Thomas James Thorburn, The Mythical Interpretation of the
Gospels (1916)
Introduction
[xi] The subject of this treatise, "The Mythical Interpretation
of the Gospels," as it may be termed, is, it should be widely
known, nothing more nor less than the theory that our present four
canonical Gospels are in no sense whatever what we nowadays mean by
the term "historical documents." This is, in truth, a most serious
proposition to fling down before the world after close upon
nineteen centuries of Christian teaching which has been throughout
based upon the contrary affirmation. For, if any such theory be a
true one, and can be so established to the satisfaction not only of
scholars but to that of the world at large, then the documents
referred to must be in effect probably nothing more than a mere
congeries of ancient nature-myths, and their Central Figure also
can only be an embodiment of one or more [xii] of the various
cult-gods or nature-spirits (demons) with which the imagination of
the ancient races who formerly dwelt in the southern parts of
western Asia and eastern Europe, with Egypt and Arabia, peopled
those lands for many centuries before and subsequent to the
Christian era.
The subject, the present writer repeats, is one of the utmost
importance when viewed from the religious standpoint; and it has
hitherto, in his opinion, been somewhat too hastily set aside
without examination, and even quietly snubbed by critical as well
as by dogmatic theologians. It is not thus that any theory, however
wrongheaded it may be, is checked, nor by these means are genuine
seekers after truth ever convinced of its errors. On the contrary,
such theories and assertions should be challenged freely and
criticised, and their mistakes and assumptions frankly and
systematically pointed out.
After making the above prefatory statement, it may not be
inopportune or superfluous here to give, for the benefit of such
readers to whom it will be welcome, a brief sketch of the chief
mythical and non-historical explanations of the origin and nature
of Christianity which have been put forth from time to time during
the period covered by the past one hundred and twenty years.
Previously to the end of the eighteenth century the mythical
hypothesis of Christianity was, for all practical purposes, wholly
unknown. Going still further back, in the earlier centuries of the
Christian era, we find the various fathers of the church and other
contemporary writers, secular as well as ecclesiastical,
distinguishing most carefully and emphatically the historical
Gospel narratives, as they had received or examined them, and above
all the personality of Jesus Christ, from the nature myths and the
deities of various classes and grades, whether Olympic gods or
cultual nature-spirits (demons), which were held in awe or honour
by the peoples in whose [xiii] very midst Christianity had but
recently been introduced and established. This is, indeed, an
indisputable and accepted fact.
Much the same, too, may be said of the Jewish rabbins and others
who contributed to that body of authoritative Jewish teaching,
mingled with fact and fancy, which at an early period took shape
and became known as the two Talmuds. To the Christian fathers and
the Jewish rabbins alike both Jesus Christ and the records of his
life and teaching had an undoubted historical basis. Even his
miracles were in general admitted by the Jews, but were attributed
by them either to the agency of demons or to the magical arts which
he was supposed to have learned in, and brought from, Egypt.
Neither early Christian nor Jew of any period felt the smallest
doubt as to the historic character of either Christianity or its
Founder, whilst even the pagan Romans and Greeks always refer to
both in professedly historic terms. Indeed, the educated Gentiles
of all races included within the Roman Empire of that period
regarded the Christian system as wholly unlike, and in every
respect totally opposed to, the stories told of the cult-gods and
divine heroes of their myths. These three primary facts are beyond
dispute, and all three taken together form, in the opinion of the
present writer, a great and a priori obstacle to any modern scheme
that can be devised for the mythicising of the story of the
Christian religion or the person of its Founder.
With the period of the great French Revolution, at the end of
the eighteenth century, a great change was obviously impending. Its
advent was heralded by the publication, in 1794, of the notorious
work of Charles Franois Dupuis (1742-1809), entitled L'origine de
tons les Cultes, ou la Religion Universette, which had followed
close upon Volney's Les Ruines, ou Meditation sur les Revolutions
des Empires, a thinly veiled and dilettante [xiv] attack upon all
religion, and especially upon the historical character and
evidences of Christianity. In the work of Dupuis all primitive
religion is connected with a system of astral mythology, and the
origin of astral myths is traced to Upper Egypt. This book excited
some interest at the time of its publication, though it had only a
small sale; it is said, however, to have been largely instrumental
in bringing about the expedition organised by Napoleon Bonaparte
for the exploration, or exploitation, of that country. Regarding
this book, it will suffice here to say that a distinguished modern
astronomer1 has (March 20, 1914) informed the present writer that
Dupuis's "method led him to the conclusion that the constellations
must have been devised when the sun was in the constellation Aries
at the autumnal equinox, i.e., about 13000 B.C. The evidence
afforded by the unmapped space round the south pole proves that he
was ten or eleven thousand years wrong; in other words, nearly as
wrong as he could be"!2 Any system which is based upon such a huge
and primary error as this stands self-condemned at the outset.
["In the early 1800s Charles Dupuis argued that the rectangular
zodiac [of Dendera] originated around 13,000 BCE on the assumption
that the summer solstice then occurred in Capricorn (the Goat),
which stands at one of the four ends of the zodiac." "Jed Z.
Buchwald & Diane Greco Josefowicz, The Zodiac of Paris: How an
improbable controversy over an ancient Egyptian artifact provoked a
modern debate between religion and science, Princeton University
Press, 2010, p. 113. Another possibility is that instead of
Capricorn being the constellation in which the solstice sun rose,
it is the constellation in which it set; this would bring the date
forward by about 10,500 years (ibid., p. 208)."
http://davidpratt.info/pole5.htm#ne11 ]
The method of Dupuis soon fell into disrepute, but in spite of
this fact it has been revived in our own day in a somewhat modified
form by certain modern mythicists, notably A. Niemojewski (Bog
Jezus, 1909, and Gott Jezus im Lichte fremder und eigener
Forschungen, samt Darstellung der evangeliscken Astralstojfe,
Astralszenen, und Astralsysteme, 1910) and [Christian Paul]
Fuhrmann (Der Astralmythen von Christus, [1912]), who have used
this once much-vaunted "key" to the origin of religions in a manner
regardless not only of astronomical facts but even, at times, of
common sense.
With the downfall, in the early nineteenth century, of the
astral theory of Dupuis, which in speculative theology was largely
superseded by the unimaginative [xv] rationalism of Paulus
(1761-1851), the next generation were confronted with a revival of
the mythic theory in a new and improved form. David Friedrich
Strauss (1808-74) issued in 1835-6 his famous work, Das Leben Jesu,
based to a great extent upon the dialectical method of the then
fashionable Hegelian idealistic philosophy, in which, while he
acknowledged the actual existence of an historical Jesus who formed
the subject of the Gospel memoirs, Strauss maintained had had such
a complete halo of myth thrown around him that for all practical
purposes his life was entirely unknown to us. This work created a
great sensation almost throughout Europe, and a fourth edition of
it, translated by George Eliot, appeared in England in a popular
form under the English title of The Life of Jesus Critically
Examined (1846). Finally the work was entirely recast and rewritten
as Das Leben Jesu fr das Deutsche Volk bearbeitet (1865); in this
new form Strauss declared that he viewed the Gospel stories rather
as conscious inventions than as poetic myths, as he had maintained
in the original Das Leben Jesu.
This non-historical and later view of the Gospel records and the
person of Jesus was next taken up by Bruno Bauer (1809-82), a
critic belonging, like Strauss, in the earlier part of his career,
to the Hegelian "Left Wing," and who differed from Strauss chiefly
in denying that the Judaism antecedent to the rise of Christianity
harboured any potent Messianic expectations. The Messiah, Bauer
maintained (Kritik der Evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker,
1841), was the product of the Christian consciousness, and was
rather carried back from the Christian system into that of Judaism
than borrowed by the former from the latter source. As for the
Gospels, they were, he thought, abstract conceptions turned into
history, probably by one man the evangelist Mark.
Before, however, dismissing Jesus as a wholly fictitious
character in history, Bauer decided to make a further [xvi]
critical examination of the structure and contents of the Pauline
epistles (Kritik der Paulinischen Briefe, 1850-1). As an outcome of
these combined investigations he at last decided that an historical
Jesus never existed a result little, if at all, removed from the
final conclusions of Strauss.
With the death of Bauer the mythical hypothesis may be said to
have entered upon a new phase. In 1882 Rudolf Seydel published his
Das Evangelium vonn Jesu in seinen Verhaltnissen zur Buddha-Sage
und Buddha-Lehre, which was followed not long afterwards by his Die
Buddha-Legende und das Leben Jesu nach den Evangelien (26. ed.,
1897), and Buddha und Christus (1884), in which the avowed object
was to demonstrate that the life of Jesus, as related by the
compilers of the synoptic Gospels, was almost wholly derived from
similar anecdotes related of the Buddha in Buddhist legend and
myth. The reader of the present book will find the greater number
of these stories quoted and compared with their (so-called)
Christian "parallels" and "derivatives." This theory had been,
however, already effectively criticised by Bousset in the
Theologiscke Rundschau for February, 1889.
At the opening of the twentieth century another Oriental
"source" was proposed by Mr. J. M. Robertson (Christianity and
Mythology, 1900; Pagan Christs: Studies in Comparative Hierology,
1903, 2d ed., 1912). This author, whose excursions into the field
of theology all bear the marks of great haste and extreme
recklessness of statement, has been very largely dealt with in the
present volume. It will suffice, therefore, to add here that he
traces the portrait of Jesus, as drawn by the synoptic writers, to
a syncretism of mythological elements derived primarily, perhaps,
from early Hebraic tradition and myth combined (later on) with
various pagan myths, European as well as Asiatic, and especially
the stories told about the early life of Kisha and, in some cases,
[xvii] those recorded of the Buddha. Indeed, the idea contained in
the story of Jesus is, in the main, for him, very largely a
recension of the myth of an old Ephraimitic sun-god "Joshua,"
which, when historicised, gave rise to a legend regarding a
northern Israelite Messiah, Joshua ben Joseph.
This last-mentioned view of Christianity and its Founder, again,
does not differ very greatly from that of Professor W. B. Smith, of
Tulane University, New Orleans, U. S. A., who (Der Vorchristliche
Jesus, 1906) derives the "Christ-myth" from certain alleged "Jesus
cults," dating from" pre-Christian times. Jesus is, he thinks, the
name of an ancient Western Semitic cult-god, and he finds a
reference to the doctrines held by the devotees of this deity in
Acts 18:25. He also further maintains that "Nazareth" was not in
pre-Christian times the name of a village in Galilee (since no such
village then existed), but is a corruption of Nazaraios (), meaning
"guardian" or "saviour" a word identical in its signification with
"Jesus," the name of this ancient cult-god. "Christ," also, in like
manner has reference to the same deity, for [Christos] is equatable
with [Chrstos], found in the LXX version of Psalm 34: 8.
The above views Professor Smith subsequently developed more
fully in a later work (Ecce Deus, 1912), in which he maintains,
contrary to the commonly accepted view, that Jesus is presented by
the evangelist Mark wholly as a god (i.e., a cult-deity) in an
anthropomorphic guise.
We may, perhaps, here also briefly note another variant form of
the mythical theory which has been proposed by the German
Assyriologist, P. Jensen.
Doctor Jensen states (Das Gilgamesch-epos in der Weltliteratur,
1906; Moses, Jesus, Paulus: drei Varianten des Babylonischen
Gottmenschen Gilgamesch, 1909; Hat der Jesus der Evangelien
wirklich gelebt? 1910) that Jesus may [xviii] be identified with
not merely one but several of the mythical heroes in the Babylonian
Gilgamesh epic, and a series of so-called parallels found in that
work and the Gospels are set forth in his Moses, Jesus, Paulus
[1909], as establishing the truth of his thesis. His theory,
however, has been rejected by the almost unanimous consent of
scholars, and one American theologian has even gone so far as to
pronounce the whole hypothesis "elaborate bosh."
But the hypothesis of the mythical origin and nature of
Christianity and the unhistorical character of the Gospel
narratives reaches its culminating point in two recent works of
Professor Drews, of Karlsruhe, who, abandoning for a time the
exposition of philosophy, appears as the strenuous advocate of a
mythical Christianity (Die Christusmythe, 1910, English translation
The Christ Myth; and The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus?
1912). His method and conclusions may be briefly summarised as
follows: From Robertson and W. B. Smith he borrows the general
mythical view of the Gospel narratives, and in particular the
identification of Jesus with an ancient Hebrew cult-deity, Joshua,
and an old Greek divine healer hero, Jason equating Jason = Joshua
= Jesus (Joshua forming the intermediate link) as all representing
the sun.
Further, from Professor W. B. Smith he adopts the theory that
the members of these cults had been termed "Nazoraeans"
(Nazaraioi). Christianity, he maintains, is primarily and mainly a
syncretism of these elements together with (orthodox) Jewish
Messianism plus the pagan (Greco-Roman, etc.) idea of a
"redeemer-god," who annually "dies" and "rises," and thereby
promotes the welfare of mankind. This synthesis, he thinks, was
effected in the mind of St. Paul, who "knew no historical Jesus"
(II Cor. 5 : 16). This explains, he surmises, the great change
which took place in the views and actions [xix] of St. Paul. At
first, he says, Paul, as a legalist, violently opposed the gospel
because the law pronounced cursed every one who had been "hanged
upon a tree." But suddenly he became "enlightened," and a
reconciliation became possible. He found that he could combine the
idea of the expected and orthodox Jewish Messiah of the first
century with the older and self-sacrificing god of the ethnic
nature-cults, which latter were closely akin to the pre-Christian
Joshua or Jesus cults. "This," concludes Professor Drews, "was the
moment of Christianity's birth as a religion of Paul."1To sum up:
Professor Drews has himself stated his position in the following
terms: The Gospels do not contain the history of an actual man, but
only the myth of the god-man Jesus clothed in an historical dress.
Further, such important, and for religious purposes significant,
events in the Gospels as the Baptism, the Lord's Supper, the
Crucifixion, and the Resurrection of Jesus are all borrowed by St.
Paul from the cult-worship of the mythical Jesus, being embodied in
ancient and pre-Christian systems of religious ritual.
Yet further: The "historical Jesus" of modern critical theology
has now become so vague and doubtful a figure in both religion and
history that he can no longer be regarded as the absolutely
indispensable condition of salvation. Doctor Drews likewise
believes that his own works are written in the true interests of
religion, for which ideas alone not personalities have value, and,
by reason of his convictions, that the forms of Christianity which
have hitherto prevailed are no longer sufficient for modern needs.
Not the historical Jesus, he urges, but Christ as an idea - as an
idea of the divine humanity - must henceforth be the ground of
religion. And he adds that "when we can and will no longer believe
on accidental [!] [xx] personalities, we can and must believe on
ideas."1It is not our purpose here to deal with this complex mass
of crude theories, suppositions, and assumptions, but we may,
perhaps, in this place appropriately quote the apposite remarks
thereupon of Doctor A. Schweitzer (Paul and His Interpreters, pp.
193 and 239): "In particular, these [mythical] works aim at getting
hold of the idea of a Greek redeemer-god who might serve as an
analogue to Jesus Christ. No figure of this designation occurs in
any myth or in any mystery religion; it is created by a process of
generalisation, abstraction, and reconstruction."
Again: "These writers make a rather extravagant use of the
privilege of standing outside the ranks of scientific theology.
Their imagination leaps with playful elegance over obstacles of
fact, and enables them to discover everywhere the pre-Christian
Jesus whom their souls desire, even in places where an ordinary
intelligence can find no trace of it."2This is true; and it is also
true that any discussion of a general nature which may be carried
on with reference to these "generalisations, abstractions, and
reconstructions" is seldom a fruitful one. Let us, therefore, put
the results of the above mental operations to a more concrete test,
viz., that of an actual comparative study in detail. In other
words, let us analyse and compare carefully the stories told by the
evangelists with the mythic episodes from which the former are said
to be derived, or which they are confidently stated to resemble. If
they fail in this final and supreme test, then we may safely
dismiss the whole theory of the mythical interpretation of the
Gospels, with its "generalisations, abstractions, [xxi] and
reconstructions," as an interesting but empty dream. This is,
indeed, the practical and only true method of testing all theories
in almost every department of knowledge, and it is the one which
the present writer has endeavoured to set before his readers in the
following pages.xviii.n1 An amended version of the second part of
The Christ Myth.
xix.n1 We have here an example of the application of the three
"moments" of the Hegelian dialectic thesis, antithesis, synthesis ;
see Hegel's Logic.
xx.n1 See the Berliner Religionsgesprach, 1910, pp. 94 f.; and
cf. Die Christusmythe, p. xi.
xx.n2 See also Doctor F. C. Conybeare, The Historical Christ, p.
29.
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