JESUS - GOD, MAN OR MYTH?

by Justin Cargill (BA Hons)

Many people think of Jesus as a good, moral teacher.  C.S. Lewis' response to this was simple. Given the kinds of things Jesus is depicted as saying and doing in the canonical Gospels, he could not possibly be a good, moral teacher. He must either be a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord.1

It is possible for a sceptic to avoid this trilemma by arguing that the Gospels do not provide accurate accounts of Jesus' life and teaching. The stories surrounding Jesus were legends. This, then, is thought to explain some of the deeds and extraordinary claims of Jesus recorded in the Gospels. The material in the Gospels emerged from the desire of the early Christian communities to glorify Jesus. They distorted their portrait of him.

George Wells goes so far as to suggest that the Gospels are not even remotely historical. He doesn't believe the person around whom they centre existed.2   F.F. Bruce once wrote, "It is not historians who propagate the 'Christ-myth' theories."3  He is quite correct. Wells is not an historian. Nor is he a theologian or philosopher. He is a professor of German language and literature. Wells extracts from extreme positions a range of ideas which he then shapes into an account which is not even acceptable to the scholars upon whom he draws.4

To be treated more seriously is the position of those who insist that the Gospels were written in the light of mistaken beliefs. The claim is that the Gospel writers drew upon a good deal of myth (used here in the sense of legend) and theological reflection which did not accurately portray the real Jesus.

Questions relating to the dating and authorship of the Gospels come into play at this point but it is difficult to give a summary of the various positions that are adopted. It should be pointed out, however, that no scholar now suggests that the canonical Gospels are second-century writings - a position once held. There is agreement that they were written in the first century, and some liberal scholars date them even earlier than many conservative scholars.5

The question is not so much when the Gospels were written, but how reliable are the sources upon which the writers draw and what do they do with their sources? It is one thing to say that the Gospel writers selected and adapted their material to promote certain themes. It is another thing altogether to argue that they drew upon unreliable sources or felt free to contrive material because it suited their purpose.

There is much that can be said along these lines, but in looking at the historical reliability of the Gospels we can ask some straight-forward questions. If the Gospels are reliable, what would we expect them to be like? If they are unhistorical, what would we expect to find?

There are some obvious points that need to be made.

1. The writer of Luke's Gospel says specifically that what he and others have written is based upon eyewitness testimony (Luke 1:1-3). He says that he has investigated everything 'carefully' (NIV - the Greek word means 'exactly,' 'diligently' or 'perfectly') from the beginning. Obviously, he had had contact with eyewitnesses or was at least able to draw upon a tradition of eyewitness testimony. Unless we suppose the eyewitness testimony to be fraudulent or significantly distorted, we have grounds for thinking that Luke's account is substantially historical.

In fact, the writer also implies that he was a companion of Paul. This becomes clear from the use of the first person throughout the latter part of his second book, Acts (eg. 16:10-17; 20:5-21:18; 27:1-28:16) which indicates that the writer was closely involved in events with Paul. If the writer accompanied Paul, he would naturally have heard him speak avout the various apostles' experiences with Jesus and he makes it clear that he himself met with the apostles (cf. Acts 21:18). The idea that the writer would have been acquainted with the apostles and yet have subsequently described in his Gospel their experiences with Jesus - experiences which are not even remotely accurate - is absurd.  He would have had to have been a complete charlatan.

Some writers have attempted to circumvent the implication of the first person and hence the idea that the writer was Paul's companion. They argue that the first person is a stylistic device used by ancient narrators in reporting voyages.6

This objection is unsound for a number of reasons. It is enough at this point to observe that if the writer is employing a stylistic convention he has not used it consistently. It is, therefore, difficult to see in what sense the writer understood himself to be using such a device.  Moreover, the detail in Acts is too precise to allow us to suppose that the writer was not intimately acquainted with the story he relates in the latter part of Acts. This brings us to the next point.

2. The writings of Luke are characterised by great precision in historical detail. They are filled with a multiplicity of details that provide a means of testing their truth. Luke's references to titles (e.g. of Roman officials), and his details regarding life and government under Roman rule are exact.7 His accuracy has been demonstrated again and again.

Sir William Ramsay's extensive research provided means of testing the book of Acts at many points. Ramsay himself noted that "Luke is a historian of the first-rank...this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians."8 Ramsay's comment is particularly noteworthy given that he began his archaeological study a convinced sceptic regarding the value of the New Testament.

Luke's accuracy is intriguing. Sometimes his accuracy is acknowledged but then dismissed as indicating only that Luke had at certain points some very good sources of information. But if he had such good sources of information, surely this should tell us something. And if the book of Acts is so accurate in areas where it can be checked, we cannot assume that it is less trustworthy in those areas where it cannot be checked. This accuracy shows not only contemporary knowledge but a natural accuracy of the mind. The idea that the writer of Luke and Acts could be so accurate and so detailed and yet his fundamental thesis regarding Jesus so mistaken is nothing short of absurd. It is inconceivable that myth should be couched amongst such accuracy.

3. There is a lot of material in the Gospels which is difficult to account for if the Gospels are substantially unhistorical. The material is counter-productive. It is not what we would expect to have been invented or to develop as myth. A creative community would have had no reason to invent it. And if the material was already there, it would have had every reason to exclude it.

Jesus' attitudes towards legalism, fasting, divorce, sinners and women were radical and somewhat embarrassing. The fact that Jesus was a carpenter from Nazareth and that for this reason there were those who were not convinced by him was also an embarrassment. The account of the opposition Jesus received from his own family was hardly helpful. The unbelief and cowardice of the disciples, their difficulty in understanding Jesus' teaching, their flight after Jesus death, and Peter's denial of Jesus must surely have been authentic.

Such details are not likely to have been invented or to have developed as myth and given that no attempt was made to conceal them, it is clear that the Gospel writers were concerned to record events at least as they substantially happened.

4. There is a lot of material in the Gospels which is quite irrelevant and which is difficult to account for if the Gospels are substantially unhistorical.

(a) Jesus' use of the phrases 'kingdom of God' and 'Son of Man' are clear examples. If these expressions were used by the early Christians and placed in Jesus' mouth by a developing tradition, why do these expressions hardly appear at all in the New Testament letters?

(b) Some of the controversies Jesus engaged in were irrelevant to the early Christians and accordingly indicate a historical basis. Jesus' controversies with the Pharisees concerning Corban practice (Mark 7:9-13 and parallels) were hardly relevant at the time the Gospels were written which indicates that the Gospels are drawing upon historical material at this point. Jesus' conflict with the Pharisees concerning the Sabbath (Mk 2:33-3:16 and parallels) could have been preserved because it provided material which could be used as ammunition by the Christians. But where such concerns are discussed they reflect concerns from the period of Jesus' ministry. They do not reflect the form that these issues took in later years. These issues do not appear to have been recorded with the needs of the later church in mind. They seem instead to have been preserved primarily for their historical value. 

5. There were many issues faced by the early Christians which are not reflected in the Gospels but which would have been very relevant to the situations in which the readers found themselves. The omission of these issues is very difficult to account for if the Gospels are largely unhistorical and instead reflect the developing theology of the early Christian communities. Any attempt to show that in selecting or adapting their material, the Gospel writers also felt free to create or distort this material is, therefore, unconvincing.

The Gospels, for instance, do not depict Jesus addressing many of the issues that faced the early Christians. There were plenty of controversies which Paul would doubtless have liked to have settled by means of an authoritative teaching of Jesus but he did not - circumcision, the relationship of Jew and Gentile, baptism, the problem of meat offered to idols, the correct use of spiritual gifts, the rules governing church meetings and so on. It would have been easy for Paul and the Gospel writers, to have placed in Jesus' mouth some ruling regarding circumcision, for instance. Apparently, the church knew of no Jesus-traditions regarding these topics. Neither the writers of the New Testament letters nor the Gospel writers were able to draw upon such traditions and the early Christian communities did not feel free to invent them.

The Gospels are not affected by the mood and movements of the apostolic age. If the material in the Gospels is largely unhistorical it had to come from somewhere. It must have been created by the early Christians so why is the Jesus which they created silent about many of the major issues which they faced? The traditions about Jesus in the Gospels do not appear to be in any considerable degree the creation of the early Christians.

In sum, the Gospels do in fact preserve a good deal of material which was scarcely relevant to the needs of the early church and they fail to include material which would have been relevant to those needs. Clearly, the aim of the Gospels was to preserve what Jesus said and did and any attack on their basic historicity stems from an irrational bias.

In May 1985, Gary Habermas and Antony Flew debated the question of Jesus' resurrection, so understood as a literal and physical event, before a crowd of three thousand.9  Five philosophers were asked to render a winner. If Jesus' physical resurrection was a myth one would expect that it should not be too difficult to demonstrate. But the winner of the debate defended the proposition that Jesus was resurrected. Four of the judges decided in favour of Habermas. The fifth rendered a draw.

Burton Mack reviewed the book based on this debate.10  A biblical scholar who denies the resurrection, Mack was clearly upset. He scolded Harper and Row for publishing it.11 Mack believes "the empty tomb story is best seen as Mark's own fiction, composed on the occasion of writing the Gospel in the aftermath of the Jewish war." (i.e. post AD 70).12  He insists that Jesus' resurrection is derived from martyr myths.13 He thinks that myth developed first and subsequently gave rise to resurrection experiences in the church. Mack recognises that his whole approach is flatly contradicted by Paul's report of the appearances (1 Cor. 15:5-8) which places the appearances first thereby serving to facilitate faith. He dismisses this problem simplistically. He maintains that Paul invented the list of appearances to suit his own purposes.14  Such solutions can be created but with such creativity all things are for the scholar, as for God, possible.

The opinion of one of the judges is by contrast refreshing in its openness:

Since the case against the resurrection was no stronger than that presented by Antony Flew, I would think it was time I began to take the resurection seriously. My conclusion is that Flew lost the debate and the case for the resurrection won.15

Lewis' trilemma neglected a fourth option. If Jesus was not the Lord as the Gospels claim, we are not left with only two options: liar or lunatic. The Gospel stories could have been legend. The weight of historical evidence, crowned with that for the resurrection, indicates that the Gospels are historically reliable. Lewis' conclusion, then, logically follows:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.16

Jesus asked Peter "who do you say I am?" (Mk. 8:29; Mt.16:15; Lk. 9:20). He asks the same question today.

1. Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1952), pp.40-41.
2. Wells, George. The historical evidence for Jesus (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1982).
3. Bruce, F.F.. The New Testament documents: Are they reliable? 5th rev. ed. (Downer's Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 1972), p.119.
4. France, R.T.. The evidence for Jesus (Downer's Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 1986), p.12.
5. Robinson, J.A.T. Redating the New Testament (London: SCM, 1976) and Priority of John (London: SCM, 1985).
6. Stendahl, Krister . "Biblical literature and its critical interpretation." In Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. (1988), 14:830, and Wells, p.147.
7. Blaiklock, E.M. "Acts of the Apostles." In Zondervan pictorial encyclopedia of the Bible, vol. 1, ed. Merrill C. Tenney. (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1982), p.43.
8. Ramsay, William M. The bearing of recent discovery on the trustworthiness of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1953), p.222. Cited in Josh McDowell. Evidence that demands a verdict: Historical evidences for the Christian faith, rev. ed. (San Bernardino, CA.: Here's Life, 1979), p.71. See McDowell for documentation regarding Ramsay's sceptical background (pp.70-71).
9. This debate was subsequently published in Did Jesus rise from the dead? The resurrection debate, ed. Terry L. Miethe. (San Franciso: Harper and Row, 1987). Habermas is a Christian, Flew an atheist.
10. Mack, Burton L. Review: Did Jesus rise from the dead?: The resurrection debate: Gary Habermas and Antony G. N. Flew. History and Theory, 28 (May 1989): 215-224.
11. Mack, p.224.
12. Mack, p.223.
13. Mack, p.221.
14. Mack,  p.222.
15. Cited in Miethe, p.xiv.
16. Lewis. 

©2000 Wellington Christian Apologetics Society (Inc.) All Rights Reserved.

Previously published in
Apologia (The Journal of the Wellington Christian Apologetics Society)
vol. 1, no.3 (1992): 27-29