Did Jesus Exist? - The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth by Bart Ehrman (read book .TXT) 📕

continued rapidly until stories were told about this God-man, and eventually a whole set of narratives were invented by authors like Mark, the author of our first Gospel. These narratives were not based on real history, however; they were based on myths that have been historicized.

This view of the invention of Jesus is nearly ubiquitous among mythicists (one who takes a different line, as we will see below, is G. A. Wells). We have already seen it set forth in the book of Kersey Graves of 1875. More recently, Robert Price claims in his just published book that he himself, once a former evangelical preacher, became a mythicist precisely when he realized that there were significant parallels between the traditions of Jesus and the stories of other dying and gods.1

Problems with the View

There are two major problems with this view that Jesus was originally invented as a dying-rising god modeled on the dying and rising gods of the pagan world. First, there are serious doubts about whether there were in fact dying-rising gods in the pagan world, and if there were, whether they were anything like the dying-rising Jesus. Second, there is the even more serious problem that Jesus could not have been invented as a dying-rising god because his earliest followers did not think he was God.

Dying and Rising Gods in Pagan Antiquity

Even though most mythicists do not appear to know it, the onetime commonly held view that dying-rising gods were widespread in pagan antiquity has fallen on hard times among scholars.

No one was more instrumental in popularizing the notion of the dying-rising god than Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). Frazer did in his day what Joseph Campbell did in the second half of the twentieth century: he convinced thousands of people that at heart many (or most) religions are the same. Whereas Campbell was principally revered by popular audiences, especially for such books as The Hero with a Thousand Faces and The Power of Myth, Frazer’s studies made their greatest impact upon scholars. Particularly influential was his view of dying and rising gods.

Frazer’s important book was called The Golden Bough, which went through a number of editions, each time growing larger and larger. Already in the first edition of 1890 Frazer had set out his view of pagan deities who died and then rose again; by the third edition of 1911–15 Frazer devoted all of part 4 to the topic. In it Frazer claimed that Eastern Mediterranean divinities such as Osiris, Dumuzi (or Tammuz), Attis, and Adonis were all dying and rising gods. In each case we are dealing, Frazer averred, with vegetative gods whose cycle of life, death, and resurrection replicates and explains the earth’s fertility. Frazer himself did not draw explicit connections between these divinities and Jesus, but it is perfectly clear from his less-than-subtle ways of discussing these other gods what he had in mind. He thought that the Christians picked up this widespread characterization of the pagans and applied it to their myths about Jesus.2

Although such views about pagan gods were widely held in some circles for years, they met with devastating critique near the end of the twentieth century. There are, to be sure, scholars here or there who continue to think that there is some evidence of dying and rising gods. But even these scholars, who appear to be in the minority, do not think that the category is of any relevance for understanding the traditions about Jesus.

This is true of the most outspoken advocate for the onetime existence of such gods, Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, whose book The Riddle of the Resurrection: “Dying and Rising Gods” in the Ancient Near East tries to revive the major thesis of Frazer. On the basis of a highly detailed and nuanced study of evidence, Mettinger claims that “the world of ancient Near Eastern religions actually knew a number of deities that may be properly described as dying and rising gods.”3 He does go on to stress, however, that the vocabulary of resurrection (that is, of a dead person being revived to live again) is used in only one known case: Melqart (or Heracles). As examples of such pagan deities in pre-Christian times, Mettinger names, in addition to Melqart, Dumuzi and Baal. Like Frazer before him, he argues that the dying and rising of these gods have “close ties to the seasonal cycle of plant life.”4

Having read Mettinger’s book carefully, I do not think that it will provide much support for the mythicist view of pagan dying and rising gods. For one thing, even though Mettinger claims that such views were known in Palestine around the time of the New Testament, he does not provide a shred of evidence. He instead quotes passages from the Old Testament (his field of expertise): Ezekiel 8:14; Zechariah 12:11; and Daniel 11:37. But you can look at these passages yourself. None of them mentions the dying and rising of a god. So how do they prove that such a god was known in Palestine? What is more, none of them dates from anywhere near the time of the New Testament but are from hundreds of years earlier. Can anyone cite a single source of any kind that clearly indicates that people in rural Palestine, say, in the days of Peter and James, worshipped a pagan god who died and rose again? You can trust me, if there was a source like that, it would be talked about by everyone interested in early Christianity. It doesn’t exist.

What is particularly striking about Mettinger’s study of older deities (not in the time of the New Testament but centuries earlier) is just how ambiguous the evidence is, even in cases that he argues for most strenuously. He has to offer an exceedingly nuanced and philologically detailed argument to make the point that any of these deities was thought by anyone at all as dying and rising. So how strong and prevalent a category was it if in fact there are few