – I want to know why he was created as a legend. It is easy to assume that the character of the Gospels is based off some historical person, but what does that really answer? What can that tell us? The blunt fact is that it can tell us nothing, because that person does not exist; not in the evidence we have nor in the literature we possess. So why assume that there is some hidden Jesus, that nobody has ever seen, and our evidence does not support, when clearly the authors of the Gospels were not interested in that Jesus. They went out of their way to show us a Jesus that was of their own minds, their own interests. Why? These are the questions I am concerned about.

I approach the questions with a love for the literature, not (as has been suggested) a premature prejudice against it. Nor do I pretend that there are no historical incidents in the Gospel narratives, even if those incidents are often inaccurately dated (perhaps purposefully, not out of ignorance or incompetence as so many historical Jesus scholars would claim) or placed in the wrong chronological order, or even placed in a completely different context that would never have happened in antiquity (The Sanhedrin meeting on Passover eve, for example; or Pilate letting the Jews push him around-a far cry from the murderous, cruel character described to us by Josephus). However, I feel these incidents play a part on the narrative, as sets—a backdrop like in a play—where the narrative can unfold. Much in the same way that Ithica is the home of Odysseus the craftsman and carpenter, where he, as king, is no longer welcome because of the suitors that plague his household, so too is Nazareth the ‘set’ of the story where Jesus, carpenter, (or carpenter’s son) is no longer welcome, outcast by his own people by the decadence that plagues his Israel. You will not find a critique of this position in any book or article by a historical Jesus scholar. My detractors are happy assuming my position rather than reading it or asking me questions about it. Addressing the issues seems to be the furthest thing from their minds.