The Jesus Problem: A Restatement of the Myth Theory

by J. M. Robertson

Then, with no connective development whatever, we proceed at one stroke to the full number.[56] Matthew actually makes the mission of the twelve the point of choosing, saying simply ([x, 1]): “And he called unto him his twelve disciples,” adding their names. In Mark ([iii, 13]) we have constructive myth:—

And he goeth up into the mountain, and calleth unto him whom he himself would: and they went unto him. And he appointed twelve, that they might be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, and to have authority to cast out devils.

And the lists converge. Levi has now disappeared from Mark’s record, and we have instead “James the son of Alphæus,” but with Matthew in also. The lists of the first two synoptics have been harmonized. In Luke, where only three are at first called, after a miracle ([v, 1–11]), the twelve are also summarily chosen on a mountain; and here the list varies: Levi, who has been separately called ([v, 27]) as in Mark, disappears here also in favour of “James of Alphæus”; but there is no Thaddæus, and there are two Judases, one being “of James,” which may mean either son or brother. And this Judas remains on the list in the Acts. Candid criticism cannot affirm that we have here the semblance of veridical biography. The calling of the twelve has been imposed upon an earlier narrative, with an arbitrary list, which is later varied. The calling of the fishermen, to begin with, is a symbolical act, as is the calling of a tax-gatherer. The calling of the twelve is a more complicated matter.

In searching for the roots of a pre-Christian Jesus-cult in Palestine, we have noted the probability that it centred in a rite of twelve participants, with the “Anointed One,” the representative of the God, and anciently the actual victim, as celebrating priest. The Anointed One is “the Christ”; and the Christ, on the hypothesis, is Jesus Son of the Father. The twelve, as in the case of the early Jesus-cult at Ephesus, form as it were “the Church.” A body of twelve, then, who might term themselves “Brethren of the Lord,” may well have been one of the starting-points of Jewish Jesuism.

But the first two synoptics, clearly, started with a group of only four disciples, to which a fifth was added; and in John ([i, 35–49]) the five are made up at once, in a still more supernatural manner than in the synoptics, two being taken from the following of John the Baptist. Then, still more abruptly than in the synoptics, we have the completion ([vi, 70]):—“Did not I choose you the twelve, and one of you is a devil?” It would be idle to say merely that the twelve are suddenly imposed on the narrative, leaving a biographical five: the five are just as evidently given unhistorically, for some special reason, mythical or other.

Now, though fives and fours and threes are all quasi-sacred numbers in the Old Testament, it is noteworthy that in one of the Talmudic allusions to Jesus Ben-Stada he is declared to have had five disciples—Matthai, Nakai or Neqai, Nezer or Netzer, Boni or Buni, and also Thoda, all of whom are ostensibly though not explicitly described as having been put to death.[57] As this passage points to the Jesus who is otherwise indicated as post-Christian, it cannot critically be taken as other than a reference to a current Christian list of five, though it may conceivably have been a miscarrying reference to the Jesus of the reign of Alexander Jannæus. In any case, it is aimed at a set of five; and there is never any Talmudic mention of a twelve. If, then, the Talmudic passage was framed by way of a stroke against the Christians it must have been made at a time when the list of twelve had not been imposed on the gospels. Further, it is to be noted that it provides for a Matthew, and perhaps for a “Mark,” the name “Nakai” being put next to Matthew’s; while in Boni and Netzer we have ostensible founders for the Ebionites and Nazaræans. Finally, Thoda looks like the native form of Thaddæus; though it might perhaps stand for the Theudas of [Acts v, 36]. Seeing how names are juggled with in the official list and in the MS. variants (“Lebbæus whose surname was Thaddæus” stood in the Authorised Version, on the strength of the Codex Bezae), it cannot be argued that the Gemara list is not possibly an early form or basis of that in the synoptics; though on the other hand the names Boni and Netzer suggest a mythopœic origin for Ebionites and Nazarenes. Leaving this issue aside as part of the unsolved problem of the Talmudic Jesus, we are again driven to note the unhistoric apparition of the twelve.

Following the documents, we find the later traces equally unveridical. Matthew is introduced in the Acts as being chosen to make up the number of the twelve, on the death of Judas; but never again is such a process mentioned; and Matthew plays no part in the further narrative. And of course the cult was interdicted from further maintenance of the number as soon as it was settled that the twelve were to sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel, which had apparently been done in an early Judaic form of the Apocalypse before it was intimated in the gospels. Even in the Epistles, however, there is no real trace of an active group of twelve. The number is mentioned only in a passage ([1 Cor. xv, 5]) where there is interpolation upon interpolation, for after the statement that the risen Jesus appeared “then to the twelve” there shortly follows “then to all the apostles,” that is, on the traditionist assumption, to the twelve again—the exclusion of Judas not being recognized. The first-cited clause could be interpolated in order to insert the number; the second could not have been inserted if the other were already there.

That is the sole allusion. We find none where we might above all expect it, in the pseudo-biographical epistle to the Galatians, though there is mention in the opening chapter of “them which were apostles before me,” “the apostles,” “James the brother of the Lord” (never mentioned as an apostle in the gospels unless he be James the son of Alphæus or James the son of Zebedee: that is, not a brother of Jesus but simply a group-brother), and “James and Cephas and John, who were [or are] reputed to be pillars.” The language used in verse 6 excludes the notion that the writer believed “the apostles” to have had personal intercourse with the Founder. Thus even in a pseudepigraphic work, composed after Paul’s time, there is no suggestion that he had to deal with the twelve posited by the gospels and the Acts. And all the while “apostles” without number continue to figure in the documents. They were in fact a numerous class in the early Church. It is not surprising that the late Professor Cheyne not only rejected the story of the Betrayal but declared that “The ‘Twelve Apostles,’ too, are to me as unhistorical as the seventy disciples.”[58]

On the other hand, we have a decisive reason for the invention of the Twelve story in the latterly recovered Teaching of the Twelve Apostles[59] (commonly cited as the Didachê), a document long current in the early church. Of that book, the first six chapters, forming nearly half of the matter, are purely ethical and monotheistic, developing the old formula of the “Two Ways” of life and death; and saying nothing of Jesus or Christ or the Son, or of baptism or sacrament. Then comes a palpably late interpolation, giving a formula for baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Even in the ninth section, dealing with the Eucharist, we have only “the holy vine of David thy Servant, which thou hast made known to us through Jesus thy Servant.”[60] The tenth, which is evidently later, and is written as a conclusion, retains that formula. After that come warnings against false apostles and prophets; and only in the twelfth section does the word “Christian” occur. Still later there is specified “the Lord’s-day (κυριακὴν) of the Lord.” Then comes a prescription for the election of bishops; and the document ends with a chapter preparing for the expected “last days.”

Here then we have an originally Jewish document, bearing the title Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, adopted and gradually added to by early Jesuists who did not deify Jesus, though like the early Christians in general they expected the speedy end of the world. Though their Jesus is not deified, he has no cognomen. He is neither “of Nazareth,” nor “the Nazarite;” and he is an ostensibly mythical figure, not a teacher but a rite-founder, for his adherents. They do not belong to an organized Church; and the baptismal section, with its Trinitarian formula, is quite certainly one of the latest of all. The eighth, which connects quite naturally with the sixth, and which contains the “Lord’s Prayer,” raises the question whether it belonged to the pre-Christian document, and has been merely interpolated with the phrase as to “the Lord ... his gospel.” There are strong reasons for regarding the Lord’s Prayer as a pre-Christian Jewish composition,[61] founded on very ancient Semitic prayers. Seeing that “the Lord” has in all the previous sections of the treatise clearly meant “God” and not “Christ,” the passage about the gospel is probably Jesuist; but it does not at all follow that the Prayer is.