What I find of special interest is that at the very time when the towering scholar Northrop Frye was telling his students that if there was any history in the Bible, it was there by accident—history is not what the Bible is about—Kuhn was writing his brilliant monograph Science and Religion. In it he wrote: “The only hope of lifting religion out from under the pall of hypnotic superstition is to effect the disenchantment of the Western mind of its obsession that the Old Testament is Hebrew history . . . As history it is next to valueless; as allegory and drama of the interplay of God and man’s linked potencies in the human organism, it holds immeasurable enlightenment for all humanity.” Both men were struggling to end the world’s obsession with religious literalism knowing that, as St. Paul said, the letter kills, while it is the Spirit that gives life.
Elsewhere I have written that whether or not the Jesus Story is historical is not in the end of the greatest importance. After all, one can never prove a negative, and so even though no evidence may be found, it will never be possible to prove conclusively that Jesus never existed. And that has certainly never been a goal of my studies. My sole aim and hope is to have shown that it is the Story itself that bears the meaning and significance of this “Hero’s tale.” However, I wish to return here to a most important strand in the overall narrative for which none of the critics whom I have read or met appears to have an answer or a solution. I am thinking specifically of the quite astounding silence of the earliest witness in the New Testament, indeed of the one who is responsible himself for a large portion of that entire document, namely St. Paul. I raised this crucial issue in the chapter of The Pagan Christ entitled “Was There a Jesus of History?” but it merits further expansion here because in so many ways Paul is the real founder of Christianity. Without him it would have remained a small and soon-expiring Jewish sect.
It must be kept in mind that all of the authentic letters of Paul belong to the period from about 55 to 60 CE. His opus does not include several of the letters attributed to him in the King James Version of the Bible, for example, the Epistle to the Hebrews, II Thessalonians and the pastoral epistles—I and II Timothy and Titus. This finding is based upon significant differences of language, style and theological point of view. In addition, most critical scholars today regard the authorship of Colossians and Ephesians (traditionally also attributed to Paul) as highly debatable as well. They are most probably best described as deutero-Pauline, that is to say, highly influenced by Pauline motifs but plainly later in date.
The problem is not that Paul never mentions Jesus Christ. He does so frequently, although curiously enough he never once speaks of him as “Jesus of Nazareth.” Nazareth makes no appearance whatever. What is puzzling is that Paul makes no firm biographical references to Jesus. The bulk of what is said about Jesus in the four Gospels has to do with two categories of activity: his miracles and his teachings. But with a silence that scholars such as G. Bornkamm have described as “astonishing,” Paul makes no direct references to either of these. Miracles were widely regarded in the Judaism of that time as expected accompaniments of any would-be valid claim to Messianic authenticity. Jesus purportedly performed dozens of them, but Paul says not a word in this regard. The silence over Jesus’s teachings is perhaps even more surprising since Paul’s letters are filled with moral admonitions, often upon subjects where Jesus reportedly had much to say himself. Surely Paul’s arguments would have been enormously strengthened if he had been able to quote from the Master. But, quite surprisingly, he does not.
One instance of this discrepancy has always leaped out at me as particularly glaring, and I have yet to read a persuasive conservative response to the dilemma it poses. What I have in mind is a very moving passage in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. It is in chapter 8, one of my favourite chapters in this, his most famous letter. Speaking of prayer, the Apostle makes the quite startling statement in verse 26: “For we know not what we should pray for as we ought . . .” Here, if anywhere, if it really was an accepted tradition based on historical fact and he knew about it, is the place one would expect him to quote or in some way refer to the Lord’s Prayer. After all, remember that in the Gospels Jesus is said in Matthew 6:9 to have introduced the prayer with the words: “Pray then like this . . .” He is responding to a direct request from his disciples: “Lord, teach us how to pray.” But Paul nowhere cites this prayer in whole or in part! This is little short of astounding.
The British scholar George A. Wells, who has written seven books on the mythical nature of the New Testament’s portrayal of Jesus, sifts the relevant Pauline materials extremely finely. He finds it particularly revealing that when it comes to the Crucifixion—which is so basic to Paul’s thinking about Jesus—there is no mention of significant historical details of any kind. In Did Jesus Exist? Wells states: “Even when he [Paul] writes of Jesus’s death in I Corinthians 2:8 he says nothing of Pilate, or of Jerusalem, but declares Jesus was crucified at the instigation of wicked angels—‘the rulers of this age.’” The truth is that when it comes to when Jesus is supposed to have died on the Cross, or indeed when he was supposed to have entered upon his human phase of existence in the first place, Paul is incredibly vague to the point of hopelessness. The distinguished New Testament scholar Ernst Kasemann finds that this scantiness of witness concerning concrete circumstances of the Crucifixion, where Paul’s theology “is so deeply engaged, is positively shocking.” Of course, like Horus of Egypt and all the other man-gods of antiquity, Jesus is said to have been “born of a woman.” Because he was allegedly fulfilling Jewish prophecies, Paul also can say he was “born of the seed of David” and “born under the law,” but this is not historical evidence at all. There were many centuries between David’s time and Jesus’s, but Paul tells us nothing that indicates in which one of them Jesus’s life was believed to have taken place. What is more, Paul never mentions the virgin birth or empty tomb! In short, Paul’s Christ was a spiritual or mystical Christ, not a man of flesh and blood at all.
There is so much that could be added, but that would take yet another volume. Let me conclude by saying that for me the most powerful argument of all against the view that Jesus was a historical person—and not what literary critic Harold Bloom has named “a theological God” specifically constructed by the early Church—is this: the amazingly varied theologies (Christologies) of Jesus Christ in the pages of the New Testament itself. There are at least six or seven opposing pictures of who he was assumed to be. To quote Kasemann once more, if he had truly lived, early Christian literature would not “show nearly everywhere churchly and theological conflicts and fierce quarrels between opponents” who disagreed “radically” as to “what kind of person he was.”
Having read the attempted explanations of the critics, I want to stress two things:
1. The position on the non-historicity of Jesus taken in The Pagan Christ and now held by an increasing number of scholars has never been given credible rebuttal; and
2. It is impossible to convince those who have already decided never to alter their opinions come what may. With the great majority of rank-and-file Christians, as well as most of their clergy, this seems to be the case. Some of the latter, including those who really should know better, have told me frankly that they have not read The Pagan Christ for fear of “upsetting my beliefs.” So much for the promise that the Holy Spirit will guide us “into all truth.”
* The Wilderness World of John Muir by Edwin Teale, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1976, p. xix.
10
CAN
CHRISTIANITY BE
BORN AGAIN?
IN HIS BOOK Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Carl Jung emphasized that one should never simply dismiss divergent views and opinions, however unpleasant or wrong-headed they may seem. Neither does it matter if these differ radically from the more widely accepted ideas or traditions of majority communities or groups. “Such opinions could never arise—much less secure a following—if
