James McGrath takes on the “Jesus is a Myth” school

According to James McGrath, the mythicists have shown little or no interest in doing the hard work of examining the evidence piece by piece. Until they do, I’m unable to get excited about their hypotheses. In the meantime, this comment by Eric Reitan deserves further consideration:

Contrast the following claims:

(1) There was an historic king of the Britons named Arthur, and his life was exactly as described by Sir Thomas Malory in _Le Morte d’Arthur_.

(2) There was an historic king of the Britons named Artur whose impact was sufficiently great that, after being slain by a usurper, those loyal to him would gather secretly to swear allegiance to his bloodline and share stories about him—stories said to come from Artur’s closest thanes. The earliest writings from these communities are by a priest more interested in the meaning of Artur’s life than the details of it. But after a few decades, several followers attempted to write accounts of Artur’s life and sayings based on what their respective communities had preserved. While not historically accurate, they offer clues for anyone wanting to understanding the historic King Arthur.

(3) There was an historic king of the Britons named Artur whose impact was sufficiently great to prompt storytelling about him. This storytelling became quickly severed from actual historic events, becoming interwoven with the creative fancies of bards whose interest lay more in telling colorful tales than in preserving history. Eventually these stories evolved into the legendary figure we now know as King Arthur. But the King Arthur we encounter in the inherited legends has little similarity to the historic figure that inspired the original storytelling.

(4) There was no historic king of the Britons who gave rise to the King Arthur legends. Instead, this figure was wholly an invention of bards interested in creating colorful tales—although the first bard to invent the first King Arthur story borrowed a few of his plotlines from divergent bits of recent events he’d witnessed in his travels, and decided to name his hero “Artur” because he had some vague memory that there was some king by that name who’d lived a generation ago.

Your question gestures to claim (3). As I understand it, Earl Doherty and his followers are making a claim akin to (4) with respect to Jesus. Fundamentalists embrace something akin to (1). Most biblical scholars I know are closer to (2) but allow for elements of (3).

The case of (3) is interesting. If we accept it, is there a sense in which there is an “historic Arthur”? I’d say yes, but only in the sense that there is an historic figure who prompted the storytelling—and I’d be quick to add that the character in the stories bears little resemblance to the historic figure. (2) offers more room for dispute about which details are historical.

End quote. Eric’s comments are illuminating, but IMHO not quite accurate. The biblical scholars whose work on the New Testament I regard as the most reliable – people like Martin Hengel and Hans Dieter Betz – are somewhere between (1) and (2), not (2) and (3), with respect to the historical Jesus.

 

Comments

[Gary Simmons]

The first link doesn't work. Also, you still have Jim West's old blog on your blogroll. He has a new one.

[scott gray]

john--

seems this same set of choices would be just as applicable to jeremiah and isaiah from hebrew scriptures. on these two fellows i fall between (2) and (3), heavy on the (3).

(4) seems a real stretch to me regarding any faith document.

you've laid out such choice gradients before; how would you lay out such a gradient for jesus, or these prophets?

scott

[JohnFH]

Gary, fixed the link. Yes, my blogroll is a fossil from an antediluvian age. One of these days I'll fix that too.

Hi Scott,

I would put Jesus, as I already noted, between (1) and (2). I think we can say a lot about Isaiah and Jeremiah, with a high degree of probability. In each case, there are plenty of particular problems to keep a historian busy, but that is hardly surprising.

[Duane Smith]

Hmmm,

I took a couple of courses from Betz in the late 1960's. My memory would place him between Reitan's 2 and 3.

But that was a long
time ago and memory often fails in the direction of current opinion; I may have misunderstood him; or his position may have evolved.

[JohnFH]

Hi Duane,

You might want to look at Betz's abnormally interesting commentary on the Sermon on the Mount in the Hermeneia series. Following the great neglected Heinrici, Betz regards the Sermon on the Mount (SM) and the Sermon on the Plain (SP) as stylized reconstructions (not reproductions) of hortatory address by Jesus, reconstructions of presynoptic origin. They cannot simply be explained as literary creations of the evangelists. In Betz's view, SM and SP appear to contain adaptations of genuine sayings of Jesus.

More broadly, with respect to the Synoptics, it isn't possible to play off the meaning of Jesus' life from details of it (including the contents of his teaching) as Eric Reitan does in his (2).

If this sounds fishy to you, let me know.

[Sabio]

Fantastic, thanx.
Hey, you might want to tell us your name in your "About Me" section. Hard to find.

[JohnFH]

I'll do that, Sabio.

[Jason]

1, maybe a bit of 2. The rest doesn't apply to texts written within 60 years (more like 30) of the events they describe.