[Man, I haven't posted here for a long while! That needs to change!]
I was reading the Bible earlier today, and as I read it I couldn't help but think about the strangeness of a certain postmodern theory that, effectively, claims that Jesus is a mythological figure taken from other religions.
I think one of the major flaws with this belief -- that is, the belief that Jesus is a fictional character created to represent a Jewish version of the "Corn King" myth -- lies in how we deal with the context and the composition of the New Testament. (And, by extension, the Old Testament as well.)
The advocates of the "Corn-King Jesus" belief make the following claim: that Jesus, as He is portrayed in the Gospels, is a fictional character, based on a real man, who represents a Jewish interpretation of the Corn-King myth from other religious systems of the day (notably, the Greek Dionysus and the Egyptian Osiris). This belief is not a new belief, either, as it has been noted in comparative mythology [most notably, The Hero with a Thousand Faces].
Before I refute the concept using, as the title suggests, the context and composition of the New Testament, I would like to say [shockingly!] that the adherents of "Corn-King Jesus" actually make a good observation. Like most scientists, philosophers, and theologians, they make great observations but come to poor conclusions from those observations. The similarities between Jesus and other "dying-and-returning-god" myths are uncanny. I would like to note, in particular, the story of Balder the Beautiful from Norse mythology -- how the most beautiful of the gods is killed and slain by the scheming of Loki. Or, for instance, Queztalcoutl, the dying god of the Aztecs who returns with the sun...
(As I've intimated in previous posts, though, I don't believe that Mythology plops up from out of nowhere -- it is developed through the psychology and spiritual encounters of mortal men. Should we be so surprised that man, who was created in the Image of God, has so many images that reflect, albeit impurely, the Nature of God? Or, for instance, should we be so surprised when we believe in spiritual beings and spiritual encounters [both good and evil] that people outside of the Middle East also had spiritual encounters? -- This should be enough to refute the Corn-King Jesus concept... but I have another purpose for this post.)
The thing that bothers me so much, though, about this theory is its core misunderstanding of the context and composition of the New Testament. When we look at the Gospels [Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John], we do not see mythological writing or storytelling. Whether you believe the writers trustworthy or not, or whether they were in the right mind or not, it is evidently clear that the authors of the Gospels wrote those Gospels not as mythological texts, but as historical recordings.
This is generally clear no matter what work of literature we look at. When I read a novel, I know, at the very least, that the author intended it to be read as a novel. Maybe it does have some nonfiction events in there -- or even semi-autobiographical events [for example, Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer stories] -- but the author wrote it in such a genre that I, as the reader, can recognize how I read it.
This is vitally important if we want to understand the proper interpretation of any literary text. You might not believe Luke the Physician when he says: "it seemed good to me to write an orderly account for you... so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught" (Luke 1:3-4). But, at the very least, we can be 100% certain that Luke believed that his readers would receive his text in that way.
There's an apologetic concept used by Josh McDowell that notes, vitally, how most of the early evangelists of the Gospel died for the sake of that Gospel. Mark gets dragged around Alexandria by a rope around his neck; John gets boiled in oil multiple times until the Emperor gives up and places him on Patmos until he dies; Matthew gets slain in Ethiopia. Why would men die for a lie? Why would men die for a fantasy? A false mythology?
My purpose in saying all this is to underscore the following things: the writers of the Gospels at the very least, contextually, wrote their writings in a manner that would be received not as mythology but as history (particularly Luke). These same men faced persecution for writing such a history, which would have been considerably less offensive were it a mythology. Rome had plenty of gods, so the addition of another mythological tradition, even one that claimed supremacy, would have been considerably preferable to a historical account that claimed supremacy.
When we read the Gospels, we read them as History. They don't sound like a mythological story.
That's the Beauty of it.
I might have mentioned this concept in my previous post about The Last Unicorn, but the amazing thing about the Incarnation is this: "The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us." (John 1:14) The Myth, the thing that we've heard whispered about for centuries and millennia, the Promise of God, the very Word of God -- He "becomes flesh." He becomes real. What we have in the Gospels is the strange and miraculous concept: the Corn-King, which we've heard about before, is actually a real, flesh-and-blood Man, and He has power to change us.
That's the Beauty of the Gospels. They are History. They are read as History. Whether or not you believe that what they say is true, you have to admit that they make the claim that they are true. This is not something that you seen in other mythological literature. Those tales say "So they say," or "Thus says the ancients," or "Some believe,"... They never say: "Dionysus was a real man, here, in history." Now, there were people who believed that; but none of the mythological literature tries to claim historicity. Only the Gospels do. Only the Gospels claim [with, I might mention, third-party sources that back them up] that Jesus was a real man, that He made real claims about God and about Life and about Salvation, and, most importantly, that He really did raise from the dead.
And I say all that to point us at something important about textual context -- that is, that the genre and type of literature of any text can point us to, in part, the author's meaning and the proper interpretation of that text. You might not believe that the Gospels are Historical. I do. You might not believe that Jesus was a real Man. I do. You might believe that Luke was making it all up. I don't. But unhesitatingly we must agree that, at the very least, Luke believed that his hearers would believe that his writing was Historical. And that very fact tells us something very important: that Luke was trustworthy [he's a doctor! -- and he's attested of some manner of honor in Paul's epistles as well], that Luke's audience already believed something about Jesus, that Luke's audience would receive what he was saying without having to see what he was talking about. ...
And to me, this refutes the Corn-King Jesus belief. If the Gospel was just a mythological cloak which the Gospel-Writers wrapped around a historical man, then why are the Gospel-Writers' writings so well-received? If, as the Corn-King Jesus folk say, the Resurrection was just a mythological after-addition, why is it written so uncannily... amythological? There's one angel, maybe two. An earthquake. Some dead people come back to life. And yet, the Gospel-Writers just toss those details off on the side. There's no trumpet. There's no explosion. There's no retribution against those who slayed the Savior. In fact (it's so undramatic it's hilarious), the apostles actually don't believe it initially. (And two of them are going to write the Gospels...)
Context matters. The method of composition matters. And you can learn a lot about a text just by looking into such little things!
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