JESUS CHRIST AND HIS BEING Did He Even Exist: Part Three (A)

 

By Noel Coypel - http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Noel-Coypel/The-Resurrection-Of-Christ,-1700.html, Public Domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28274624

 External Evidence:

The Historical Account 

So, for the record, let me just state again my purpose in addressing the narrative of the gospel accounts, particularly the gospel of Mark, in establishing the historicity of Jesus in parts one and two. The most voluminous work we have for the existence of Jesus and all that He said and did has for its locus the four gospels. As such it was necessary for me to lay the groundwork there, in an effort to show the veracity and the validity of those accounts. In establishing their veracity, I demonstrated their accuracy in how claims made correspond with what is actually true or factual. In establishing their validity, I have demonstrated that the manuscript evidence is well-grounded and sound. It is so sound in fact that what evidence I have provided to this point should be more than adequate to establish the truth of the claim, Jesus is. For certain skeptics however it is not, in fact it is likely that no amount of evidence provided will convince them, let’s hope I’m wrong about that. Let’s hope that some are open enough to pursue the evidence, wherever it leads. Let’s get started.  

     Among the mass of religious practices which exist globally, Christianity stands out as arguably the most well attested historically, with the establishment as Jesus of Nazareth as an actual historical figure. The view that Jesus Christ never even existed has absolutely no historical value in support of it whatsoever. Such a belief is a late development. From the 1^st century up to the 18^th century the existence of Jesus of Nazareth had never been brought into question. However, around the conclusion of the 18^th century, through the publication of books and essays of the last two hundred years, His existence has been challenged. This being the case, contemporary New Testament scholars have typically viewed their arguments as so weak or bizarre that they relegate them to footnotes, or often ignore them completely.[1]

1.      Mistaken Identity

     Some have argued that the accounts of Jesus are unoriginal and were actually adopted from pagan mythology and adapted to fit the cultural milieu of the region. Are they correct? One of the fallacies regarding parallels between pagan deities and Jesus Christ is that the pagan religions are often lumped together as though they were one religion—and one that is virtually identical to Christianity in many of its most important features. This is the composite fallacy. By combining features from various mystery religions, a unified picture emerges that shows strong parallels with the gospel. The only problem is, this unified religion is artificial, a fabrication of the modern writer’s imagination.[2] The emperor [Septimius Severus] felt the need for religious harmony within his territories, and thus settled on a policy of promoting syncretism. He proposed a plan to bring all his subjects together under the worship of Sol Invictus (the “Unconquered Sun”) – and to subsume under that worship all the various religions and philosophies then current. All gods were to be accepted, as long as one acknowledged the Sun that reigned above all.[3] Of course the Jews and the Christians refused to submit to such a ruling defying the practice of syncretism. As a result, Severus instituted an ordinance which stipulated that any converts to Judaism or Christianity should be put to death. It was this practice of syncretism which historians now refer to as “the mystery religions”. Given the syncretism of all these religions, soon they were so intermingled that today it is exceedingly difficult for historians to determine which doctrine or practice arose in which context. Since the deities of the mysteries were not exclusivistic, like the God of the Jews and Christians, many people who were initiated into various of these cults borrowed elements from one to the other.[4] Because of this Christians were viewed as seditious, obstinate, and fanatical.

     One account often cited, that is believed to parallel the gospel accounts of the life of Jesus, is one that comes out of ancient Egyptian mythology. The Egyptian Book of the Dead records an account of the god Horus, the following is a summary of that account:

He had a virgin mother.

He was baptized in a river by Anup the baptizer.

He healed the sick

He healed the blind.

He was crucified.

He was resurrected.   

     But are accounts between Jesus and Horus really that similar? Well, if you relayed this information to an Egyptian, the people there would think you had lost your mind. The claim for this “similarity”, so-called, has no basis in history. Firstly, there were multiple books of the dead, so these “parallels” are nothing more than piecemeal. Furthermore, only after the rise of Christianity did mystery religions begin to look suspiciously like the Christian faith. Once Christianity became known, many of the mystery cults consciously adopted Christian ideas so that their deities would be perceived to be on par with Jesus. The shape of the mystery religions prior to the rise of Christianity is vague, ambiguous, and localized. Only by a huge stretch of the imagination, and by playing fast and loose with the historical data, can one see them as having genuine conceptual parallels to the Christian faith of the first century.[5]

     Horus may have had the form of a man, but he had the head of a falcon. As to his virgin birth, his mother Isis took the genitals of his father’s dismembered body, Osiris, to impregnate herself. Very different from the generating power of the Holy Spirit who overshadowed or enveloped Mary. “And the angel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.’” (Luke 1:35a, ESV, Emphasis added)[6] The Greek term καί (kai) translated “and” is a copulative conjunction. Such a conjunction exists to indicate that the following clause conveys additional information or details pertinent to the message being conveyed, “the Holy Spirit will come upon you.” The conjunction καί (kai) appears a second time in between the two declarative clauses. Here also it acts as copulative conjunction, “the power of the Most High will overshadow you”, providing additional, pertinent information to the hearer. The first clause is a Greek noun πνεῦμα (pneuma) meaning, current of air, from the root πνέω (pneō) meaning to breath hard and is translated as “Spirit”.  The Greek adjective ἅγιος (hagios) is comparable to ἁγνός (hagnos) meaning properly clean or pure and morally blameless and translated as “Holy”. Therefore, the properly pure and morally blameless Spirit moved as a current of air upon Mary.

As to the baptism of Horus, this is nothing more than a fabrication, a ruse. It’s based on an Egyptian depiction of Horus receiving a water cleansing at the time of his coronation. It is not “a baptism of repentance”. Regarding his healing power, there exists no ancient Egyptian documents that record Horus as going around and healing people he came in contact with. Furthermore, certain Egyptian hieroglyphs depict Horus with his arms spread out, but the depiction is not one of crucifixion. Crucifixion is a Roman practice; Egyptians did not engage in this form of capital punishment. Moreover, while depictions of Horus dying and coming back to life do exist, a resuscitation is far different than a resurrection, especially after three days of being wrapped and sealed in a tomb. That would be on par with the truly miraculous.[7]

Even Bible skeptic Bart Ehrman has noted,

The authors provided no evidence for their claims concerning the standard mythology of the godmen. They cite no sources from the ancient world that can be checked. It is not that they have provided an alternative interpretation of the available evidence. They have not even cited the available evidence. And for good reason. No such evidence exists.[8]

      In 1999 authors Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy published a book entitled, The Jesus Mystery: Was the “Original Jesus” a Pagan God? In it they argue that the Jesus of the Bible is a myth, and the story of his life equates to nothing more than a syncretic fabrication riding on the coat tails of certain Greco-Roman deities like Dionysus and Mithras. However, the work is not taken seriously by most scholars of Church, Christian or New Testament history. When N.T. Wright was asked if he would be willing to debate Freke and Gandy on the substance of their book he retorted that it would be like a asking a professional astronomer to debate the author of a book claiming the moon was made of cheese. Bart Ehrman argued that those who take up this gauntlet of attempting to lump in Christianity with the mystery religions are seldom scholarly and their works even less so. He argued that the claims made in their book are simply fabrications, misinterpretations, or bald face assertions that have no historical evidence to support them.

Professor of Philosophy Ronald Nash has stated,

We find that there was no pre-Christian doctrine of rebirth for the Christians to borrow.… The claim that pre-Christian mysteries regarded their initiation rites as a kind of rebirth is unsupported by any evidence contemporary with such alleged practices. Instead, a view found in much later texts is read back into earlier rites, which are then interpreted quite speculatively as dramatic portrayals of the initiate’s “new birth.” The belief that pre-Christian mysteries used rebirth as a technical term is unsupported by even one single text.[9]

     Moreover, Samuel G. F. Brandon, professor of Comparative Religion at the University of Manchester said with regard to the parallels between the Egyptian Osiris cult and Jesus Christ,

Any theory of borrowing on the part of Christianity from the older faith is not to be entertained, for not only can it not be substantiated on the extant evidence, but it is also intrinsically most improbable.[10]

     So, on the one side we have Bible skeptics arguing that much of the material in the gospel accounts were contrived and never actually occurred. So, controversy stories between Jesus and the pharisees were concocted by the early church to address certain problem areas and then inserted back into the narratives pertaining to Jesus of Nazareth. Then, on the other side, we have skeptics downplaying miraculous accounts of Jesus as merely story telling based on myths circulating prior to and following His arrival on the scene via these suspect mystery religions and being inserted into the gospel accounts and applied to Him in order to prop up this new religion. It seems to me that the skeptics are doing a lot more colluding than they accuse the church or the gospel writers of doing. When you have to go to those kinds of extremes, where you need to go way left or way right of the accounts as we have them, perhaps the accounts as they stand are accurate. The vast amounts of manuscript evidence and their historic proximity to the events they record certainly speak to the accuracy of the accounts as we have them. Maybe Jesus really did exist. Maybe He really was who He said He was or is. Maybe the gospel writers were correct in their assertions. Maybe they really are reliable accounts, and we can trust their testimony.

*In Part Three (B) I will address the “Semitic (Hebraic) Sources” for the existence of Christ.

 

 

 

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[1] Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Grand Rapids MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2000), 6. Quoting Werner G. Kummel, The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of Its Problems (Nashville: Abingdon, 1972), 447.

[2] J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus: How Contemporary Skeptics Miss the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2006), 223.

[3] Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity Vol. I The Early Church to The Dawn of The Reformation (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publications, 2010), 97.

[4] Ibid., 21.

[5] J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus: How Contemporary Skeptics Miss the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2006) 234

[6] Unless otherwise indicated, all scriptural quotes are from The Holy Bible. English Standard Version, with Strong’s Numbers (Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2008).

[7] Rice Brooks, Man Myth Messiah (Nashville TN: W Publishing Group, 2016) 120-22

[8] Ibid., 131. Quoting Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2013). 26.

[9] J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus: How Contemporary Skeptics Miss the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2006), 224.

[10] Ibid., 228.