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
Thus far, the local movement was not only Jewish but Judaic. It may
or may not have been before the fall of Jerusalem that a Jesuist
"apostle" named Paul conceived the idea of creating by propaganda a
new Judæo-Jesuist movement appealing to Gentiles. Such an idea is not
the invention of Paul or any other Jesuist; the idea of a Messianic
Kingdom in which the Gentiles should be saved is found in the Jewish
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, written in Hebrew by a Pharisee
between the years 109 and 106 B.C. [311] But, thus made current,
it might well be adopted by Jesuists. The reason for supposing this
to have begun before the year 70 is not merely the tradition to that
effect but the fact that in none of the epistles do we have any trace
of that "gospel of the Kingdom" which in the synoptics is posited
as the evangel of Jesus. That evangel, which is a simple duplication
of the alleged evangel of the Baptist, and which we have seen to be
wholly mythical, being devoid of possible historic content, [312]
is part of the apparatus of the retrospective Messianic claim. But
the Pauline Epistles, even as they show no knowledge of the name
Nazareth, or Nazaræan, or Nazarene, or of any gospel teaching, also
show no concern over a "gospel of the Kingdom." Whether or not, then,
they are wholly pseudepigraphic, they suggest that a Paulinism of
some kind was an early feature in the Jesuist evolution.
According to the Acts, Paul's name was originally Saul, though no such
avowal is ever made in the epistles. The purpose of the statement
seems to be to strengthen the case as to his Jewish nationality,
which is affirmed in the epistles, as is the item that he had been a
murderous persecutor of the early Jesuists. All this suggests a late
manipulation of the traditions of an early strife. To claim that the
Gentilizing apostle had been a Jew born and bred would be as natural
on the Gentilizing side as to allege that the typically Judaic Peter
had denied his Lord; while the charge of persecuting the infant church
would be a not less natural invention of the Judaic Christians who
accepted the tradition that Paul had been a Pharisee and a pupil of
Gamaliel. In point of fact we find the Ebionites, the typical Judaic
Jesuists, knowing him simply as "Paul of Tarsus" in their version of
the Acts or in a previous document upon which that founded. [313]
And many Jewish scholars have declared that they cannot conceive
the Pauline epistles to have been written by a Rabbinically trained
Jew. [314] This does not preclude the possibility that the original
Paul, of whose "few very short epistles" personally penned [315]
we have probably nothing left that is identifiable, [316] may have
been such a Jew, but the presumption is to the contrary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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