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Part of a series on

Jesus in Christianity

Jesus in Islam

Background

Jesus in history

Perspectives on Jesus

Jesus in culture

Perspectives of Historicity

Many Christians believe that God plays an active role in history through miracles and divine revelation; and some take as a basis for their faith a divine authority for the Bible, and the divinity of Jesus. Some Christians believe in God but question the divinity of Jesus and the Bible, and rely more heavily on the work of scientists and historians.

Since Christological arguments for the existence of God became more prevalent in evangelical teachings, the issue of the historicity of Jesus gained greater significance, and arguments about historiography started to be used in significant ways in this context. Most Christian scholars, and many non-Christian scholars, do not dispute that a person named Jesus once lived, connected in some way to the biblical accounts, thinking that evidence for Jesus' existence is by historical standards fairly strong.

Many historians do not dispute the existence of a person who was named Jesus, but there is much less acceptance of the narrative of his life and death, and far less for any miraculous claims. Many scholars think that interpretations of Jesus' sayings are secondhand and literary extrapolations from his actions and mythologized invented detail which have been applied to an historical figure.

However, a number of critics have proposed that there was no historical Jesus, adducing as support for this position the paucity of non-Christian historical sources corroborating Christian writings. Perhaps most prolific of those Biblical scholars who discount the historical existence of Jesus is a professor of German, George Albert Wells, who argues that Jesus was originally a Gnostic myth.

Jesus and Syncretism

Main article:Jesus, pre-4th century Christianity, and syncretism

The Pythagoreans tied astronomy and geometry to mystical meaning, and often encoded deeper meaning within geometric or numerical representations, themselves encoded as outer mysteries in the form of stories. Some scholars think that some of these stories and their deeper meaning was incorporated into the story of Jesus, rather than them being a reflection on historic events. For example, 12 apostles is thought to be a reference to the Zodiac itself derived from geometry of spheres, 72 disciples is thought to be a reference to the precession of the Zodiac.

Other stories are thought to have more cryptic meaning, one of the best examples being the story of the 153 fish, which is thought to encode via Isopsephia (a Greek version of Gematria) a mystical diagram known to Plato, the 153 being a repeated number in the diagram, and having religious significance connected to the Vesica Piscis. Many scholars have thought, throughout the centuries, that the feeding of the 5000 and the 4000 has a cryptic meaning, early ideas tying the numbers to Jews, Gentiles, the Torah, and Apostles, whereas more recent ideas suggest there is an encrypted mystic diagram. Other instances of isopsephia are thought to occur, such as 666 which is quite literally the number of the great beast.

File:IsisAndHorus20BC.JPG

The image on the left, dating from 20BC, depicts Isis and Horus, the image on the right is an early christian depiction of Mary and Jesus, from 5th century Fayum

The pre-Christian Egyptian god Horus, itself a syncretism of many local deities, is thought to have many similarities with Jesus. According to some scholars, Horus shares elements of the nativity with Jesus, such as a virgin mother Mary married to Joseph, preceded by annunciation, announced by stars, occurring in Bethlehem, though the similarities supposedly only reveal themselves when transliterating between Demotic and Hebrew. Another story alleged to have been copied from Horus is that of the raising of Lazarus at Bethany, thought to be indentifiable with the raising of Osiris at the underworld, Annu, again only revealed by transliteration of the names.

Titles are also shared such as The way, the truth, the life, the anointed one, Light of the World, as are depictions, such as that of Mary and the baby Jesus, and the depiction of Mary in revelations. In addition, some allege that Set is the prototype for Satan, the story of the battle in the wilderness with temptation being shared between the stories. Since the Horus stories are thought to have astronomical meanings, some scholars suggest that this explains otherwise confusing ideas in the New Testament.

File:SteleWithAntinous.gif

Antinous with cross, and grapes

During the first and second centuries BC, Hellenic philosophy merged with minor deities to produce Mystery Religions, in which a Life-death-rebirth deity was used as allegory to encode wisdom. Such religion quickly replaced many local religions as the dominant form throughout the Mediterranean, with the resulting variations of the central god-man figure becoming known as Osiris-Dionysus. Some scholars think that Jesus was one of the forms of Osiris-Dionysus.

The religions share with Christianity many things, such as a form of baptism, religious meals of bread and wine (sharing the same meaning as Christianity, disturbing Tertullian), the birthday of the central figure, pregnancy duration, nativity story, riding into town on a donkey, crucifixion at Easter, and last judgement, although it varied as to which features were held in common.

Early Christians (such as Justin Martyr and Tertullian) tended to provide unprovable supernatural explanations for the similarities with Mystery Religions, favouring statements that the Devil was responsible for the similarities, producing them to trick people into the wrong religion before Christianity came into existence a century later. Modern approaches are more reasoned, suggesting that all surviving evidence of the beliefs in the mystery religions postdates Jesus, and that the myths did not feature crucifixion in their early forms. The counter argument to such apologetics is that crucifixion is the likely consequence of the religions becoming mystery religions rather than their more literal original form, and that no surviving evidence of Christianity pre-dates Jesus either.

One of the forms of Osiris-Dionysus, Mithras, became the dominant form in the Roman army, spreading throughout the empire. Amongst the stories of the earlier forms of Mithras, is a story of a moon god Ea, later referred to as Oannes, whom some scholars think is the basis for John the Baptist his relationship to Jesus mirroring that of the moon to the sun. Also travelling with the early form is the case of priests known as Magi, whom some allege were inserted into the nativity story to give Jesus more importance.

Mithraism eventually syncretised with more explicit sun worship to become Mithras Sol Invictus, a religion that became official Roman policy, and many scholars think was the main competitor to Christianity. Constantine I, who was the highest priest of this cult, for the sake of unity, is thought by some scholars to have tried to smooth out the differences between the two, including moving the sabbath to Sunday (the day of Mithras Sol Invictus (Mithras, the unconquerable sun)), as well as moving the date of Jesus' birth to December 25th (the same day as that of Mithras, and Saturnalia).

Such smoothing is thought to have allowed Christianity (which bore semblance to the more literal reading of the stories that Mithraism taught was allegory) to gain the upper hand, for reasons outlined earlier by Celsus. Writing in the 2nd century, Celsus wrote (rather offensively) that Christianity spread amongst the ignorant and the illiterate, since they are not intelligent enough to interpret the beliefs allegorically.

Christianity's dominance was finally enforced by a decree in 394 (by Theodosius, completely banning non-Christian religion. After the ban, mithraeum (the Mithras temples) were converted into churches, and according to certain scholars specifically Mithraic beliefs transferred to the archangel Michael, since the previous adherents of Mithraism still continued to worship in the same location, just claiming to be Christian.

Sources

Main article:Jesus and textual evidence

Although there is much evidence of Jesus attested by the Bible and the New Testament apocrypha (those works which the Council of Laodicea did not consider valid), those arguing against Jesus' historicity argue that since these are works written for religious reasons, their validity on this point is suspect. Of the secular commentators in existence within memory of Jesus, from the evidence of their surviving works (which still survive in significantly high number to fill hundreds of volumes of text) only 6 are claimed to have written anything relating to Jesus - Pliny the Younger, Josephus, Suetonius, Philo, Lucian, and Tacitus. Lucian wrote a satire demonstrating the existence of Christians but condemning them as easily lead fools, whereas Pliny the Younger wrote the same opinion in prose.

Many Christians use a passage from Josephus (found only in quotations apparently from it by Eusebius) as evidence that the Bible is not the only contemporary document proclaiming the truth of their faith (such as the Resurrection of Jesus as Christ, part-God, who was executed at the suggestion of Jewish leaders, and won many converts). However, critical scholars note that the passage uses terms Josephus nowhere else uses, the passage is a rather odd thing for a non-Christian Jew to write, the other text reads more continuously without the passage in question, and that the first person known to have claimed that Josephus did not mention Jesus was Origen (who lived centuries before Eusebius who is the first person known to have claimed (or quoted) that he did). The discovery of a more neutral 10th century version, bolstered Christian hopes of the validity of the passage, however, it fails to explain why the earlier 9th century manuscripts should have the flaws, and may itself be a forgery.

The only known text which claims to be a form of official governmental record and which also mentions Jesus is the collection known as the Letters of Herod and Pilate. They are found in some 6th century manuscript copies of the work of Justus of Tiberius (who was of the same time as Josephus). Virtually all scholars dispute the attribution of the texts to Herod or Pilate, and consider them pure (and obvious) propaganda. Early commentators stated that Justus had no mention of Jesus.

Jewish records, both oral and written, of the period, were compiled into the Talmud, a work so large that it fills at least 32 volumes. Within its vastness, there is very little mention of anyone called Jesus, the closest match being a person or persons called Yeshu. However, the description of Yeshu does not match the biblical accounts of Jesus, the name itself is usually considered to be a derogatory acronym for anyone attempting to convert Jews from Judaism, and the term does not occur in the Jerusalem version of the text (which, compared to the Babylonian version, would be expected to mention Jesus more). Some Christians proclaim that the lack of references, and the difficulty in associating Yeshu with Jesus, is due to Christianity being negligible when the Talmud was predominantly created, in addition to the Talmud being more concerned with teachings, than recording history.