Jesus Never Lived, Speaker Says Rational Thought Brings Religious Scholar to campus
By Rahul Kanakia Opinions Columnist Wednesday, May 31, 2006 last updated May 31, 2006 1:39 AM
Questions about Jesus and his life have dominated popular culture in recent weeks with the premiere of “The Da Vinci Code” film, based on the novel that alleges Christ had a child. In this climate of religious dialogue, Richard Carrier, a graduate student in ancient history at Columbia University, told members of the student group Rational Thought that Jesus never existed in a speech last night at the Math Building.
The highly-controversial speech stood in contrast to accepted Christian theology and religious-academic thought. Most scholars accept that there was a historical Jesus, who is the basis of the Christian religion, though he may or may not have exhibited any special abilities.
But a small number of academics, including Carrier, argue that there was never even a historical Jesus. They believe that the biblical apostle Paul founded Christianity, and in his conception, Jesus was an incorporeal, allegorical figure. Later, they say, Christians came to believe that Jesus was an actual person and added various biographical details.
As evidence of his claim, Carrier pointed to Paul’s epistles, which are the oldest books in the New Testament.
“Paul never discusses Jesus’ family, his deeds, where he went or where he came from,” Carrier said. “He never discusses any of his confrontations with the authorities, nor any disputes about what he taught. He says Jesus became flesh, was crucified and buried, but he never says when or where or positions these events in any historical context.”
According to Carrier, this omission only makes sense if Jesus was originally understood to be a fictional, heavenly figure. Carrier described the process by which he believes Jesus came to be seen as a historical person.
“Jesus was originally perceived as a heavenly being whose death and reincarnation took place in heaven and was made known secretly in the Old Testament,” he said. “And in the early first century this secret was communicated by revelation to Paul, who preached widely. This message about Jesus was then mythified, just as other mystery cults had done with their gods.
“By the end of the first century,” Carrier continued, “some Christians had come to believe that the myths were real and assumed that Jesus was a real person. This sect of Christians eventually gained the political advantage and became what we know as orthodox Christianity, which only preserved texts that agreed with their interpretation and sometimes even forged or altered texts to advance their views.”
Carrier said that the Gospel of Mark was written nearly 60 years after the purported death of Jesus, and that the other three Gospels borrowed heavily from this book. The version of Jesus’ life given in the Gospel contains many elements that are usually found in the lives of mythical figures, he said.
“Jesus conforms so closely to the criterion of a mythic hero the probability that he was a mythic hero increases substantially,” he said. “There are 22 features that have been identified by scholars that are commonly shared by many mythic heroes. They can be ranked with a score according to how many features they have. Jesus clearly scores at least 19 out of 22.”
According to Carrier, Jesus shares many of the following mythic traits, including a virgin birth and divine lineage. An attempt is made to kill him when he is a baby. He is spirited away from those plotting his murder. He is reared in a foreign country. He is crowned king. He reigns over a period of peace. He prescribes laws. He then loses favor with the gods or his subjects. He meets with a mysterious death. He dies at the top of a hill. His body turns up missing.
Jesus scores higher on this scale than almost all other heroes, including Hercules and Romulus, Carrier said. Only Oedipus scores higher.
“Jesus competes for second place only with Theseus and Moses,” he said. “Everyone who scores more than 11 on this scale is most likely mythical. No historical figures who accumulated some of these features by chance or legend, such as Alexander the Great or Augustus Caesar, scores even as high as 11.”
Carrier pointed out that, in the ancient world, mythological figures often underwent the process of “historicization.”
“This had actually become a trend,” Carrier said. “It is called ‘Euhemerisation.’ Euhemerus wrote a work of fiction called the Sacred Scriptures in which he showed an imaginary scholar who had found out that Zeus and Uranus were real historical kings.
“Aesop was probably never a real person nor are any of the biographies about him likely to be genuine,” Carrier continued. “Instead, Aesop was most likely invented in order to assign a name to a growing collection of fables passed down from numerous oral sources.
“Historical facts were then invented about this Aesop and then many detailed biographies were written that are similar in many ways to the gospels.” Carrier added. “Like Jesus, Aesop was renowned as a challenger to power. He came from a lowly background, yet was renowned as a cultural hero. And he was regarded as a martyr; he was executed by the priests of Delphi for denouncing their greed.”
Despite this evidence, Carrier was quick to point out that this is just a theory.
“We need to go out and interact with the community and see if it stands up to the evidence,” he said. “I’m not here declaring that this is absolutely true and it would be foolish to deny it. We’re not at that stage yet.
“The normal procedure is to assume that a person who is claimed to be historical is historical,” he continued, “unless there is a reason to doubt it. I believe this is an appropriate principle. For example, merely lacking evidence is not enough of an argument for someone not existing historically. You need actual evidence for them being mythified.”
Martin Mueller, a fifth-year graduate student in physics, organized the talk as the head of Rational Thought.
“When I first came here to Stanford,” Mueller said, “I was surprised that there wasn’t a student group specifically for students who are secular, for students who do not subscribe to any religious beliefs. This is a forum for those sorts of issues.
“In the general population, the word atheist has a bad ring to it,” he added. “But we just use it for what it means. We do not believe in a god. The people that are attracted to our kinds of activities are the people who do not believe, based on the evidence, that there is a God.”
Talks like Carrier’s help Mueller and the members of Rational Thought formulate their beliefs, he said.
“It is very important for us, as it is for everybody,” Mueller said. “To have a reason for believing what it is we believe. It is very important for members of our organization to be able to say that we do not believe in Jesus because we do not believe he existed or we do not believe he existed as he was in the Gospels.”