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Deconstructing Jesus

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I guess it all started with the pre millennium madness. More and more biblical scholars are following the footsteps of scholars who have attempted to find the actual person behind the gospel accounts.

"Deconstructing Jesus" isn't an easy read. Unless you have been diligently studying in this field you will find many references to authors you have never heard about. The field is rife with people studying this question.

Bottom line, as I understand it, is that the Jesus that contemporary Christianity follows is a multi-layered construction that has evolved over time to fit the needs of the current culture and political climate. The roots of this construction are all over the first century Middle East and various philosophies. From Cynic, to Gnostic, through Zealot, and everything in between has been woven into the picture that we get of "The Man From Nazareth" (or, was he a Nasserite or Nasorean?).

For the serious student of Christology or church history this book is an excellent criticism of all the current thinking in this area of scholarship. I doubt that the average pew-sitting Christian will be overjoyed with this book but the scholarship will, eventually, be the stuff of many homilies.

Will you find the historical Jesus in this book? No. But you will find an early Church struggling with a polyglot of beliefs attempting to blend them into a cohesive fabric of faith. Perhaps it is that dynamic that has kept "The Church" alive for two millennia. Mysticism and Gnostic thinking are on the rise again and "The Church" on the eve of another evolutionary move -- here's the first map of the territory ahead.

This book is a landmark: at long last we have a well-known and highly respected Christian theologian taking up for serious discussion the conclusions of several non-theological scholars about the non-historicity of the Jesus of the Gospels and Acts. Chief among these scholars has long been George A. Wells, whose first book on the subject was The Jesus of the Early Christians (1971). A half-dozen others have followed. In the last few years, Earl Doherty, a Canadian classical scholar, has pursued the subject with great energy on his very lively website, and this year in an impressive book, The Jesus Puzzle (2000). On the whole, the theological establishment has cold-shouldered, or more often, met such publications with silence rather than arguments. Hopefully Price's book will lead to a change of attitude. After all, theology, including the history of Christianity, is an essential ingredient in the history of civilization. Yet, unaccountably, Western historians have left the history of Christianity to their theological colleagues. It is significant that practically all Western general Encyclopedias have assigned the whole area of religion to theologians. The result is that the general public has got a rather biased picture of Christian origins. Price's book will shake them up. After a wide-ranging and always interesting argument he concludes as follows: "it seems to me that Jesus must be categorized with other legendary founder figures, including the Buddha, Krishna, and Lao-tzu. There may have been a real figure there, but there is simply no longer any way to being sure." Fair enough. But historians will not give up their search. After all, new manuscripts, providing new ways of looking at the field, may still turn up. Michael Wise's fascinating reinterpretation of the Qumran texts referring to the Teacher of Righteousness, in his recent book The First Messiah (1998), is a case in point.

For those who've read Burton L Mack or John Dominic Crossan or know about other modernist New Testament scholarship this is your next step. Robert Price charges in where others fear to tread taking the arguments of more cautious modernists to their natural conclusions and finally revealing that the emperor has no clothes or rather that he's got a whole wardrobe and that according to our prejudices and preconceptions we can dress Jesus/Barbi (or should that be Ken) in the clothes we prefer.Want a Cynic philosopher Jesus? You got it! Want a charismatic Jewish excorcist? You got it! Anyone reading Russell Shorto's indispensable introduction for layperson to the full spectrum of modernist debate 'Gospel Truth' will have concluded this already, but boy does Mr Price take everything a step further but leaves the arguments open ended. Even the apologists get a word in here and there! You're left to make your own mind up, to pursue trains of thought or further researches or just let your imagination rove through the religious mixed grill of the ancient world. There's enough information here to keep a post-graduate student or fascinated layperson busy for a very long time. There is nothing here that could offend anyone Christian or non Christian with an open heart and mind. If you want to believe there is a Yeshua ben Yusuf lurking in the shadows of the New Testament then Robert Price might just help to illuminate that figure for you. Robert Price writes with such riveting mixture of scholarship and good humour that I turned to each new chapter with eager anticipation. musonius@hotmail.com

Against all the books that purport to show what Jesus was "really" like, be it itinerant preacher, marginal Jew, radical zealot, etc., this book shows how the level of mythologizing has left it impossible to reconstruct a genuine biography. It leaves open the strong possibility that in fact there was no historical Jesus, or that there was more than one -- Jesus as a composite character.

Among books skeptical of Christianity, it is the best documented, with examples of similar beliefs in preChristion religions, Greek philosophy and early rabbinic Judaism contemporary with the New Testament writers.

Robert Prices Deconstructing Jesus is a scholastic masterpiece of exhaustive research, carefully thought out arguments, and valuable insights into the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth. He does a fine job demonstrating, by comparing the Gospel accounts of Jesus supernatural conception, miracles, death and resurrection with similar traditions found in the mystery cults of ancient Greece and the near East, that Jesus was probably a mythical figure created from a synthesis of numerous mythologies then in vogue in the ancient world. His relentless pursuit of ancient texts to make his point that Jesus was, essentially, a Judaized version of the ancient mystery religions that was later usurped by literalists in the Catholic Church, should leave the objective reader with little choice but to agree. I also found his demonstration that many of Jesus teachings and parableswhich I previously considered the strongest evidence for a historical Jesus availableto have parallels in the teachings of the Midrash and other rabbinical writings to be especially damning to the idea of a historical Jesus. While he remains open to the possibility of a literal historical figure existing behind the mythology, I had to agree with his assessment that such can neither be known nor, if it could be proven true, whether it would make any real difference.

While Prices conclusions and scholarship were flawless, thats not to say the book was not without some problems. Price is a scholar writing for other scholars. As such, this is a difficult book to follow and should not be attempted by the linguistically challenged. One classic "Priceism" should be enough to serve as an example: "Neusner was no longer willing to assume that such attributions meant much diachronically (actually going back in history to Rabbi X); no, instead they must derive their meaning synchronically: as it were, two-dimensionally along the picture plane of the particular document." (Pg. 99). Huh? But for those who enjoy that kind of theological techno-babble, this is a great read. As for myself, I found it akin to wading across a sea of molasses upon the back of a Rhino.

Price also has this irritating habit of dissecting the arguments of other scholars without fully explaining what their theory was or what he really found wrong with them. It was like walking into a foreign film with lots of badly translated subtitles. More than once I found myself lost and thoroughly uncomprehending what he was trying to say. In the last chapter, however, he redeems himself by pulling it all together and leaving us with the reasonable, articulate and seemingly objective conclusion that Jesus Christ was a mythical creationone of many of the erathat rose to the top of the pecking order and survived into the modern era. I suspect most evangelical and conservative Christians will find much to take old Robert to task for in that, but that would be only because hes drilling too close to a nerve.

Todd Vick rants and raves about Price's "natualistic presuppositions" but Price makes it clear in several of his writings that his scholarship is not based on "naturalistic presuppositions," but on a "principle of biographic analogy." That means, when one sees mythic and heroic elements in a story (e.g. virgin births, turning water into wine like Dionysus, the "dangerous-child" motif), it sends up red flags that the story is probably a myth. Secondly, I would like to ask why Vick disregards all of the other supernatural stories contemporary to Jesus' time. Isn't it a naturalistic presupposition to assume that the gospels are true, yet the other multitudes of literature with supernatural elements are false? It is completely absurd and arbitrary to say that the gospel stories are true and the other mythological stories from the first century are false.

I did research on the subject on my own as a sideline to Roman Archaeology, strictly from a historian's point of view. Unfortunately, whenever it comes to mythology I am helplessly engulfed in my own yawns, so I directed my research to more earthly matters. (Btw. I am of course aware of most of the literature that had been published on this proposition since the mid-eighteen hundreds of which Wells gives in his books a fair digest.) Price did all the boring work - because for people like me, myth is a terrible bore. The three main aspects which have convinced me, that we are facing fiction (or "myth") are these: (1) I analyzed in great detail the trial procedures strictly by the letter of the law, and it became evident, that even the seemingly "realistic" portions of the gospels are clearly fictional. I wouldn't say uninformed, but in a strange way misrepresenting the proceedings. (2) no matter how far back we follow the documents, they always come in the presence of an institution (such as the synagogue, or a churche) which acts as a custodian of the tradition. There is not a shred of evidence for an innovative phase that would precede the organized cult-activity. There is even no evidence for the existence of the apostles, (including Paul!) with the one exception of John (perhaps a very important exception) - who however cannot be identical with the Zebedee in the gospels. What we really have is a bundle of anonymous testimonies to a received faith, and perhaps in John the originator of the branch or heresy in this tradition which eventually became Christianity. (3) The fact of the "Easter-faith" is much more likely the testimony to a received faith. A testimony based on a historical precedent would soon be exposed to the strains of the reality thereafter. Faith in a myth is bulletproof - at least for people who are susceptible for this sort of thing. On reflection the entire movement may have originated among proselytized gentiles in the Jewish Diasporah, and from there have filtered back to the old country as an inspiration to actually impersonate the concept, but faced strong resistence. The documents, even in the form as they have been handed down to us, reflect on the to and fro of the argument and a developing heresy from the Jewish law. So what does this tell us about Jesus? Not much, I am afraid.

Robert M. Price has a knack for coming up with intriguing hypotheses when it comes to Biblical criticism. He makes no claims to have all the answers, and presents a whole load of interesting material from the ancient world that will at the very least throw some much needed doubt onto the field of historical Jesus research. I wouldn't say that this book is aimed at the average layman, but rather at those who have done a fair amount of reading on this topic already. There are a few long portions of the book that present the traditions of Jesus from non-biblical sources and I could imagine that the average reader would become disinterested. For those looking to expand their knowledge on the historical Jesus I recommend this book very highly.

This is another indispensable contribution from Dr. Price. Here he traces the lines of evidence back to a plurality of preorthodox Christian sociological and cultural phenomena that later converged into what we recognize as Christianity. Dr. Price is honest enough with the evidence to avoid the trap, that many Jesus scholars fall prey to, of building a "Jesus" out of some axiomatic theological or historical agenda. He shows a depth and sensitivity to the data which free him from the group-think constraints of many other academics. The analytical rationality, eloquent clarity, and comprehensive scope makes this another persuasive work that deserves serious attention by those interested in the origins of Christianity and "historical" Jesus studies.

It isn't that Robert Price hasn't studied the subject of Christian origins--he certainly has, and he's even been a born-again Christian. It isn't that he doesn't pontificate about the theories of this scholar and that apologist. That he surely does (the book seems to be a paean to Burton Mack). Price even makes a definitive statement now and again. But much of this book is not only boring--obviously designed to please his already-convinced peers of his immense erudition--but it goes nowhere, as Price is wishy-washy about his conclusions: "I'm not trying to say that there was a single origin of the Christian savior Jesus Christ, and that the origin is pure myth..." (p. 85) Blah, blah, blah. Price then proceeds to criticize the "Old Christ-Myth theorists," who, in fact, were not fence-sitters but who took a stand that sometimes became a bit wild but was never dull.

One area where this book is a bit more audacious than others in its genre is the section outlining other savior gods. Even though the perspective that the ancients--pagans and Jews alike--possessed practically every concept in Christianity, including the characteristics of its alleged founder, many modern scholars are simply terrified to touch the material brought to light in the past few centuries that reveal such facts of unoriginality through comparative religion. In other words, Jesus ain't original--he's a rehash himself of gods who already existed. At least Price has the courage to discuss these myths regarding dying-and-rising savior gods such as Baal, Tammuz, Osiris, Attis and Dionysus. Price reaches his zenith when he says, "It is very hard not to see extensive and basic similarities between these religions and the Christian religion. But somehow Christian scholars have managed not to see it, and this, one must suspect, for dogmatic reasons." (p. 88)

Also, Price displays some originality in his discussion of "ancient romances" and their correspondences to the gospel fable. ("The Cruci-fiction?") Price names a number of such texts and shows that their major plotlines are similar and "prefigure" that of the gospel fable as well. In the end, the Jesus myth could be considered another one of these "ancient romances," although it is not nearly as intriguing or edifying. In any case, Price highlights some "new" primary sources that reveal the banality of the Christian myth.

Unfortunately, despite some strengths the book is poorly organized and, again, appears to have been written for those who already know most of what is presented. It is certainly not for the lay public and will have little impact on the public in the long run.

If you are really interested in Christian origins, this book is not a bad read. But there are far better and more exciting ways to learn about Christianity and its alleged founder. The most readable of these is "The Christ Conspiracy" by Acharya S, who holds a number of the same views as Price but is able to present them in a far more exciting manner. Doherty's "Jesus Puzzle" is a well-written and necessary examination but it still can't reach the public like "The Christ Conspiracy." "The Jesus Mysteries" contains much of the same information found in Christ Conspiracy, but it is rubbery in its conclusions and focuses on spiritual experiences. Leidner's "Fabrication of the Christ Myth" is a pretty good work, with some interesting and unusual ideas. Price's "Deconstructing Jesus," on the other hand, contains little original and is mostly a rehash of other scholars' tedious and nitpicking opinions.