Ok, we all know that the Church tells us that Jesus really did exist, that the Gospels are historical documents and should be taken at face value. But are they indeed historical? Did Jesus really exist? Does it matter?

Simple answer to all 3 questions: No.

Here's a passage from a book I've been reading, called The Pagan Christ written by Tom Harpur, a former Anglican priest who teaches Theology at the University of Toronto.

"Can we say with any authority that Jesus of Nazareth actualy existed as a historical person? I have grave doubts that we can. It is abundantly clear to me that while there are indeed certain historical elements in the Gospel accounts -- specific place names, actual persons (such as Herod, Pilate, and Caiaphas the High Priest), and alleged dates -- these alone don't constitute a genuine history or biography in any modern sense. When we review the exact parallels between early saviour stories and the sayings and actions of Jesus, it's more than obvious that what we're dealing with is another variant of the overarching archetypal theme of the same mythos in all ancient religion -- only this time in Jewish dress.

[...]

"The reality is that God calls us to use his divine gift of reason, and we ignore this not just at our peril but to our ultimate loss. What we are considering now is the logical consequence of all we have been through so far. Be patient and hear the argument to its end. You will find, as I have promised from the start, that we are being called not to an impoverished vision but to one that radiates with fresh understanding and hope. Jesus lives on for us, but in a new way.

[...]

"In spite of a mass of scholarship on the topic, in spite of the evidence from the study of comparative religion in particular, the historical view of Jesus's life is still stubornly maintained. Kuhn is correct when he says that all this scholarship 'points with steady directness' to the truth that the events of the Gospel narratives are matched with amazing fidelity 'by the antecedent careers of such world saviours as Dionysus, Osiris, Horus, Tammuz, Adonis, Atys, Orpheus, Mithras, Zoroaster, Marduk, Izdubar, Witoba, Apollonius of Tyana, Yehoshua ben Pandera, and even Plato and Pythagoras.'

[...]

"Massey testifies that neither Philo, the brilliant Alexandrian Jew who laboured so hard to effect a syncretism of Greek Platonism, Egyptian mysticism, and Mosaic Hebraism, and who was an exact contemporary of Jesus (c. 20 B.C. - A.D. 50), nor Irenaeus (c. A.D. 130-200), bishop of Lyons and one of the earliest Church Fathers, believed that the divine Word (Logos) could ever become incarnate in one man. Kuhn says that Philo no more knew of a Christ that could be made flesh than he knew of a Jesus in human form -- and he lived at the time of the alleged historical Jesus! The same is true of Tatian, the Christian apologist and Gnostic (c. A.D. 160) who wrote the first-ever attempted harmony of the four Gospels, the Diatesseron. He completely disclaimed the notion of the Christ having assumed an actual body, as did all the Gnostic Christians. They declared it impossible that he (the divine Logos) should suffer, since he was by nature both incomprehensible and invisible, a divine emanation of the one God.

[...]

"What is even more curious is that the closer one gets to Jesus' actual alleged time, the greater and more general is the denial or ignorance of his existence. But the further one draws away from it, the greater and more insistant are the 'proofs' of it. This again entirely reverses the universal phenomenon of a historical recording. Most living characters are familiar entities during and immediately after their lives, and they wax romantic and are haloed only after centuries have elapsed. But Jesus was airy and ethereal in the first century and crystallized into quite a concrete personality only after several centuries. Something quite strange was going on."

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Ok, that's enough typing for today, but this was just a small exerpt from a very good and interesting book, and ultimately makes me want to return to Christianity, but not the one promulgated by any organized Church with dogmas and literal interpretation of everything in the Bible.

In the end, Harpur argues, and correctly, I might add, that the Gospels are as true as the many parables Jesus relates in them. The story of Jesus is not true in a superficial way, it didn't actually happen the way they say it does in the Gospels. However, there is a deeper truth, an allegorical or metaphorical truth, which makes God and Jesus relevant to us.
F L E S H Reviewed by F L E S H on . The Historical Jesus: Fact or Myth? Ok, we all know that the Church tells us that Jesus really did exist, that the Gospels are historical documents and should be taken at face value. But are they indeed historical? Did Jesus really exist? Does it matter? Simple answer to all 3 questions: No. Here's a passage from a book I've been reading, called The Pagan Christ written by Tom Harpur, a former Anglican priest who teaches Theology at the University of Toronto. "Can we say with any authority that Jesus of Nazareth Rating: 5