I recently stumbled upon a blog penned by Acharya S called “The Truth Be Known.” Acharya S is a pseudonym for a person identified as D. M. Murdock, one reportedly educated in the Classics and in Archeology. She postulates that Jesus did not exist but is a conflation of divers mythic personages from cultures outside of the Hebrew.
And I had thought that the posturing that Jesus did not exist went to the grave with the grumpy, cold war historians from the old Eastern Bloc once they were free of the stifling, often lethal, Marxist atheism.
From what I have read, almost all historians, even those who disbelieve Christianity, think that Jesus existed. Truth is not a popularity contest, but since Christianity is not popular these days, it’s probably safe to accept that professional credence in Jesus’s historical existence is well-founded.
One quick read on the Internet on the subject is the Wikipedia article on the “Historicity of Jesus” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus_Christ.
I’ll briefly discuss two to three other points. Acharya S argues that Christianity was used as a means to unify the Roman Empire. That some within the empire saw Christianity or other religions as means to unify the empire, I have no doubt. That the beliefs and practices of Christianity became compromised to some extent because of such machinations will get no protest from me. That has nothing to do, however, with the historical basis for Jesus of Nazareth nor for the movement within Judaism that he began.
The notion that Jesus is a conflation of myths also misfires. We do not know what is, if any, the prototypical story behind myths which may, at least on the surface, bear a resemblance. Does the notion of a messiah emanate strictly from the Jewish consciousness or does it emanate from the consciousness of the human race? Does it emanate from another ethnic or racial consciousness and the Jews picked up on it? These questions remain unresolved or answered incompletely based upon what we know now, but knowing there is more to know. I have read the stories about Krishna and Horus, and while points of similarity exist, the stories themselves do not match. Of the two, I find the Hindu spirituality to be seeded with grains of truth whereas Horus comes across as a work of fictional exposition. That is my personal view.
The “christ conspiracy theories” are not new. They are mentioned in the gospels. The Passover Plot was popular and shocking some years ago, not to mention ludicrous. While there is not a boatload of evidence about Jesus, enough exists for the historians and for lawyers who have written on the subject. On the other hand, no evidence exists that directly disputes the existence of Jesus. Evidence exists that disputes his divinity or his messiahship, but none that disputes his existence.
Finally, Acharya S makes much of the confusion between worshipers of the sun and worshipers of the son, and she suggests Christians got it wrong. Confusion between the English homonyms sun and son would be understandable, but since we are talking about terms in several other languages from thousands of years ago, that’s not a digestible line of ratiocination. Moreover, the idea of Jesus being the “sun of God” would be distinctly non-Jewish and utterly rejected. On the other hand, the terms “son of man,” “messiah,” and “son(s) of God” find their roots in the Jewish experience and literature, and they have been passed on into the Christian literature, even if the theology around them is not the same.
What and how much to believe about Jesus, Yehoshua, as the messiah, as we know him from what has been passed down orally and scriptically, is up to each individual; but the nonsense that is the claim of his nonexistence warrants a quick trip to the shredder.
