User:TheologyJohn/JMSpecArguments

Early non-Christian references to Jesus
Three early writers are typically cited in support of the actual existence of Jesus: Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius. Proponents of the view of Jesus as myth typically dispute the accuracy of one or more of these sources. Many proponents of the Jesus-myth hypothesis highlight the lack of documents, other than Christian documents, that make reference to Jesus until the end of the first century and note the survival of writings by a number of Roman and Jewish commentators and historians who wrote in the first century but which lack mention of events described in the Gospels, taking this as evidence that Jesus was invented later. Opponents of the hypothesis argue that arguments from silence are unreliable and point to the existing historical sources, both Christian and non-Christian alike; furthermore, they point to the trend in many writings of the era to omit contemporary details to make the work more "timeless".

Earliest recorded references
The earliest references to Jesus are by Christian writers (in the New Testament and its Apocrypha). Of the few references outside of Christian documents:
 * The Antiquities of Josephus (37 CE - c. 100 CE), written in 93 CE contain two references to Jesus. The text comprising the first reference, the Testimonium Flavianum, states that Jesus was the founder of a sect, but the authenticity of the passage is disputed. Grammatical analysis indicates significant differences with the passages that come before and after it, while some phrases would be inconsistent with a non-Christian author like Josephus. This leads most scholars to believe the Jesus reference was either altered or added by persons other than Josephus. However, several scholars have proposed that the core witness to a Jesus as a leader of a sect is reliable. The second reference states that in the year 62 CE, the newly appointed high priest "convened the judges of the Sanhedrin and brought them a man called James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned. The fact Josephus describes John the Baptist in clear, unsensational terms, in a passage that is not usually disputed, but, arguably, does not make clear mention of Jesus, is also seen by some people as evidence he was not aware of Jesus, at least as a figure of any striking importance.
 * Tacitus in the context of the Great Fire of Rome refers to "some people, known as Christians, whose disgraceful activities were notorious. The originator of that name, Christus, had been executed when Tiberius was emperor by the order of Pontius Pilate. But this deadly cult, though checked for a time, was now breaking out again." Critics point out that there is no way to tell where Tacitus got the information for this passage and state there are hints in the passage that suggest that the information did not come from Roman records.
 * Suetonius, who wrote in the second century, made reference to unrest among the Jews of Rome under Claudius caused by "Chrestus". This has been commonly identified with Jesus Christ, though in this case it must refer to indirect posthumous effects and gives no biographical information. Critics point out that "Chrestus" was in fact very common Greek name and may have been a person of that name living under Claudius rather than a misspelling of Christ.
 * There are references to Christians in the letters of Pliny the Younger, but they give no specific information about the founder of this movement. However critics point out that all the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan demonstrates is that by about 110 CE there were significant numbers of people who would not recant their faith in Christ even under torture or the threat of death, that this was a significant problem for the Imperial authorities, and the authorities considered it a "perverse religious cult, carried to extremes.".
 * The Babylonian Talmud contains several references that have been traditionally identified with Jesus of Nazareth. However, whether these Talmudic verses actually refer to Jesus of Nazareth or to various other persons that were only later identified with Jesus and with each other remains controversial. If the identification is accepted, Jesus is described as a heretic ("min") but nowhere in the Rabbinic literature is it suggested that he was not a historical figure.

Apparent omissions in early records
Justus of Tiberias wrote at the end of the first century a history of Jewish kings, with whom the gospels state Jesus had interacted. Justus' history does not survive, but Photius, who read it in the 9th century, stated that it did not mention "the coming of Christ, the events of His life, or the miracles performed by Him." The Jewish historian Philo, who lived in the first half of the 1st century also fails to mention Jesus, as do dozens of other major contemporary writers who might have been expected to refer to someone who is meant to have attracted such devotion and performed such extraordinary acts.

Non-mythicist Response
Non-mythicists often explain these lacks by pointing to the limited numbers of surviving manuscripts from the period, and by arguing that Jesus' life did not in itself appear significant enough that this lack is much of a surprise. Christian scholar R. T. France writes that "even the great histories of Tacitus have survived in only two manuscripts, which together contain scarcely half of what he is believed to have written, the rest is lost" and that the life of Jesus, from a Roman point of view, was not a major event.

The New Testament epistles
It is often held that the authentic letters of Paul of Tarsus are the earliest surviving Christian writings. The epistles ascribed to Paul do not discuss Jesus's life and ministry in level of detail used by the Gospels, though they do make several claims that he was human, specifically the "Seed of Abraham" and "of the Tribe of Judah". There are a variety of explanations for this among those who believe in a historical Jesus, while proponents of the Jesus-myth theory regard it as evidence to support their position.

G. A. Wells suggests that the level of discussion of the historical Jesus in the Pauline epistles, except for the Pastorals, as well as in Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, the Johannine epistles and Revelation supports his position. In these works, Wells argues, Jesus is presented as "a basically supernatural personage only obscurely on Earth as a man at some unspecified period in the past". Wells considers this to be the original Christian view of Jesus, based not on the life of a historical figure but on the personified figure of Wisdom as portrayed in Jewish wisdom literature.

A more radical position is taken by Earl Doherty, who holds that these early authors did not believe that Jesus had been on Earth at all. He argues that the earliest Christians accepted a Platonic cosmology that distinguished a "higher" spiritual world from the Earthly world of matter, and that they viewed Jesus as having descended only into the "lower reaches of the spiritual world". Doherty also suggests that this view was accepted by the authors of the Pastoral epistles, 2 Peter, and various second-century Christian writings outside the New Testament. Doherty contends that apparent references in these writings to events on earth, and a physical historic Jesus, should in fact be regarded as allegorical metaphors. Opponents regard such interpretations as forced and erroneous.

Non-mythicist Response
R.T France disagrees with the notion that the Apostle Paul did not speak of Jesus as a physical being. He argues that arguments from silence are unreliable and that there are several references to historical facts about Jesus's life in Paul's letters, such as that Jesus "who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David" (Romans 1:3, TNIV).

The influence of the Old Testament
A majority of scholars explain the similarities between the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke using the two-source hypothesis, according to which, Matthew and Luke derived most of their content from Mark and from a lost collection of Jesus' sayings known as the Q document. In the small amount of additional material unique to Matthew, Jesus is presented with strong parallels to Old Testament figures, most noticeably Moses.

It is widely accepted that the Gospel accounts were influenced by the Old Testament. Advocates of the Jesus-myth believe that the gospels are not history but a type of midrash: creative narratives based on the stories, prophecies, and quotes in the Hebrew Bible. Some advocates argue that there is no reason to assume that the sayings attributed to Q originated with Jesus. Doherty has argued that when the midrashic elements are removed, little to no content remains that could be used to demonstrate the existence of an historical Jesus.

Though believing that the gospels may contain some creativity and midrash, opponents of the Jesus-myth theory argue that the gospels are more akin to ancient Greco-Roman biographies. Such works attempted to impart historical information about historical figures but were not comprehensive and could include legendary developments.

However, opponents of the Jesus-myth theory have argued that the closest parallels to potential Moses-based embellishment do not apply to that of the Jesus narrative. Moreover, there are many examples of ancient Jewish and Christian literature that shaped their stories and accounts according to Old Testament influence, but nevertheless provided some historical accounts; for example, in 1 Maccabees, Judas and his battles are described in terms which parallel those of Saul's and David's battles against the Philistines in 1 and 2 Samuel, but nevertheless 1 Maccabees has a degree of respect amongst historians as having a reasonable degree of historical reliability.

Parallels with Mediterranean mystery religions
Some advocates of the Jesus Myth theory have argued that many aspects of the Gospel stories of Jesus have remarkable parallels with life-death-rebirth gods in the widespread mystery religions prevalent in the Hellenic culture amongst which Christianity was born. The central figure of one of the most widespread, Osiris-Dionysus, was consistently localised and deliberately merged with local deities in each area, since it was the mysteries which were imparted that were regarded as important, not the method by which they were taught. In the view of some advocates of the Jesus Myth theory, most prominently Freke and Gandy in The Jesus Mysteries, Jewish mystics adapted their form of Osiris-Dionysus to match prior Jewish heroes like Moses and Joshua, hence creating Jesus.

Several parallels are frequently cited by these advocates, and often appear, mixed with other parallels, on internet sites. The most prominently cited parallels are with Horus and Mithras. Horus was one of the life-death-rebirth deities, and was connected and involved with those of Osiris.

Worship of Isis, Horus' mother, was a prominent cult, and there is a proposal that this is the basis of veneration of Mary, and more particularly Marian Iconography.

Mithraism was a mystery religion widespread in parts of the Roman Empire in the second and third centuries. Mithraic sanctuaries ("Mithraea") feature images of the tauroctony, the killing by Mithras of a bull. These appear to include astrological elements, possibly associating Mithras with the Sun. Initiates progressed through seven grades associated with planets, and may have conceived their souls as ascending away from Earth and the material world. An inscription from the Mithraeum at Santa Prisca has an uncertain text but may refer to the shedding of the bull's blood as having "saved us".

Mithraic practices have been compared to those of Christians, including baptism, confirmation and communion. However, Mithraists may not have sanctified Sunday as the day of the Sun. Images in Mithraea show Mithras being born from a rock, and it has been conjectured that his worshippers celebrated his birth on December 25, since this is known to have been regarded as the "birthday" of Sol Invictus. The Christian apologist Justin Martyr referred to the use of bread and water in Mithraic ritual, which he regarded as a demonic imitation of the Christian Eucharist. Grape-imagery in Mithraea has been taken to show that wine was also consumed by Mithraists. Mithraea included bathing pools or basins, and Tertullian, discussing non-Christian rituals comparable to Christian baptism, referred to Mithraic initiation "by means of a bath". Papyrus fragments preserve what may be a kind of Mithraic "catechism", "in which an officiant questions an initiate, who must give the required answers".

Non-mythicist response
There are a variety of ways in which non-mythicists have responded to this.

In 1962, scholar of Judaism Samuel Sandmel cautioned against what he described as "Parallelomania": "We might for our purposes define parallelomania as that extravagance among scholars which first overdoes the supposed similarity in passages and then proceeds to describe source and derivation as if implying a literary connection flowing in an inevitable or predetermined direction."

Opponents of the Jesus Myth theory regularly accuse those who advocate the existence of such parallels of confusing the issue of who was borrowing from whom, a charge which was also made in ancient times by prominent early Christians. More recently in the book Reinventing Jesus, the authors put forth the position that "Only after 100 A.D. did the mysteries begin to look very much like Christianity, precisely because their existence was threatened by this new religion. They had to compete to survive."

Michael Grant argued that "Judaism was a milieu to which doctrines of the deaths and rebirths, of mythical gods seemed so entirely foreign that the emergence of such a fabrication from its midst is very hard to credit."

However, some prominent early Christians, e.g. Irenaeus and Justin Martyr actually argued for the existence of some of these parallels; Justin specifically used several to attempt to prove that Christianity was not a new cult, but that it was rooted in ancient prophecy which had been "diabolically imitated". Similarly, modern Christian apologist C.S. Lewis was converted to Christianity largely because he came to believe that Jesus was a 'true myth'.

Historiography and methodology
Earl Doherty argues that the gospels are inconsistent concerning "such things as the baptism and nativity stories, the finding of the empty tomb and Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances" and contain numerous "contradictions and disagreements in the accounts of Jesus' words and deeds". He concludes that the evangelists freely altered their sources and invented material, and therefore could not have been concerned to preserve historical information.

A similar tack (seen in works like The God Who Wasn't There) works from the fact that the dates in both canonal and non-canonal sources do not match up. For example it is stated in the Talmud that Jesus was killed under Alexander Jannaeus, and Luke and Matthew have different birth dates that are nearly a decade apart.

Opponents of the theory, including skeptical commentators such as the Jesus Seminar, argue that some reliable information can be extracted from the Gospels if consistent critical methodology is used.

Specific Scholarly Criticisms - Integrate this (as I have already been doing, of course, but finish the job!)
R.T. France states that Christianity was actively opposed by both the Roman Empire and the Jewish authorities, and would have been utterly discredited if Jesus had been shown as a non-historical figure. He argues that there is evidence in Pliny, Josephus and other sources of the Roman and Jewish approaches at the time, and none of them involved this suggestion.