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I have received a considerable amount of feedback and questions in relation to my Jesus myth article, Jesus Myth - The Case Against Historical Christ. In this article I will address those questions and expand on some of the information put forward in the original article.
I would first like to provide some background on this subject and address some broader concerns.
I am certainly not the first person to propose that the Jesus of the Gospels never existed but that instead he originated from "myth". The idea in modern scholarship that Jesus Christ is entirely fictitious seems to have begun its development in earnest in the 18th century and became quite prominent in the 19th century, only to later recede in the 20th century.
Many of the early proponents of the idea that Jesus never existed were students and professors of comparative religion, who saw in the Jesus story reflections of sun worship and "pagan" mythology. Some of these observations had some merit, but much of the early criticism of the story dwelled heavily on non-Jewish parallels, some of which were poorly established or based on poor understandings of the so-called pagan beliefs. In 1875 Kersey Graves published The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors, which has been heavily criticized and has many factual errors. In this work Graves compared the story of Jesus to the supposed stories of sixteen other saviors. The problem here is that Graves got many of his facts wrong.
In 1909 the German philosopher Arthur Drews published The Christ Myth, which was a much more scholarly work that became quite popular and well known, even in America. That same year John E. Remsberg published a review of the scholarship on the issue of the nature of Christ among skeptical scholars of the time, from which the follow text is taken:
The conceptions regarding the nature and character of Christ, and the value of the Christian Scriptures as historical evidence, are many, chief of which are the following:
1. Orthodox Christians believe that Christ is a historical character, supernatural and divine; and that the New Testament narratives, which purport to give a record of his life and teachings, contain nothing but infallible truth.
2. Conservative Rationalists, like Renan, and the Unitarians, believe that Jesus of Nazareth is a historical character and that these narratives, eliminating the supernatural elements, which they regard as myths, give a fairly authentic account of his life.
3. Many radical Freethinkers believe that Christ is a myth, of which Jesus of Nazareth is the basis, but that these narratives are so legendary and contradictory as to be almost if not wholly, unworthy of credit.
4. Other Freethinkers believe that Jesus Christ is a pure myth -- that he never had an existence, except as a Messianic idea, or an imaginary solar deity.
The first of these conceptions must be rejected because the existence of such a being is impossible, and because the Bible narratives which support it are incredible. The second cannot be accepted because, outside of these incredible narratives, there is no evidence to confirm it. One of the two last is the only true and rational conception of the Christ.
Jesus Christ is a myth. But what do we understand by the term myth? Falsehood, fable, and myth, are usually considered synonymous terms. But a falsehood, a fable, and a myth, while they may all be fictions and equally untrue, are not the same. A falsehood is the expression of an untruth intended to deceive. A fable is an avowed or implied fiction usually intended to instruct or entertain. A myth is a falsehood, a fable, or an erroneous opinion, which eventually becomes an established belief. While a falsehood and a fable are intentional and immediate expressions of fiction, a myth is, in most cases, an unconscious and gradual development of one.
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It is often difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish a historical from a philosophical myth. Hence the non-agreement of Freethinkers in regard to the nature of the Christ myth. Is Christ a historical or a philosophical myth? Does an analysis of his alleged history disclose the deification of a man, or merely the personification of an idea?
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The hypothesis that Christ is a philosophical myth, based, like the preceding one, upon the Messianic idea, is thus presented by T. B. Wakeman:
"Never was there an example of a word becoming a believed person, under this law of materialization, more plainly and evolutionally than the 'Messiah' and 'Son of Man' of the Hebrew prophecies.... The Christ, 'Jesus,' was no man, for the reason that he was prophesied and visionated into this world and life to do a work that it would be utterly absurd to suppose a man could ever do. The Romans had killed, and could easily kill, every man who had tried to resist their oppression. Now the God Yahweh by his 'eternally begotten son,' spiritized as the 'Son of Man,' that is the 'Soul of the State,' as Shakespeare makes Ulysses say it, must, in order to be of any avail appear with supernatural powers. He was the personified people, Israel; he had been crucified alive, in their subjection and massacre even to the death and Hades. But by supernatural power he, the Israel, would rise again and bring the final judgment backed by the infinite power of the nation's Father, Yahweh. It was only a Spirit-God who could do this -- nothing less could be originated, or thought of, or provided, for such a superhuman purpose. A person, a man, a reformer, a weak edition of Socrates, or Savonarola or Bruno! How absurd! The human heart in its despair by its imagination, brought a God into the world to do a God's work. 'No man,' said Napoleon; 'nor a God,' says Science, except the idea. Such it was that finally united the millions of Asia, Africa, Europe, and America, in a dream so intoxicating that it dares not to be awakened though the dawn of Science is here."
Mr. Wakeman argues that the silence of history for one hundred years after the alleged appearance of Christ can be explained only upon this hypothesis of an ideal Christ. To this the advocate of the historical myth may, I think, very properly reply: History, for the most part, takes cognizance only of noted men and important events; and while this silence precludes the existence of the supernatural Christ of Christians, and even that of the human Jesus of Renan, it does not necessarily preclude the existence of an obscure religious teacher and an insignificant sect which subsequently, by a chain of fortuitous circumstances, became the mightiest among the religions of the world.
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While all Freethinkers are agreed that the Christ of the New Testament is a myth they are not, as we have seen, and perhaps never will be, fully agreed as to the nature of this myth. Some believe that he is a historical myth; others that he is a pure myth. Some believe that Jesus, a real person, was the germ of this Christ whom subsequent generations gradually evolved; others contend that the man Jesus, as well as the Christ, is wholly a creation of the human imagination.