There are some odd people in this world. Of course, people being what they are, I'm sure many of these odd people think me rather strange too. One group that I learned about are the mythicists. These people argue that Jesus Christ was not a historical figure, but was a mythical creation. Now I've finally read a book by a mythicist -- Jesus Potter Harry Christ: The World's Most Popular Literary Characters, by Derek Murphy (Holy Blasphemy Press: 2011; Amazon UK; Amazon US).
As the book's title suggests, Murphy's thesis is that Jesus Christ, like Harry Potter, is a mythical creation. In his book he builds his case for this thesis -- not necessarily that there was no person called Jesus Christ wandering around the Middle East 2000 years ago (although it's clear that Murphy believes that there was no historical Christ), but instead that the figure in the Bible who has been worshipped for almost two millennia is a wholly fabricated being.
Murphy details the historical pre-cursor myths (like Gilgamesh, Pythagoras, Osiris, and Mithras) and their similarities to the Christ myth. Then he argues that Jesus was invented as a Sun God, with astrological symbolism built into the myth, and that his suffering and return from the dead was a part of this symbolism (to do with the "death" of the sun in winter and its subsequent re-birth in Spring). Murphy's contention is that these myths were built up and were used in a mystery cult, which were all the rage at the time. The cults would (like scientology - not a cult at all, oh good lord no) only reveal their inner teachings as their initiates advanced higher up the ladder towards being truly Enlightened. Some of Paul's epistles can be interpreted as Paul correcting initiates who have left the right path. This mystery cult aspect would explain why the hidden story of Christ disappeared: it was secret, and as the cult expanded through the Roman empire the secret aspect became lost, and Christians ended up only using the public teachings.
Murphy outlines his thesis in a clear and engaging manner -- I really enjoyed reading the book. But there it suffers from one large flaw: the argument is a load of Taurus. It simply doesn't hold together. The logic is so flawed at times it makes you want to take the opposite site, and argue for Biblical inerrancy. This is embarrassing, partly because I really enjoyed reading the book, it's extremely lucid, but largely because Biblical inerrancy sits poorly with my atheism.
The problem is Murphy's approach is to find all the evidence he can that can be used to support his views, and hoping that the reader will buckle under the weight of it. But the quality of the evidence is extremely varied. For example, he relates Mithras killing the bull to Christ's crucifixion by saying that "[s]ymbolically, the act of slaying a bull with a sword is identical to crucifying it on a cross" (p. 213). Mithras is identified with Christ, so I'm not sure what he was doing killing Himself. Similarly, he suggests that Matthew might have laid out his gospel to reflect the zodiac, although some of these links are rather tenuous: Sagittarius (the archer) represents the crucifixion, because although many sun gods were crucified (or buried under a tree) they were actually killed by an arrow. Like Jesus was. Even more bizarrely, the Sermon on the Mount was meant to reflect Aries the Ram, representing aggression and war. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall kick serious arse?
These are some of the worse examples, and many of the similarities are at least genuine similarities. The problem is to pick apart which similarities are bogus, which of the genuine ones are due to convergence (e.g. many myths have heroes popping off to the underworld) or coincidence, and which are genuinely the result of deliberate copying. Murphy never attempts this: the similarities are allowed to build up unchallenged. And there is no structure to the build-up: there is no indication of what sort of coincidence is important.
This is closely related to another problem: the core of Murphy's argument is that some people generated the myth of Christ, as the background to a mystery cult. But he doesn't give us any conspiracy theory to explain who these people were or how and why they did it. So we are given no clue about why they would chose a variety of sources, and how they would chose which bits of which myths to put together. It's also puzzling why Jesus, if he was fictional, was chosen to be Jewish: if his creators were Jewish, why draw so heavily on Greek and Egyptian myths? If they weren't, why chose to make him an outsider?
I guess most of us, if we thought about it, would accept that there was most probably a historical Christ, but that the accounts of His life given in the Gospels distort what the historical Christ said and did (I can heartily recommend Phillip Pullman's fictional meditation on this matter). I think there are interesting questions about how and why this was done (and why, for example, are the Gnostics so different: they may genuinely have been a mystery cult), but these issues aren't touched on. Add to this is the sense of definiteness: the academic style of being clear about what evidence supports a contention is missing. For example, it's well known that some of the Pauline epistles were not written by St. Paul, but Murphy goes further and claims that they were deliberately forged by communities trying to oppose Paul's teaching and confuse other communities (pp. 355-6). Well, possible I suppose but...
About this point you might be wondering what Harry Potter has to do with this. Unfortunately, not really a lot. His role is to hook us and drag us in, but the logic is typically tenuous: Harry Potter is a moral character who inspires many people, and so is Jesus Christ. Harry Potter is fictional, so Christ might be too.
It doesn't hurt that Harry Potter is popular, so a few more people will buy Murphy's book.
Much of this makes me want to suggest that the book isn't worth reading. But it is actually enjoyable and entertaining because of its clear prose and the well-structured argument. Even better, you can enjoy picking apart that argument. So if you like that, I can heartily recommend this book.
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Bob O'Hara is a biostatisician who conducts research at the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He writes the blog, Deep Thoughts and Silliness at Nature Network. You can also follow him on twitter @BobOHara