Jesus is Just Alright

…Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are a bunch of practical jokers who meet somewhere and decide to have a contest.  They invent a character, agree on a few basic facts, and then each one's free to take it and run with it.  At the end, they'll see who's done the best job.  The four stories are picked up by some friends who act as critics: Matthew is fairly realistic, but insists on that Messiah business too much; Mark isn't bad, just a little sloppy; Luke is elegant, no denying that; and John takes the philosophy a little too far.  Actually, though, the books have an appeal, they circulate, and when the four realize what's happening, it's too late.  Paul has already met Jesus on the road to Damascus, Pliny begins his investigation ordered by the worried emperor, and a legion of apocryphal writers pretends to know plenty…

In Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum, the employees of a publisher specializing in esoteric texts find themselves caught in a vast, centuries-spanning conspiracy, a plot that is, ironically, of their own creation. Through telling and retelling, and spread to the community of those interested in conspiracies, the plot becomes, possibly, real.  Casaubon, the narrator, makes the point of how narratives can structure reality by offering this possible version of the origin of Christianity.  Though it is never quite clear whether Casuabon believes what he says, his larger point is that the truth of a particular story, if truth is described by whether it happened or not, is not as important as the perceived truth of that story.  People act on what they believe to be true.  This point is manifest by the end of the novel, as he awaits his (real or imagined) doom at the hands of conspiracy theorists who have come to believe the truth of The Plan, his Templar conspiracy.

While Eco (and perhaps his narrator) presents this as fiction, it seems that there is a cadre of atheists who would find this explanation of Christianity's birth congenial, at least to judge by an article that's been making the rounds of places like Salon, Alternet, and Rawstory about the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth.  It reminds us that most scholars accept the existence of a man around whom the myths of Christianity were built, but tells us about a growing Jesus Myth movement that is questioning even this.  Their critique of earlier scholars is that they were Christians, and so had an interest in keeping alive the story of the man Jesus.  Based on the lack of evidence and the problematic nature of the Gospels, they conclude that Jesus never existed and that the Gospel writers, especially Matthew, Mark, and Luke, were in the business of "historicizing mythology" when they gave their supposed eyewitness accounts to the life and ministry of Jesus.

There's nothing new in this denial; what is new, at least to me, is the certainty of it.  I have suggested before that certainty is, at best, an elusive thing in consideration of the existence of God.  Asserting a definitive answer one way or another seemed then like a failure of imagination, and I suggested humility in approaching the question.  I would like to suggest that those positively asserting the non-existence of Jesus approach the question with a similar humility.  Also, to suggest that there may be more important matters to expend energy on.  Christians, and most scholars, will not likely be moved by argument from accepting at least the likely historicity of Jesus.  Nor should they be, since the arguments against the existence of the historical Jesus are at least as thin as arguments for him.

Central to these arguments is the lack of first-century historical evidence for Jesus.  Indeed, only the Gospels and a couple of references by the Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus attest to his having existed, and the earliest of these was written 30 or so years after Jesus' purported execution.  Surely, these writers suggest, Jesus would appear somewhere in the official records of the Roman Empire.

Says who?  Jesus, if he existed, was a rabble-rousing peasant, an itinerant preacher of the coming kingdom of God, a miracle worker and would-be Messiah, one of many in Judea.  He was executed for sedition, as were many others, in a manner befitting criminals. Following his death, his disciples appear to have kept quiet. In other words, he was pretty unremarkable, and there's no reason to expect him to appear in the historical record. Roman historians tended not to focus on provincial matters, only on those directly affecting Italy, and so the goings-on in the wilds of Judea would hardly register.  What's surprising is not that there are so few first-century mentions of him, but that there are any.  Clearly he had gained a following that found a way to continue after his death, primarily through the efforts of Paul, but also through those who had known him in life.

The next front of the battle, then, is to attack the reliability of the Gospels and the references in Josephus as witnesses to the historical person of Jesus.  It's easy to do so.  Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the so-called synoptic Gospels, differ on significant points.  But the Gospels are not presenting history as we understand it, they are heaping myths on the character of Jesus.  Through their placement of his birth in Bethlehem, the references to his ancestry, stories of his ministry, execution, and resurrection, the Gospel writers were making Jesus intelligible to both pagan and Jewish audiences. As to Josephus, he exists in texts only dating from the eleventh century and later, and though there are early quotations of the references in Josephus, these come from Christian authors like Origen and Eusebius.

These facts make them vulnerable to the charge that all first-century references to Jesus were fabricated by Christians interested in perpetuating the myth of a historical figure at the heart of a religion that was striving for legitimacy.  Part of the process of Christian apologetics was establishing the truth of the Christian faith, and how better to do this than to start with a real person, one who seemed to satisfy the requirements of the Jewish Messiah and could be understood by Gentiles? But this does not foreclose the possibility of Jesus' existence; it simply casts serious doubt on the claims made about him.

Besides, it's not as though the Gospel writers and Christian scribes are the only partisans in this debate. Just as one might look at the Gospels and Josephus and see the hand of interested parties at work, it is equally possible to see self-interest in the work of those attacking these texts as proof of the historical Jesus.  This is because purveyors of the "Christ myth" idea are as involved in apologetics as those they accuse of creating the myth of Jesus.  As I noted above, a partial aim of Christian apologists was to demonstrate the truth of their faith.  Another partial aim was to demonstrate the falsity of other religions, leaving Christianity as the only viable option.

Though I am loath to call atheism a religion, I have elsewhere noted certain religious tendencies among some atheists.  Among these are seemingly millennial expectations that the world will be transformed once religion is abandoned, a push for a rough atheist orthodoxy, proselytizing, and, now, apologetics.  None of this is really surprising, and means there might be a very interesting discussion to be had about whether modern atheism might be considered a Christian heresy.  Heretical or not, it shows just how indebted some atheists are to the deep Christian intellectual tradition that modern atheism reacted against.

I find this ironic and, in some respects, funny.  Not satisfied with the evidence showing the construction of Jesus the Christ, it seems as though some atheists cannot be secure in their atheism unless any factual basis for religion, especially Christianity, can be eliminated.  My own approach to being an atheist is that you face facts, even inconvenient ones, with reason.  You don't try to change the facts.

And, let's face it, whether I've convinced you Jesus of Nazareth existed or not (not my goal; I actually don't care), for all intents and purposes his existence is a fact.  It is accepted by a majority of historians, both religious and non-religious; Christians, Muslims, and Jews accept him as a historical figure, though they clearly differ over his importance. If he didn't exist, the world certainly functions as though he did; the perception of truth is strong.  Thus those challenging his existence have the burden of proof, and it is a duty that, if we are intellectually honest, cannot be fully discharged.

We can cast doubt upon the veracity of the Gospels, but who, really, except for some Christians thinks every word of them is literally true?  We can quibble over whether no, some, or all of the references in Josephus were later interpolations.  But in the end, we are left with interpretations.  To say that inconclusive evidence allows for a definitive conclusion, either way, is to rest on faith.  Since the challenge cannot definitively rule Jesus out, we are forced to err on the side of caution.

We are left, then, with a sort of Rorschach test which allows a spectrum of responses.  At either end will be those who, with absolute certainty, declare positively that Jesus existed or that he did not.  In between there is the agnostic middle, who see the references and generally agree that where there's smoke, there's fire.

Who's right?  Who's wrong? 

Who cares?

This debate, ultimately, will change nothing.  The world will not be improved one whit if even a majority was to become convinced Jesus the man didn't, or probably didn't, exist.  Christianity is not going to fold up and shuffle off to some Island of Misfit Faiths. We'll never know for sure whether he existed, and the time we spend arguing over it could be better spent on issues that actually make a difference. 

My own position is in the agnostic middle.  When asked by my students, I say that there was probably a preacher named Jesus who gained a following by preaching the coming of God's kingdom on Earth, who gained a following, and later was transformed into something more by his followers.  Can I be certain? No, and I can live with the uncertainty.  Though he may never be my friend, Jesus is just alright with me.