Rising Gods, Pagan Parallels, and Cultural Context: A Response to M. David Litwa

 

Egyptian coffins from the Palestinian city of Deir el-Balah (13th century BCE)

 

Among the many and variegated types of intellectual sins, none can top the mighty taboo of taking something out of context. That’s why, far be it from me to say that context doesn’t matter. It most certainly does. And thus I take quite seriously the charge leveled at us comparative religion gurus–that we’re taking mythic antecedents to Christianity out of context. Out of their cultural context, that is. Thus, to speak of a resurrection of Baal or Osiris, from far-flung cultures like Canaan or Egypt, separated from 1st century Palestine by vast spans of distance or time, is an illegitimate attempt at drawing comparisons with the death and resurrection of Christ. These stories stem from different cultural milieux; therefore, they cannot properly be compared, much less related to one another. Indeed, it is improper even to apply the word ‘resurrection’ to these other accounts, as this constitutes equivocation. Most recently, these comparative approaches have been admonished by scholar and author, M. David Litwa:

Time and time again, the biblical maxim proves true: “There is nothing new under the sun” (Eccles. 1:9). No single deed or saying in Jesus is unique in the sense of being without parallel – because nothing in human history is without parallel. If the mythicist databank is world mythology ranging from 1800 BC to 100 CE, then any creative mythicist can chalk up a host of parallels to Jesus. It is simply a matter of blasting Jesus’ life into small enough bits that represent single actions or motifs stripped out of narrative context. Jesus was born from a virgin, Attis was born from a virgin; Jesus brought baptism of fire, Zoroaster brought baptism of fire; Jesus rose from the dead, Osiris rose from the dead; and so on … Never mind that the parallels come from radically different times and cultures; never mind that they are shorn of their context and mean almost nothing as individual units; never mind that the parallels never add up to a coherent story that looks anything like the portraits of Jesus in the gospels — the parallels, in shards, are there (How the Gospels Became History, Yale University Press, 2019, 43).

It should be noted, before proceeding, that I am agnostic on the matter of Jesus’ historicity. Granted I’ve advocated for mythicism in the past, on this very blog, I admittedly find myself teetering back and forth on the issue, such that I’ve finally embraced full-blown Jesus agnosticism. That said, I won’t be defending mythicism here per se, though I do sympathize with mythicists and appreciate their contributions to the study of Christian origins. What I wish to tackle here is Litwa’s lambasting of comparative religion as it concerns Jesus, the notion that these parallels are insignificant and arbitrary motifs that are ripped out of context and inappropriately applied without regard for their culturally specific meaning and provenance.

To begin with, these are not insignificant parallels to the life of Jesus, but highly significant archetypes that closely parallel some of the most profound attributes of Jesus, particularly his miraculous birth and resurrection from the dead. Should anyone doubt this, ask none other than M. David Litwa himself, who makes such comparisons in his previous work, Iseus Deus: The Early Christian Depiction of Jesus as a Mediterranean God (Fortress Press, 2014). There, it is the divine conception, healing miracles, and resurrection that are examined, each in their own respective chapter, with regard to similar stories about Perseus, Plato, Asclepius, and Heracles. Litwa is careful not to claim genealogical derivation, but nonetheless recognizes that the parallels are real, significant, and indicative of common conceptions of divinity in the Mediterranean world.

The issue for classicists like Bart Ehrman and M. David Litwa, who focus primarily on the Greco-Roman milieu from which Christianity sprang, is that one dare not venture outside of that immediate cultural backdrop when making comparisons with Christ. And to a degree, this is certainly understandable. If one such as myself were drawing comparisons with the resurrected Hunaphu of Mayan lore, or the miraculous birth of Gautama the Buddha, then it’s fair to say that we’re straying too far afield. But Egypt, Persia, or Asia Minor? That’s an entirely different story.

Litwa dismisses parallels with other dying and rising gods, like Baal and Osiris, yet any critical Old Testament scholar will tell you that Canaanite culture and myth were precursors for ancient Israelite religion. (Indeed, the Israelites may have even been an indigenous tribe of Canaanites!) Hosea witnesses to the continual lusting after the gods of old, the Baals and Asherahs, and Baal was sometimes even conflated with Yahweh (2:6). Scholars like Lloyd Geering and John Day see the archetypal myth of the dying-rising god, particularly Baal, underlying those passages in the Hebrew Bible that speak of the metaphorical death and rebirth of Israel, e.g. Isaiah 26 and Ezekiel 37. Daniel 7, an important theological template for the New Testament depiction of Christ, was already, in the Old Testament, a recasting of Baal and his father El, the “one like a Son of Man” and the “Ancient of Days.” This is not some alien cultural sphere, but one that supplied fertile ground for the mythic framework of Christianity’s own ancestral religion. When Christ defeats death to become the risen Son of God, enthroned among the clouds of the heavens, should we be surprised to see in this the vestiges of Baal, the risen son of El, who defeats the monster Mot (death) and is enthroned as king of gods and men? This is precisely the kind of phenomenon we’d expect from a revivalist religious movement, one where the nationalistic metaphor of resurrection becomes literal again, embodied in a new deity and a new era.

As for the Egyptian Osiris, Egypt ruled Canaan for half a millennium, from the 16th to 11th centuries BCE, and undoubtedly left a lasting impression on people of the Levant. Thus Psalm 78, for instance, partakes of a Hymn to Osiris when speaking of David as Yahweh’s earthly regent, just as Horus became the earthly representative of the god-king whilst Osiris reigned in the heavens. Scattered throughout the Levant are archaeological artifacts attesting devotion to ancient Egyptian divinities, including Osiris himself. The Osirian mortuary cult may have had its genesis in the hoary mists of Egyptian prehistory, but it did not stop there, nor with the Pyramid Texts or Book of the Dead. Osiris as the dying-rising god par excellence, whose resurrection secured a like fate for devotees, enjoyed a lasting legacy well into Ptolemaic Egypt and the Greco-Roman world at large. Are we crazy to think that, e.g., a massive population of Diaspora Jews in Alexandria, where Philo was already waxing philosophical about proto-Christian concepts, might have absorbed aspects of this enduring myth, one long known to their ancestors? I think not. Again, we’re not talking about a long-forgotten or distant culture, but one well within the periphery of Christian origins.

What about comparisons with Zoroaster, including cosmic renewal of the world by a baptism of fire? Not exactly a long shot when we consider that post-Exilic Jews were inundated in Persian culture and religiosity after Cyrus freed them from captivity in the 6th century BCE. Scholars have long postulated that Judeo-Christian eschatology (end times belief) was heavily influenced by earlier conceptions in Persian Zoroastrianism, including cosmic dualism (the wise lord Ahura Mazda versus the evil Ahriman), a final judgment, immersion in a lake of fire, and a mass resurrection of the dead. In fact, the Pharisees, who upheld such views contra the Sadducees, appear to have derived their very namesake from ‘Persian’ (Farsi/Parsee), just one letter off in Hebrew (Paras/Parash).

The irony in all of this should be obvious by now: Litwa is the one taking these motifs out of context! When we actually examine the historical undercurrents, the contact these cultures had with one another as a result of travel and trade, war and conquest, etc., it becomes increasingly dubious to try and hermetically seal these mythemes off. Crying “cultural context” betrays an ignorance of historical context, disregarding the extent to which these cultures and their myths ebbed and flowed, mixed and merged, were adopted and adapted and re-interpreted under the cosmopolitan and syncretistic impulses of the time. Cultural differences did exist, to be sure, but so did cultural diffusion. Thus the resurrection of Osiris, in its original context, entailed notions of solar rhythms, of the rejoining of constituent aspects of “self” like the Ba and Akh, but nonetheless retained a central motif of bodily resurrection–of a divinity through whom others could achieve the same, even if destined for the next world. Could both the differences and similarities with Christ be a result of syncretic adaptation? You bet. We can hardly prove it, but neither are we off our rocker to make reasonable inferences about its plausibility.

All told, the comparitivist is not merely blasting Jesus’ life into insignificant shards, but noting profoundly significant points of similarity that represent prominent archetypes within the matrix of Mediterranean religion. The cultural and narrative distinctions are not ignored, but fully acknowledged and understood within the framework of cultural diffusion and religious syncretism. The databank is not “world mythology” from “radically different times and cultures,” but interpenetrating traditions from cultural and religious movements that undeniably had considerable contact with, and impact on, one another. Perhaps nobody said it better than Litwa himself:

Ancient Judaism was a living Mediterranean religion engaged in active conversation and negotiation with larger religious currents of its time. If Judaism in the first century was an obviously distinctive religion, many Jews still shared views of deity surprisingly similar to other Mediterranean peoples of the time. It was these pervasive cultural notions of deity that early Christians appropriated and adapted to describe the divine identity of their lord (Iseus Deus: The Early Christian Depiction of Jesus as a Mediterranean God, Fortress Press, 2014, 19-20).

Indeed. And that goes as much for ancient Canaan, Egypt, and Persia as it does for the Hellenistic-Roman world. For this was the Oikumene (inhabited world), a stage of human affairs where cherished ideas, though separated by time and distance, were connected by the vast web of human interaction, legacy, and tradition.

 

The First Easters: Death and Resurrection Before Christ

 

 

Easter celebrates the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But well before Jesus, there were stories of divine men who were raised from the dead, some of them with uncanny similarities to Christ.

The Canaanite god Baal, worshiped by Israelites for centuries (Hos. 2), was known as the mighty son of El (= God in Hebrew). He was killed by Mot, the god of death, after which his female consort Anath buried and mourned for him “like the longing of an ewe for her lamb.” Later, El beheld in a dream that Baal yet lived! Young Baal, risen son of El, defeated death and became enthroned as king of gods and men. 

 

Baal upon his throne

 

The Egyptian Osiris was murdered and dismembered by his jealous brother, Set. But his wife Isis recovered the body parts and pieced him together again, raising him from the dead. Osiris ascended to heaven to become the judge of the dead, while his son Horus ruled over a new kingdom on earth. In the image of the risen Osiris, ancient Egyptians saw the promise of their own resurrection to eternal life in the hereafter.

 

The resurrection of Osiris

 

Dionysus, the Greek god of theater, wine, and fertility, was likewise dismembered by the evil Titans (giants), though the goddess Demeter physically restored him to life. Adonis, too, was mauled by a boar, but later raised from the dead. Early church fathers like Origen and Jerome commented on the rejoicing that accompanied his resurrection.

 

Women mourning the death of Adonis

 

The Greek physician Asclepius was widely celebrated for his miracles of healing. As the 2nd century Christian apologist Justin Martyr noted, he healed the lame, the blind, and the paralytic, and even raised the dead. After Hades became upset with him for rescuing too many from the underworld, Zeus struck Asclepius dead with a thunderbolt. But he later relented and raised Asclepius to godhood. Thereafter, he appeared to many in the temples and shrines where his miracles were sought.

 

Asclepius healing the sick

 

The mighty Hercules was dying from poison when the funeral pyre he had mounted was struck by lightning and set ablaze. Afterwards his followers searched for his body to no avail, and concluded that he must have been raised to heaven. Likewise, Romulus, first king of Rome, vanished in the midst of a violent storm that darkened the earth, but later appeared to a trusted witness, Julius Proculus, to deliver a great commission for Rome before ascending on high. The poet and wonder-worker Aristeas also disappeared after dying in a fuller’s shop, but appeared to many alive again throughout Sicily. 

 

Romulus appears to Julius Proculus

 

Some of these stories grew out of pagan agricultural festivals, celebrating the rebirth of light and life in the spring, or the waxing and waning of the sun. The gods who personified these natural events even came to be seen as saviors, their passions ritually re-enacted to bring about a similar fate in their worshipers. Thus, as Osiris died and rose, so too did the believer by being mystically identified with him in the process of embalmment. The resurrections of these divinities were celebrated annually in passion plays and public festivals, sometimes involving the raising of a statue or effigy to represent the god’s victory over death.

 

Raising the effigy of the god

 

History doth repeat itself. In the Easter celebration of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, we are witnessing the culmination of a long, winding, and rich tradition of religious ideas from around the Mediterranean world. 

 

 

 

 

Is God Necessary for Morality?

Atheists are among the most stigmatized people in society. In fact, a 2011 survey revealed that atheists are even more distrusted than rapists (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 101). And one would be hard-pressed to run for public office while making known their nonbelief. After all, what basis is there for morality without the guiding hand of God Almighty? If there is no divine authority figure, why be good at all? As Dostoyevsky famously quipped in The Grand Inquisitor, “If there is no God, then all things are permitted.”

Well, if you haven’t been keeping up with ancient events, then you may be unaware that this line of reasoning is fatally flawed. That’s because it was effectively refuted about 2,400 years ago by none other than Plato. In his famous dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro, a philosophical quandary is posed thusly: “Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?” Known as the Euthyphro Dilemma, the problem boils down to this: If something is morally good simply because it is commanded by God, then morality is arbitrary. God could decide tomorrow that murder and rape are morally acceptable, and voilà, it would be. On the other hand, if God commands what is already morally good, then morality exists independently of God. He is not the source or creator of morality, not the one who determines right from wrong, but merely one who dispenses a system of ethics that transcends his own authority.

In response, theists attempt to wiggle their way out of the dilemma by suggesting that God’s very nature, or character, is good, so that he would never condone such wicked acts as rape or murder. But then all one has to do is reformulate the question, à la philosopher Michael Martin: “Is God’s character the way it is because it is good, or is God’s character good simply because it is God’s character?” The dilemma stands, as God’s character remains subject to an external definition of what is moral or good. Why is this? It’s because morality is an abstraction, or social contract, produced collectively by sentient beings, and to which all sentient beings are subject. And it’s something that naturally arises on a pragmatic basis for the sake of order and harmony within any civilized society. God, therefore, is neither the source of morality, nor a necessary explanation for its existence.

But imagine for a moment the sheer absurdity of suggesting that the biblical God is the supreme author of morality. A God who demands the extermination of men, women, and children (1 Sam. 15:1-3), who delights in the retaliatory act of seizing infants and dashing them against rocks (Ps. 137:8-9), of raping the wives of Israel’s enemies (Is. 13:16), even orchestrating the brutal death of dozens of children by savage bears, merely for having mocked one of his prophets (2 Kgs. 2:23-24). This is a ferociously partisan, bloodthirsty, and vengeful deity, not one bound by any high-minded or all-encompassing moral code. Theists will typically defend such verses in one of three ways: 1) by suggesting that “those were different times,” thus invoking moral relativism and destroying their own case for an objective morality stemming from God; 2) by appealing to context, of which there simply isn’t any to justify the depravity above; and 3) by pleading, “that was the Old Testament,” or, “Jesus changed all that,” tacitly admitting that the God they ostensibly worship was once horrible and in need of change, which further contradicts any claims to the immutable and unchanging character of God (e.g., Mal. 3:6; Heb. 13:8; Jm. 1:17).

Suffice it to say, neither God nor the Bible serve as the basis for morality. Although, it is also true that, on atheism, morality does not have any metaphysical or cosmic basis. It’s not something that is written into the fabric of the universe. But neither does it need to be. You see, how we treat each other may not matter on a metaphysical level. It’s all the same to the cosmic void whether we live in harmony or hasten our own demise. But the point is, it matters to us. We care about one another, and, if we are wise, seek to treat others in the manner that we wish to be treated (a philosophy that long predates Christ). For nonbelievers, especially, it is in the absence of a loving God that we embrace this simple truth: All we have is each other. And that’s enough. No posthumous incentives, no heavenly rewards or threats of damnation, are necessary to know that love, sympathy, and compassion are the better way. That they are their own reward. Deep down, I think that’s what truly motivates all of us, no matter what our faith or creed.

Did God Create the Universe?

 

 

The cosmological argument, in its simplest form, states, “Whatever exists must have a cause.” For theistic philosophers, the problem is obvious. If God exists, then, by the same rationale, he too must have a cause. But the theologians plead, “God is eternal, and therefore requires no cause.” To which the atheist replies, “If God can be eternal, then why can’t the universe?” And voilà: The universe requires no creator. God need not apply.

But, for the atheist, there’s a hitch. If we are truly advocates of science, then we must reckon with Big Bang cosmology. Which suggests that the universe is not eternal–that it began roughly 14 billion years ago. Thus Christian apologists such as William Lane Craig invoke what is known as the Kalam Cosmological Argument, i.e., “Whatever begins to exist must have a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe had a cause.” The atheist is backed into a corner. The logic of Kalam is sound, with no apparent flaws or rebuttals. Something cannot come from nothing, so, if the universe had a beginning, something must have begotten it, perhaps even created it. What else is a better candidate than the God of classical theism? It’s philosophical checkmate for the atheist.

Or is it?

In point of fact, there is a glaring flaw in all of the reasoning above. And it is this: The cosmological arguments, including Kalam, rely on our everyday experience of the world, our common-sense notions about reality. But in the world of physics and cosmology, we are far removed from that arena. Especially quantum physics, the activity of the subatomic world, which is directly relevant to Big Bang cosmology, since winding back the cosmological clock on an ever-expanding universe presents us with the reverse–an ever-receding universe that collapses into an infinitesimal void. And right here, in the subatomic realm of quantum physics, all of our common-sense notions about reality go right out the window. We can no longer rely on simple syllogisms or everyday experience. We’re in an altogether different world.

Quantum physics is strange, unfamiliar, and downright perplexing, even to physicists. As Richard Feynman famously quipped, “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” But are we altogether ignorant about this aspect of reality? Not quite. In fact, we’ve harnessed quantum physics in the practical application of various technologies, including lasers, transistors, semiconductors, magnetic resonance imaging, etc. There is much that we still don’t understand. But there is much that we do indeed understand.

In cosmological terms, here’s what we do know:

1) The vacuum of space is typically identified with nothingness, sheer emptiness. But not so in quantum physics. As physicist Lawrence Krauss explains, “Empty space is a boiling, bubbling brew of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence in a time scale so short that you can’t even measure them.” Empty space has weight. It is incredibly active and dynamic. In short, nothing isn’t nothing anymore in physics. Difficult to grasp, but verifiably true. In labs, we can detect these virtual particles popping in and out of existence, seemingly from nothing.

2) Many physicists theorize that our universe, like the virtual particles themselves, emerged from just such a quantum void. Given eons of time, a sufficient level of vacuum fluctuations could nucleate into a bubble of “false vacuum,” which would then expand, exponentially according to a phenomenon known as inflation, and produce an entire universe.

3) We can measure the net energy of the universe. Yes. We can literally measure the entirety of the cosmos. It’s astonishingly simple. Take all the matter in the universe and subtract it from its equivalent, gravitational energy. Notice I used the word “equivalent.” Simple logic dictates the obvious answer. The sum energy of the universe… is zero. Our universe is precisely what we would expect to emerge from a zero-point energy state, or quantum vacuum, without violating any laws concerning the conservation of mass-energy, i.e., “Mass-energy is neither created nor destroyed.” It’s the ultimate free lunch. Out of “nothing” we get something, though that something equates precisely to its original state, purely in terms of mass-energy. Our universe is akin to “nothingness” turned inside-out. Zero manifesting itself in a different form. This, among other reasons, is why physicists are hard-pressed not to envisage the cosmos as something of an optical illusion, or hologram. The universe is a far stranger place than we once, with our feeble minds, could have ever conceived.

4) In July of 2012, an elementary particle known as the Higgs boson was discovered via the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. This particle had long been theorized to exist, as such a thing was required by physics to explain the very existence of mass itself. But not until 2012 did we finally verify its existence. The particle in question had all the properties and attributes predicted of the Higgs. There is still much we have yet to learn. Is it the only such particle of its kind? What is its precise mass? Though more calcuation and testing must be done to answer the latter of these questions with certainty, current measurements put it at 126 GeV. At first sight, that probably doesn’t mean much to you. But it is monumentally significant to cosmologists. At 126 GeV, the Higgs boson, the particle/field that pervades the cosmos and produces its inherent mass, is right on the critical line between determining whether the vacuum of space is stable… or unstable. The current measurement indicates meta-stability; it is somewhere between the two extremes, suggesting that our universe is a long-lived but impermanent bubble of false vacuum. In other words, at some point, perhaps several billion years from now, a scenario like that described above, in which vacuum fluctuations spawn a new universe, will occur. Within our own universe. A new bubble will nucleate and spread out at the speed of light, effectively wiping out and replacing our existing universe. It would be nothing short of apocalyptic. If we extrapolate this scenario, both well into the future and deep into the past, the implications are staggering. This may have already happened. Countless times, over the mighty span of eternity. It rekindles an old idea in cosmology, once thought obsolete, as the accerlation of our expanding universe put an end to the notion of an expanding and contracting universe. We may indeed live in a cyclic universe. One that is eternal, but not static, undergoing an infinite series of transitions, phases, and manifestations. If that were the case, it would align well with everything else we witness in nature–the various cycles, the perennial death and rebirth, of everything from vegetation to entire star systems. Paradoxically, perhaps, our everyday experience of the world may indeed be telling us something about cosmology.

None of this even takes into account the very real possibility of a multiverse. Though this is a plausible scenario, we have no compelling evidence for such a thing. The scenarios discussed above, however, are grounded in evidence, even if not absolute proof. We return to our initial inquiry: Did God create the universe? Obviously, the cosmological arguments for his existence are a dismal failure. There is far too much that they do not take into account concerning physics and cosmology. And, where naturalistic processes or hypotheses provide plausible explanations, supernatural ones must step aside. Because, if there is one thing we’ve learned from the long and well-documented history of science, it is that invoking God at the frontiers of hitherto unexplained phenomena, whether in biology or astronomy, has always proven fruitless. In such cases, God is merely a symbol of our ignorance, a means of bridging the gaps in our knowledge with little more than magic, as there is never any attempt to explain just how God did it. As Robert M. Price is fond of saying, it is akin to declaring, “God knows.” In other words, no one knows. Newton’s contributions to the field of physics were invaluable, though he stopped short when confronted with the question of just how gravity worked, particularly in the grand scheme of our solar system, satisfied to say that God was responsible. Einstein persevered where Newton had given up, and provided us with the actual mechanics underlying gravity. Einstein himself invoked the God of Spinoza to explain the inherent harmony and orderliness of the cosmos, though scientists since have shown that the universe is both orderly and chaotic–and that even its orderliness is naturally explained by the homogeneity of nature. Just what we’d expect of a godless universe, a “blind watchmaker,” that gives the illusion of design, despite there being no intent or purpose. Just pervasive and mindless same-ness. An overall cosmic simplicity that neither characterizes complex sentience, nor requires it.

Did God create the universe? We don’t know. But we are wise to be patient, avoiding fill-in-the-gap, supernatural “solutions” that only serve to soothe our uncertainty, and holding off judgment until either new discoveries or existing hypotheses, based on scientific evidence, provide a naturalistic explanation. As they always have.

 

The Jesus I Love (And Have a Hard Time Leaving Behind)

 

Mythicism, the apologists say, including secular scholars like Bart Ehrman, is driven by the motivation to remove Jesus from the realm of history. After all, if there was no historical Jesus, then how can Christianity be true? Thus, the mythicist strives to strike out Jesus in order to disprove Christianity and score another point for atheism. What presumptuous hogwash.

I’ve written about this before, but I’ll gladly repeat it here: I am not a soldier for atheism. I am a truth-seeker. Period. I don’t care about what’s palatable, only what’s tenable. My voracious curiosity about the world around me produces an honest search for truth. And it just so happens that atheism appears to be true, compelling me to accept it, whether I like it or not.

And so it is with mythicism.

Historians over the last few hundred years have attempted to reconstruct a historical Jesus from the many layers of myth and legend that encrust him in the Gospels. Their methods have produced what Dr. Robert M. Price calls “an embarrassment of riches.” Was he a sage? A mystic? A faith-healer? An apocalyptic preacher? Some have ascribed to him one of the various categories of 1st century Jews, e.g., Jesus the Essene, Jesus the Pharisee, Jesus the Zealot. And so on.

Theologian and philosopher Albert Schweitzer once noted that, out of these myriad reconstructions, there arose a pattern. Oftentimes, the figure that was reconstructed was a reflection of the historian himself. A Jesus whose theological or political views aligned with that of the reconstructionist’s. Unbeknownst to the historian, the endeavor was as much an exercise in psychology as it was history. They had created the very Jesus they desired.

You know what? Guilty as charged.

You see, there’s a Jesus I love. Probably anchored in the Jesus I grew up with, the Jesus my mother taught me about. The Jesus who loved me, and whom Mom so passionately loved. But, beyond the sentimental vestiges of this Jesus, I find also a person of compassion, who bucked the system and championed higher ideals. The “Bernie Sanders” of antiquity, if you will. Someone who cared deeply about those whom were downtrodden and oppressed, who fought for the poor and despised the selfish greed of the wealthy elite (Mk. 10:21-25; Mt. 5:5, 25:35-40; Lk. 14:13-14, 16:13). And, above all, someone who preached a message of love. Challenging and inspiring us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves (Mt. 22:39).

I want to keep this Jesus. I don’t want to eliminate him from history. I have zero, zip, zilch desire to do so. But I cannot turn a blind eye to the preponderance of evidence that we are dealing with a composite figure, one constructed from ideas, myths, even various personages, that permeated the ancient Mediterranean. Nor can I ignore the utter lack of corroborating evidence for such a historical figure, especially where we should expect to find it. Alas, it’s not about what I want. It’s not about what I like. It’s not about what I desire. It is about following the evidence wherever it leads. My only allegiance is to the truth.

But, perhaps mythicism has an advantage. Mind you, this is not what drove me to it, but merely the happy outcome. The Christ Myth Theory frees me from having to restrict myself to historical reconstructions of Jesus. Because there’s a critical difference between attempting to establish your ideals and desires as fact… and merely embracing a symbolic reconstruction of them. A non-historical Jesus can be anything I want or need him to be, so long as I’m neither distorting facts nor history. In other words, Jesus the champion of compassion and love is something that I can embrace as a metaphor, an ideal. A figure who upholds the virtues to which all of us should aspire. You can destroy a person, place, or thing. But you cannot destroy an idea. In this way, the Jesus I love can endure. Or, to put it another way… He Lives.

 

Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions? A Refutation of Dr. Ronald Nash

 

About 10,000 years ago, the last Ice Age came to an end, resulting in the northward migration of wild game that hunter-gatherers had depended upon since time immemorial. In response, man came to settle along the banks of seas and rivers, where they took up fishing and agriculture in order to maintain sustenance. As agriculture became an essential function of both civilization and subsistence, it also became crucial to understand the nature of the seasons and the solar cycles that contribute to seasonal change. Since the scientific method had yet to be conceived, we came to understand the sun and the seasons through ritual and myth—particularly the personification of croplife. From this sprang dying and rising god myths, symbolizing the death and return of vegetation, the waxing and waning of the sun, etc.

Over time, man came to believe that performing certain rituals of initiation could mystically unite him with the fate of the risen god, affecting for him a spiritual rebirth in this life, and, ultimately, a blessed existence in the next. The origins of this soteriology, at least insofar as the earliest evidence shows, appear to lie in the ancient Egyptian cult of Osiris. As one risen from the dead, Osiris became the conduit through which all ancient Egyptians could rise to eternal life, via a process of imitative magic or ritual assimilation with the god.

Similar concepts of salvation began to arise in the Greco-Roman world after Alexander the Great inaugurated the Hellenistic Age—a time of unprecedented sharing of ideas between formerly disparate cultures, resulting in rampant religious syncretism. The salvific components of the Osirian cult appear to have found their way into the various “mysteries” of Dionysus, Attis, Adonis, etc. Not least among these was Christianity. The inherent mysticism by which the devotee ritually shares in the death and resurrection of the god is featured in such passages as Rom. 6:3-5 and Col. 2:12, where baptismal initiation of the Christian neophyte brings about his metaphorical death and rebirth, culminating in a resurrection to eternal life (1 Cor. 15:20-22).

Critical scholars of ancient religion and Christian origins have long recognized the proverbial strands of mystery religion “DNA” in the New Testament. However, evangelical scholars and apologists, who still exert a massive influence within academia, have fought mightily to distance Christianity from its pagan predecessors. Any external influences are considered a threat to the notion that the Bible is exclusively a product of divine revelation, unsullied by the impure and mundane imaginations of man.

There is perhaps no more comprehensive a case against Christianity’s indebtedness to the ancient mysteries than that found in Dr. Ronald Nash’s 1994 article for the Christian Research Journal.[i] Many apologists appeal to this work, carting out a list of Nash’s primary contentions against pagan influences upon Christianity—a list which represents the standard objections raised by nearly all apologists. I shall consolidate this list into the nine essential arguments proffered by Nash, addressing each in turn.

(1) Arguments offered to “prove” a Christian dependence on the mysteries illustrate the logical fallacy of false cause. This fallacy is committed whenever someone reasons that just because two things exist side by side, one of them must have caused the other. As we all should know, mere coincidence does not prove causal connection. Nor does similarity prove dependence.

Here, Nash is attempting to accuse scholars of comparative religion of the fallacy known as cum hoc ergo propter hoc, which states that correlation is not causation. However, the fallacy would be better stated, “Correlation is not necessarily causation.” Oftentimes, correlations exist precisely because of causation, which is why the fallacy exists to begin with, since we have a tendency to over-infer causation based on the general rule.

As it concerns this case, if scholars of comparative religion were going merely on superficial similarities, positing dependence might well constitute such a fallacy. But, there’s a far greater cumulative case at hand: primarily, the soteriological similarities (the homologic principle, or imitatio dei, whereby the devotee mystically shares in the god’s death and resurrection); the rampant use of mystery cult terminology employed by Paul (e.g. mysterion, meaning “mystery” or “secret,” and teleios, denoting “perfection” or “maturity,” all of which held the same religious connotation in the mysteries); the agricultural symbolism involving the death of the planted seed as invoked by the NT authors (1 Cor. 15:35-37; John 12:24, etc.); the likely influence of the Hellenistic mysteries upon Paul and other Hellenized Jews in the Diaspora, and the fact that Christianity ultimately arose from a heavily syncretistic milieu in which the mysteries had reached the height of their popularity. It is also worth noting that the parallel interaction between deity and devotee, i.e., dying and rising in mystical unison, has no basis whatsoever in Judaism, but was certainly prevalent in the mysteries, whence it must have been derived.

Thus, the fallacy here is all Nash’s. He has committed a strawman argument by misrepresenting why it is that critical scholars see a connection between Christianity and the mystery religions. It is most decidedly not because of mere, historical coexistence or superficial similarities.

(2) Many alleged similarities between Christianity and the mysteries are either greatly exaggerated or fabricated. Scholars often describe pagan rituals in language they borrow from Christianity. The careless use of language could lead one to speak of a “Last Supper” in Mithraism or a “baptism” in the cult of Isis. It is inexcusable nonsense to take the word “savior” with all of its New Testament connotations and apply it to Osiris or Attis as though they were savior-gods in any similar sense.

No, it is inexcusable nonsense to claim that Christianity has some kind of trademark on words and phrases that are just as apt for describing the mysteries as they are for describing Christianity. For example, Nash suggests the use of the word “resuscitation” for the mystery gods, though “resurrection” is far more appropriate, since the former implies restoration from unconsciousness, from the cessation of breathing, or from a mere “apparent” death, whereas ”resurrection” more aptly describes a restoration from a state of absolute death to life, which applies equally to Jesus, Osiris, Dionysus, et al. Nash is merely engaging in special pleading for exclusive ownership of his favored vocabulary, in a desperate attempt to distance Christianity as much as possible from legitimate and noteworthy similarities in the pagan cults.

Nash’s assertion that the word “savior” carries a misleading connotation in reference to the mystery gods is sheer nonsense. All of these figures were essentially saviors. Whether through Jesus Christ or the Egyptian Osiris, one was saved from the cessation of existence, from damnation, whether at the hands of Ammit or Eternal Hellfire, and given the gift of eternal life. In the Hellenistic mysteries, especially, one could attain rebirth already in this life, just as Christian baptism achieves for its initiates.

(3) The chronology is all wrong. Almost all of our sources of information about the pagan religions alleged to have influenced early Christianity are dated very late. We frequently find writers quoting from documents written 300 years later than Paul in efforts to produce ideas that allegedly influenced Paul. We must reject the assumption that just because a cult had a certain belief or practice in the third or fourth century after Christ, it therefore had the same belief or practice in the first century.

First, as Dr. Robert M. Price notes, “It is a fundamental methodological error to assume that a phenomenon must have arisen just shortly before its earliest attestation.”[ii] Besides, this is an egregious error on Nash’s part. We have a multitude of highly informative, pre-Christian and contemporary sources on the mysteries—from ancient pyramidal texts (circa 2600 BCE) to the testimony of such historic figures as Hesiod, Pindar, Sophocles, Herodotus, Plato, Livy, Diodorus Siculus, Julius Caesar, and Plutarch, all of which range from the 8th century BCE to the 1st century CE. Not to mention, ancient burial inscriptions, artifacts, and frescoes. Nash is either woefully ignorant of the facts or lying outright.

No doubt, we get a fuller picture of mystery cult practices in the 2nd-4th centuries CE, but this is to be expected. The mysteries, as their namesake implies, held secrecy in the highest regard; therefore, not until the spread of Christianity do we receive antagonistic commentary from early church fathers, providing the bulk of extant evidence. There would likely be a great deal more evidence had it not been for the destructive decrees against paganism by Emperor Theodosius in the 4th century CE.

Nevertheless, we can easily reconstruct the general practices and beliefs of the mystery religions from the collection of both pre- and post-Christian sources, which correspond with each other quite well—in particular, Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (2nd C. CE) and the sacred texts of ancient Egyptian pyramids and burial inscriptions, which indicate that the salvific components of the Hellenistic mysteries have their conceptual roots in the cult of Osiris, dating as far back as the 3rd millennium BCE. In both Apuleius’ account of the mysteries and the coffin texts of ancient Egypt, the mystes is identified with Osiris in death, resulting in new life—whether in this life or the next.[iii]

(4) Paul would never have consciously borrowed from the pagan religions. All of our information about him makes it highly unlikely that he was in any sense influenced by pagan sources. He placed great emphasis on his early training in a strict form of Judaism (Phil. 3:5). He warned the Colossians against the very sort of influence that advocates of Christian syncretism have attributed to him, namely, letting their minds be captured by alien speculations (Col. 2:8).

Quite to the contrary, all of our information concerning Paul makes it highly likely that he was influenced by pagan sources, particularly the mysteries. There is, according to Acts 9:11, his upbringing in Tarsus, an ancient city that rivaled both Athens and Alexandria in Hellenistic, intellectual culture during Paul’s day, not to mention a major cult site of the mystery god Attis, as revealed by archaeological finds from the 1st century BCE. There is, again, the rampant use of mystery cult terminology employed by Paul, as well as the invocation of agricultural symbolism, such as the death of the planted seed and its sprouting to new life. What’s more, Paul’s rhetoric and theology correspond precisely to that of the Hellenized Jew, Philo of Alexandria, who also spoke of a firstborn son of God, who was the very “image of God” and God’s “agent of creation” (Conf. 62-63, 146-47; cf. Ro. 8:29; 2 Cor. 4:4; 1 Cor. 8:6), able to “procure forgiveness of sins” (Mos. 2.134; cf. Ro. 3:23-24). These ideas represent a syncretism of Jewish and Middle Platonic religiosity, i.e., Hellenistic “paganism.”

Most importantly, there is the mystery religion soteriology revealed by such passages as Romans 6:3-5, Philippians 3:10-11, 1 Corinthians 15:20-22, etc. This is truly the most salient point, as it goes to show that Paul went well beyond the mere use of similar words and phrases to describe the Christian mystery; he incorporated the very mysticism—the underlying salvation scheme—of the Hellenistic mystery cults, whereby the newly initiated sacramentally shared in the death and resurrection of the god.

And there’s no use suggesting that Jews from the period would never have succumbed to Hellenistic paganism. 2nd Maccabees informs us that they were forced to engage in Dionysus worship, which may have had lasting consequences, as attested by Plutarch and Tacitus. It also laments “an extreme of Hellenization and increase in the adoption of foreign ways” (4:13). The Dead Sea Scrolls reveal the Jewish embrace of Hellenistic astrology, which comports with horoscopes found at Qumran.[iv] And Philo of Alexandria was pontificating on Hellenistic religious concepts like rebirth and immortality of the soul—in a disembodied state no less—during the first half of the first century (Cher. 113). Esoteric Jewish movements such as the Essenes and Therapeutae also embraced this Hellenized style of immortality (Cont. 68). While many zealous and conservative Jews resisted Hellenistic culture, others simply did not, as the evidence clearly shows.

(5) Early Christianity was an exclusivistic faith. As J. Machen explains, the mystery cults were nonexclusive. “A man could become initiated into the mysteries of Isis or Mithras without at all giving up his former beliefs; but if he were to be received into the Church, according to the preaching of Paul, he must forsake all other Saviors for the Lord Jesus Christ … Amid the prevailing syncretism of the Greco-Roman world, the religion of Paul, with the religion of Israel, stands absolutely alone.” This Christian exclusivism should be a starting point for all reflection about the possible relations between Christianity and its pagan competitors. Any hint of syncretism in the New Testament would have caused immediate controversy.

Indeed, Christian exclusivism is a starting point for such reflection, and possibly a damning concluding point, to boot. As Price explains in Deconstructing Jesus, “previous converts to the inclusivistic faiths of Mithras, Attis, Isis or Dionysus would have come pouring into the ‘open gates’ of Christianity, bringing all of their cherished beliefs with them,” and thus “we would be amazed not to find a free flow of older ‘pagan’ myths and rituals into Christianity.” Despite the exclusion of “other faiths as rivals and counterfeits of Christianity … the barn door was, as usual, shut after the horse had got out (or rather, in!).”[v] Nash has inadvertently engaged a premise that produces the exact opposite of its intended effect, arguing for a position that makes Christian syncretism with the pagan mysteries all the more viable.

(6) Unlike the mysteries, the religion of Paul was grounded on events that actually happened in history. The mysticism of the mystery cults was essentially nonhistorical. Their myths were dramas, or pictures, of what the initiate went through, not real historical events, as Paul regarded Christ’s death and resurrection to be. The Christian affirmation that the death and resurrection of Christ happened to a historical person at a particular time and place has absolutely no parallel in any pagan mystery religion … [This] makes absurd any attempt to derive this belief from the mythical, nonhistorical stories of the pagan cults.

To begin with, Nash is begging the question by presuming that Paul’s Christianity, the earliest form we know of, concerns recent events in mundane history. Paul gives no historical context whatsoever for Christ’s crucifixion, but places the blame on the archons and aions, the demonic rulers of this age (1 Cor. 2:8), much like the apocryphal Ascension of Isaiah, where Satan and his angels crucify him prior to his celestial resurrection (9.14). Whether Paul even considered Jesus to have been a recent, historical person is highly debatable. As mentioned above, Paul’s Christ Jesus appears to be an analogue to Philo’s firstborn son of God, a lofty, celestial deity of whom Paul knows only through scripture and revelation (1 Cor. 15:3-4; Gal. 1:11-12), not from any recent, historical source. Even where Paul declares that Jesus was “born of a woman” (Gal. 4:4) and descended from David (Ro. 1:3), he is relying on scriptural pesher, not historical data. And, though Galatians 1:19 mentions a James, “the brother of the Lord,” Paul is using an epithet that was bestowed upon all baptized Christians (1 Cor. 15:1; Phil. 1:14), not a description of an earthly sibling. There is simply nothing of biographical value in Paul’s letters—nothing evincing a recent, historical man, but, rather, a syncretistic confluence of dying and rising gods, Hellenistic heroes, Zoroastrian eschatology, and Greco-Judaic, philosophical prototypes.

But let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that Jesus was a historical person, put to death on the cross under Pontius Pilate as the later Gospels suggest. Even if that were the case, Nash is still foisting a completely dubious non-sequitur. The cognate myths of the mystery religions needn’t have been considered recent, historical events in order to inspire the salvific significance attached to the “historical death and resurrection” of Jesus. Rudolf Bultmann, Geza Vermes, S.G.F. Brandon, Samuel Sandmel, Hyam Maccoby, Richard Reitzenstein, and Marvin Meyer are among many scholars who have understood, perfectly well, that a historically crucified, messianic hopeful could have easily spawned an apocalyptic Jewish movement that, upon Hellenistic soil, absorbed popular mystery cult accoutrements. And besides, as Price explains, “all of these religions thought their saving events happened in some vague and special past. In Crete they presented the tomb of Zeus, killed by a boar yet resurrected.”

(7) Jesus died once and for all (Heb. 7:27; 9:25-28; 10:10-14). In contrast, the mystery gods were vegetation deities whose repeated deaths and resuscitations depict the annual cycle of nature.

A half-truth. Tammuz, Persephone, and Adonis were conceived as undergoing a cyclical journey from the underworld (death) to the land of the living, and so on and so forth. In contrast, the myths of Aleyan Baal, Ishtar, Osiris, Dionysus-Zagreus, and Attis featured a one-time death and resurrection motif, just as that of Christ. Their resurrections may have been celebrated annually, but in a manner no different than Easter is celebrated today. And, that their deaths and resurrections symbolized the annual cycle of nature is another half-truth. They were originally personifications of the death and rebirth of croplife; but, as time went on, they came to represent the hope and yearning of all individual devotees for an immortality like that achieved by their god.[vi]

(8) None of the so-called savior-gods died for someone else. Only Jesus died for sin. As Gunter Wagner observes, to none of the pagan gods “has the intention of helping men been attributed. The sort of death that they died is quite different (hunting accident, self-emasculation, etc.).”

This is not entirely accurate, as Plato informs us that “expiations and atonements for sin” were indeed a component of the mysteries (Rep. 2.7). Though, how widely this applied to the various mystery cults of the ancient world cannot be known, as there is scant evidence for it elsewhere. Regardless, Nash’s argument is irrelevant. Christianity is essentially a syncretism of Judaism and Hellenistic mystery religions, a Greco-Judaic hybrid. As such, we should expect to find Jewish elements, e.g., vicarious sacrifice and atonement for sin, that might be absent from the mysteries. Likewise, we should also expect to find mystery religion elements, e.g., sacramental participation in the death and resurrection of the god, and symbolic consumption of the deity’s flesh and blood, that are wholly absent from, and even anathema to, Judaism.

As to the specific circumstances of their deaths, that is equally irrelevant, as syncretism entails the appropriation of basic, or key, elements of a particular phenomenon, not the plagiarization of every last detail of a given narrative. And the key element here is what the deaths and resurrections of these gods ultimately achieved for their adherents, regardless of how they are said to have occurred, narratively.

(9) Which mystery gods actually experienced a resurrection from the dead? Certainly no early texts refer to any resurrection of Attis. Nor is the case for a resurrection of Osiris any stronger. One can speak of a “resurrection” in the stories of Osiris, Attis, and Adonis only in the most extended of senses. For example, after Isis gathered together the pieces of Osiris’s dismembered body, Osiris became “Lord of the Underworld.” This is a poor substitute for a resurrection like that of Jesus Christ.

It is true that, in the earliest myths of Attis, Cybele invokes Zeus to have Attis’ body merely preserved, never to rot or decay. But, at some point in the legacy of Attis’ myth, the mere preservation of his body morphed into a full-blown resurrection, leading to a “Passion Week” by the 1st century CE under the reign of Caesar Claudius.[vii] Author G.A. Wells discusses the evidence brought to bear by Maarten J. Vermaseren in his seminal work, Attis and Cybele: The Myth and the Cult:

Attis died emasculating himself under a tree; but ancient art includes ‘scenes of the emasculated Attis dancing,’ indicating his resurrection. The oldest evidence is a Hellenistic Greek vase depicting ‘the dancing Attis hilaris … from the 4th century BC.’ Vermaseren also instances two later statues from Ostia which point to the god’s periodic resurrection. One (from Roman Imperial times) shows ‘another young Attis standing ready to replace the dying one.’ The other statue (dedicated in the second century AD) depicts the ‘lying and triumphant Attis, his entire figure indicating the resurrection which is also shown by the decoration of various kinds of flowers and plants.’[viii]

As for Osiris, his destination in the Egyptian afterworld makes him no less resurrected than does Jesus’ destination in the Christian afterworld–Heaven. Both serve as the abode of the hereafter for those deemed worthy and righteous. Regarding the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, James P. Allen, Curator at the Department of Egyptian Art, explains:

The ancient Egyptians would not have recognized the title of this book. The texts translated here were given the collective name “Book of the Dead” in modern times because they are usually found in scrolls of papyrus or on other objects that were buried with the deceased in Egyptian tombs … The modern title “Book of the Dead” is misleading, because the texts are not about death but about life: specifically, eternal life which every Egyptian hoped to attain after death.[ix]

Granted Osiris becomes king of the afterworld rather than taking up an earthly sojourn, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs state that Osiris was initially raised on earth, after which he ascended upon a ladder to heaven.[x] In the earliest New Testament strata, the same was essentially believed of Jesus. Accordingly, “God exalted him to the highest place” following his death on the cross (Phil. 2:8-9). Ephesians makes the resurrection and ascension a synonymous event, declaring “the mighty strength [God] exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms” (1:19-20). If such a brief transition from earth to heaven qualifies as a resurrection for Christ, then it equally qualifies as a resurrection for Osiris.

The resurrection of Dionysus is clearly attested in pre-Christian sources. Philodemus records that, “after his dismemberment by the Titans, Rhea gathered together his limbs and he came to life again” (On Piety 44). Plutarch explicitly identifies Dionysus with Osiris, stating, “the tales regarding the Titans and the rites celebrated by night agree with the accounts of the dismemberment of Osiris and his revivification and regenesis” (Is. Os. 35.364). Given the similarities between their death and resurrection motifs, it appears obvious that Dionysus had been syncretized with Osiris by the 1st century BCE. And although our earliest source for the resurrection of Adonis stems from the 2nd century CE, his identification with the Babylonian Tammuz, who is said in very ancient texts to have risen from the dead, should be evidence enough that he was depicted as dying and rising well before the Common Era.[xi]

In all of this, Dr. Ronald Nash’s charged rhetoric and invective, accusing “liberal scholars” of absurdities and “inexcusable nonsense,” is both hypocritical and beneath contempt. What is truly absurd, amounting to inexcusable nonsense, is to suggest that Christianity somehow arose in an ideological or cultural vacuum, insulated from any outside influences. Every known human convention and institution, including the various faith traditions that permeate this world, is subject to external influences—the inevitable transmission and intermixing of thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. Why should Christianity be any different? Alas, it is a case of flagrant special pleading on the part of the apologist, making outrageous claims that simply distort facts and logic in order to defend the indefensible. A shameless shell game that flatly deserves to be exposed for what it is.

The next time an apologist, professional or otherwise, carts out Dr. Nash’s failed list of dismissals against the well-founded hypothesis of Christian and pagan syncretism, I would suggest taking apologist William Lane Craig’s advice on the topic, though turning it against him and his ilk:

When they say that Christian beliefs about Jesus are [not] derived from pagan mythology, I think you should laugh. Then look at them wide-eyed and with a big grin, and exclaim, “Do you really believe that?” Act as though you’ve just met a flat earther or Roswell conspirator. You could say something like, “Man, those old theories have [never been debunked in] over a hundred years! Where are you getting this stuff?” Tell them this is just [apologetic] junk, not serious scholarship. If they persist, then ask them to [consider] the actual passages narrating the [legitimate] parallel. They’re the ones who are swimming against the [facts], so make them work hard to save their religion. I think you’ll find that they’ve never even read the primary sources.[xii]

 

Notes:

[i] Ronald Nash, Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions, https://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/cri/cri-jrnl/web/crj0169a.html (1994).

[ii] Robert M. Price, Deconstructing Jesus, (New York: Prometheus Books, 2000), 91.

[iii] Gwyn Griffiths, The Isis Book, (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1997), 315, regarding Apuleius’ Metamorphoses: “In this cult the initiate can be identified with none other than Osiris, but here, after a ceremony which depicts the visit of the sun-god to the Osirian realm of the dead, the triumph over the dead is fittingly symbolized by an Osiris-figure with solar attributes. An identification with the god is therefore present.” Cf. S.G.F. Brandon and E.O. James, ed., “The Ritual Technique of Salvation in the ancient Near East,” The Saviour God: Comparative Studies in the Concept of Salvation, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1963), 26: “In the Coffin Texts, which document Egyptian mortuary faith and practice during the Middle Kingdom period (c. 2160-1575), the identification of the deceased with Osiris has become so complete that the earlier parallel formulae disappear and the deceased is directly addressed as Osiris in the various ritual situations involved. Thus the dead person is directly called upon, as Osiris, to resurrect himself: ‘Raise thyself to life, (for) thou diest not!’”

[iv] Matthias Albani, “Horoscopes,” Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Volume 1, ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman and James C. Vanderkam (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 370, regarding Horoscope 4Q186. See also Helen R. Jacobus, 4Q318: A Jewish Zodiac Calendar at Qumran? https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/api/datastream?publicationPid=uk-ac-man-scw:128116&datastreamId=FULL-TEXT.PDF (2010).

[v] Robert M. Price, Deconstructing Jesus, (New York: Prometheus Books, 2000), 92-3.

[vi] S.G.F. Brandon and E.O. James, ed., “The Ritual Technique of Salvation in the ancient Near East,” The Saviour God: Comparative Studies in the Concept of Salvation, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1963), 17-33. See also Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas: Volume 1, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978), 290-92; Sarah Iles Johnston and Fritz Graf, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets (New York: Routledge, 2007), 36–7; and Gary Forsythe, Time in Roman Religion: One Thousand Years of Religious History (New York: Routledge, 2012), 89: Ganymede’s apotheosis to heaven via the winged Attis indicates that the savior is bestowing upon Ganymede the salvation and immortality that he himself had achieved.

[vii] Gary Forsythe, Time in Roman Religion: One Thousand Years of Religious History (New York: Routledge, 2012), 89.

[viii] G.A. Wells, Did Jesus Exist? (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1992), 202.

[ix] James P. Allen, Introduction, and Raymond O. Faulkner, trans., Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, (New York: Barnes & Noble Publishing, 2005), 11.

[x] James P. Allen, trans., and Peter Der Manuelian, ed., The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005), 57. See also J. Gwyn Griffiths, The Origins of Osiris and His Cult, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1980), 1-2.

[xi] S. N. Kramer, Dumuzi’s Annual Resurrection: An Important Correction to ‘Inanna’s Descent,’ Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 183 (October 1966:31).

[xii] William Lane Craig, “Jesus and Pagan Mythology,” Reasonable Faith, https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/jesus-and-pagan-mythology/ (2009).

 

Is Alcoholics Anonymous a Religious Cult?

 

Language is powerful, and nothing better illustrates this than its use in religious cults. Religious cults employ loaded language and communicative concepts that are intended to manipulate their converts, a practice tantamount to brainwashing. This paper will explore one organization in particular, Alcoholics Anonymous. By examining the organizations’ literature and rhetoric, this paper will set out to demonstrate that Alcoholics Anonymous exhibits the language and communicative concepts of a religious cult.

Alcoholics Anonymous has its origins in the “zealous religious sect” known as the Oxford Group (Galanter 177). The founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson, was introduced to the group at the height of his despair. After many years of struggle with alcoholism, he finally achieved sobriety through his conversion to the group (Galanter 177). Greatly influenced by the practices of the Oxford Group, which “were characterized by open confessions and guidance from [fellow] members in the assembled group,” Wilson started Alcoholic Anonymous, establishing “a network of mutual aid” and “social support” bound together by “commitment to a common goal” (Galanter 177-78).

“From the start, AA displayed characteristics of a charismatic sect: strongly felt shared belief, intense cohesiveness, experiences of altered consciousness, and a potent influence on members’ behavior” (Galanter 178). “As in the Oxford Group, AA meetings exhibited from the outset ritualized open confessions of prior transgressions and the acceptance of a ‘Higher Power’ for guidance. Of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, ten are based on the creed of the Oxford Group” (Galanter 178). From the beginning, the organizations’ roots were deeply religious in nature.

In AA: Cult or Cure?, Charles Bufe lays out several key characteristics of religious cults. Number one is Religious Orientation. “Cults are usually centered around belief in a ‘Higher Power’; they often have elaborate religious rituals and emphasize prayer” (Bufe). This is overtly reflected in the Twelve Steps of AA, including Step Two: “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity”; Step Three: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God”; and Step Eleven: “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God … praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out” (Wilson 59). As Bufe notes:

AA literature is filled with references to “God” and a “Higher Power,” and the so-called Big Book’s chapter, “We Agnostics,” concludes with the words, “God restored us to our right minds … When we drew near to Him He disclosed Himself to us!” Further, the 12 steps, the core of AA’s program, are simply a codification of Oxford Group principles; and fully half of the steps mention “God,” “Him,” or a “Power greater than ourselves.”

Creating “a sense of powerlessness” is also a key characteristic of religious cults, intended to “undermine the person’s confidence in himself and his judgment” (Singer). Thus, “submission of the individual to the ‘Will of God’ is emphasized” (Bufe). This is explicit within Step Three: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God” (Wilson 59). As Bufe notes, “This means abandonment of individual decision making in favor of obeying the will of the abstraction as interpreted by the cult.” “Victims gradually lose their ability to make independent decisions and exercise informed consent” (Singer).

Number two on Bufe’s list is Irrationality. “Cults discourage skepticism and rational thought” (Bufe). As Bufe notes, “AA’s emphasis is primarily on emotional experience (‘spiritual awakening’) and ‘overcoming’ doubts en route to spiritual ‘knowledge.'” This is primarily achieved through “Group-Speak” and “Thought-Stopping Techniques” (Orange Papers).

Groups use what Lifton calls “the thought-terminating cliché.” Repetitive phrases, clichés, sayings, platitudes, and buzz words are regularly invoked to describe all situations, and prevent further analysis or discussion. Any disagreements are usually settled by referring to the sayings or writings of wise leaders (past or present), rather than by turning to independent analysis. Members are rewarded for their ability to regurgitate this “Group- speak” and for their willingness and talent for putting down dissenters with cult clichés … the effect of group-speak is critical for mind control, since language is so central to all human experience (Orange Papers).

Bufe examines some of the common expressions of AA that reflect this:

AA aphorisms are [quite] revealing. Two common ones are “Your best thinking got you here” and “Utilize, don’t analyze.” It would be hard to think of more virulently anti-intellectual epigrams … Another popular AA saying is “Fake it until you make it.” In other words, members should sit on their doubts and mouth accepted AA wisdom until they feel comfortable doing it. This sounds more like a recipe for brainwashing than a recipe for “spiritual awakening.”

Bufe explains, “The way that these ‘thought-terminating clichés’ operate is that the most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. Put more broadly, thought-stopping phrases include any use of language, especially repeated phrases, to ward off forbidden thoughts.” Furthermore, “the purpose of such slogans as ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid,’ ‘Utilize, don’t analyze,’ ‘Your best thinking got you here,’ and ‘Let go and let God,’ is to get AA members to stop thinking for themselves and, instead, to accept divine guidance (that is, guidance from AA)” (Bufe). As a result, converts “use AA catchwords and interpret many of their problems in terms of AA rhetoric” (Galanter 181).

Third on Bufe’s list is Exclusivity. In other words, religious cults present themselves as the only path to salvation (Bufe). As Jan Groenveld notes in Totalism in Today’s Cults, “Their ‘truth’ is the absolute truth. It is sacred — beyond questioning. There is a reverence demanded for the leadership. They have all the answers. Only to them is given the revelation of ‘truth.'” Bufe relates that, at “the vast majority of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, newcomers are routinely told that participation in AA and acceptance of the AA ‘program’ (basically the 12 steps) is the only way to overcome an alcohol problem.”

This mentality is reflected in the literature when Bill Wilson states, “If you are as seriously alcoholic as we were, we believe there is no middle-of-the-road solution” (25). At the beginning of Chapter 5 of Alcoholics Anonymous, Wilson explicitly relays a message which is read aloud during the commencement of every AA meeting: “Never have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program” (58). Elsewhere in the book, he relates how “one poor chap committed suicide in my home. He could not, or would not, see our way of life” (16). The message is clear: AA is the only way.

Closely related is number four on the list, Dogmatism. “Cults invariably have The Truth and are highly antagonistic to those who question it. The Truth is invariably revealed in a cult’s sacred texts or in the pronunciations of its leaders” (Bufe).

Everything is seen in terms of black and white, pure and the impure, good and evil. There are set answers for everything and no room for uncertainty, controversy, healthy debate or doubt. The member is given a complete solution. In return, members of the group are expected to be unquestioning in their commitment to the group’s identity, its ideas and leaders (Orange Papers).

Bufe summarizes just how well AA fits the bill when it comes to such Dogmatism:

They regard the 12 steps with the reverence that a fundamentalist has for the Ten Commandments, and they regard the “Big Book” [of Alcoholics Anonymous] as a fundamentalist would the Bible … At most meetings, even mild criticism of the steps or the “Big Book” will be met with sarcasm, anger, and put-downs. For AA true believers, the steps and the “Big Book” are received wisdom (which, indeed, Bill Wilson believed them to be); and they are to be blindly followed, not questioned.

At number five on the list is the concept of Separatism. Bufe notes that “Cult members almost always view themselves as outsiders, as different from the rest of society … and it’s common for cult members to believe that only they and their fellow cult members can understand each other—’outsiders’ certainly can’t.” This is especially achieved through “the use of specialized terms; almost all cults develop a jargon peculiar to themselves” (Bufe). Groenveld explains, “This effectively isolates members from the outside world. The only people who understand you are other members. Other members can tell if you are really one of them by how you talk.”

Once again, Bufe examines how well AA reflects this particular cult mentality:

The one area in which AA members definitely show signs of separatism is in their use of jargon. AA terms often take on meanings different from their standard English meanings—for instance, “sobriety,” rather than merely meaning “unintoxicated,” means a special state of Grace gained by working the Steps and maintaining absolute abstinence. It is characterized by feelings of Serenity and Gratitude. It is a state of living according to God’s will, not one’s own. It is sanity.

Sixth is Manipulation through Guilt. “Many cults expertly manipulate their members through arousal of guilt feelings” (Bufe). Groenveld explains that this process “manipulates a person’s range of feelings. Guilt and fear are used to keep control. Cult members cannot see the control by guilt, and like other abuse victims are conditioned to blame themselves when things are wrong, even grateful when a leader points out their transgressions.”

Groenveld elaborates, “By conducting an all-out war on impurity, the ideological totalists create a narrow world of guilt and shame. This is perpetuated by an ethos of continuous reform … Since each man’s impurities are deemed sinful and potentially harmful to himself and to others, he is, so to speak, expected to expect punishment.” Bufe discusses this tactic as it is conducted in AA:

Guilt is inherent in AA dogma. It’s enshrined in the 12 steps with their references to “our wrongs,” “our shortcomings,” “defects of character” and [the instruction to take] a “moral inventory” … the AA “program” fosters guilt in abundance … AA-induced (or reinforced) guilt makes members feel sinful and fearful, and thus tends to tie them to AA, because temporary relief from their unpleasant feelings is available at meetings.

Closely related is number seven on the list, The Cult of Confession:

Group meetings often include confessional sessions where members admit to past or present sins against the norms of the group — doing bad deeds, thinking bad thoughts, etc., and in return, they receive both admonition, warnings and praise for their confessions. To help cultivate emotional control public exhibitions of emotional highs and lows are often encouraged and applauded as a form of ritual self-flagellation (Orange Papers).

“More than this, the sharing of confession enthusiasms can create an orgiastic sense of ‘oneness,’ of the most intense intimacy with fellow confessors and of the dissolution of self into the great flow of the Movement” (Bufe). “Thus confession serves the purpose of fostering identification as a member of the cult rather than as an individual human being. It also serves the purpose of alleviating guilt, thus making the confessor dependent on the cult for that alleviation” (Bufe).

This characteristic is embodied in Step 5: “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs” (Wilson 59). As relayed earlier by Galanter, AA meetings involve “ritualized open confessions of prior transgressions” and are replete with “the litany of sin and redemption” (178-79). Converts are instructed to obtain a seasoned mentor, or “sponsor,” with whom they engage in “daily confessional communications” (Galanter 180).

Eighth on Bufe’s list is Mind Control Techniques, primarily Intimidation. “For example, it may be suggested or implied that failure to adopt the approved attitude, belief or consequent behavior will lead to severe punishment or dire consequences such as physical or mental illness, the reappearance of a prior physical illness, drug dependence, economic collapse, social failure, divorce, disintegration, failure to find a mate, etc.” (Singer). “Not choosing the group’s Way will usually lead to humiliation, damnation or death” (Orange Papers).

Bufe notes that, “At newcomers’ meetings, AA members almost invariably repeat the lies that alcoholism is a progressive, fatal disease, that alcohol abusers have no control after they take the first drink, and that AA is the only alternative to jails, institutions, or death.” In the literature, Bill Wilson ominously declares, “Unless each AA member follows to the best of his ability our suggested Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs his own death warrant. His drunkenness and dissolution are not penalties inflicted by people in authority; they result from his personal disobedience to spiritual principles” (174). Elsewhere, he states that, if the alcoholic failed to “perfect and enlarge his spiritual life, he would surely drink again, and if he drank, he would surely die” (15). The message is abundantly clear: Do or die. Assimilate, or else.

While it is not explicitly included in Bufe’s list, another important aspect of cult manipulation is the use of Extravagant Promises, though this is very much akin to the Millenarian/Utopian outlook of most religious cults. Common expressions from AA include “Beyond your wildest dreams,” “Spiritual Awakening,” and “Don’t quit before the miracle happens” (Orange Papers). In the literature, Wilson relays the following promises, which are also recited at the outset of every meeting:

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self- seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves (83-84).

Elsewhere in the literature, Wilson states, “Most of us feel we need look no further for Utopia” (16). “We have found much of heaven,” he claims, “and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not dreamed” (25). Other statements include, “This Power has in each case accomplished the miraculous,” and “We feel we are on the Broad Highway, walking hand in hand with the Spirit of the Universe” (50, 75). “As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became conscious of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow or the hereafter. We were reborn” (63). This is what Wilson promises—nothing short of spiritual rebirth, of heaven and Utopia.

In conclusion, it can be stated beyond a shadow of a doubt that Alcoholics Anonymous employs the language and communicative concepts of a religious cult. This is overtly reflected in such concepts and practices as Religious Orientation, Powerlessness of the Individual, Submission to the Will of God, Thought-Stopping Clichés, In-Group Jargon, Manipulation through Guilt, Confession, Intimidation, and Extravagant Promises. The aim of such devices is to achieve coercive mind control, manipulating the convert into believing that AA is the only path to salvation, that they are powerless without its aid, and that, if they don’t conform absolutely to its standards, they are doomed. Given the pervasiveness of AA throughout the world, as well as its continued growth, these tactics seem to work very much in its favor, demonstrating the power inherent in its use of cult language and communications.

 

Works Cited:

Galanter, Marc. Cults: Faith, Healing, and Coercion. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Print.
Wilson, Bill. Alcoholics Anonymous. Fourth Edition. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 2001. Print.
Bufe, Charles. AA: Cult or Cure? More Revealed. Ken Ragge, n.d. Web. 20 November 2011.
Groenveld, Jan. Totalism in Today’s Cults. The Orange Papers. A. Orange, n.d. Web. 20 November 2011.
Singer, Margaret. Coercive Mind Control Tactics. Fact.net. Fight Against Coercive Tactics Network, 1993. Web. 20 November 2011.
Orange Papers. Key Cult Features. A. Orange, n.d. Web. 20 November 2011.

Jesus: Man or Myth?

For many years, I held the default position that Jesus of Nazareth was a historical person, whose story was simply embellished along the lines of popular religious archetypes from the time. However, as my studies have ensued over the years, I’ve come, quite surprisingly, to relinquish this view, embracing instead the mythicist position–that Jesus Christ is a mythological figure, from top to bottom. There is a great deal of scholarship and material that one must digest before fully understanding this position, much of it highly complicated and intertwined in ways that are no less complex. For my part, I thought it best to simplify any such explications for the lay reader by use of a historical timeline–one that will hopefully elucidate the process by which Jesus Christ materialized over several millennia.

Tammuz, Ishtar, and Baal (3rd ML. BCE to 6th C. BCE)

The Babylonians worshipped Tammuz and Ishtar (Dumuzi and Inanna in Sumerian), both of whom were raised from the dead. Tammuz underwent a cyclical, or annual, return from the underworld. Ishtar, on the other hand, was killed while attempting to rescue Tammuz from the underworld. She was stripped of all her clothing beforehand and hung on a nail (crucified), after which she rose from the dead three days later. [1]

Baal was the Canaanite counterpart of the Babylonian Tammuz. He was one among the many sons of El (“God” in Hebrew). Ancient texts from Ras Shamra depict the resurrection of the slain Baal Aleyan, as conveyed through a vision of his father El. [2] Thereafter, he is enthroned as the king of gods and men, reigning over a new and peaceful era.

The Canaanite god, Baal

 

Isis and Osiris (3rd ML. BCE to 4th C. CE)

As recorded in the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt, Osiris suffered a violent death at the hands of his brother Set. Isis pieced his dismembered body back together and raised him from the dead, after which he ascended upon a ladder to heaven. [3] [4] In the death and resurrection of Osiris, the ancient Egyptians saw the promise of their own victory over death, believing that they could be mystically united with Osiris upon death and raised, as he was, to eternal life. [5] Osiris himself reigned henceforth in the Egyptian afterworld, as ruler and judge of the dead. His worship persisted for several millennia, spreading into the Greco-Roman world until it was forcibly suppressed by the Church in the 4th century CE.

The Resurrection of Osiris

 

Dionysus and Attis (2nd ML. BCE to 4th C. CE)

Among the Greeks, particularly a sect known as the Orphics, Dionysus Zagreus was torn apart and consumed by the evil Titans (Giants), after which he was reborn, or resurrected, based on various myths involving the efforts of either Zeus, Rhea, or Demeter (On Piety 44; Libr. Hist. 3.62.6). According to both Philodemus and Diodorus Siculus, Dionysus was reassembled in the same fashion as Osiris, indicating religious syncretism with, or influence by, the Osirian cult. The same sort of salvation scheme, by which the devotee shares in the fate of the risen god, appears to have been at play. Gold leaves found in graves from the 4th century BCE state, “Now you have died and now you have come into being, O thrice happy one, on this same day. Tell Persephone that [Dionysus] himself released you.” [6]

Originally a god of Phrygia (modern-day Turkey), Attis died emasculating himself under a tree after he’d been driven mad by his consort. Cybele invoked Zeus to have his body preserved, never to rot or decay. At some point in the legacy of Attis’ myth, the mere preservation of his body morphed into a full-blown resurrection, leading to a “Passion Week” by the 1st century CE under the reign of Caesar Claudius. [7] [8] The resurrection of Attis appears to have had the same salvific benefits for members of his cult as did the risings of both Osiris and Dionysus. [9]

The Risen Attis

 

Asclepius, Heracles, and Romulus (6th C. BCE to 5th C. CE)

The Greek physician Asclepius healed the lame, the blind, and the paralytic, and raised the dead (First Apology 22:6). Zeus struck Asclepius down for bringing forth too many resurrectees, but later raised him from the dead to become an immortal god (Autol. 1.13; Dial. Mort. 13.1).

Heracles (variously known as Hercules) suffered and died upon a funerary pyre, after which he was bodily raised to heaven, leaving not a trace of his mortal remains behind (Bibl. Hist. 4.38.5). In the 1st century play Hercules Oetaeus, Hercules appears to his weeping mother Alcmene following his death and resurrection. He tells her to refrain from mourning, that he has been “granted [his] place in heaven” among the gods (1940-43; cf. John 20:11-15).

Romulus, first king of Rome, was begotten by the god Ares and a Vestal Virgin, Rhea Silvia. According to Livy and Plutarch, the body of Romulus went missing, amid rumors that the Senate had conspired against him, though it was declared that he had risen to heaven to become the god Quirinus. Afterwards, he appeared before Proculus to deliver a Great Commission: “Go, and declare to the Romans the will of heaven that my Rome shall be the capital of the world” (Livy, Hist. 1.16.2-8; cf. Mt. 28:16-20).

Romulus, Legendary Founder of Rome

 

The Jewish Messiah and Persian Saoshyant (6th C. BCE)

Following the destruction of the Davidic monarchy and the exile of the Jews by their Babylonian conquerors, there arose a hope for the restoration of Jewish independence and sovereignty under a new king from David’s line (Isaiah 10:33-12:6; Micah 5:2-4; Zechariah 9:9-10; Ezekiel 34:22-24, 37:24). Though there are verses that would seem to suggest that this king, or messiah, would be a supernatural being, e.g., the titles of divinity bestowed upon him in Isaiah 9:6-7, these are better understood as hyperbolic and ceremonial expressions of royalty, to be taken no more literally than when 1 Kings 1:31 declares, “May my lord King David live forever!”

Christians would later interpret such passages literally, as well as misapply those like Isaiah 53, which, in its original context, has nothing whatsoever to do with the messiah, but expresses the hardship of the quintessential Israelite captive to Babylon, as well as his eventual vindication at the hands of Persian intercessors. Even within Rabbinical Judaism, some Jews would come to view the 53rd chapter of Isaiah as a prophecy of the atoning sacrifice of the Messiah, extending the notion of sacrificial atonement for sin from mere animals to actual men, as had been done in the case of Eleazar (4 Macc. 6:29-30), though this idea does not persist in modern Judaism.

Interestingly enough, however, many Jews would come to embrace the religious ideas of their Persian liberators, e.g., the coming of a virgin-born savior, Saoshyant, who would inaugurate a Final Judgment and resurrection of the dead (Yašt 19.11, 13.129). These were fundamental elements of Persian Zoroastrianism, which entered the biblical stream in the 6th century BCE works of Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah, and their later redactors. Jews who embraced such views were called “Pharisees” (from Farsi/Parsee), denoting “Persians.” This is precisely why the Pharisees upheld belief in the resurrection of the dead, while the Sadducees did not.

Faravahar, symbol of Zoroastrianism

 

Philo’s Firstborn Son of God (20’s CE)

A contemporary of the apostle Paul, Philo of Alexandria was a Jewish philosopher who merged Greek and Jewish ideas to form his own Greco-Judaic synthesis. Philo’s ideas were born out of the Hellenistic climate of his day and age, when Jews, Greeks, Romans, etc. were exposed to one another as never before, largely due to the conquests of Alexander the Great. In his works, Philo spoke of a celestial being, or Jewish archangel, whom he referred to as the “firstborn son of God,” the very “image of God,” and God’s “agent of creation” (Conf. 62-63, 146-47). He describes him as a “being most perfect in all virtue,” who was able to “procure forgiveness of sins” (Mos. 2.134). However, Philo never made mention of any historical personage in nearby Palestine who supposedly embodied these ideas. They were, for him, merely a philosophical and religious abstraction, i.e., “not a man, but a divine word” (Fug. 108).

Philo of Alexandria

 

Paul’s Christ Jesus (50’s CE)

Of the thirteen epistles attributed to Paul, only seven of them are authentically written by him. [10] Those are 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. And they represent the earliest known form of Christianity, written decades before the Gospels and Acts. In these authentic letters of Paul, Christ is preeminently a dying and rising savior god like that of Osiris, Dionysus, and Attis. Christ’s resurrection from the dead is extended to his devotees (1 Corinthians 15:20-22). The rite of baptism mystically unites the believer with the death and resurrection of Christ, so that they too can live eternally (Romans 6:3-5). Following his resurrection, he is exalted to the heavenly spheres (Philippians 2:8-9), like Romulus and Heracles. His death is an atoning sacrifice (Romans 4:25), in line with the sacrificial cult of the Old Testament and the vicarious suffering of Eleazar, etc. Like the Zoroastrian Saoshyant, he will inaugurate the resurrection of the dead (1 Corinthians 15:23). And, in lockstep with Philo, Christ is the firstborn Son of God (Romans 8:29), the celestial image of God (2 Corinthians 4:4), and God’s agent of creation (1 Corinthians 8:6), able to procure forgiveness of sins (Romans 3:23-24).

Paul’s Christ Jesus is nothing more than an amalgamation of religious ideas that permeated the ancient Mediterranean world. There is no mundane reference to any historical person, whatsoever. No biographical details like that found in the later Gospels. Paul never mentions Mary or Joseph, a ministry or miracles, a trial by Pontius Pilate, the slaughter of the innocents by King Herod, any association with John the Baptist, etc. In fact, Paul gives no historical context for Christ’s crucifixion, but places the blame on the archons and aions, the demonic rulers of this age (1 Corinthians 2:8), much like the apocryphal Ascension of Isaiah, where Satan and his angels crucify him prior to his celestial resurrection (9.14). Paul’s self-proclaimed knowledge of Christ comes primarily from scripture and revelation (1 Corinthians 15:3-4; Galatians 1:11-12), not from any recent, historical source. Even where Paul states that he was “born of a woman” (Galatians 4:4) and descended from David (Romans 1:3), he is relying on scriptural pesher, not historical data. And, while Galatians 1:19 mentions a James, “the brother of the Lord,” Paul is using an epithet that was bestowed upon all baptized Christians (1 Corinthians 15:1; Philippians 1:14), not a description of an earthly sibling.

All told, there is nothing of biographical value in Paul’s letters. Nothing evincing a recent, historical man, but, rather, a syncretistic confluence of dying and rising gods, Hellenistic heroes, Zoroastrian eschatology, and Greco-Judaic, philosophical prototypes. Our earliest Christian testimony suggests that Jesus Christ was a figure born out of ancient myth.

Jesus the Christ

 

Notes:
[1] Diane Wolkstein & Samuel Noah Kramer, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer (Harper Perennial, 1983), 64.
[2] George Al Barton, Archaeology and the Bible (American Sunday School Union, 1946), 535-539.
[3] Samuel A. B. Mercer, The Pyramid Texts. “Resurrection, Transfiguration, and Life of the King in Heaven, Utterance 676.” Internet Sacred Text Archive. http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/pyt/pyt56.htm (2010).
[4] James P. Allen, trans., and Peter Der Manuelian, ed., The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005), 57. See also J. Gwyn Griffiths, The Origins of Osiris and His Cult, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1980), 1-2.
[5] S.G.F. Brandon and E.O. James, ed., “The Ritual Technique of Salvation in the ancient Near East.” The Saviour God: Comparative Studies in the Concept of Salvation (Manchester University Press, 1963), 17-33.
[6] Sarah Iles Johnston and Fritz Graf, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets (New York: Routledge, 2007), 36–37.
[7] G.A. Wells, Did Jesus Exist? (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1992), 202.
[8] Gary Forsythe, Time in Roman Religion: One Thousand Years of Religious History (New York: Routledge, 2012), 89.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Bart Ehrman, Forged (New York: HarperOne, 2011).

 

 

 

 

Ehrman Errs: Yes, Bart, There Were Dying & Rising Gods

 

The Pursuit of Truth

On October 21st in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, leading New Testament scholar, Bart Ehrman, will be debating Robert M. Price on the historicity of Jesus. Ehrman made quite a splash back in 2012 when he published Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, in which he decried, and arguably slandered, those who doubt the historical existence of Jesus, aka ‘mythicists.’ According to Ehrman, mythicists are simply anti-religious zealots, whose agenda to remove Jesus from history is driven by the desire to destroy religion. He chalks up the vast majority of those in the mythicist camp as mere Internet junkies, sensationalists, and hacks, who have no familiarity with either historical method or the ancient sources. Well, none of this is true of Bob Price, who remains friendly with evangelicals, and whose knowledge of biblical history is second to none. It isn’t true of the majority of mythicists whose work I’ve read, and it certainly isn’t true of me.

When it comes to the motivation behind those in the atheist movement at large, I think Dan Barker said it best:

What unites [many nonbelievers] is not revenge for having been victimized by the deceptions of religion, but a burning desire for actual facts. If we doubters do have a psychological motivation, perhaps it is the mental hunger, the intense craving to truly fill in the blanks of knowledge. [1]

That is what drives me, and the same motivation is at work when assessing the historicity of Jesus. To begin with, removing Jesus from the face of history is hardly necessary in order to refute Christianity. It’s enough to demonstrate the myriad, scriptural contradictions and absurdities, lack of evidence for various historical claims, etc. One can simply assume that there was a historical Jesus, and make the case that the miraculous feats attributed to him are unsubstantiated by the historical record, that his story was embellished like so many other ancient figures–Caesar Augustus, Alexander the Great, Apollonius of Tyana, etc. There simply is no need to make Jesus vanish from history in order to vindicate atheism. But that, for me, isn’t the end goal, anyway. The end goal for me, and for many nonbelievers, is the pursuit of truth. More and more, I find myself in agreement with the mythicists. Not because I want to eradicate religion, but because I think they’re right.

Ehrman, Interrupted: The Risen Osiris

One of the key points in this debate is whether Jesus was modeled after a dying and rising god archetype. This is the contention of most mythicists, including Dr. Price, and it is the point that I wish to address here. Such an archetype, in and of itself, does not preclude the historical existence of Jesus. It’s possible that Jesus did exist, and that he was simply deified in accordance with this mythic template. Mythicism, naturally, entails many more factors for consideration, but this is one of the most important. According to Bart Ehrman, however, mythicists are fooling themselves on this point. The following video features Ehrman’s “rebuttal” of Dr. Price, et al., on the matter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQj0I_tDmng

I will now tackle each of Ehrman’s points, one by one. His arguments are, to use his own words, “problematic up and down the line.” Beginning with the preeminent dying and rising god of ancient Egypt, Osiris:

All you have to do is read the ancient sources on Osiris. The most famous one is Plutarch, who has a very lengthy essay on Isis and Osiris … It’s true that Osiris gets killed. What is not true is that he gets raised from the dead. He doesn’t get raised from the dead! When Jesus gets raised from the dead, his body comes back to life and he comes out of the tomb and he ascends to heaven. Osiris stayed dead. His body was entombed, and there were various places, according to Plutarch, where different people, different locales, argued that his body was entombed, and they built shrines to this dead body. The body stayed dead. Now Osiris himself, his soul, lived on in the underworld. He became the king of the underworld. But his body did not come back to life. So he wasn’t resurrected from the dead. His body stayed dead. That’s very different from the Christian doctrine of the resurrection, which is that Jesus’ body came back from the dead.

I have read the ancient sources on Osiris. While the 2nd century historian, Plutarch, may be our principal source on the story, he is far from being our only source. Consider the following texts:

Osiris! look! Osiris! listen! Arise! Live again! (Pyr. 258 ff.)

Osiris! thou wert gone, but thou hast returned; thou didst sleep, but thou hast been awakened; thou didst die, but thou livest again! (Pyr. 1004 ff.)

The ancient Egyptian sources are quite clear: Osiris died, but he has risen, and he lives again. Plutarch, equally, speaks of Osiris’ “revivification and regenesis,” though it is possible that, as a Middle Platonist, Plutarch regarded this as a spiritual resurrection, only. Among the philosophers and the elite in the Greco-Roman world, a disembodied soul was the preferred state of immortality. But this was not the common view in antiquity, much less of the ancient Egyptians. As comparative religion scholar S.G.F. Brandon relates, Osiris’ resurrection was “conceived of in completely materialistic terms, involving the use of a reconstituted physical body.” [2] The pyramidal texts reveal an emphasis on the corporeal reconstitution of the god, confirming Brandon’s claim:

“I have come to thee…that I may revivify thee, that I may assemble for thee thy bones, that I may collect for thee thy flesh, that I may assemble for thee thy dismembered limbs, for I am as Horus his avenger, I have smitten for thee him who smote thee…raise thyself up, king, Osiris; thou livest!” (1684a-1685a and 1700 = Utterance 606; cf. also 670)

“Osiris, collect thy bones; arrange thy limbs; shake off thy dust; untie thy bandages; the tomb is open for thee; the double doors of the coffin are undone for thee; the double doors of heaven are open for thee…thy soul is in thy body…raise thyself up!” (207b-209a and 2010b-2011a = Utterance 676)

Granted Osiris becomes king of the afterworld rather than taking up an earthly sojourn, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs state that Osiris was initially raised on earth, after which he ascended upon a ladder to heaven. [3] As we shall see, the same was originally believed of Jesus.

The Resurrection of Osiris (Philae, 2nd-3rd C. BCE)

It is true that Plutarch mentions tombs of Osiris, and we find the existence of such tombs in ancient Egypt, as well. What this demonstrates is a diversity of ideas within ancient religious and philosophical traditions. For some, Osiris’s body remained entombed, though it would still be subject to reanimation, as was the case for all ancient Egyptians. [4] For others, as the sources above illustrate, he rose from the dead and bodily ascended to heaven. Such diversity was prominent also in early Christianity, as Bart Ehrman can certainly attest. Docetist Christians, for example, never conceived of a dying and rising Christ; he could not be put to death in the flesh, as he was a spiritual, not a physical, entity. Christianity had no uniformity until Catholic orthodoxy prevailed in the 4th century, stomping out and labeling all other views as “heresy.” Such diversity of ideas can still be gleaned, however, within the canon of the New Testament (just pit Paul against Matthew on whether the Mosaic Law still applies, etc.), and persists, even to this day, in the multitude of Christian denominations throughout the world.

Now, let’s circle back to something that Ehrman said earlier in the podcast:

I would like Bob to give a single reference from any Jew living anywhere within 200 years of Jesus who mentions the Osiris myth.

Ehrman wishes to establish that Jews from around the era would have had no familiarity with Osiris, much less dying and rising gods. But that is incredibly unlikely. Osiris had long been known in Palestine. Archaeological excavations reveal his presence there, and even scripture alludes to knowledge of him, e.g., the resurrection imagery of bones rejoining in Ezekiel 37, Psalm 78’s narrative parallels with an early Hymn to Osiris, etc. [5] [6] No surprise there, given that Egypt ruled Canaan from as far back as 3,000 BCE.

Early Christianity’s major centers of growth and development were in places like Alexandria and Antioch, home to Hellenized, Greek-speaking Jews who would’ve been all too familiar with Greco-Roman and Egyptian myths. Many of them may have embraced such myths, as 2 Maccabees informs us of “an extreme of Hellenization and increase in the adoption of foreign ways” (4:13). Ehrman is essentially foisting an argument from ignorance. We don’t need explicit mention of Osiris by any Jew from the period in order to be reasonably certain that his myth was known to them.

Egyptian Funerary Stelae from Palestine (Osiris at bottom)

Bart Ehrman’s attempt to minimize the relevance of the Osiris myth seems especially dubious in the face of what I consider to be the most salient point on the matter: Soteriology. What is eerily similar between Osiris and Christ is what their resurrections achieve for their devotees. In both cases, the resurrection of the godman is the conduit through which mortal men can conquer death and live eternally. [7] As Christ was raised, so too are Christians. As Osiris was raised, so too are his followers. By ritual identification with the risen god, one can be spiritually renewed, walking in newness of life (Met. 11.21-23; cf. Ro. 6:3-5). Both Jesus and Osiris ascend to heaven, where they take up their throne as Ruler and Judge. Both offer their body and blood in the sacrament of bread and wine. [8] [9] The similarities, in terms of theological function, are so staggering, they can only be the product of cultural diffusion and religious syncretism.

Jesus & Osiris Enthroned

Ehrman continues by adamantly denying any “common motif in pagan religions of a god who dies and gets raised from the dead.”

We don’t have evidence that pagans believed in a dying and rising god at all … with respect to the pagan myths, there simply is no plausible parallel to the idea of a divine being who dies and is raised bodily, physically, from the dead. You just don’t have any instances of dying and rising gods. This idea of a dying and rising god started being made popular … in the early 20th century … More recent scholarship over the last twenty years has shown that in fact that’s bogus, that in fact there are not instances of this. And if you actually press a mythicist to give you an example, they give you examples like Bob Price just gave of Osiris, which is definitely not a case of somebody being raised from the dead.

Osiris we’ve just covered, and the ancient sources most certainly convey a bodily resurrection from the dead, with salvific significance like that of Christ’s, to boot. Before we launch into a survey of other notable dying and rising gods, let’s look first at the earliest depiction of Jesus’ resurrection in the New Testament. In Iesus Deus: The Early Christian Depiction of Jesus as a Mediterranean God, M. David Litwa explains:

…in early Christian texts we read that after Jesus’ death, God “highy exalted” him (Phil. 2:8-9), and seated him “in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:20) at the “right hand of God” (1 Pet. 3:21-22). In his monograph on Jesus’ ascent, A.W. Zwiep comments that “the general conviction in the earliest Christian preaching” is that “as of the day of his resurrection Jesus was in heaven, seated at the right hand of God.” This is assumed, notably, in Luke 23:43, where Jesus says to the thief: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Indeed, says Zwiep, resurrection and exaltation were regarded as two sides of the same coin; resurrection meant “resurrection to heaven.” [10]

The earliest New Testament texts make Jesus’ resurrection and ascension a synonymous event. Christian apologists attempt to counter this by appealing to the list of appearances in 1 Cor. 15:3-8, though critical scholars have shown that the appearances most likely represent visionary experiences of the heavenly Christ, like that of Paul’s, not an earthly sojourn. [11] There doesn’t appear to be any tradition of Jesus walking the earth after his resurrection until decades later, beginning with the Gospel of Mark. Prior to that, however, Jesus was raised to heaven, and “appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection” (Ro. 1:4). As Paul has it, Jesus achieved divine status upon his resurrection/ascension–what scholars refer to as an apotheosis (to become a god). According to ancient sources, the same was believed of several other, notable figures. If the earliest depiction of Christ’s bodily exaltation to heaven qualifies as a resurrection, then so do theirs.

Asclepius, Heracles, and Romulus

The Greek physician Asclepius healed the lame, the blind, and the paralytic, and raised the dead (First Apology, 22:6). Zeus struck Asclepius down for bringing forth too many resurrectees, but later raised him from the dead to become an immortal god (Autol. 1.13; Dial. Mort. 13.1).

The second-century Christian apologist Theophilus of Antioch affirms that Asclepius “was raised” [using the same Greek word as that used] for the resurrection of Jesus in Matt. 16:21; Mark 14:28; Luke 24:6 [etc.] … Out of mercy, says Lucian, Zeus raised Asclepius not just to a normal human life, but made him participate in immortality … Justin Martyr apparently understands Asclepius’ resurrection to involve a simultaneous ascent to heaven… [12]

The Rod of Asclepius is, to this day, a universal symbol of medicine and healthcare.

 

Heracles (variously known as Hercules) suffered and died upon a funerary pyre, after which he was bodily raised to heaven, leaving not a trace of his mortal remains behind. In the 1st century play Hercules Oetaeus, Hercules appears to his weeping mother Alcmene following his death and apotheosis. He tells her to refrain from mourning, that he has been “granted [his] place in heaven” among the gods (1940-43; cf. John 20:11-15).

A series of Attic and Apulian vases appearing from about 420 BCE show Heracles being bodily carried away to Olympus from his pyre … That Heracles was actually bodily removed from his pyre is also suggested by Diodorus of Sicily, who has Heracles’ companions search for the bones of the hero after his cremation–to no avail (Bibl. Hist. 4.38.5). Heracles’ body is gone, because it has ascended to the divine realm, leaving no remainder (cf. Jesus’ empty tomb). [13]

The Ascension of Heracles

 

After Romulus, first king of Rome, was raised from the dead to become the god Quirinus, he appeared before Proculus to deliver a great commission: “Go, and declare to the Romans the will of heaven that my Rome shall be the capital of the world” (Livy, Hist. 1.16.2-8; cf. Mt. 28:16-20).

Romulus departed from this mortal life and was transformed into an immortal, transcendent being. His metamorphosis was simultaneously an ascent to heaven … Ancient authors agree … that Romulus’ body did disappear. The mortal remains, for those who believed in his ascent, were taken up and transformed for celestial life. On this point, Tertullian explicitly compares Romulus and Jesus: both were “encompassed with a cloud and taken up to heaven” (Apol. 21.23; cf. Acts 1:9-11). For Tertullian’s comparison to work, Romulus must have been taken up bodily, like Jesus. [14]

Romulus, Legendary Founder of Rome

 

 The Mystery Religions: Dionysus, Attis, and Adonis

The mystery cults were originally agricultural faiths whose dying and rising gods symbolized the death and rebirth of croplife–thus the spring celebrations of popular gods like Attis. Over time, man came to believe that performing certain rituals of initiation could mystically unite him with the fate of the risen god, effecting for him a spiritual rebirth in this life, and, ultimately, a blessed existence in the next. This mystical concept is featured in such passages as Rom. 6:3-5 and Col. 2:12, in which baptismal initiation of the Christian neophyte brings about his metaphorical death and resurrection to new life in Christ, with the implication that he will share literally in the gift of eternal life to come. The roots of this salvation scheme may lie in the ancient Egyptian cult of Osiris. As esoteric studies expert Arthur Versluis notes, Greeks and Romans regarded ancient Egypt as a land of great power and mystique, and scholars “have shown conclusively the links between Egyptian traditions and the Greco-Roman Mystery and magical traditions.” [15]

Dionysus was the central figure of both the Dionysian and Orhic mysteries. He was the Greek god of theater, fertility, and wine, and was believed to be the son of Zeus and a mortal woman, Semele. The Epicurean, Philodemus, records that “after his dismemberment by the Titans, Rhea gathered together his limbs and he came to life again” (On Piety 44). Similarly, Diodorus of Sicily relates, “his members were brought together again by Demeter and he experienced a new birth as if for the first time” (Libr. Hist. 3.62.6). Plutarch explicitly identifies Dionysus with Osiris, stating, “the tales regarding the Titans and the rites celebrated by night agree with the accounts of the dismemberment of Osiris and his revivification and regenesis” (Is. Os. 35.364).

Dionysus: God of Wine, Fertility, and Rebirth

 

Attis was a Phrygian god whose jealous consort, Cybele, drove him to madness, leading him to castrate himself and bleed to death under a pine tree. Plagued with regret, Cybele invoked Zeus to have his body preserved, never to rot or decay. At some point in the legacy of Attis’ myth, the mere preservation of his body morphed into a full-blown resurrection, leading to a “Passion Week” by the 1st century CE under the reign of Caesar Claudius. [16] Author G.A. Wells discusses the evidence brought to bear by Maarten J. Vermaseren in his seminal work, Attis and Cybele: The Myth and the Cult.

Attis died emasculating himself under a tree; but ancient art includes ‘scenes of the emasculated Attis dancing,’ indicating his resurrection. The oldest evidence is a Hellenistic Greek vase depicting ‘the dancing Attis hilaris … from the 4th century BC.’ Vermaseren also instances two later statues from Ostia which point to the god’s periodic resurrection. One (from Roman Imperial times) shows ‘another young Attis standing ready to replace the dying one.’ The other statue (dedicated in the second century AD) depicts the ‘lying and triumphant Attis, his entire figure indicating the resurrection which is also shown by the decoration of various kinds of flowers and plants.’ [17]

The Risen Attis (1st C. BCE)

 

Adonis is believed to be the Greek counterpart of the Babylonian Tammuz–a name that graces one full month of the Jewish calendar. Though widely known as a god of beauty and desire, he also belongs to the category of dying and rising gods, as he too was associated with seasonal worship and fertility. Ritual mourning and lamentation accompanied the death of the god; though, like Tammuz, he would triumphantly rise again. [18]

They say, at any rate, that the deed that was done to Adon by the boar [i.e. the death of the God] occurred in their land, and in memory of that misfortune every year they beat their breasts and mourn and perform the ceremonies, making solemn lamentations throughout the country. And when the breast-beating and weeping is at end, first they make offerings to Adonis as if to a dead person; and then, on the next day, they proclaim that he is alive and fetch him forth into the air…  (Lucian, Syr. God., Ch. 6)

Women bewailing the slain Adonis

 

Conclusion

Bart Ehrman is a top-notch New Testament scholar and textual critic. There is no denying either his brilliance or his contribution to the field of New Testament studies. However, in assessing the claims of mythicists, and scholars of comparative religion in general, he seems to have stepped well outside of his area of expertise. Despite Ehrman’s adamant claims to the contrary, there were dying and rising gods, as well as mythic figures like Romulus and Asclepius who were divinized upon their resurrection, like Jesus in the earliest New Testament texts. They rose physically, not merely spiritually, leaving not a trace of their bodies behind. Osiris is certainly to be counted among them, as ancient Egyptian texts and relevant scholarship make abundantly clear. And the scholarship on these matters is not outdated; Litwa’s work in Iesus Deus, for instance, was published a mere few years ago.

Bart Ehrman writes and lectures about the diversity within early Christianity, in such works as Lost Christianities and The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. He knows, as well as anyone, that emerging orthodoxy supplanted and effaced all other opposing views. In a strange twist of irony, Ehrman himself has become the champion of The New Orthodoxy within New Testament scholarship, railing against any views that aren’t represented by “mainstream, biblical scholarship.” But mainstream, biblical scholarship still lies on the conservative end of the spectrum for a reason: Because evangelical Christianity still exerts a mighty influence within the halls of academia. And, there, the fashionable opinions of mainstream scholars matter more than what the ancient sources themselves have to say. True discovery must recede behind the dominating shadow of the status quo. This is why independent scholars like Robert Price, Richard Carrier, David Fitzgerald, etc. are the true heroes. They don’t give a damn about the status quo. They’re not in it to be “mainstream.” They’re following the evidence wherever it leads them. They, like me, are only interested in pursuing the truth.

Works Cited:

[1] Dan Barker and John W. Loftus, ed., The Christian Delusion, (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2010), 11.
[2] S.G.F. Brandon and E.O. James, ed., “The Ritual Technique of Salvation in the ancient Near East.” The Saviour God: Comparative Studies in the Concept of Salvation, (Manchester University Press, 1963), 23.
[3] James P. Allen, trans., and Peter Der Manuelian, ed., The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005), 57. See also J. Gwyn Griffiths, The Origins of Osiris and His Cult, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1980), 1-2.
[4] Louis Zabkar, A Study of the Ba, (SAOC 34; Chicago: University of Chicago, 1968), 155.
[5] Alfred Bertholet, The Pre-Christian Belief in the Resurrection of the Body, The American Journal of Theology, (20:1 [1916]: 10).
[6] Walter C. Kaiser Jr. and Duane Garrett, Power Over Egypt in the Hymn to Osiris, NIV Archaeological Study Bible, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 877.
[7] S.G.F. Brandon and E.O. James, ed., “The Ritual Technique of Salvation in the ancient Near East.” The Saviour God: Comparative Studies in the Concept of Salvation, (Manchester University Press, 1963), 17-33.
[8] Joseph D. Reed, Arsinoe’s Adonis and the Poetics of Ptolemaic Imperialism, (American Philological Association: First Edition, 2000), 331.
[9] Internet Sacred Text Archive, The Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden (Col. XV.), http://sacred-texts.com/egy/dmp/dmp18.htm (2010).
[10] M. David Litwa, Iesus Deus: The Early Christian Depiction of Jesus as a Mediterranean God, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), 173-74.
[11] Matthew Ferguson, 1 Corinthians 15 and the “500 Witnesses,” https://adversusapologetica.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/1-corinthians-15-and-the-500-witnesses/ (2013).
[12] M. David Litwa, Iesus Deus: The Early Christian Depiction of Jesus as a Mediterranean God, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), 156-57.
[13] Ibid., p. 159.
[14] Ibid., p. 164.
[15] Arthur Versluis, Magic & Mysticism: An Introduction to Western Esotericism, (Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), 12.
[16] Gary Forsythe, Time in Roman Religion: One Thousand Years of Religious History (New York: Routledge, 2012), 89.
[17] G.A. Wells, Did Jesus Exist? (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1992), 202.
[18] S. N. Kramer, Dumuzi’s Annual Resurrection: An Important Correction to ‘Inanna’s Descent,’ Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 183 (October 1966:31).

Lord, Liar, or Lunatic?

 

C.S. Lewis popularized the “Lord, Liar, or Lunatic” argument as follows:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis%27s_trilemma#Lewis.27s_formulation)

To one unacquainted with biblical criticism, this may appear to be a sound argument. But, in fact, it is logically fallacious. Lewis has committed a false trilemma by limiting us to only three options, when there is indeed a plausible alternative: Legend. The Gospels were written decades after the supposed death of Jesus, so we cannot simply assume that they accurately portray the words and deeds of the “Savior.” To make matters worse, they are undeniably works of fiction, wherein the authors had plenty of creative license. Classicist Matthew Ferguson explains:

The Gospel authors are silent about their identities and give context about their relation neither to their sources nor to the events they contain. The Gospel narratives instead just read like novels, told from a camera-like perspective, that merely follow around the characters with no critical analysis whatsoever … [They] are not historical biographies but hagiographies written in unquestioning praise of their messianic subject … Such works, written for an audience of converts, are not concerned with being critical or investigative, but merely serve the religious agendas and ideologies of the communities that produced them. (Matthew Ferguson, “Ancient Historical Writing Compared to the Gospels of the New Testament‏,” is available online at: http://adversusapologetica.wordpress.com/2013/08/18/ancient-historical-writing-compared-to-the-gospels-of-the-new-testament/)

Case in point: How do we know what Jesus prayed while away from his disciples on the Mount of Olives, with no one nearby to hear him (Luke 22:39-46)? Because Luke made it up. Without knowing what, if anything, can actually be attributed to Jesus, we can make no assumptions therein. Lewis’ argument falls apart on that basis.

But, if I had to take a shot in the dark as to who the historical Jesus was, assuming there was one, I’d follow John Loftus and Paula Fredriksen in estimating that he was an apocalyptic prophet, heralding the coming Kingdom of God in the tumultuous, political climate of 1st century Judea. “The end is nigh” may well have been his message. So, where does that place him within Lewis’ triadic scheme? This is a question we cannot answer without considering cultural and historical relativism. For his time, Jesus would have been pretty run-of-the-mill. But, by today’s standards, he’d be on par with David Koresh and Jim Jones. For the sake of sparing Lewis any “patronizing nonsense,” I’ll answer him within a 21st century context: Lunatic.