Why I am a Mythicist
An ex-Catholic explains why she has adopted Christ Mythicism.
I was raised a Catholic, but by the time the nuns had finished with me, I was convinced that Christianity could not answer my questions. Just like the catechism questions and answers I had to learn in primary school, as far as I could see, the Church was only willing to answer the questions they set themselves. I found it difficult to understand how Christians came to believe in the Resurrection or that Jesus’ Crucifixion had achieved eternal salvation. The world was no better a place after his death than before.
However, like many other ex-Christians, I still accepted that a man called Jesus may have preached in Palestine in the first century CE, but if I had any thoughts on the matter, it was that his intention was not to declare himself the god of a new religion, but to reform Judaism.
As an adult I got involved in Tibetan Buddhism and while I was uncomfortable with some of its religious trappings, I saw it as a philosophy of the mind with a scientific approach rather than a religion. Unlike the church, the Buddha himself told his followers not to blindly accept his teachings, but to test them for themselves. I may have lapsed in my practice, but Buddhism showed me that there is another approach to the age-old questions that does not demand that you believe the impossible.
A few years ago, I came across the writings of popular American Biblical scholar, Bart Ehrman. In his book, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible, Ehrman expounds the historical-critical approach to the Bible that is taught to all divinity students, but which is hidden from lay people for fear that it might engender doubt. His thesis was that Jesus was not God, but an apocalyptic preacher who taught that the coming of the Messiah and the end of the world was imminent. At some point Jesus’ followers came to believe that he had risen from the dead and ascended bodily into heaven. How this happened Ehrman cannot say. He thus draws a veil across the Resurrection, saying that it is in the realm of miracles, and as an historian he does not deal in miracles.
Yet Jesus’ Crucifixion and Resurrection are at the very heart of Christianity. Without them there is no Christianity, just a collection of pious platitudes. As far as I am concerned, any critique of Christianity that does not explain the Resurrection is pointless.
When I discovered YouTube, I looked Ehrman up and watched several of his lectures. And it was the YouTube algorithm that led me to Ehrman’s arch-rival, the American historian and philosopher, Dr Richard Carrier and Mythicism.
What is Mythicism?
The general consensus among Biblical historians is that a man called Jesus existed and his teachings began the movement that we now call Christianity. This is called Historicity. Historicity covers a wide range of theories about this historical Jesus ranging from that he was actually God manifest on Earth to that he was just an ordinary man, but an inspiring teacher around whom various legends have accreted.
However, beginning in the mid-19th century, a small but growing number of scholars have doubted that Jesus the man ever existed and propose that he is just a myth. This position is called Mythicism. This stance also covers a wide range of theories from the outright whacky to the vigorously academically tested. However, to my mind, the soundest Mythicist theory is that put forward by Canadian author Earl Doherty and tested and propounded by Richard Carrier.
In his book, The Jesus Puzzle, (which he has since expanded into his new book Jesus Neither God nor Man: The Case for a Mythical Jesus.) Doherty proposes that Jesus was not an historical figure, but was conceived of by preachers such as Paul as a celestial being who was crucified and resurrected in the heavenly realms, and that the concept of Jesus as an earthly, historical being was developed over time. Carrier found this thesis compelling and so wrote his own book, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, in which he sets out to vigorously and academically test Doherty theories. (For more see Christ Mythicism: a theology for a rational world.)
When I told a friend of mine about Mythicism, her reaction was typical. Denying the existence of Jesus was akin to Holocaust Denial and, as the Romans were meticulous record keepers, we have lots of records about Jesus’ life and crucifixion. However, much as I love her, my friend was wrong on both counts.
We have a great deal of evidence about the Holocaust. We have the physical evidence of concentration camps and extensive records kept by the Nazis as well as films taken by the Allied troops who liberated the camps. Even before the Liberation, journalists and intelligence agencies were reporting on wholesale slaughter by the Nazis. After the war, thousands upon thousands of eyewitness testimonies were collected and we still have living survivors who can tell us about their own experience. With such evidence, denying the Holocaust is entirely illegitimate. On the other hand, questioning the existence of Jesus is entirely reasonable.
We have none of the evidence for Jesus that we have for the Holocaust, and certainly not the Roman records my friend assumed existed. There is no archaeological evidence at all that can be legitimately linked to Jesus, and apart from the Bible itself, there is very little textual evidence, and what there is is of no value at best and dubious at worst. While we have fragments of Roman documents accidentally preserved through time, we have absolutely none that mention Jesus or his crucifixion. Indeed, if such records existed, would they not have been put on display for all to see, rather than, as my friend suspected, being locked away somewhere in the Vatican archives?
The problem with Christianity
Most Mythicists discourage challenging Christians head-on with the evidence that Jesus never existed, as they believe Christians will never accept it and just dig in. They feel the discussion about Mythicism should be solely a ‘Debate between Atheists’, and that one should take it gently with Christians, conceding that Jesus existed, but debating whether or not he was God. And I must admit, my residual Catholicism makes me shy away from confronting my Christian friends. We were taught that it was wrong to challenge a believer’s faith as though it were something fragile that might easily shatter. Nonetheless, I would rather let such a friendship lapse than subject believers to my Mythicist proselytising.
But on the societal level, I feel it is important to challenge Christianity with the evidence that Jesus never existed. Our very existence as a species may depend on it.
Now, I would have no great problem with Christianity if the people who called themselves Christians actually followed its teachings: if they practised charity, loved their neighbours as themselves, loved their enemies, refrained from throwing the first stone, judged not lest they be judged, refused to live by the sword and turned the other cheek. (And I have known several who do.) However, too many of them believe that a book of legends and parables written more than 2000 years ago is literally true, eschew science and any learning outside the Bible’s covers, are obsessed with other people’s sex lives, try to impose the lifestyle they propound on everyone else while, more often than not, not adhering to it themselves, use their religion as an excuse to attack and discriminate against anyone they do not agree with or approve of, and aspire not to holiness but to wealth and power.
How can any Christian condone the clergy’s sexual abuse of children and how fixated the churches — the worst amongst them being the Catholic Church — were with covering it up in order to maintain their power and authority?
But Christianity’s transgressions go even further.
In the US, fundamentalist Evangelical Christians are trying to subvert the education system to foster ignorance and bigotry. They call themselves ‘pro-life’ while resisting all anti-Covid health measures, promoting civil war, supporting the death penalty and opposing any attempt at gun control. They will not admit it, but it is obvious that they only oppose abortion so as to control women and punish them for having sex. They foisted Donald Trump on the world, an idiot who brought us to the brink of World War III, and aided and abetted his attempted coup against an elected government. Then, despite his being a brazen liar, a sexual predator, a traitor to his country and a convicted felon, they have blindly obeyed their fanatical preachers and re-elected him to a second term.
Here in Australia, Christians have taken over the conservative parties and have worked hand in glove with the fossil fuel industries to block any progress on combating climate change. It has taken decades to get voluntary euthanasia through state parliaments and they tried their best to stop the introduction of same-sex marriage. When they failed, they insisted on the government putting forward a ‘Freedom of Religion’ Act in a country that already has total religious freedom. Fortunately, it failed, but it was evident that all they wanted from this law was even greater freedom to discriminate than is already available to them through exemptions in the existing legislation. Scott Morrison, our ineffective former Prime Minister, is a Pentecostalist who deliberately ignored warnings about the dangers of bush fires and floods which have ravaged this country and, like Donald Trump, put holding onto political power, and ‘protecting’ the economy, ahead of preserving our lives in his response to the pandemic.
However, their most dangerous belief is fundamentalist Christians’ certainty of the imminence of the End of Days, the return of Jesus Christ and the Rapture. This doctrine holds that at the End of Days, the faithful will be taken bodily up into Heaven, leaving the rest of us behind. The End of Days will be heralded by Armageddon, a great battle between Good and Evil. In order for Jesus to return, Jerusalem has to be occupied by the Jews. Nonetheless, the Jews themselves will not be saved unless they profess faith in Jesus Christ. It is for this reason that Evangelicals are so keen for the US to support Israel’s destructive and disruptive influence in the Middle East. It is also why Evangelical Christians so stubbornly refuse to acknowledge man-made climate change. They have no need to worry about the future as the Rapture is coming any day now and if the rest of us are left on a hell on earth it is God’s will and what we unbelievers deserve.
But it gets worse than that.
It is my firm belief that George W. Bush undertook the invasion of Iraq in order to bring on the End of Days, as Armageddon is believed to be in Iraq. It explains why his administration refused to do any post-invasion planning. Why bother when the Rapture is coming? (Though I believe Dick Cheney went along with this dangerous nonsense because he knew there was more money to be made from chaos than from order.) If another, even more fanatical, Evangelical Christian were to become Commander-in-Chief of the US military machine, who knows what hell he could unleash in pursuit of the Rapture.
So, you see, in my eyes, this is more than an academic debate. We need to save the world from Christianity, and one way we can do this is by undermining the faith of its followers in its founding myth. Acknowledging that Jesus is a heavenly rather than earthly being, just like God himself, would not damage the faith of true Christians, but it could destroy the hold fundamentalism has on its adherents.
© Pauline Montagna 2024
Read more reflections on Christ Mythicism
References
Dr Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, Sheffield Phoenix Press (2014)
Earl Doherty, Jesus Neither God nor Man: The Case for a Mythical Jesus, Age of Reason Publications (2009)
Bart Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible, HarperOne (2009)
