The Jesus Problem: A Restatement of the Myth TheoryRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
The Jesus Problem: A Restatement of the Myth Theory
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Jesus Christ
Let us then see what we reach on the hypothesis that early Jesuism even
in the first century, and possibly even before the fall of Jerusalem,
was running in two different channels--one movement adhering to
Jewish usage, making Jesus the Servant of God, and conceiving him as a
God-gifted Healer whose death raised him to the status of the Messiah,
the promised Christ or Anointed One who should either close the earthly
scene or bring about a new God-ruled era for the Jews. For the holders
of this view, the Kingdom of God was coming. Jesus was ere long to
come in the clouds in great glory and inaugurate the new life. To
ask for clear conceptions on such a matter from such minds would
be idle. There were none. The one idea connected with the mythical
evangel was that Jews should repent and prepare for the new life. To
that elusive minimum the latest biographical analysis, assuming the
historicity, reduces the "ministry" of the gospel Jesus. [320] The rest
is all post-apostolic accretion. On the other hand, the Petrine Jesus
has proved his mission for his devotees, first and last, by miracles,
and by his resurrection--things which the biographical school rejects
as imaginary.
Upon this movement there enters an innovator, Paul of Tarsus. Round
him, as round Peter, there are clouds of myth. That he was
originally Saul, a Pharisee, a pupil of Gamaliel; that he began as
a bitter persecutor of the Jesuists; and that he was converted by
a supernatural vision, become common data for the church. That the
charge of persecution was a Judaic figment, on the other hand, is
perhaps as likely as that the story of Peter's denial of his Master
was a Gentile figment. We are in a world of purposive fiction. But the
broad divergence of doctrine seems to underlie all the fables. Saul,
on the later view, changes his Jewish name to the Grecian Paul when
he plans to make the Jesus-cult non-Jewish, using the tactic of
monotheism against pagan polytheism in general, in the very act of
adding a Son-God to the Jewish Father-God, as so many Son-Gods had
been added to Father-Gods throughout religious history. To the early
Jewish Jesuists, the notion of the Son had been given by the old cult
of sacrifice, with its Jesus the Son--an idea obscurely but certainly
present, as we have seen, in the lore of the Talmudists.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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