Expert: Tyler Eldred (formally known as DarkBlue) - 9/12/2008

Question
I recently had a debate with a friend of mine regarding whether Jesus existed. His argument came from the novel "The Jesus Mysteries." He stated there are no writings of Jesus aside from the Bible. That there are coins that prove the gospels were written 100 years after Jesus' supposed death. He also asserts Christianity comes from Pagan folklore and mysticism.

Could you please comment?  

Answer
Hi Brett,
This was a very interesting question for me to answer because possibility that Jesus did not actually exists is not something that I have thought about recently, and it was interesting to read about an argument that attempted to show it. I have written you a response in three sections: The first is a basic explanation of the argument presented in the Jesus Mysteries, which may be helpful to understand if you are unfamiliar with it, section II concerns itself directly with refuting the argument of the Jesus Mysteries, so that you might have an answer to the arguments that your friend gave, and section three talks directly about the proof for the historical existence of Jesus, and a tiny bit about the origins of the Bible.

Section I-What does the Jesus Mysteries say?

I hadn't heard of this booked until you mentioned to me, so I didn't some research to look into the argument that it made. An okay summary of it is located on wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jesus_Mysteries , and the beginning section of the book, where the thesis is presented is located here http://www.pufoin.com/pufoin_perspective/jesus_mysteries.php .The Jesus Mysteries is a book written by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. It presents a certain argument that a variety of Pagan myths were over time all attributed to one deity, which is in the book called "Osiris-Dionysus." The mythical existence of Osiris-Dionysus, the book argues, was rewritten by Paganized Jews with Jewish ideals incorporated into it. This argument therefore concludes that Jesus was a mythical figure derived from a Pagan mythical figure, who was later mistaken to have been a historic figure.

This argument is alternate historical narrative to the typical historical narrative that Jesus was a historical figure who gathered a following of people which later became the Christian Church, and that the Gnostics (this is what those who held a pagan viewpoint on Jesus’ divinity were called) were heretical off-shoot shortly after the formation of the early church. To make this argument, Freke and Gandy use three things: a) sources of pagan myths and interpretations of pagan myths that suggest characteristics typically attributed to Jesus, b) commentary suggesting that Jesus never existed, c) and a theory as to how the mistake could have been made.

The theory goes like this: The Paganized Jews, in addition to writing the Gospels, created a religion based around this Jewish adaptation of Paganism. Following suit with the traditional format of Pagan followings, they claim that there was an inner group who knew all the secrets about the religion (the book used the term "mysteries," hence the title of the book), and in this case knew about the mythical and Pagan roots of the story of Jesus, and an outer group, who just knew enough to follow along. The book calls this outer group "the Literalists," and claims that they got separated from their connection with inner group, and began to label them as Gnostics and heretics, and these Literalists formed that which we know as the Christian Church today. So that's what the books say in order to make this argument that Jesus never existed. Now I will show you why it is not a good argument.

Section II- The Jesus Mysteries Thoroughly Refuted

There are two good web pages that I found that refute the points of this book. There is a general review located here http://www.tektonics.org/books/jesmystrvw.html . A more thorough and technical refutation is located here http://www.christian-thinktank.com/copycat.html . In this section you will see a summarized version of the points covered in the first article and also a couple of others that were not mentioned in either.

First let’s look at the historical muster of their argument. These two individuals, who come from Master's degrees and a Bachelor’s degrees irrelevant to the scope of their book from not particularly prestigious universities with no experience or distinguishment in the field of biblical studies, archaeology, or history have presented an argument that somehow escaped all of the cultural experts, Christian and atheist alike. The truth is that Freke and Gandy have not written a proper or professional historical argument. It contains to following errors in form:
Unhistorically supported attacks and accusations on the early Church, and other negative or condescending language
Excessive and irrelevant bias, acclaim, and accreditation toward Paganism and the Hellenistic world
Presenting their theory that explains evidence, instead of using evidence to explain the theory (there is, for example not one reference to an inner or outer circle of Gnosticism)
Use of sources that are scholastically outdated, by over 100 years in some cases (these were theories that were once held, but then later realized to be false an became abandoned)
Use of quotes in order to make points that were against the intent of sources from which they were quotes
Being selective in the presentation of evidence, by using only sources or only parts of sources that support their argument, and not using addressing more mainstream sources which make points against their argument (a good historical analysis never ignores data, just like you would never throw out data in a science report, but examines and analyzes the whole picture, in order to get the most comprehensive interpretation of the truth)
Using evidence that is highly doubtful in historical credibility
Altogether dismissing evidence that proves them wrong
To illustrate this point, we'll talk about the amulet that's on the cover of the book. The amulet shows someone on a cross, which the authors take to be Osiris-Dionysus. Now the time period attributed to this amulet was little more than a guess from some other researcher. But the authors took this as fact and failed to take in account the fact that amulets such as those can be easily forged by any jeweler and that thousands of forgeries of this kind exist in this archaeological world. Furthermore, they failed to mention that amongst the experts that have studied the amulet, none of them have maintained that this amulet was of Pagan origin, attributing the subject of the image to be Jesus. Now while the authors claim that they didn't mean to use the amulet as evidence, but just as illustration, it at least calls into question either their expertise or integrity in their historical analysis.

Now while the book quotes Early Church figure Justin Martyr many times, they didn't even mention this quote, "But in no instance, not even in any of those called sons of Jupiter, did they imitate the being crucified; for it was not understood by them, all the things said of it having been put symbolically." This quote which comes from the 2nd century, showing that the story of Jesus preceded any pagan figure attributed to crucifixion, in that, at least during this point of time, Christianity existed and pagan crucifixion mythology had not. If this is true, then the strongest claim this book can make is that there existed Pagan religions around the time of Jesus, something which we knew already. If this wasn't enough, we could point out that the teachings of Jesus theologically match Judaism much better than Paganism, because the whole concept of God crucified is a message of humility and obedience, which connects deeply with the theology of Judaism and contradicts the theology of Paganism. If that wasn't enough, here is a list of prophecies that Jesus fulfilled that were set, in the cases of some, thousands of years BC, but according to the book was supposedly gotten from later pagan myths:
The concept of a Messiah, a Son of God to come down from earth to save the world
The way of the Messiah prepared for by a voice crying out from the desert (John the Baptist)
The savior of the world riding in on a donkey
Being bought for 30 pieces of silver
The Messiah born from a virgin
A "Suffering Servant" by whose wounds we are healed
References in multiple locations to wounded or pierced hands

Section III- The Historical Reality of Jesus

Now since one could suggest that Freke and Gandy were wrong about their paganism theory, but right about the fact that Jesus was not a historical figure, (and since you also asked about this in your question) we will look at this next. It is true that most historians attribute the four gospels to being later than 50 years and earlier than 100 years AD. It is believed that the gospel stories were passed down by oral tradition amongst the Christian community, if not directly through disciples of Peter and Paul. Given the strict code of preservation in oral tradition at the time, this would have been a fairly reliable system. The Bible would not start to be first complied until about 150 AD, but in their process involved finding any and all written copies and throwing away any that didn't match with the others. The translation process from Hebrew to Greek involved 70 translators working independently, to ensure that no mistake was made in the translation. All books were debated over, and some books weren't officially added until as late 400 AD.

We should note the historical style contained in the gospel. Take the Gospel of Luke for example. Luke 3 begins by saying "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Tranchonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood or Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert." This contains a lot of specific historical personal nouns, so we can understand that Luke certainly didn't write Jesus as a myth. Later in the chapter (23-38) we are given the genealogy of Jesus, something which could have been easily checked (by asking for relatives until you got distantly someone related to a Joseph, son of Mattathias or by checking some genealogical records that might have been kept at the time) by anyone who thought Luke was "trying to pull a fast one" at the time. What's more is that 11 of the apostles and Paul all were tortured and martyred for their faith not only that Jesus exists (a point not really contended at the time) but also that he was the Messiah, which, with their deaths around 60 AD, is surely something someone writing it all down in 100 AD could ask their grandfather about. So my point is that while 100 years seems like a long time, it certainly doesn't seem enough time for there to be any real uncertainty that Jesus existed and we can understand how the story of Jesus’ life could be accurately preserved .

Now you asked about historical evidence outside of the Bible and as a matter of fact there were some that existed. I’ve heard of five historical documents that mention Jesus: The Jewish Babylonian Talmud, the Historic writings of Suetonius, "Annals" and "Histories," which are two books written by a Roman historian named Tacitus, a 73 AD letter sent by Mara Bar-Serpion, and the writings of the Roman Historian Josephus. Josephus is the most well known of these. Josephus is mentioned in the Jesus Mysteries, and of him it is said that no serious scholars believe that he wrote that part of the history book, but this is untrue according to Venerable Bede, who lists J. D. Crossan, R. T. France, Raymond Brown, John P. Meier, Michael Grant, Robin Lane Fox and others who believe that he wrote it, some of those who are atheists. Of the other four texts I know much less, only that they are also said to exist. It stands to be said that the Jesus Seminar, a scholastic club dedicated to finding the most strict and blunt truths about Jesus, certainly affirm that he did exist.

There are supernatural proofs of Jesus’ historical existence which your friend may not accept, but you might find interesting. The first is that two Roman historians, Thallus and Phlegon, who both record a widespread darkness at a date that coincides with the crucifixion of Jesus, but does not coincide with any astrological phenomenon such as an eclipse. Another piece of evidence is the Shroud of Turin. The Shroud of Turin is a length of cloth which contains the imprint of a person who has wounds like that described in the Bible. It has been claimed to have been the burial shroud of Jesus. That topic is probably too big to cover here but Wikipedia has a secular but informative article on the Shroud and the controversy surrounding it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shroud_of_Turin#Miraculous_formation . They are currently testing the Shroud using even more sophisticated technology, so look out for news about that.

So the points I've talked about are what is the argument of the Jesus Mysteries, what undermines its argument, how was the scripture formed, and what evidence do we have for the historical existence of Jesus. As I final point I will add that as a Christian my belief is much deeper than the historical realty of Jesus. This means my faith doesn’t sink or soar with every piece of evidence uncovered, because there are truths that I know in my heart no matter what the evidence seems to suggest. I hope you feel the same way. So thank you once again for the question, I hope this discussion has been helpful, and please let me know if you have any further questions.