Home  ›  Thesis Mythiste

Thesis Mythiste

According to the thesis mythiste, the character of Jesus of Nazareth had no historical existence.

From the eighteenth century and the development of historical-critical methods in studying the texts of New Testament , the actual existence of Jesus of Nazareth has been questioned, and theses (called mythistes theses) have been advanced to prove the mythical or mythological figure of Jesus, in this context and explain the emergence of Christianity.

According to some of these ideas, Jesus is a mythical character, raised one-dimensional archetype , and that would have the same (in) consistency of the characters described for example in The Golden Bough by James George Frazer. The arguments most frequently compare him to Mithras , Dionysus , Sol Invictus , or Aesculapius.

According to other theories, personality is the result of a theological development, taking a historical dimension progressively from the second century AD. In this context, Jesus becomes a conceptual figure , exploited by the early Christians.

These arguments are developed along two axes argumentation:

  • one hand, no supporting evidence and no archaeological evidence attests the existence of Jesus of Nazareth : Christian texts are not reliable, and non-Christian texts are of doubtful authenticity or may be an echo of Christian discourse;
  • on the other hand, evidence suggests that it is a character mythical or fictional.

The thesis of the lack of historical Jesus, which appeared in the late eighteenth century , remained marginal in the academic historical research , completely rejected by academic scholars in the early Christianity since the late 1930s . It was popularized in the media in the early 2000s, the United States by Earl Doherty , and in France by Michel Onfray which resumed theses Couchoud Paul-Louis and Prosper Alfaric.

Summary

/ / Status of current academic research

The quest for the historical Jesus designate successive steps of historiographical study of the life of Jesus of Nazareth as a historical figure.

Sources on Jesus of Nazareth

P52 papyrus containing a fragment of the Gospel of John, and dated by paleography of the second century (usually in the first half), is considered the oldest manuscript containing an extract of the New Testament. P52 papyrus containing a fragment of the Gospel of John, and dated by paleography of the second century (usually in the first half), is considered the oldest manuscript containing an extract of the New Testament.
The P52 papyrus containing a fragment of the Gospel of John , and dated by paleography of the second century (usually in the first half), is considered the oldest manuscript containing an extract from the New Testament.

Jesus wrote nothing, and although the Christian tradition has attributed some texts direct witnesses of his life (the Gospels of Mark and John and the Epistles of Peter among the canonical texts, many texts and apocryphal ), studies Critics have shown that these Pseudepigrapha or late assignments. The first sources in the second half of the first century Christian texts are the New Testament : The Epistles of Paul of Tarsus (seven out of fourteen of the New Testament are now considered actually written by Paul ) and canonical gospels (which themselves are the authors under whose name the Christian tradition has placed them).

There are direct references to Jesus in two passages of the Jewish Antiquities (c. 95) the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus , whose famous Testimonium Flavianum. The Testimonium Flavianum has long been questioned, particularly because it asserts that Jesus Christ is what is surprising from a Jewish Pharisee , and there is no consensus among experts between authenticity, interpolation Total Christian copyists or only partial interpolation . The second passage that talks about running in 62 of Jacques , "the brother of Jesus called Messiah " (Jacques was the principal leader of the first community of disciples in Jerusalem ) , has also been challenged , but today it is generally regarded as authentic by scholars of Flavius Josephus .

Apart from Flavius Josephus, no other non-Christian author of the first century speaks of Jesus or the Roman Seneca , Pliny the Elder and Quintilian nor Greek Plutarch , nor the Jew Philo of Alexandria. This is not surprising, the crucifixion of a Jewish preacher who gathered a few disciples was not a significant event on the scale of the Roman Empire .

It was not until the turn of the first and second centuries to see in the works of Latin authors Tacitus , Pliny the Younger and Suetonius mentions the first Christian communities, which are beginning to take at least locally significant enough that the administration Roman cares. The passage of the Annals of Tacitus XV.44 on the burning of Rome, very unfavorable to the Christians and present in all manuscripts (the oldest of which are the eleventh century ) is now considered authentic cons by historians . But there is no evidence that the information provided by Tacitus on "Christ condemned by Pilate under Tiberius 'come from sources independent of the Christians of the early first century .

The existence of Jesus

Quod Est Veritas? What is truth? ", Painting by Nikolay Gay.

The question of sources has not led historians to question the existence of Jesus. Since 1933, Professor of History of Christianity at the Sorbonne Charles Guignebert appropriate "confess therefore that all the alleged evidence Gentiles and Jews do not give us any useful information on the life of Jesus, they do not even give us the certainty he lived " . But he concluded: "The efforts are often learned and ingenious mythologists have won their theses not independent and disinterested scholars that nothing would bow to a well established and whose membership would have made sense . The enthusiasm does not compensate for this incompetent failure . "

In the academic world, the question of the historical existence of Jesus is now closed (apart from Jesus Project, started in late 2008 - see below). For researchers and specialists, mythistes theses are rejected by a set of elements and arguments both external and internal to the New Testament:

  • The earliest Christian writings are the letters of Paul of Tarsus , who met the chief disciples of Jesus, the Jacques just his brother and head of the Judaeo-Christian community in Jerusalem, Peter and John , and wrote in the 50s. If these letters provide few details about the life of Jesus (Paul seeks mainly to prove that he is the messiah ( Christ , deny that other Jews), there is presented as a real person) .
  • The canonical Gospels , whose actual dates are between 65 and 95, are major sources about Jesus (the intake of some apocryphal gospels like the Gospel of Thomas is now discussed). They contain many contradictions, inconsistencies and improbabilities and is addressing the concerns of theological texts of the Christian communities in which they were composed, based on oral traditions or written now lost (as the hypothetical source Q ). If he can not trace a precise biography of Jesus, the work of historians is to distinguish the original words and deeds of Jesus of what is literary and theological elaborations after his death, and that on the basis of criteria of historicity most possible targets (eg the criterion of dissimilarity, that can be attributed to Jesus' words and actions which are neither the Judaism contemporary with Jesus, nor the early Christian communities ). Geoltrain Pierre , founder of the Chair of the origins of Christianity Section of Religious Sciences of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes summarizes things:
"No one would dare, nowadays, to write a life of Jesus as those who were born in the nineteenth century. Imagination then made up for the silence of the sources, we used a psychology of Jesus which was mostly that of the author. The work of Albert Schweitzer on the history of the lives of Jesus put an end to this kind of project. As the company reversed, as to the mythologies that theses, at the difficulties encountered by the historian , thought to solve all in explaining the Gospels as a solar myth or sacred drama purely symbolic, it does not stand up to the analysis. The study of the Gospels can say not only that Jesus existed, but even more .. "
  • Even the most skeptical historians on the stories of the Gospels consider the incredible invention of the crucifixion by Christians. Guignebert Charles notes: "I am making all reservations on the details of the Gospel story, I do not think it possible to doubt the historicity of the crucifixion " . For Alfred Loisy "Nothing in the Gospels has been consistency, if not the crucifixion of Jesus by Pontius Pilate to sentence because of agitation messianic" . In the second century , within some Christian communities, this crucifixion came into conflict with the progressive deification Jesus : the Docetists developed a design Christological incarnation in which the crucifixion and therefore were only illusions. For Maurice Goguel , "If Docetists had the slightest reason to believe that Christ was a perfect fit without historical reality, they would not have spent considerable ingenuity to give his story an interpretation that the dgaget completely too immediate contact with humanity. " .
  • From the earliest days of Christianity it was virulently attacked by the other streams of Judaism in Palestine, and the pagans when it began to spread in the Greco-Roman. It is unlikely that among these attacks, none has focused on the existence of Jesus in the decades after his execution as presented by Christians. There is no trace of this argument in the texts of the opponents of Christianity that we keep both pagan side, that the Jewish side , . Among pagans available texts Lucian and Celsus about 170, and Porphyry in the third century. Among the Jews of antiquity, in addition Flavius Josephus , Jesus is mentioned in the literature Rabbinical : "it is absent from the Mishna and the Tosefta which compilations are from the late second century and the early third century, and only found in the later works of the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud " . The most famous passage, that of the Babylonian Talmud (TbSanhedrin 43a), dates back perhaps to the second century , and appears as a Baraita , that is to say, an oral tradition embodied in a written compilation. These texts, which are essentially controversial, do not constitute reliable sources to reconstruct the historical Jesus, nor even according to historian Charles Guignebert to "prove its existence" . But the historian RT France believes that "no later than early in the second century, Jesus was known and hated as a miracle worker and preacher who had collected many followers and was executed just as" someone who Israel turned away from his path. " So it is unflattering, it is so deformed, evidence of the impact of miracles and teaching of Jesus. The conclusion that it relies solely on the claims of Christians, and that "the Jews of the second century adopted without calling into question the assumption that the Christian Jesus really existed is only dictated by a dogmatic skepticism. It is unlikely that these controversies, often taking over "elements" different from what Christians believed, have appeared in less than a century about a nonexistent figure " ..

The historian Henri Marrou Irenaeus mythiste considers the thesis as an example of supercritical method .

The American Robert M. Price , professor of theology and biblical studies at the Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary and editor of Online Journal of Higher Criticism think that if we strictly applied the various methods of historical-critical as are designed and practiced today, would lead to a complete agnosticism as regards the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth .

Didier Fougeras, coordinator of the New International Version Bible , argues that the question of the historical existence of Jesus should be reconsidered in the light of current knowledge and methodologies

The Jesus Project

Following the Jesus Seminar whose controversial work had concluded that only 18% vote of the words of Jesus in the Gospels could be attributed to the historical Jesus, the RESC (Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion), University of California CFI (Center for Inquiry) from New York, had launched a new research seminar called "The Jesus Project" , edited by R. Joseph Hoffmann , whose objective was to review the question of the historicity of Jesus. Some of the main participants of Jesus Seminar have declined the invitation as John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg , who said: "I find the project objective boring and tedious. We might as well have a debate about the historical existence of Julius Caesar " , and other specialists in biblical studies as of April Conick .

The first seminar of the Jesus Project , provided over five years, was held from 5 to 7 December 2008. It includes fifteen specialists from various disciplines including James Tabor, Robert Eisenman , Bruce Chilton and Robert M. Price .

In June 2009 the project was temporarily suspended, and one of its three organizers, Hoffmann has withdrawn .

Theses mythistes

According to historian Charles Guignebert in 1933: "The radical critique of traditional evidence, concerning the existence of Jesus, based on two main assertions renewed by Bruno Bauer (1809-1882): 1) contemporary literature, Jewish or pagan , says nothing of Jesus. 2) The New Testament literature, with its inconsistencies and contradictions, its obvious interpolations, its enormous improbabilities, may be considered a reliable historical source . "

The eighteenth century

In line with the work of Richard Simon and Jean Astruc appearance of the first questions about the paradoxes and inconsistencies of the Biblical texts , and questioning the historical reliability of the gospels. Famous examples are found in the History of the establishment of Christianity and in the articles "Christianity" of the Philosophical Dictionary of Voltaire. It says he "saw some followers of Bolingbroke , smartest qu'instruits, who denied the existence of Jesus " , but for him, inconsistencies and improbabilities in the Gospels can not reasonably doubt its existence.

Early work historico-critical about Jesus (the quest for the historical Jesus ) began in 1774 with the publication of the work of Reimarus.

The first real mythistes in the last decade of the eighteenth century , Constantin-Franois Volney are (1757-1820) and Charles-Franois Dupuis (1742-1809), two radical thinkers of the Enlightenment , in the tradition of materialism and sensuality :

  • Constantin-Franois Volney , The Ruins, or Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires (Paris: Desenne, 1791), translated into English in 1796: The Ruins, Gold Survey of the Revolutions of Empires (New York: Davis, 1796). According to him, Jesus is a myth derived from solar syncretism between the Persian and Babylonian mythology.
  • Charles Francois Dupuis , Origin of all religions (Paris: Agasse, 1794); recent English translation, The Origin of All Religious Worship (New York: Garland, 1984) , included in a Compendium of the origin of all cults, Paris, 1798. It combines astronomy and mythology and made their gods and legends of the allegories of the stars and their movements. So Jesus is the symbol of the sun and the twelve apostles of the zodiac signs.

A parodic response to the argument mythiste Dupuis was given in 1827 by Jean-Baptiste Peres , in his pamphlet Like what Napoleon never existed .

The first quest for the historical Jesus and the thesis mythiste

This is the nineteenth century , during what was called the first quest of the historical Jesus , led mainly by liberal theologians in Germany, that have developed the first theories mythistes. From 1840 , Bruno Bauer can be considered the first mythiste, in the tradition of the mythological school of David Strauss.

The current preferred method is the mythiste in comparative mythology. This one appears particularly in the work of Max Mller (1823-1900), for which the origin of religion is to be found in the myths of birth, death and rebirth of the Sun . These ideas will be taken including James Frazer explains the origin of the mythical beliefs of humanity by the idea of a "sacrificial king" associated with the sun as a god dying and rebirth, and regeneration of the Earth spring. Frazer's hypothesis assumes "the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth as a great religious figure and moral and that the doubts raised "does not deserve serious attention" , the testimony of the Gospels "appears ample the eyes of researchers without prejudice " and only the details of life and death of Jesus and still remain shrouded in the mists of uncertainty "

It is observed that such story takes, apparently, the elements present in this or that myth and it is found at syncretism , borrowing the identity of one or the other myth in the draft to fill missing documentation. It draws the consequence that if Jesus has, in the writings canonical who speak of a virgin birth , a divine design (like Plato or Alexander in their hagiographies respectively) and miracles , then Jesus is no more of historical existence that Athena or Mithras.

Fail to demonstrate this reasoning contact between two bodies of stories, work philological on texts, the hermeneutical it induces. This observation has nothing to do with faith, describing what the state of the art at the time grew mythistes theses. It was not until the school's history forms for this work to be accomplished. Alfred Loisy , with these arguments, opposes mythisme .

In the Anglo-Saxon

German Bruno Bauer and English Edwin Johnson are the two main representatives of the current academic mythiste in Anglo-Saxon.

Bruno Bauer
Bruno Bauer

Philosopher Hegel and historian Bruno Bauer (1809, 1882) is in line with the mythological school of David Strauss that he criticizes in his works: Kritik der Geschichte des Evangelischen Johannes (1840) on the Gospel of John , and Kritik der Geschichte der Evangelischen Synoptik (1841) on the Synoptics.

According to Bauer, the real founder of Christianity is Jewish Philo of Alexandria , which adapts to the world Jewish ideas and philosophy Hellenistic.

Bauer's thesis has little impact in academia at the time, even if it is leased to his death by the philosopher and social theorist Friedrich Engels . More recently, the French philosopher and exegete a href = "Claude_Tresmontant" alt = "Claude Tresmontant"> Claude Tresmontant argue that Philo of Alexandria would have influenced the early Christian communities.

The Dutch radical critique

In the late nineteenth century a number of Protestant theologians oppose the work of the Germans of the Tuebingen school , and call into question the authenticity of the letters of Paul. They form the movement of the Dutch radical critic . The main toilets are van Manen, AD Loman, Gerardus Johannes Petrus Josephus Bolland and GA van den Bergh van Eysinga. Among them Loman and Bolland also will question the historical existence of Jesus.

Gerardus Bolland continues the work of Bauer and considers that the founder of Christianity is the Emperor Titus Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus. Unlike Bauer puts the Gospel of Mark in the first, it restores the priority of the Gospel of Matthew that represents a gospel judeochristianisation Gnostic , as the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians speak with Clement of Alexandria and Hippolytus Rome. The focus of the gospel is, in his view, the parable of the sower , throwing his seed on varied terrain with equally varied results. He likens this seed discourse stoic.

Abraham Dirk Loman , a lecturer from 1856 to 1893 at the Lutheran Seminary of Amsterdam and the University of Amsterdam. For Loman, episodes from the life of Jesus, as the Sermon on the Mount, are fictions written after the fact to justify liberal tendencies that would have emerged in the Judaism of the first century.

Edwin Johnson

Edwin Johnson (1842, 1901), is the author of Antiqua Mater: A Study of Christian Origins (1887). He believes that Christianity emerged from a combination of liberal trends of first century Judaism and Gnosticism. This book went through a bad review from WC Von Mannen, yet one of the founders of RadikalKritique .

Albert Kalthoff

For the German philosopher and theologian Albert Kalthoff (1850, 1906) , Christianity is a social phenomenon emerged when contact oppressed proletarian masses in the Roman Empire and Jewish messianic aspirations. The story of Jesus is that the idea of Christ in Christian communities.

Arthur Drews
Arthur Drews

Arthur Drews (1865, 1935) was a German philosopher.

It draws on the works of William Benjamin Smith, a professor of mathematics at New Orleans author of a triple observation: he notes that nothing in the letters of Paul and the early Christian apologists that little allusion to the public activity of Jesus, it seems inconceivable that a single person has inspired a religious movement as important as Christianity, and one person has been deified as easily and quickly. Smith therefore supports the idea of a "Jesus" pre-Christian, who was the god of the Gnostics Naassen (quoted in pseudo Philosophoumena Hippolytus of Rome ) and the Jewish sect of Nazarene (quoted by Epiphanius, the name of Nazarenes do coming from outside the village of Nazareth whose existence at the time would be very doubtful). He gives several quotes to support his thesis. The "God of the Hebrews, Jesus' magical Papyrus of Paris (but actually this manuscript dates only from the fourth century) . The case of Apollos and the disciples of John the Baptist at Ephesus in Acts of the Apostles who know "things about Jesus" , before their meeting with Paul. Elymas magicians, called Bar-Jesus (Acts xiii, 6-12) and Simon (Acts viii, 9-13) were followers of the pre-Christian Jesus.

He published in 1909 and Christusmythe Die Die Christusmythe. Zweiter Teil. Die fr die Zeugnis Geschichtlichkeit Jesu. Eine Antwort an die mit besonderer Bercksichtigung der Schriftgelehrten theologischen Method. In 1911. According to him, Jesus is the product of myths and apocalyptic ideas of his time in the fusion of Gnostic ideas and Hellenistic philosophy. Albert Schweitzer devotes an entire chapter to his theory.

John M. Robertson

Journalist free-thinker John M. Robertson (1856-1933) is the author of Christianity and Mythology (London, 1900), Short History of Christianity (London, 1902), Pagan Christs, Studies in Comparative Theology (London, 1902) Jesus and The Problem - Restatement of the Myth Theory (London, 1917). He said the figure of Jesus grew out of Jewish worship of Joshua , he identifies a solar deity. Apollonius of Tyana was the only messianic figure whose character is truly historic admission by the author.

France

In France this movement was dominated by the work of Paul-Louis Couch , a philosopher, and Japanese-Hellenist, and Prosper Alfaric .

Salomon Reinach

Salomon Reinach (1858, 1932), archaeologist specialist in the history of religion published in 1909 Orpheus .

It does not directly support the thesis of non-historicity, but the little documentary value of the Gospels . In a way, it is good for understanding docete character based on the epistles of Paul , whose it fails to accept that all are inauthentic. It focuses on three elements which seem to capital (About the curiosity of Tiberius; Bossuet and the argument of the prophecies, Simon of Cyrene, a source of biblical Docetism):

  • the silence of other historians that the Christian writers of the gospels
  • no report of Pontius Pilate to the attention of Tiberius in a civilization so administrative that the Roman empire ;
  • the story of the Passion takes up and develops the prophecy of Psalm 22 ., . It would be an appropriation and imitation of the psalm. This imitation is the origin of thought docete.

This book opened a controversy that the press of the time appointed De Bello Orphico. Reinach had managed to unite against him by historians and scholars of all stripes, from the Catholic Lagrange op until Charles Guignebert historian renowned atheist . The reason for the controversy is the use of comparative structural even as Alfred Loisy and some other progressive historians are trying to develop the comparative functional.

Louis-Paul Couch

The doctor Paul-Louis Couch , editorial director of collections on the history of religion presents his thesis in an article published successively in 1924 in the Mercure de France and followed by conferences of the Union for Truth January-April 1924. The Union for the Truth was a cultural institution in search of intellectual sociability in the middle class and Catholic modernist.

Couchoud theory is collected in the mystery of Jesus, plus three chapters in which the author tries to demonstrate that the study of the Apocalypse and Pauline epistles not confirm his views from the Pauline epistles. The set is published in the Mercure de France in March 1924. His starting points are the only evidence of real value is that of Paul of Tarsus and the design docete of Christianity would be the orthodoxy if Paul is the real founder of Christianity.

In a first draft, Couch argues that the method by which the historians of his time, of Ernest Renan to Alfred Loisy , trying to understand the character of Jesus and the origins of Christianity faces two major pitfalls:

  • The first is that it is inconceivable that a generation or less a man to be deified;
  • the second is that, from a historical perspective, Jesus escapes the historian lack of sufficient documentation. Testimonium Flavianum , doubtful, for it is fully interpolated. Anything that, in the Talmud , for Jesus depends on Christianity. Of the three "witnesses" pagans, one, that of Suetonius knows a Jewish agitator named Chrestos and the other two, Pliny the Younger and Tacitus only attest to the existence of a Christian movement, and for this which is the origin of this movement, that they repeat what the Christians say.

Paul-Louis Couch, Paul speaks of Christ is not a historical being, but an ideal person within the meaning Plato 's term. Couch has an understanding of the values of Christianity and the influence of "belief in Jesus' that distinguish it from other theorists. According Goguel, Couchoud mythiste assumes no thesis, but thesis spiritualist.

Couch's theses will be criticized by commentators of all stripes: the Jesuit Leonce de Grandmaison (founder of the journal Science Religious Research ) , the Protestant Maurice Goguel ( EPHE Sorbonne and) , the Catholic excommunicated Alfred Loisy (Professor at College de France ) and the rationalist Guignebert Charles (Professor at the Sorbonne). Faced with these criticisms Couchoud published in 1937 Jesus: God made man. . Couch considers that "Christ" as presented by Pauline literature is not an incarnation of YHWH, the God of "always" the Jewish people, but a new god that fits into the pantheon of "Oriental religions". The thesis mythiste becomes: Jesus is not a deified man but the god of a mystery cult humanized by the story that is made. There he joined the design docete of Christianity is one of Gnosticism. This position is described as "Docetism extreme" Couchoud .

Couch's book, The Mystery of Jesus, was translated into English, so it has an affiliation among American mythistes even though it was inspired by Robertson Prosper Alfaric

In 1919 , Prosper Alfaric (1876, 1955) was appointed to the chair of history of religions from the University of Strasbourg . This appointment is much discussed and scandal among Catholics as among Protestants. It will then be supported by Alfred Loisy and Charles Guignebert , free-thinker and professor of history of Christianity at the Sorbonne , which cleave the mythiste Couchoud. With him and Albert Bayet sociologist, professor at the Sorbonne and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Alfaric published in 1932 The Problem of Jesus and the origins of Christianity, and was excommunicated in the same year.

Alfaric for the few texts of non-Christian writers who mention Jesus Christ are interpolated by Christians. It is based on the absence of any mention of Jesus in some ancient authors. In particular, he noted the history of Jewish kings Just Tiberias , a story in which Jesus' life should have found a place. The work has just disappeared, but Photius read it in the ninth century of the Common Era and was surprised to find anything about "the coming of Christ, the events of his life, the miracles he did." He also noted the similarities between Jesus and the gods of the mystery cults, Isis or Mithras.

Alfaric publishes his articles on this topic in newsletters rationalists like Ernest Renan circle newsletter and specifications of the Rationalist Union. The latter was founded in 1930 by Paul Langevin who adopted the doctrine as mythisme . By cons, it does not publish articles on the nonexistence of Jesus Christ in academic journals such as Historical Review of Gabriel Monod or the Journal of the History of Religions of Emile Guimet.

Upon discovery of the Qumran Scrolls in 1947, Prosper Alfaric wondered about the origin Essene Christianity, he was formerly in high esteem. He regretted the "sequestration" of these documents.

The philosopher Michel Onfray in 2005 prefaced the publication of a collection of articles and conference Alfaric under the title Jesus Christ did exist? .

Arthur Heulhard

Heulhard Arthur (1849 1920), journalist and music critic, publishes The Christian Lie, Jesus Christ never existed (1908-1910) and Barabbas Truth, Lies Jesus Tu es Petrus, history and Legend (1913-1914). He said that John the Baptist and not Jesus who proclaims Christ and Son of the Father (Bar Abba in Aramaic), and he was not decapitated. And that Barabbas who was crucified by Pilate for murder, robbery and treason. A century later, the evangelists would have substituted the imaginary character of Jesus, an innocent victim in order to profitably exploit the redemption of sins through baptism.

For the historian Maurice Goguel , Arthur Heulhard is the most prolific "polemicists whose work is more of a historical novel than history" .).

The inter-quests

In the first half of the twentieth century, the quest for historical Jesus undergoes a crisis if not at least pause. The work of Albert Schweitzer, Geschichte der Leben Jesu-Forschung (1906) (History of research on the life of Jesus), synthesizes the work of what we call the first quest, and cites the main theses mythistes of time. It mainly shows that the lives of Jesus as they were built in the nineteenth century (the most famous being those of David Strauss and Ernest Renan) we learn more about their authors than about Jesus, for lack of objective criteria for determine what is historical in the Gospels. The work of the School of the history of forms, led notably by Martin Dibelius and Bultmann , carefully analyze the literary composition of the Gospels and conduct their "demythologization. Bultmann will come to the conclusion that nothing can be said for the historical Jesus, because the Gospels were not written and preserved to tell the "historical Jesus" as he lived, taught, and was crucified, but to witness the "Christ of faith" of the communities in which they were composed. The work will resume in the 1950s with the second search and the search for objective criteria of historicity.

During this period, the theses mythistes experienced a boom in the general public. In Germany especially, the theories of Arthur Drews was the subject of a major propaganda, and controversy was not limited to scientific publications, but took the form of pamphlets, popular books and public debates. In 1927, mathematician, logician, philosopher, epistemologist, British politician and moralist Bertrand Russell , in Why I Am Not a Christian, writes: "Historically, It Is Quite doubtful whether Christ ever Existed at all, and if He Did We Do Anything not know about Him, so That I'm Not Concerned With The Historical question, Which Is a very difficulty one ".

These arguments received many responses including those of Schweitzer, Wilhelm Bousset (Was wissen wir von Jesus?, SJ Box , (Historicity of Jesus, 1912), Charles Guignebert (The problem of Jesus, 1914) , Maurice Goguel (1925) ... In 1933, Charles Guignebert note that the theses mythistes had managed to convince anyone to specialists .

Since the 1930

After discussions of the 1930s, the question of historicity was regarded as finally settled by historians. Research on the historical Jesus has resumed in the 1950s, with new approaches and methodologies, and the discovery of new texts as the Nag Hammadi library and the Qumran manuscripts that provide evidence about the religious context of early Christianity. None of this has questioned the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth.

However, outside of academia, academic and publishing system and validation of scientific journals and publishers, various authors have continued to support the thesis that there was no historical Jesus, and propose alternative theories for the birth of Christianity and writing the New Testament. These arguments have no reception at the New Testament scholars and early Christianity.

In the Francophone world

Current esoteric
Daniel Mass

The lawyer Daniel Mass (born 1872) published in 1926 editions of the Century The Enigma of Jesus Christ He argues that Jesus is actually John of Gamala , the son of Judas from Gamala. He also argued that the wording of the Gospels is the result of a deliberate attempt to falsify the Church's history and that the exegesis is an ecclesiastical discipline to catechize crowds.

Robert Ambelain

The occultist and Freemason Robert Ambelain (1907, 1997), published Jesus or the deadly secret of the Templars (Robert Laffont, 1970), then The Secret Life of St. Paul (1972), ending with the dark secrets of Golgotha (1974). He repeats the thesis of Daniel Mass (that of a zealot Jesus), he believes the victim of a cabal that explains the lack of success. The discovery of the secret hidden by the church which caused the downfall of the Knights Templar.

Bernard Dubourg

Bernard Dubourg (1945, 1992) is the author of The Invention of Jesus (1987-1989) . He said criticism of the Bible is not made "solely by the laziness of researchers and their submission to the churches", and silence would have expanded on the Jewish origins of Christianity. He argues that the New Testament was originally written in Hebrew using the technique of exegesis of the Midrash , the Greek texts being literal translations. In this context, Jesus and Paul of Tarsus are fictional characters. To support his thesis, Dubourg made a retroversion of the Gospels from Greek into Hebrew, finding correspondences numerology ( gematria ) with the Old Testament.

Other authors in the media rationalists or atheists

Among the authors who have defended the thesis mythiste, it may also include:

Michel Onfray

The philosopher Michel Onfray resumed mythistes theses of Paul-Louis Couchoud Alfaric and its Counter-History of Philosophy and its atheology Treaty. He prefaced the republication of articles Alfaric.

In an article titled "Atheism by Michel Onfray ridiculous," Michael Foessel criticism of the cavalier attitude that transforms Onfray doubts into certainty, reiterating a "hypothesis (...) dated" .

In the Anglo-Saxon

The thesis mythiste experiencing a revival in Anglo-Saxon, but its echo in the academic world remains, for now, relatively limited.

George Albert Wells

Degree in German and philosophy, George Albert Wells (1926 -) taught German at Birkbeck College of London University from 1949. It was the first to deliver on site the questions about the existence of Jesus and the credibility of the gospels. In 1971 he published The Jesus of the Early Christians which will be followed by a dozen books on this subject as Did Jesus Exist? (en). His skills as a linguist facilitate its access to the writings of German Bauer and Drews particular. However, throughout its publications, Wells returns to some of his early conclusions: influenced by Burton L. Mack (in) , it appears increasingly convinced of the existence of ancient Galilean movements claiming an earthly Jesus and gradually loses the hearing .

Earl Doherty

Canadian Earl Doherty (born 1941), holds a degree in Ancient History and Classical Languages, published in 1999 The Jesus Puzzle, Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ?. It falls in line with GA Wells and Paul-Louis Couchoud whose book The Mystery of Jesus , was translated into English .

Earl Doherty takes into account the state of research on early Christianity , from problems arising from the synoptic problem , the corpus of Johannine and Pauline corpus.

According to him Paul of Tarsus and the author of the Gospel of Mark (which he places after 90 AD, while most New Testament scholars date it to 70) did not believe in Jesus as a person who lived on Earth in a historical setting, but saw him as a mythical hero, based on the prophecies of the Old Testament in the context of a Judeo-Hellenistic religious syncretism.

Only the second generation of Christians who gave a historical interpretation of the myth of Jesus, between I e and the second century, merging the gospel of Mark and the Q source , anonymous collection of sayings. The Acts of the Apostles is a book based on the late legend.

Tom Harpur

The Canadian Tom Harpur has published in 2005 The Pagan Christ. In his thesis of the "Christian doctrine is nothing but a spruced Egyptians and mutilated" surlequel relied mythic fable of Christ, which would be of pagan origin. The character "historical" Jesus of Nazareth was invented in III and IV centuries by the dominant Christian church.

Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy: The Jesus Mysteries

The book Jesus Mysteries (original title in English) Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy , had a bestseller.

Their thesis is that Jesus is a fictional character mixed into one man described as the origin of Christianity. Several characters were synthesized in one, mostly from the solar myth, reflected in the stories of deities popular in the Roman Empire as Mithra , Hercules , Dionysus. The story of Jesus portrayed in the gospels would be almost identical to that of previous "saviors" as Horus.

Brian Flemming

Other

Alvar Ellegrd

Swedish Alvar Ellegrd (1919-2008), professor of English at the University of Gothenburg , published after his retirement Mytens om Jesus: den i nytt ljus tidigaste kristendomen (The Myth of Jesus) . According to him the original Jesus is the Teacher of Righteousness , who was the leader of the community Essenes of Qumran , 150 years before the time described by the gospels. And that Paul of Tarsus who created Christianity. Paul aurait t en contact avec la secte qui gardait les manuscrits de la mer Morte. In support of his theory, Ellegrd the link between the Damascus Document , where he is told that the Essenes would have left Jerusalem for the "land of Damascus" and the road to Damascus , where Paul would have received his vision of Jesus Christ. For Ellegrd, in both cases "Damascus" symbolically designate Qumran.

Luigi Cascioli

The Italian Luigi Cascioli (1934-2010), author of Italian for The Fable of Christ - Irrefutable proof of the non-existence of Jesus, claiming that Christ is a fiction invented by the Church in the person of a certain John of Gamala , son of Judas the Galilean. Luigi Cascioli made headlines by suing the Catholic Church through one of his priests for abuse of popular credulity regarding the existence of Jesus .

References

  1. "We're not at the time when B. Bauer (1840), or PL Couch (1937) contrived to deny that Jesus had existed: the meaning of his actions, not its existence is now the Debate "introducing Daniel Marguerat to Jesus of Nazareth: New Approaches an enigma (Daniel Marguerat Michel Bouttier, Enrico Norelli, Jean-Michel Poffet), Labor et Fides, 1998 13 See also

    Works


Leave a Reply

0 vote, average: 0.00 out of 50 vote, average: 0.00 out of 50 vote, average: 0.00 out of 51 vote, average: 0.00 out of 50 votes, average: 0.00 out of 5 (0 votes, average: 0.00 out of 5, rated)
Loading ... Loading ...
Help us improve the wiki Send Your Comments