Back نظرية أسطورة يسوع Arabic Mite de Jesús Catalan Jesus-Mythos German Μυθικισμός του Ιησού Greek Teoría del mito de Jesús Spanish نظریه افسانه بودن عیسی FA Thèse mythiste French Xesús mítico GL Teori mitos Yesus ID Mito di Gesù Italian
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| Christ myth theory | |
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 The Baptism of Christ by Joachim Patinir — Proponents of the Christ myth theory reject the mainstream consensus that Jesus was a historical person who was baptised and later executed. | |
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| Later proponents |
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| Living proponents |
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| Subjects | Historical Jesus, historical reliability of the Gospels, historicity of Jesus |
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The Christ myth theory, also known as the Jesus myth theory, Jesus mythicism, or the Jesus ahistoricity theory,[1][q 1] is the fringe view that the story of Jesus is a work of mythology with no historical substance.[q 2] Alternatively, in terms given by Bart Ehrman paraphrasing Earl Doherty, it is the view that "the historical Jesus did not exist. Or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity."[q 3]
The mainstream scholarly consensus, developed in the three quests for the historical Jesus, holds that there was a historical Jesus of Nazareth who lived in 1st-century-AD Roman Judea,[2][3][4] but his baptism and crucifixion are the only facts of his life about which a broad consensus exists.[q 4] Beyond that, mainstream scholars have no consensus about the historicity of other major aspects of the gospel stories, nor the extent to which they and the Pauline epistles may have replaced the historical Jesus with a supernatural Christ of faith.[q 5]
Mythicism can be traced back to the Age of Enlightenment, when history began to be critically analyzed,[5] and was revived in the 1970s. Proponents broadly argue that a mythological character was historicized in the gospels, and that thus a historical Jesus never existed.[q 3][q 6][q 7] Most mythicists employ a threefold argument:[6] they question the reliability of the Pauline epistles and the gospels to establish Jesus's historicity; they argue that information is lacking on Jesus in secular sources from the first and early second centuries; and they argue that early Christianity had syncretistic and mythological origins as reflected in both the Pauline epistles and the gospels, with Jesus being a deity who was concretized in the gospels.[7][q 8][q 9]
The non-historicity of Jesus has never garnered significant support among scholars.[8][web 1][9][10] Mythicism is rejected by virtually all mainstream scholars of antiquity,[11][12][web 2][note 1] and has been considered a fringe theory for more than two centuries.[q 10][13][8] Mythicism is criticized on numerous grounds such as for commonly being advocated by non-experts or poor scholarship, being ideologically driven, its reliance on arguments from silence, lacking positive evidence, the dismissal or distortion of sources, questionable or outdated methodologies, either no explanation or wild explanations of origins of Christian belief and early churches, and outdated comparisons with mythology.[note 1] While rejected by mainstream scholarship, with the rise of the Internet the Christ myth theory has attracted more attention in popular culture,[14][15] and some of its proponents are associated with atheist activism.[16][17]
- ^ Lataster 2015a
- ^ "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees, based on certain and clear evidence." B. Ehrman, 2011 Forged : writing in the name of God ISBN 978-0-06-207863-6. p. 256-257
- ^ Herzog 2005, pp. 1–6.
- ^ Powell 1998, pp. 168–173.
- ^ Van Voorst 2000, p. 568.
- ^ Van Voorst 2000, p. 9; Price 2009, Chapter 1.
- ^ Eddy & Boyd 2007, p. 34.
- ^ a b Weaver 1999, pp. 71 "The denial of Jesus' historicity has never convinced any large number of people, in or out of technical circles, nor did it in the first part of the century.".
- ^ Casey 2010, p. 33.
- ^ Wells 2007, p. 446 "by around 1920 nearly all scholars had come to regard the case against Jesus's historicity as totally discredited".
- ^ Van Voorst 2003, pp. 660.
- ^ Burridge & Gould 2004, p. 34.
- ^ Van Voorst 2003, p. 658,660 "debate on the existence of Jesus has been in the fringes of scholarship...for more than two centuries.", "Among New Testament scholars and historians, the theory of Jesus' nonexistence remains effectively dead as a scholarly question.".
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Ehrman.2015.Debatewas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Gullotta 2017, p. 313-314,346.
- ^ Casey 2014, p. 41,243-245.
- ^ Ehrman 2012, pp. 336-338 "It is no accident that virtually all mythicists (in fact, all of them, to my knowledge) are either atheists or agnostics. The ones I know anything about are quite virulently, even militantly, atheist.".
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