Acharya S - The History of Mythicism

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by D.M. Murdock/Acharya SSeptember 1, 2009

from StellarHousePublishing WEbsiteIn our quest to determine what is "mythicism," we discover that this movement was epitomized by Dr.

David F. Strauss, who had come out in 1835 with The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined, a book highly

critical of Christianity that pointedly identified as myth much of the gospel story regarding Christ.Strauss was not an atheist or skeptical mythicist, however, as he did not dismiss the gospel story as

"mere" fairytales. Rather, being a Christian minister, he attempted to imbue the Christian mythos with

spiritual, if not allegorical, meaning. This perspective represents one plank of the mythicist position, as

mythicism in its totality does not dismiss myth simply as something fabricated but instead recognizes the

ancient wellspring of profundity and comprehension from which it draws.It appears that Strauss was encouraged in his efforts by the success of German biblical criticism - most

widely known through the group called the "Tbingen School," as established by Dr. Ferdinand Christian

Baur (1792-1860), whose own work in comparative religion was considered "revolutionary."

Such doubt was evidently not enough for Dr. Wilhelm Traugott Krug (1770-1842), heir to the seat of famed

philosopher Dr. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who called for an even stronger declaration of Christianity's

mythical nature. Krug's solicitation was answered by another German scholar and theologian, Dr. Bruno

Bauer(1809-1882), who published his first mythicist work in 1840.This book, Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte des Johannes, took the perspective that Christ was a

mythical characterbased on Jewish, Greek and Roman religious ideas and mythology, created during the

second century, with the gospel of John, for instance, being a product of the Jewish community out of the

large and important Egyptian city of Alexandria.These Jews represented a sort of "third party" in addition to the "first party" stricter followers of Judaism,

who depicted Godas "wholly other," separate and apart from humanity, while the "second party" is that of

the Pagans, who "leant towards the union ofGodand Man."Bauer's perspective vis-a-vis this third party is summarized by christian apologist Rev. George Matheson:

"It consisted of those Jews at Alexandria who, after the conquest of their country by

Alexander, had chosen to forget the land of their fathers, and had sought as much as

possible to amalgamate their manners and religion with the religion and manners of the

surrounding Gentile nations."(Matheson, 149)

Although they brought forth novel notions, Baur, Strauss and Bauer were preceded in fact by many others

who stepped out from the shadows of the Inquisition to voice unpopular ideas that had doubtlesslycirculated surreptiously for centuries.Indeed, prior to this seemingly sudden burst of mythicism appeared the voluminous writings published in

1795 by Professor Charles Franois Dupuis (1742-1809), as well as those of Count Volney (1757-1820)

and Rev. Dr. Robert Taylor (1784-1844), who spent three years in prison in the late 1820's and early 1830's

2009/10/03 The History of Mythicism

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for two convictions of "blasphemy," based on his popular lectures asserting that Christ was a myth.This punishment did not deter Taylor from publishing a number of books on the subject, including The

Syntagma (1828), The Diegesis (1829), and The Devil's Chaplain (1831).Yet, his ordeal was so horrifying that it haunted evolutionist Charles Darwin, who feared his own writings

would land him a similar fate. Following this brouhaha, in 1840 an individual wisely maintaining his

anonymity by calling himself merely a "German Jew" (J.C. Blumenfeld?) published a series of pamphlets in

a volume entitled, The Existence of Christ Disproved by Irresistible Evidence.

Strauss and Bauer were also succeeded by the publication in 1841 ofThe Christian Mythology Unveiled,

whose anonymous author later published under the name of Logan Mitchell. Mitchell was followed by lay

Egyptologist Gerald Massey (1828-1907), whose monumental works highlighted the comparisons between

Christianity and the Egyptian religion.Another earlier scholar who extensively dipped into mythicism was Sir Godfrey Higgins (1772-1833),

although he was not a mythicistper se but an evemeristwho believed that under all of the mythical

attributes of various godmen lay a "real person."This evemeristoreuhemeristperspective, named for the Greek philosopherEuhemerus (4th cent. BCE),

who posited that the gods of old were in reality kings and assorted other heroes who were deified, remains

one of the most commonly held opinions regarding Jesus Christ, along with the believing and mythicist

perspectives.

The evemeristposition has been popular enough for a definition to be widely available in dictionaries and

encyclopedias, while the mythicistposition does not likewise enjoy such a widespread recognition.

Considering that mythicism was the major thrust of many well respected scholars for centuries in Europe,

this oversight would seem to be both contrived and egregious. We hope that this article will help to

establish this previously marginalized and ignored position as a viable option worthy of respect and

scientific study.

Much of today's mythicism is traceable in reality to the French scholar Dupuis, although earlier inferencesmay be found, for example, in the comparisons of the Hebrew prophet Moses with the Greek god

Dionysus/Bacchus - also known as Mises.As I relate in The Gospel According to Acharya S (71-72):

In the writings of... French scholar Voltaire [1694-1778] we find the same basic information:

"The ancient poets have placed the birth of Bacchus in Egypt; he is exposed

on the Nile and it is from that event that he is named Mises by the first

Orpheus, which in Egyptian, s ignifies 'saved from the waters'... He is brought

up near a mountain of Arabia called Nisa, which is believed to be Mount Sinai.It is pretended that a goddess ordered him to go and destroy a barbarous

nation and that he passed through the Red Sea on foot, with a multitude of

men, women, and children. Another time the river Orontes suspended its

waters right and left to let him pass, and the Hydaspes did the same. He

commanded the sun to stand still; two luminous rays proceeded from his head.He made a fountain of wine spout up by striking the ground with his thyrsus,

and engraved his laws on two tables of marble. He wanted only to have afflicted

Egypt with ten plagues, to be the perfect copy of Moses."Voltaire likewise names others preceding him who had made this comparison

between Moses and Dionysus/Bacchus, such as the Dutch theologian Gerhard

Johann Voss/Vossius (1577-1649), whose massive study of mythology has

never been translated from the Latin, and Pierre Daniel Huet (1630-1721), the

Bishop of Avranches.




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Another commentator was French novelist Charles-Antoine-Guillaume Pigault-

Lebrun or "Le Brun" (1753-1835)...

In The Gospel, I further discuss the use of the word "Mises" or "Mise" in ancient Orphic hymn pertaining to

Dionysus/Bacchus, as well as relating the analysis of such by Bishop Dr. Simon/Symon Patrick in the

17th century.Unlike Voltaire, Dupuis, Volney or Taylor, however, these earlier individuals could not be deemed

"mythicists" in the sense that they believed the biblical figures to have been myths; rather, they were

attempting to trace the derivation of the Greek and Roman myths to the Hebrew religion, which they

believed to be "historical."

In Essays on the Context, Nature, and Influenceof Isaac Newton's Theology(26), James E. Force and

Richard H. Popkin trace this blossoming of mythicist thinking to the intellectual crisis brought about by

the discovery of,

"polygenetic evidence concerning the origin of the first men and the polytheistic evidence

concerning the nature of man's first religion."

Explaining further, Force and Popkin remark:

"The data indicating that the varieties of mankind could not be encompassed within Biblical

history, chronologically or geographically , and that the varieties of human belief could not be

squared with the Biblical account raised most serious problems about the then generally

accepted Jewish and Christian framework."

This "skeptical crisis" led to the publication of much scholarship addressing ancient mythology and

polytheistic religions, including the massive work by the liberal "Christian apologist" Vossius, published in

1641, which, again, sought to salvage the Judeo-Christian tradition by making the ancient Greek and

Roman myths, etc., derivative of the Bible's "history," rather than the Judeo-Christian "history" in fact

representing myths based on these other religions.

The goal of Vossius's tremendous effort may be, as described by Force and Popkin, to depict,

"various pagan mythologies as picturesque descriptions of historical events, of natural

phenomena, or of social conditions clothed in remnants of Judaism and Christianity."(29)

While this position constitutes the recognition of important comparisons between Judeo-Christianity and

the Pagan religions, mythicism turns this perspective on its ear and asserts that the former represents a

historicized and Judaized version of the latter.This form of true mythicism, in fact, followed on the heels of this Vossian scholarship, to the degree that itbecame an all-consuming occupation for a generation of scholars throughout Europe and in the U.S. The

mythicistposition today largely revolves around this latter premise, which was significantly developed also

in the multivolume work by Dupuis at the end of the 18th century.The French scholar's influence included many of the European elite, such as not only Volney but also

Napoleon Bonaparte, who, following his personal tutoring by Dupuis and Volney, is said to have remarked

that the question ofJesus's historicitywas a good one.Certainly after Dupuis mythicism was no longer confined to viewing only non-biblical characters as being

largely or wholly mythical, as in a German work from 1815, we find reference to "biblische Mythicismus" or

"biblical mythicism." (Jenaische, 383)

In addition, many centuries before any of this mythicistscholarship - which appeared in a variety of

languages and which remains widely unknown - we find in the earliest times of formalized Christianity

voices of dissent who doubted the historicity of various biblical tales, whether from a mythicistorevemerist

position.




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These voices include those known today only through their detractors, such as,

the Jew Trypho, assailed by Church father Justin Martyr (c. 150 AD/CE)

the Pagan philosopher Celsus (2nd cent.), harangued by Church father Origen (c. 185-

254)

Neither of these critics appeared to have blindly accepted the tales of the Christians as being any more

historical than those of the Pagans, and they were certainly not alone in this doubt over the centuries.Naturally, however, for the long stretches when the Catholic Church and its Inquisition reigned supreme,

this opinion was not readily articulated, and the rampant illiteracy of the time also did not help this thrust of

scholarship.The wholesale burning of hundreds of thousands of book has likewise left a huge void in our collective

literary past that largely prevents us from following the mythicisttrail from antiquity.

Individuals who continued the mythicist position into the modern era include:

John E. Remsburg (1848-1919)

Dr. William Benjamin Smith (1850-1934)

Dr. John M. Robertson (1856-1933)

Dr. Arthur Drews (1865-1935)

Edouard Dujardin (1861-1949)

Herbert Cutner (fl. 1950)

Dr. John Jackson (1907-1993)

Dr. Frank Zindler

Dr. Robert Price

Earl Doherty

I myself have three published books specifically about the mythical nature ofJesus Christ, while a fourthinvestigates the non-historical character of the gospels:

The Christ Conspiracy - The Greatest Story Ever Sold

Suns of God - Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled

Christ in Egypt - The Horus-Jesus Connection

Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of The Christ

The first three texts in this list delve specifically into comparative religion and mythology, demonstrating

that there is little original or "historical" about the Christmyth as a whole. The last inspects the canonical

gospels themselves to see whether they could possibly be considered reliable history. These various

approaches constitute the main planks ofmythicism in a nutshell.

A popular form ofmythicism may be seen also in the first part of internet movie "ZEITGEIST," which

purportedly has been viewed over 100 million times worldwide and for which my work served as a significant

source.Comedian and cultural commentator Bill Maher's "Religulous" also touches upon the subject.

For more, see the article "What is Mythicism?"

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Acharya S - The History of Mythicism