Category:Jesus Myth Theory (subject)

Jesus Myth Theory

Overview

According to this theory, the Jesus we know from the Gospels is an entirely mythical figure fabricated by early Christians, by adopting popular myths and legends of the time.

In its more radical version the theory argues that a person called Jesus of Nazareth never existed; other proponents of the theory contend that there might have been a historical character named Jesus but is completely unrecognizable behind his mythical metamorphosis.

In some authors, the Jesus Myth Theory has been motivated or influenced by antisemitic attitudes, in the attempt to separate radically the Christian Jesus from his Jewish environment and to turn Christianity into a totally non-Jewish religion based on Hellenistic or "Aryan" traditions.

Contemporary critical scholars dismiss today the Jesus Myth Theory and contend that the Gospels are theological re-interpretations of the life of real person (the Historical Jesus).

Major proponents of the Jesus Myth Theory

Two 18th-century French philosophers, Charles François Dupuis (1742–1809) and Constantin-François Chassebœuf, Comte de Volney (1757–1820) are credited for first developing the idea that Jesus should be viewed as an entirely mythical character. They rejected the historicity of Jesus and explained the origins of Christian narratives about Jesus as mere allegories based on solar pagan myths and rituals.

The theories of Dupuy and Volney influenced the work (and the language) of scholar David Friedrich Strauss, who in 1835 contended that the gospels should be regarded as largely mythical (not historical) narratives. Strauss however did not question either the historicity of Jesus, or the existent of a certain continuity between his preaching and the "mythical" interpretations of his disciples, thus laying the foundations of modern critical scholarship on the Historical Jesus.

Closer to the Jesus Myth Theory was Bruno Bauer. In his work we find, openly expressed, that kind of antisemitic prejudice that would become distinctive in some proponents of the Theory, especially in Germany. In Bauer's view, the roots of Christianity are in Greek-Roman philosophy (Seneca), not in Judaism.

An extravagant variant of the Jesus Myth Theory was developed in the 1970s by John Marco Allegro.

Contemporary proponents of the Jesus Myth Theory include Alvar Ellegård, George Albert Wells and Robert M. Price.

External links

• Wikipedia