50bookchallenge, 15000pages

[gwynhefar]

Book #101 -- Tom Harpur, The Pagan Christ, 228 pages.

This is one of those books that I think every Christian should read. The literalist approach to the Bible is what turned me away from Christianity in the first place -- if I'd been taught the approach this book suggests, I'd probably still be Christian. Harpur, an Anglican minister, lays out very convincing evidence that the gospels are not nor were ever intended to be the biography of a historical man. Instead he presents them as versions of a mystery play -- a retelling of an older 'saviour' archetype recast in a Jewish setting. The parallels between the biblical Jesus and other examples of the type, particularly the Egyptian Horus, are hard to ignore. Interpreting the gospels as an allegorical drama rather than historical biography immediately clears up most of the more troublesome contradictions and improbabilities as well. Moreover, as Harpur shows, the insistence on a literal interpretation is not evident in the writings of the Church Fathers until the 3rd or 4th centuries. Harpur's argument, and it is well supported, is that the literalist approach was invented around that time as a way to exert control on the uneducated masses. After all, not only was a religion based on an allegorical guide to self-enlightenment beyond the understanding and interest of the common people of the time, it is much easier to dictate people's actions when you claim to be doing the will of a literal god-figure whom they cannot hope to understand or emulate except through your guidance. Finally, it is Harpur's contention that the reimagining of the Biblical Christ as a spiritual Everyman and his 'biography' as an allegory for the Soul's journey through life does not in any way detract from the power of Christianity. On the contrary, it enhances it, making formerly inscrutable 'events' come alive with symbolic meaning. Hmmm . . . maybe I should try giving this book to my father . . .


Progress toward goals: 280/366 = 76.5%

Books: 101/150 = 67.3%

Pages: 26703/50000 = 53.4%

2008 Book List

cross-posted to 15000pages, 50bookchallenge, and gwynraven

Comments

[queenbookwench.livejournal.com]

I should read this because I think I would find it interesting. I do think though that there is a pretty wide historians' consensus that there was a historical person named Jesus who was a prophet/revolutionary type figure (whether or not he had the theological attributes Christians claim for him), so I find it kind of surprising that he would claim that the gospels aren't intended to describe a literal man at all.

[gwynraven.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I always thought that was the case too, until I actually did some research on it -- the 'consensus' of biblical historians exist, but unfortunately (academicians are not exempt from politics) it exists primarily because of how unpopular it is to say he didn't exist and the rationale that *someone* must have started all this hoopla, and it just as well could have been some guy named Jesus.

There is, in fact, no non-Christian evidence to support the physical existence of Jesus, and very little *Christian* evidence prior to Eusebius (whose works even most biblical scholars admit are *highly* suspect in terms of factual information) in the late 3rd, early 4th centuries. The vast number of the references earlier than that refer to him by the title "Christos" or "Christus" and could just as easily refer to a mythological figure as to a historical person.

So, what it comes down to is that there's nothing to say that he *didn't* exist, so why not? Honestly, in order to make it plausible that he *did* exist, you would have to turn him into a little-known, little-regarded itinerant preacher, who may or may not have been persecuted and/or killed for his words, but who definitely did not have the kind of official trial and execution given in the Bible (way too many inconsistencies with timing, dates, and the way we *know* both Jewish and Roman law worked at the time). In short, you'd have to turn him into the kind of person that the fastidious Romans felt no need to record and no contemporary or near-contemporary non-Christian author felt the need to mention. To do that, in my opinion (and you're welcome to disagree) does far more to cheapen Christianity than saying that he was always intended to be an allegorical figure.

Basically, if the historical Jesus had been even 1/10 of the man the gospels portray him as, he'd have been in the Roman records and probably in the letters of the Roman citizens of the time ('Hey, did you hear about that mess down in Judea? Man, that Jesus guy really stirred things up!'). So you're pretty much left with two options: either he existed but he wasn't all that important, or he never *physically* existed but his story serves to illustrate a profound spiritual truth. I know which option I'd pick if I were Christian :)