The dependence between the gospels and pagan literature with regard to death and return; towards a method for evaluation JR MULVIHILL 0000-0002-7637-1022 Thesis submitted for the degree Philosophiae Doctor in New Testament at the Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West University Promoter: Prof dr FP Viljoen Co-promoter: Prof dr JG van der Watt October 2017 Chapter One 1.0 RESEARCH PROPOSAL 1.1 PROPOSED TITLE & KEY WORDS 1.1.1 Proposed Title “The dependence between the Gospels and pagan literature regarding death and return—toward a method for evaluation” 1.1.2 Key Words myth, parallels, influence, Jesus, pagan, Greek, Roman, homogeneity, distinction, method, Gospels, death, resurrection, Zalmoxis, Romulus 1.2 BACKGROUND AND PROBLEM STATEMENT 1.2.1 Background A subcategory of the claim that the Gospels belong in the genre of mythology is a position attempting to answer the question of causation—that is to say, which data and events best explicate the origination of the Gospel narratives. It has been said that the salient characteristics of the profile of Jesus of Nazareth find their origination in various antecedent figures featured in the Greco-Roman host culture of the first century. Over the past thirty years there has been a subtle return to what was initially assumed to be a formidable objection to traditional Christianity (John G. Jackson, 1985:67; Robert Price, 2000:75-96, 2002, 2005; Richard Carrier, 2002, 2009, 2014; Tom Harpur, 2004:51; Rene Ruttiman, 1986; Dennis MacDonald, 2000, 2015; 2 Richard C. Miller, 2010, 2015; Payam Nabarz and Caitlin Matthews, 2005; Stephen Harris and Gloria Platzner, 2004:255, 414-15; James Robertson, 1985:292-94; Burton Mack, 1995:75-7; Giovanni Casadio, 2003:263; Alan Dundes, 1990:179-90). In the late nineteenth century this thesis was a challenge to Christianity’s uniqueness and credibility by way of a then new analysis and subsequent genre classification (Priestly, 1804; Dupuis, 1801; Strauss, 1835:56). The Gospels were alleged to be first- and second-century- constructed Jewish amalgams of antecedent ancient near eastern and Greco-Roman pagan background religious beliefs related to myths and/or Mystery religions (Carus, 1902:416-25; Pfliederer, 1910:24-5; Bousset, 1913:19-20; Bultmann, 1953:15-6, 1962:32-5, 1962:7). The four New Testament Gospels were, according to proponents of this theory, not to be considered reports of authentic historical events but rather imaginative cultural composites, finding their genesis in the contours of long known pagan paradigms and narratives. I will refer to the family of arguments related to this idea as the “strong homogeneity thesis,” which posits that the Gospels are so similar to the pagan religious and mythical ideas of their host culture that it is credible to view them as having derived from these sources. The claim that the Gospel narratives are mythical has had a long pedigree; it seems as though Jesus’ original followers had to meet similar challenges (1 Timothy 1:4; 4:7; 2 Timothy 4:4; Titus 1:14; 2 Peter 1:16; see Dinckler, 1962:3:487; Oswalt, 2009, location 439, location 3131; Bruce, 1976:2:643-47; Hughes, 1984:747-9; Keener, 1993:608, 631, 637, 727). Relegating the Gospels to a mythic category is still common—considered by some to be an esteemed choice to designate an alternative genre assignment to this particular first-century content. The designation of 3 “myth” as a genre for the Gospels—from the least informed internet skeptic to credentialed scholars of the ancient world such as Richard Carrier (Carrier, 2014:56-60, 2009:14, 2005:145- 51) or Robert Price (Price, 2000:250, 259-60, 2005:145-51) to the anonymous skeptical blogger— is so ubiquitous that it is difficult to evaluate “myth” as an appellation. My evaluation will not engage directly with this critical label. Once one decides to view these documents as mythic, the concomitant question of causation presses; the question here undertaken will not be whether the accounts in the Gospels actually correspond to real space and time events from the past but rather whether it is warranted to believe that the Gospels were spawned from a mythical pagan source, either directly, by way of authorial borrowing, or indirectly, through application of ubiquitous pagan socioreligious notions. How could one responsibly evaluate such a claim? Is there a method that could be employed that does not stack the deck in favor of a predetermined conclusion? Is there a way to limit bias and curtail personal subjectivity in terms of acceptance or denial of the strong homogeneity thesis? These secondary questions related to causation will be my focus; this issue will obviously have ramifications with regard to the plausibility of the resultant genre assignment. Some scholars attempt to isolate individual sayings of Jesus, minus crucial context, and thereby reconstruct Jesus with an alternate identity, linking him with nearly any prominent ancient group (Aslan, 2014; Borg, 1991; Crossan, 1991; Vermes, 1973; Allegro, 1970).1 I will refer to proponents of this 1 Professor Craig Evans authored an entire book in response to this way of envisioning Jesus. He lists numerous scholars in whose works this theme of analytic distortion is writ large; see Evans (2006:123-48); see also Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1911). 4 idea as those attracted to the strong homogeneity thesis—as those who believe the Gospel data to be strongly correlated to pagan mythic and religious accounts. Although this theory has been assailed in a number of interesting and varied ways over the last century (Case, 1912; Rahner, 1955:171-72; Orr, 1965; Metzger, 1968:6-9, 16-21; Alsup, 1975; Smith, 1986; Nash, 2003:126-27; Porter and Bedard, 2006; Davis, 2006; Boyd and Eddy, 2007), this idea has nonetheless found its way back into some areas of the cultural mainstream and has emerged again in the contemporary scholastic community. In its nineteenth- and early twentieth-century instantiation, this proposition contained several strong assertions regarding Gospel composition. For instance, it was variously posited that there was a robust correspondence between the language of the Gospel writers and antecedent pagan linguistic content that could be delineated and connected by way of exposition (Bousset, 1913:65-6); that Jesus could be best understood as having chosen an ancient near eastern comparative religious framework rather than a Jewish one (Pfleiderer, 1910:199, 210, 348-49, vol. I:5-6, 24-5; vol. II:186, 371-72; vol. IV:76; Bousset, 1913:66; Bultmann, 1953:10-16, 1962:32-5, 1981:96); that the apostle Paul clearly manipulated and distorted the inherited Christian tradition through an obvious pagan lens (Fairweather, 19242; Weigall, 1928; Hyde, 1946; Reitzenstein, 1978; Bousset, 1913:66; Randall, 1970; Maccoby, 1982); and that the New Testament was a predominantly mythical product (Strauss, 1835:55-6; Bultmann, 1934: 8; 1953:15-6) with little or no historical content. 2 However, it should be noted that Fairweather does unequivocally state that, regarding the essentials of the Christian faith there is clear independence of these ideas from the Greco-Roman cultural matrix. 5 Strategies were employed to strip away what was seen to be false or legendary, with the aim that the reader could know the true content and proper genre of these popular biblical texts. Currently, the three credentialed champions of this thesis are Richard Carrier, Dennis R. MacDonald, and Robert M. Price. Carrier holds a doctorate in ancient history from Columbia University, MacDonald a doctorate In New Testament studies from Harvard University—he is currently a professor of Religion and New Testament at Claremont Graduate University—and Price two doctorates from Drew University, one of which he took in systematic theology in 1981 and the other in New Testament studies in 1993. All three scholars hold nuanced versions of a strong homogeneity thesis and defend their contentions publicly (Price, 2000:75-96, 250-60; Carrier, 2014:56-60, 2009:14, 2005:145-51; Macdonald, 2015:1-4, 10, 2000:11, 22-3). There are other contemporary credentialed scholars who hold to similar forms of this thesis in their published work (Ruttiman, 1986; Africa, 1974; Campbell, 1972; Frazer and Frazer, 1998; Wolmarans, 2008; Krauss, 2011; Miller, 2010, 2015; Nabarz, 2005; Harris and Platzner, 2004; Mack, 1988, 2001, 2008; Jones, 1969; Fogelin, 2003; Allegro, 1979). 1.2.2 Problem Statement Generally absent from critical works offered by proponents of the strong homogeneity thesis is a rigorous and robust academic method that readers can track to a relatively clear conclusion. This is true of both past and present scholars who were and are convinced of this particular way of explicating the authorship and cultural power of the Gospels. If a method is clearly specified, it will often preclude critical data that would significantly modify the strong homogeneity conclusion or undermine the particulars of the claim in question. Authors given to this thesis rarely explain how they constructed their method or why they chose the methodology they 6 employed. Finally, there is troubling absence of bias qualification in these works; this is pointed out time and again by scholars critical of the strong homogeneity thesis (Sandmel, 1962:1-2; Alsup, 1975:215-16; Boyd and Eddy, 2007:21-4; Riches and Millar, 1985:46). My treatment attempts to confront these shortcomings by offering a method of literary evaluation that addresses these issues. I will attempt to rationally and objectively evaluate the Gospels’ descriptions of particularly decisive episodes in the life of Jesus and then compare them to similar activities of characters in pagan literature, utilizing a method I believe could be employed profitably for further investigations of this nature.