Why the gospels are not total myth

 

There are some who say that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. At some point, those who say such things have got to confront the gospels.

The four gospels in the Bible tell of episodes in the life of a historical Jesus. Hyper-sceptics claim they are actually mere myth, totally myth from start to finish, and that nothing reported in them ever happened, not a single thing. They say that it is a story of a god on earth and that stories of gods on earth never have any grain of truth in them. They say they were just made up. They claim that the writers of the gospels should be thought of like writers of fiction such as novels.

But anyone who has that view has difficult questions to answer about the gospels. And I have never seen them give satisfactory answers to this set of questions.

The nub of their problem is this. Writers who make things up in fiction can make up just about anything they want. They can start with a blank piece of paper. Everything they put on paper is a choice, their own choice, and as fiction writers they don’t have to include anything except what suits them. Let’s start with the gospel of Mark, because most scholars believe that this was the first gospel and that it influenced the other gospels. Does Mark make the sorts of choices you might expect of a fiction writer in the ancient world writing a myth about a god on earth?

• So, if Mark was a fiction writer who wanted to  write a story of a god on earth, why would Mark choose what we find in his gospel, setting it specifically close to the modern day in his era, within living memory in a real time and place? In ancient myths, writers usually make up stories set long long ago, in a vague time period. So why would Mark choose to set one within the span of living memory in his day? What’s the point of such a different choice, with all that it entails?
   
• Mark tells the story of the death of Jesus. In ancient myths, their gods tend to have deaths in romanticised stories, some quite fantastic. But Mark gives Jesus a common form of execution, carried out by the current political administration, accused of being a political criminal. Why? Why would Mark choose that death for a god on earth instead of something more fitting for a god, such as being slain in a battle, or poisoned by a lover, or magically struck down by another god? If Mark was writing fiction about a fictional god on earth, he could make it about anything he wanted, so why does he keep it normal?
   
• Mark wrote that the Romans executed Jesus by nailing him to a cross, a death that was for for slaves and terrorists. Who was that supposed to appeal to? The cross was one of the most despised forms of death in that day. It was a turn-off to people, Jews and Romans alike, and made the gospel message unpopular. Why would Mark not choose a manner of death for a hero that you might find in a myth? The only sound explanation is that Mark couldn't get round it, because that's what happened.

• When Mark described Jesus on the cross, there is no sign of a demon punishing him there. Just Jews and Romans passing by. Why would Mark write a myth that is not like a myth?
   
• When Mark tells his story of Jesus raised from the dead, he does not describe the scene of Jesus emerging from the tomb, merely stating that Jesus was alive again and gone to Galilee. Why would a writer of myth not write a mythical scene of an amazing sight of Jesus emerging from the tomb in an amazing way?
   
• Only about a third of Mark’s gospel contains anything “supernatural”. Why would a writer of a myth make two thirds of his book totally unlike a myth?
   
• At no point in the gospel do we get a description of what kind of clothes Jesus of Galilee walked around in, what colour hair he had, or anything about his general appearance that was distinctive. Why would a writer of a myth not describe a god on earth in physical detail? Mythic heroes have fancy personal descriptions. If there's no description, then the writers aren't trying to create a mythic hero.
   
• Location: Galilee was either unknown to most people or regarded merely as an unromantic backwater (by people who didn’t live there). So why would Mark choose dull rural Galilee as a location for a myth? Why not set a story on a Greek island instead, or some other romantic location? Why would Mark make such a humdrum choice about a place that had little meaning for anyone who didn’t live there?

 

I could go on with more examples. The fact is that a writer of a myth could make up anything at will to please the writer or an audience. But no mythicist has a good answer as to why all those choices together, and many similar things, should be made by Mark. If you don't want a lot of mental gymnastics to get round those things, then the simplest coherent explanation is that Mark was not writing total myth.

I’ve written a good deal about evidence for the historical Jesus, and an index to my posts on that subject is here.