The Historical Jesus — Part 6
“(I do not believe) that Christianity is finished. I am, on the contrary, convinced that it is not Christianity, but our conception and interpretation of it, that has become antiquated in face of the present world situation. The Christian symbol is a living thing that carries in itself the seeds of further development. It can go on developing; it depends only on us, whether we can make up our minds to meditate again, and more thoroughly, on the Christian premises”. Carl Jung (my italics)
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Welcome to what may be the last instalment in what has become a somewhat tedious and sometimes acrimonious exchange between Matthew and myself on this theme. I apologise to any of his or my followers who were hoping for more. (While I was preparing this he has invited me not to continue, as his readership doesn’t seem that interested. That is perhaps hardly surprising if they are Christians with the same mindset as him. As I was a long way into this when he told me that, I’ve decided to continue for the benefit of my own followers and hopefully a more general readership.)
Here is a brief summary of what has preceded. Following Matthew’s invitation to have a discussion about the historical Jesus, I wrote this article in which I mentioned various books whose authors had arrived at conclusions which challenged the Christian story. I suggested that Christians should be aware of these challenges and thus be able to respond to them. He responded here, with what he described as a rant, dismissing all these books as not worthy of consideration, “terrible scholarship”, conspiracy theories, and so on. I then responded here. Following that, Matthew responded, saying “ I don’t really know where to go from here”. I therefore wrote a further article, offering some suggestions.
Matthew has responded to that here. He has offered arguments against some of my points, which I’ll discuss below. My first concern is that, even though he asked me specifically where to go from here, he has for the most part ignored what I wrote, and continued in the same vein as before.
In this latest response he has become obsessed with the Egyptian issue, even though I specifically said that I was willing to put it to one side if we were to continue. He has chosen the title ‘Was Jesus an Egyptian Mystery Rite?’, which is somewhat misleading. I understand that it’s important to have pithy and eye-catching titles when writing on Medium, which cannot therefore be too lengthy. Matthew’s choice, however, appears to be another attempt to make me look stupid by claiming something neither I nor anyone else ever said. He could and should have found something better, if he wanted to have a serious discussion. The actual claim is not that Jesus was an Egyptian mystery rite, rather that the figure and sayings of Jesus are modelled on or, if you prefer, have remarkable similarities with the Egyptian figure of Horus.
The original claim that I quoted (thus it was not mine) was that “there is nothing the Jesus of the Gospels either said or did — from the Sermon on the Mount to the miracles, from his flight as an infant from Herod to the Resurrection itself — that cannot be shown to have originated thousands of years before, in Egyptian Mystery rites and other sacred liturgies such as the Egyptian Book of the Dead”. The star in the east, walking on water, slaughter of the innocents, temptation in the wilderness, changing water into wine, all “already existed in the Egyptian sources”.
Rather than research the evidence for these claims, Matthew has chosen to indulge in another rant, which was his own description of his previous article. Of course, in order to understand the background to such a claim, he would have to read books that do not contain “anything any scholars take seriously”, that “use demonstrably fake evidence”, and are written by “maverick writers” who have no interest in anything apart from “selling their own books”. Being so closed-minded, I don’t imagine for one moment that he would be willing to do that. For the more general readership, however, I’ll just point out the existence of the relevant books, should anyone wish to research this issue further.
The source for the quote above, which Matthew finds so offensive, comes from Tom Harpur’s The Pagan Christ. As one of his epigrams he quotes Saint Augustine, hardly a Christian heretic, from the Retractiones: “The very thing which is now called the Christian religion existed among the ancients also, nor was it wanting from the inception of the human race until the coming of Christ in the flesh, at which point the true religion, which was already in existence, began to be called Christian” (my italics).
Augustine doesn’t actually mention Egypt here, but one wonders where else he might have meant. Moses, arguably the most important figure in the foundation of the Judeo-Christian tradition, was according to the Old Testament brought up in Egypt and, according to the Acts of the Apostles (7.22), “was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians”. Would it be any surprise therefore if in Judaism and its offspring Christianity there were many Egyptian elements?
Harpur’s book is inspired by the research (albeit independent therefore not to be taken seriously according to Matthew) of
- Godfrey Higgins: Anacalypsis: An Inquiry into the Origin of Languages, Nations and Religions
- Gerald Massey: Ancient Egypt, the Light of the World: A Work of Reclamation and Restitution in Twelve Volumes, The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ, and The Natural Genesis
- Alvin Boyd Kuhn: A Rebirth for Christianity, The Root of All Religion, The Lost Light: An Interpretation of Ancient Scriptures, and much more besides.
Other books on this theme are by Ahmed Osman:
- Christianity: An Ancient Egyptian Religion
- Jesus in the House of the Pharaohs: The Essene Revelations on the Historical Jesus
- The Egyptian Origins of King David and the Temple ofSolomon
- The Hebrew Pharaohs of Egypt: The Secret Lineage of the Patriarch Joseph.
I don’t know whether Osman has got everything right (it’s a long time since I read him, and perhaps he’s got it completely wrong), but all his research is surely worth a read for anyone interested in this issue. What he says, and all the others listed, cannot be dismissed in the way that Matthew chooses to dismiss books whose conclusions he doesn’t like without having read them.
The assertion that certain of the writers I referenced are ‘maverick’, that they “use demonstrably fake evidence” (especially Higgins, Massey, and Kuhn) is not only insulting, but based on total ignorance, and therefore pathetic. I would have expected better than this from someone as intelligent as Matthew. If he really believes that, then this demonstrates merely that he is unwilling to contemplate any challenge to his beliefs, in effect that he is hiding behind a brick wall. At first I thought that by ‘serious scholars’ he meant professional academics with many degrees working in universities, or something similar. I wonder now whether what he means are merely those who agree with him.
It’s worth pointing out that, if Christianity did originate in ancient Egypt, then that does not necessarily diminish it in any way — in my eyes it would enhance its importance. It would merely mean that we have to re-evaluate it. It would be highly significant if Jesus were part of a tradition that goes back into the mists of time. Conventional Christians will of course be shocked and bound to disagree, because they have been persuaded that he was a one-off incarnation of God in human form.
My next concern is that after two complete articles by him, I still have no idea what Matthew was expecting by inviting me to this discussion. I also have absolutely no idea what his thoughts are about the historical Jesus, except perhaps that the gospel accounts are completely historically true, or were at least believed to be so by the writers at the time. In that case what does the ‘search for the historical Jesus’ actually mean?
Given his suggestion that he may not wish to continue, this may not now happen. However, I would like to invite Matthew to explain exactly what he was expecting when he invited me to this discussion, only briefly if he chooses. I also invite him to wipe the slate clean, wind the clock back, imagine that none of what has preceded has happened, and then write what would have been his opening article if he had started first. Hopefully he will do both. I think that could be productive. If he is unwilling to do either, then obviously I also won’t bother to continue, as this is clearly becoming a waste of my time.
Dealing now with the issues he raises in his latest article, he begins with another rant against some of the books I referenced. He focuses especially on the claim that “Christianity was invented by the Romans”, or more precisely that the New Testament was written by the Romans. I did originally say that this was the hardest of the five propositions to accept, and explained the inadequacies in Abelard Reuchlin’s pamphlet/book. I have since said that I was quite happy to put this proposition to one side if the discussion continued. So it’s interesting that Matthew has chosen to start with this. What is the point? As I also wrote originally, this theory is “almost too shocking to mention to Christians”. It has proved to be so.
My third proposition was the possibility that “if Jesus was crucified he survived this and therefore did not die”. I have made much of the mention of myrrh and aloes in John’s gospel at the burial of Jesus, and Matthew has commented on this at length.
I am very grateful to Tony Atkinson for pointing out to me that “myrrh and aloes were both used in embalming. The quantities in the text suggest that use rather than the smaller amounts needed for therapeutic use”. He also pointed out that I could have found that out on a two-minute Google search, which I’ve subsequently confirmed. I can only say in my defence that, on a similar Google search, I found material to support what I said in the article. However, I do now plead guilty to not having done enough research, so I apologise. However, there still remain the other factors mentioned in the texts:
- the unusually short length of time on the cross
- the failure to break the legs of Jesus, which would have accelerated his death; this did not happen because he was believed to be dead already.
- the role of Pilate. It was apparently a flagrant breach of procedure to hand over the body to Joseph of Arimathea — according to Roman custom, it should have remained on the cross.
- in the original Greek version of Mark’s Gospel, when Joseph asks for Jesus’s body, he uses the word soma — a word applied only to a living body, instead of ptoma which means corpse.
This means that the proposition cannot necessarily be ruled out. However, since these details on their own are inconclusive and debatable, I’m happy to let go of this suggestion for the purposes of this discussion.
That brings us onto the fourth proposition, that Jesus must have been far more militant than he appears in the gospels. Medium writer Jeremy Armiger, who is very knowledgeable about the history of Christianity, has responded that this would be the only one of my original five “that deserves any kind of serious consideration and (has) some sort of history in Jesus scholarship”. In my previous response I said that “this is not an issue that can simply be brushed under the carpet, as Matthew does by claiming that it is ‘not remotely serious’. Some explanation has to be offered”. Matthew, however, has completely ignored it, and chooses to focus on the issues that I said I was willing to put to one side.
Matthew says that my claim that “gospel writers are adding ‘mythological’ elements to the story meant “nothing to anyone at this time”, and that my opinion “is based on a post-enlightenment Epicurean separation of the mythic and the material that no one in the first century possessed”. I assume that here he is merely expressing his opinion, and not based on any actual evidence unless he can provide some. How can he possibly know what was going on in the minds of the writers?
In my previous article I referred to Matthew’s ‘mythological’ account of the empty tomb. I kindly omitted to refer to his extraordinary account of the crucifixion: “From noon on, darkness came over the whole land… At that moment (the death of Jesus) the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many”.
What are we to make of this? John, who some scholars believe has the most accurate and possibly eye-witness version of the crucifixion (or one based on it), knows nothing about any of this or, if he does, chooses to ignore it. Mark and Luke both refer to the darkness and the tearing of the curtain, but there is no mention of an earthquake. I have no problem with any of this. I am happy to believe that at such a momentous moment in human history, Nature herself would respond. Also, as a believer in paranormal events (unlike many modern scientists), I am quite willing to believe that the Temple’s curtain might have been torn. (The alternative would be to believe that the authors added these details for dramatic effect.)
But what about the rest? There is no mention of any of it in the other three gospels. Surely if the dead were walking around Jerusalem in great numbers, the authors would have heard about it. Did Matthew really mean ‘ghosts’ when he wrote ‘bodies’? That would be more believable. This seems to me to be an obvious ‘mythological’ (or fictional if you prefer) addition of these elements to the story. Medium Matthew’s only defence is that the author “would have actually thought they happened”. In which case, should we doubt the author’s sanity? Has he reduced the story to what in modern times would be a zombie movie?
However, since I believe that the author was probably serious and not insane, we have to try to understand what he meant by the inclusion of these (I would say) fictional elements. I am not very knowledgeable about this and would welcome responses from anyone with deeper knowledge, but I assume that he is connecting Jesus with some earlier Jewish traditions and is attempting to fulfil prophesies, for example in the books of Ezekiel and Daniel (see this Britannica article).
There is also a Christian tradition that believes in physical resurrection. (I don’t know if Medium Matthew belongs to it.) One writer claims here that “simply to speak of a ‘resurrection’ of the dead is to imply physicality”. He says this, even though one of the passages he quotes in support (Matthew 22.30–31) has Jesus saying: “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven”. Are angels in heaven bodies resurrected in the flesh? It’s hard to see how. My first reaction is, it’s hard to know how to help such people. Perhaps Medium Matthew or some other reader can explain how I’ve misunderstood all this, if indeed I have.
On the same theme, did the author of Matthew really believe in the virgin birth? By coincidence (or perhaps synchronistically?) someone writing under the name of Religion and Politics at the Dinner Table has just published an article on the virgin birth. He points out what is well known to critics of conventional Christianity, that “this narrative of virgin birth signifying the significance of an individual was not something new to Romans, or ancient Greek mythology both prevalent in the area where this gospel was written”. The least that could be said therefore is that Jesus was not a unique example of a virgin birth, unless of course the other accounts are ‘merely’ mythological. See the article for the examples he quotes (which is not a complete list of those possible).
He points out what is also well known, that Matthew’s belief in the virgin birth is based on a misunderstanding. Matthew actually quotes the Old Testament prophecy (Isaiah 7:14) that he is referring to: “Now all this took place so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet would be fulfilled: ‘Behold, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a Son, and they shall name Him Immanuel,’ which translated means, ‘God with us’ .”
There seems little doubt therefore that Matthew is not basing his belief on knowledge (as Medium Matthew might have us believe), rather his wish that his account should fulfil Old Testament prophecies. The problem is of course, as many of us already knew, that the word in Isaiah translated as virgin (almah) doesn’t mean that, rather a young woman of marriageable age.
This seems to cast doubt on Medium Matthew’s assertion that Matthew did actually believe in the virgin birth at the time of writing — again he was seeking to fulfil a prophecy. There is no longer, however, any reason to continue to believe in his mistake, as some (many?) modern Christians still do. A more interesting question is, how is it that the ‘most Jewish’ of the gospel authors can be so unfamiliar with his own language/tradition? How could he make such an obvious mistake? Was he actually not familiar with the Hebrew language and working from a translation?
Another related example is Matthew’s claim that Joseph and Mary with the baby Jesus took refuge in Egypt to escape the massacre of the innocents. Did he really believe this, or did he invent it merely so that he could claim that the prophecy in Hosea (11.1) “out of Egypt I have called my son” might be fulfilled? None of the other gospel authors know anything about this.
I therefore stand by my assertion that fictional, mythological elements have been added to the gospel accounts, especially in Matthew.
Medium Matthew says that he has “little interest in speculating on what Graham means by ‘esoteric meanings’ as a way of historical explanations”. That’s a shame because then we might start to actually get somewhere. He is probably unware of quotes like this: “The most difficult and obscure of the Holy books, Genesis, contains as many secrets and mysteries as it does words, even concealing many mysteries under each word”. This is attributed to Saint Jerome, who was responsible for the translation of the Bible into Latin known as the Vulgate. I haven’t been able to establish exactly where he wrote this, but it probably comes from his Hebrew Questions on Genesis. If that is true of Genesis, is there any reason to believe that it might not be true of the New Testament?
I know that we are supposed to be discussing the historical Jesus, therefore the New Testament, so Matthew might consider that quote irrelevant. However, I assume that as a Christian he has some faith in the Old Testament as well. If he doesn’t believe in esoteric meanings, are we therefore to assume that he is a Christian literalist?
In which case, does he believe that the world was created in seven days, as I believe some Christians still do (although hopefully now very few)? I assume he thinks that we should not take that statement literally. Does he believe that the garden of Eden existed somewhere on Earth, given the mention of four apparently terrestrial rivers in the text? Some explorers/archaeologists still keep searching for it, sometimes even claiming that they have, or might have, found it. Any sensible person, who believes that there might be ‘esoteric’, allegorical meanings would recognise that Eden refers to the spiritual realm (what Christians might call heaven). So what does Matthew think, if he believes the Bible is historical, without hidden meanings?
A far more interesting example is the Exodus story, which contains the incident of the Lord giving Moses the power to part the Red Sea (Exodus 14.16). Most Jewish people (at least of a religious persuasion) believe in its historicity, and have a festival each year to celebrate it. However, as another recent article by Religion and Politics at the Dinner Table has shown, there is no historical evidence for it (something that was also well known).
If, however, we interpret the story allegorically or esoterically (Matthew notwithstanding), then it makes a lot of sense. I won’t do that here for reasons of length. I’ll just refer to you the work of N. J. Solomon, a prolific writer on Medium, who is deeply knowledgeable about Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition, and spirituality/esotericism in general.
He has written extensively about the system of Pardes in Old Testament literature, which claims that there are (or perhaps can be) four levels to the texts: Peshat the literal, Remez the allegoric or symbolic, Derash the comparative, and Sod the esoteric or mystical meaning. He has written many articles on the theme of interpreting the books of the Old Testament from this perspective. He says that “the four hidden layers of the stories in the Bible are revealed as a metaphor for the descent, trials, and purification of the human soul”.
Here is a link to his article on Exodus from the Pardes perspective. After I read it I responded, pointing out that Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi’s book Kabbalah and Exodus made similar claims, namely that the story is best understood allegorically, or if you prefer esoterically. So, if two Jewish writers, who one would assume have the most interest in maintaining the historical truth of the narrative, both say that it is best understood allegorically, then perhaps we should take notice of them, especially since the allegorical version makes a lot of sense, whereas the ‘historical’ account in the Old Testament is barely credible.
Again by coincidence (or perhaps synchronistically), as I was preparing this section in my head and thinking of the Exodus incident, an article appeared on Medium discussing the possibility that the parting of the Red Sea might actually have happened. A scientist of Christian persuasion was trying to find naturalistic reasons to explain how the sea might have parted, presumably believing that it did. I don’t think an explanation was offered as to how this might miraculously have happened at exactly the right moment. This would seem to be another desperate example to validate the biblical account, similar to trying to find the Garden of Eden on Earth. If only such people would appreciate the importance of allegorical and esoteric interpretations.
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Above, I asked seemingly provocative questions like, does Matthew believe the world was created in seven days, not especially to make him look ridiculous, rather because I have no idea exactly what as a Christian he does believe, except that he is (or has been) “denominationally promiscuous”. That suggests that he has changed his mind over the years, and has been on some kind of journey. Matthew is prolific on Medium, writing on a wide variety of topics, as I said before intelligently and thoughtfully. He is also very knowledgeable and widely read. As far as I can remember, however, he has never written on Medium about his Christian beliefs. He has lots more followers than I do. Surely they would be interested in learning about his Christian beliefs and the journey he has been on. I certainly would since it would provide an opportunity for further discussion. (I am aware of an article on Substack entitled ‘Why Christianity is True’, but I don’t wish to join, and the full article is behind some kind of paywall. I wonder if Matthew would consider publishing this on Medium.)
This exchange overall has been somewhat hostile; that was possibly inevitable when two such opposing views collide. I hope, however, that there will be no lasting bad feelings. After all, we are both Christians who I assume preach forgiveness and good will to all men (and women), as taught by Jesus.
If this is the end of our dialogue, since Matthew seems not to want to continue, then thanks to everyone who has followed it. I hope you have found it of interest, not too frustrating, and perhaps sometimes educational. Uncovering the true origins of Christianity will remain one of my preoccupations.
I will, as always, be grateful for any meaningful observations about the content here. Also, if anyone would care to write a brief review of the whole exchange, that would be very interesting and much appreciated.
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Appendix.
A slightly mischievous ending.
Matthew has recently published an article entitled God is Coming Back to the Sciences. There he opens by saying that in recent times “ neo-Darwinism, reductionism and materialism, have come under question”, and that “something interesting is emerging about exactly why these ideas have been held onto for so long in spite of their dubious nature”.
He is, of course, in favour of this development because it aligns with his religious perspective. He doesn’t seem to have noticed the irony of why it hasn’t occurred to him that the same might apply to Christianity.
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