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                           THE JESUS PROBLEM

                    A RESTATEMENT OF THE MYTH THEORY


                                   BY
                         J. M. ROBERTSON, M.P.


        [ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED]


                                London:
                              WATTS & CO.,
                17 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C. 4
                                  1917








CONTENTS


                                                            PAGE
    Prefatory Note                                           vii

    Chapter I.--THE APPROACH                                   1
    Chapter II.--THE CENTRAL MYTH                             24

        § 1. The Ground of Conflict                           24
        § 2. The Sacrificial Rite                             31
        § 3. Contingent Elements                              39
        § 4. The Mock-King Ritual                             50
        § 5. Doctrinal Additions                              53
        § 6. Minor Ritual and Myth Elements                   57
        § 7. The Cross                                        61
        § 8. The Suffering Messiah                            64
        § 9. The Rock Tomb                                    67
        § 10. The Resurrection                                70

    Chapter III.--ROOTS OF THE MYTH                           72

        § 1. Historical Data                                  72
        § 2. Prototypes                                       91
        § 3. The Mystery-Drama                                96

    Chapter IV.--EVOLUTION  OF THE CULT                      107

        § 1. The Primary Impulsion                           107
        § 2. The Silence of Josephus                         121
        § 3. The Myth of the Twelve Apostles                 126
        § 4. The Process of Propaganda                       135
        § 5. Real Determinants                               148

    Chapter V.--ORGANIZATION AND ECONOMICS                   157

        § 1. The Economic Side                               157
        § 2. Organization                                    162

    Chapter VI.--EARLY BOOK-MAKING                           170

        § 1. The "Didachê"                                   170
        § 2. The Apocalypse                                  173
        § 3. Epistles                                        176

     Chapter VII.--GOSPEL-MAKING                             182

        § 1. Tradition                                       182
        § 2. Schmiedel's Tests                               188
        § 3. Tendential Tests                                192
        § 4. Historic Summary                                202

    Chapter VIII.--SUPPLEMENTARY MYTH                        207

        § 1. Myths of Healing                                207
        § 2. Birth Myths                                     209
        § 3. Minor Myths                                     217

    Chapter IX.--CONCLUSION                                  223

    Appendix A.--TRANSLATION OF "THE TEACHING OF
                 THE TWELVE APOSTLES," WITH NOTES            235
    Appendix B.--THE MYTH OF SIMON MAGUS                     248








PREFATORY NOTE


Most of the propositions in mythology and anthropology in this
book are founded on bodies of evidence given in the larger works of
the author. It seemed fitting, therefore, to refer to those works
instead of repeating hundreds of references there given. Readers
concerned to investigate the issues are thus invited and enabled to do
so. For brevity's sake, Christianity and Mythology is cited as C.M.;
Pagan Christs as P.C.; and the Short Histories of Christianity and
Freethought as S.H.C. and S.H.F. respectively. In the first three
cases the references are to the second editions; in the last case,
to the third. The Evolution of States is cited as E.S. Another work
often referred to is Sir J. G. Frazer's great thesaurus, The Golden
Bough, which is cited as G.B., the references being to the last
edition. Other new references are given in the usual way. The Ecce
Deus of Professor W. B. Smith is cited in the English edition.

Passages in brackets, in unleaded type, may be passed at a first
perusal by readers concerned mainly to follow the constructive
theory. Such passages deal controversially with counter-polemic.








THE JESUS PROBLEM

THE APPROACH


As was explained in the preamble to The Historical Jesus (1916),
that work was offered as prolegomena to a concise restatement of the
theory that the Gospel Jesus is a mythical construction. That theory
had been discursively expounded by the writer in two large volumes,
Christianity and Mythology and Pagan Christs, and summarily in A Short
History of Christianity, the argument in the two former combining a
negative criticism of the New Testament narrative with an exposition
of the myth-evidence. Criticism having in large part taken the form
of a denial that the records were unhistorical, it was necessary to
clear the ground by showing that all the various attempts of the
past generation to find in the gospels a historical residuum have
entirely failed to meet critical tests. Those attempts, conflicting
as they do with each other, and collapsing as they do in themselves,
give undesigned support to the conclusion that the gospel story is
without historic basis.

It remains to restate with equal brevity the myth-theory which, long
ago propounded on a very narrow basis, has latterly been re-developed
in the light of modern mythology and anthropology, and has in recent
years found rapidly increasing acceptance. Inevitably the different
lines of approach have involved varieties of speculation; Professors
Drews and W. B. Smith have ably and independently developed the theory
in various ways; and a conspectus and restatement has become necessary
for the sake of the theory itself no less than for the sake of those
readers who call for a condensed statement.

This in turn is in itself tentative. If the progressive analysis of
the subject matter from the point of view of its historicity has meant
a century and a half of debate and an immense special literature, it
is not to be supposed that the theory which negates the fundamental
assumptions of that literature can be fully developed and established
in one lifetime, at the hands of a few writers. The problem "What
really happened?" is in fact a far wider one for the advocate of the
myth-theory than for the critic who undertakes to extract a biography
from the documents. In its first form, as propounded by Dupuis and
Volney, the myth-theory was confined simply to certain parallelisms
between Christian and Pagan myth, and to the astronomical basis of a
number of these. From this standpoint the actual historic inception of
the cult was little considered. Strauss, again, developed with great
power and precision the view that most of the detail in the gospel
narrative is myth construction on the lines of Jewish prophecy and
dogma. But Strauss never fully accepted the myth-theory, having always
assumed the existence of a teacher as a nucleus for the whole. As
apart from the continuators of Dupuis and Volney, it was Bruno Bauer
who, setting out with the purpose of extracting a biography from the
gospels, and finding no standing ground, first propounded a myth-theory
from that point of view.

His construction, being the substantially arbitrary one of a
hypothetical evangelist who created a myth and thereby founded the
cultus, naturally made no headway; and its artificiality strengthened
the hands of those who claimed to work inductively on the documents. It
was by reason of a similar failure to find a historic footing where he
had at first taken it for granted that the present writer was gradually
led, on lines of comparative hierology and comparative mythology and
anthropology, to the conception of the evolution of the Jesus-cult from
the roots of a "pre-Christian" one. The fact that this view has been
independently reached by such a student as Professor W. B. Smith,
who approached the problem from within rather than by way of the
comparative method, seems in itself a very important confirmation.

What is now to be done is to revise the general theory in the light
of further study as well as of the highly important expositions of it
by Professor Smith and other scholars. An attempt is now definitely
made not merely to combine concisely the evidence for a pre-Christian
Jesus-cult, but to show how that historically grew into "Christianity,"
thus substituting a defensible historical view for a mythic narrative
of beginnings. And this, of course, is a heavy undertaking.

The question, "What do you put in its place?" is often addressed
to the destructive critic of a belief, not with any philosophic
perception of the fact that complete removal is effected only by
putting a tested or tenable judgment in place of an untested or
untenable one, but with a sense of injury, as if a false belief
were a personal possession, for the removal of which there must be
"compensation." In point of fact, the destructive process is rarely
attempted without a coincident process of substitution. Even to say
that a particular text is spurious is to say that some one forged or
inserted it where it is, for a purpose. That concept is "something in
its place." Some Comtists, again, are wont to commit the contradiction
of affirming that "no belief is really destroyed without replacement,"
and, in the next breath, of condemning rationalists who "destroy
without replacing." Both propositions cannot stand.

If it be meant merely to insist that explanation is replacement,
and that explanation is a necessary part of a successful or complete
process of destruction, the answer is that it is hardly possible even
to attempt to cancel a belief without putting a different belief in its
place; and that it is nearly always by way of positing a new belief
that an old one is assailed. The old charge against rationalism, of
"destroying without building up," is historically quite false. Almost
invariably, the innovator has offered a new doctrine or conception in
place of the old. True, it might not be ostensibly an equivalent, for
the believer who wanted an equivalent in kind. An exploded God-idea
is not for me replaceable by another God-idea: the only rational
"replacement" is a substitution of a reasoned for an authoritarian
cosmology and ethic. But in the way of reasoned replacements the
innovators have been only too quick, in general, to formulate
new conceptions, new creeds. They have really been too eager to
build afresh, and many untenable formulas and hypotheses are the
consequences.

These very attempts, naturally, are constantly made the objects of
still more hasty counter-attack. Every form of the myth-theory with
which I am acquainted, whatever its defects, has been the result
of much labour, and even if astray can be fairly pronounced "hasty"
only in the sense that it proves to be inadequate. It is not so with
most of the counter-criticism. The reader may rest assured that
it is not possible for any exposition of the new theory to be as
"hasty" as is usually its rejection. [1] Professional theologians
who cast that epithet are in general recognizably men who believed
their hereditary creed before they were able to think, and have at
no later stage made good the first inevitable omission.

Myth-theories, sound or unsound, are the attempts of students who find
the record incredible as history to think out, in the light of the
documents and of comparative mythology and hierology, the process by
which it came to be produced; and even as all myth is but a form of
traditionary error