The Jesus Problem: A Restatement of the Myth Theory

by J. M. Robertson

That we are dealing with a conflict of symbolisms will probably be the inference of those who will face the facts. But Dr. Conybeare, who is here in good company, is quite satisfied that behind the Mark story of Jesus riding in a noisy procession on an unbroken colt we have unquestionable history. There must be no nonsense about two asses; but for him the story of the unbroken colt raises no difficulty. He further simplifies the problem by summarizing Mark as telling that “an insignificant triumphal demonstration is organized for him [Jesus] as he enters the sacred city on an ass”;[70] and by explaining that “there was no other way of entering Jerusalem unless you went on foot.”[71] The “insignificant” is held to be sufficient to dispose of the problem of the Roman Governor’s entire indifference to a Messianic movement. Thus functions the biographic method, in the hands of our academician.

All the while, the item of the foal is, on his own interpretation, a specified fulfilment of a prophecy, only in this case the prophecy is in his opinion rightly understood, whereas in the two-ass story it was misunderstood. By his own method, the critic is committed to the position that the phrase “whereon no man ever yet sat” is myth.[72] For serious critics in general, this is sufficient to put in doubt the whole story. For our critic, a story of a triumphal procession, with an unbroken colt, is simply resolved into one of an “insignificant procession,” with an ordinary donkey. Thus, under the pretence of extracting history from a given document, the document is simply manipulated at will to suit a presupposition. On this plan, the twelve labours of Herakles are simply history exaggerated, and any one can make any Life of Herakles out of it at his pleasure. We must not say that Una rode on a lion, but we may infer that she rode on a small yellow pony. It is the method of the early German deistic rationalists, according to which the story of Jesus walking on the water is saved by the explanation that he was walking on the shore.]

Part of the demonstration of the myth-theory, again, lies in the fact that the first act of Jesus after his entry is to “cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrow the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of them that sold the doves.” That this should have been accomplished without resistance seemed to Origen so astonishing that he pronounced it among the greatest miracles of Jesus,[73] adding the skeptical comment—“if it really happened.” The myth-theory may here claim the support of Origen.

Strauss could find no ground for rejecting the story as myth upon his method of finding myth-motives only in the Old Testament. If he had lived in our day he would probably have agreed that the episode is singled out of the kinds of exploit which were permitted to the victim in the Sacæa and the Saturnalia and such primitive sacrificial festivals in general, and turned to a doctrinal account. Such liberties as are described, all falling short of sacrilege, are among those which could normally take place. It is by way of anti-Judaism that the episode is utilized in the synoptics.

In the fourth gospel, where so many matters are turned to new account, and so much new doctrine introduced, the purification is put with symbolic purpose at the outset of the Messiah’s career, in a visit to Jerusalem of which the synoptics know nothing; and in this myth Jesus makes “a scourge of small cords” to effect his purpose. That later item was probably suggested by the effigy of the Egyptian Saviour God Osiris, who bears a scourge as the God of retribution. In the synoptics there is no symbol: the story is simply employed as part of the superadded didactic machinery which alternately exhibits the full development of the Messiah and the unfitness of the “Jewish dispensation” to continue. Inferribly, the story of the fig-tree is in the same case, signifying the condemnation of the Jewish cult, though here there may be a concrete motive of which we have lost the clue. But it is significant that while the gospel record could not possibly assign to the holy Messiah such a general course as was followed by the licensed sacrificial victim, it follows the story of his Entry with that of one markedly disorderly act; whereafter he goes to lodge in Bethany ([Mt. xxi, 17]) at a house which later is indicated as that of a leper ([xxvi, 6]). There his head is anointed by a woman; who in Luke, in a differently placed episode ([vii, 37]), becomes “a sinner.” Is not this another echo from the obscure tragedy of the sacrificial victim, who was anointed for his doom?

§ 4. The Mock-King Ritual

Separately considered, the Crucifixion in the gospel story is as impossible as the Entry. The cross, we are told, was headed with an inscription: “This is the King of the Jews.” Sir J. G. Frazer[74] and M. Salomon Reinach[75] concur in recognizing that if the victim had really been executed on the charge of making such a claim, no Roman governor would have dared so to endorse it.[76] The argument is that only by turning the execution into a celebration of a popular rite could the procedure have been made officially acceptable. But to extract such an explanation from the record is simply to stultify it as such. If there really occurred such a manipulation of the death-scene of an adored Teacher, how could the narrators possibly fail to say as much? We are asked by the biographical school to believe that the Crucifixion was made a farce-tragedy by treating the Teacher as the victim in a well-known rite of human sacrifice, and also to believe that the devotees who preserved the record, knowing this fact, chose to say nothing about it, preferring to represent the procedure as a unique incident.

It might perhaps be argued, on the biographical view, that the Roman soldiers, who are held to have been Asiatics, chose to improvise a version of a sacrificial rite which was unknown to the Jesuists, and that the latter simply reported the episode without understanding it, interpreting it from their prophets in their own way. But if the record be historical it is incredible that in a cult which is claimed to have made many adherents throughout the Roman Empire in east and west in a generation or two, it should not quickly have become known that the procedure of the Crucifixion was a copy of popular eastern and western rites of human sacrifice. If there had taken place what the hypothesis suggests, there was a purposive suppression. That is to say, the credibility of the narrative is at this point vitally impeached by a supporter of the biographical theory, which expressly rests on the narrative as regards non-miraculous data.

And while on the one hand it is in effect charged with the gravest suppressio veri, on the other it is charged, equally in the name of the biographical view, with something more than suggestio falsi, with absolute fiction. M. Loisy does not merely dismiss the Barabbas story as unhistorical, offering no explanation of its strange presence: he comes critically to the conclusion that Jesus on the cross uttered no word, whether of despair, entreaty, or resignation. We need not ask what kind of credit M. Loisy can ask for a record which he thus so gravely discredits. The scientific question is, Upon what grounds can he demur to the extension of a myth-theory to which he thus contributes? If the record admittedly invented utterances for the Teacher on the cross, why should not the whole be an invention? In particular, why should not the trial before Pilate and the inscription on the cross be inventions?