Deconstructing Jesus

by Robert M. Price

After more than a century of New Testament scholarship, it has become clear that the Jesus of the gospels is a fictive amalgam, reflecting the hopes and beliefs of the early Christian community and revealing very little about the historical Jesus. Over the millennia since the beginning of Christianity various congregations, from fundamentalist to liberal, have tended to produce a Jesus figurehead that functions as a symbolic cloak for their specific theological agendas.

Through extensive research and fresh textual insights Robert M. Price paves the way for a new reconstruction of Christian origins. Moving beyond the work of Burton L. Mack and John Dominic Crossan on Jesus movements and Christ cults, which shows how the various Jesus figures may have amalgamated into the patchwork savior of Christian faith, Price takes an innovative approach. He links the work of F.C. Baur, Walter Bauer, Helmut Koester, and James M. Robinson with that of early Christ-myth theorists—two camps of biblical analysis that have never communicated.

Arguing that perhaps Jesus never existed as a historical figure, Price maintains an agnostic stance, while putting many puzzles and scholarly debates in a new light.

He also incorporates neglected parallels from Islam, the Baha'i Faith, and Buddhism. Deconstructing Jesus provides a valuable bridge between New Testament scholarship and early freethinkers in a refreshing cross-fertilization of perspectives.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, Christianity, Theology, History, Atheism

284 pages, Hardcover

First published February 29, 2000

About the author

Robert McNair Price is an American theologian and writer. He teaches philosophy and religion at the Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary, is professor of biblical criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute, and the author of a number of books on theology and the historicity of Jesus, asserting the Christ myth theory.

A former Baptist minister, he was the editor of the Journal of Higher Criticism from 1994 until it ceased publication in 2003. He has also written extensively about the Cthulhu Mythos, a "shared universe" created by H.P. Lovecraft.

Reviews

[Darrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his book, Deconstructing Jesus, Robert M. Price opens by pointing out that scholars in search of the historical Jesus often create him in their own image. Depending on what parts of the scriptural record you consider to be genuine, Jesus could have been a messianic king, a progressive Pharisee, a Galilean shaman, or a Hellenistic sage. However, if Jesus can be interpreted to be whoever you want him to be, it makes the whole question of a historical Jesus meaningless.

In order to uncover the true historical Jesus, we must take away everything which came from a different source. Price points out anachronisms in the Gospels proving certain sayings couldn't have been said during the time of Jesus. For example, there were virtually no synagogues or Pharisees in Galilee until after 70 CE. Also, the term "Rabbi" wasn't used as a title before the second century.

The mystery of what the number 153 means in John 21:11 ("Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken.") is solved by turning to Pythagoras. One of the miracles of Pythagoras involved him correctly guessing the exact number of fish in a net. 153 is a significant number to Pythagoreans because it's the sum of 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14+15+16+17. It's also what you get when you add 1+(1X2)+(1X2X3)+(1X2X3X4)+(1X2X3X4X5). Also, if you add together the cubes of the three digits in 153, you get 153. It's what Pythagoreans call a "triangular" number.

Price examines the Sufi preserved sayings of Jesus and also notes the similarities between the sayings of Jesus and aphorisms of the rabbis in the Mishnah as well as Cynic and Stoic philosophers. In a very interesting chapter, he details how Rene Girard's scapegoat theory can be applied to the story of Jesus.

Price also devotes a chapter to ancient romance novels such as Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe, Iamblichus' Babylonian Story, the Ephesian Tale of Xenophon, Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon, Longus' Daphnis and Chloe, Heliodorus' Ethiopian Story, and Apuleius' The Golden Ass. A common plot involves the heroine falling into a coma, being prematurely buried, and kidnapped by grave robbers. Her lover is shocked to find her tomb empty, eventually finds her, but gets crucified because the king wants her for himself. The lover is saved from crucifixion at the last moment and is reunited with his love, although he thinks that she's a ghost at first.

Price points out parallels between Jesus and other mythical savior figures (like Dionysus, Jesus turns water into wine and describes himself as a life-giving grapevine (John 15:1-10)). Also, he points out how parts of Jesus' story are borrowed from other messianic figures. The trial of Jesus is lifted straight from the trial of Jesus ben-Ananias as described by Josephus. The cleansing of the temple is based on Simon bar-Giora. Jesus is also based on Cleomenes, Carabbas, Theudas, Jesus ben-Sapphiah, Jesus bar-Abbas, Elymas bar-Jesus and Jesus Justus among others. Jesus is also based on Old Testament figures such as Joshua (which is a variant form of Jesus), Jonah, Elisha, and Moses. Mark's crucifixion account is taken from Psalm 22.

It's not even certain that Jesus was crucified by Pilot since there is another tradition in which Jesus is crucified by Herod. There's also a Jewish tradition that Jesus died 100 BCE. 1 Corinthians 2:8 and Colossians 2:15 attribute the death of Jesus to spiritual entities rather than earthly rulers.

So, after we remove the borrowed stories and sayings, what are we left with? Nothing. Just as with Hercules, there might have originally been a historical figure behind the myths, but when you strip the myths away, nothing of the historical person is left. If there was an historical Jesus, no information about him survives.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The creation of the Jesus cult and the myth that surrounds it reveals itself when one strips away the special pleading and magically assuming that the New Testament (NT) was creatio ex nihilo and was not a product of its time period. When the New Testament is considered as part of reality and its superstitious origins are removed the Jesus cult has even less validity than I had previously thought.

This book mercifully saves the reader from too many Biblical citations with their all too familiar contradictions and incoherencies. This book does provide insights that show how the Gospels are mostly fictional extrapolations from other fictional extrapolations. All of the post-prediction proofs in the NT have always irritated me. It is easier to believe that humans were being human and fooling the gullible than it is to believe in magic, fortune tellers or non-repeatable experiences. Fictional stories are easily made to fit any narrative one wants. Even today, over 500 people (the number of witnesses mentioned in Acts) believe in the return of Elvis and that UFOs are real. The author made the point that modern day believers in UFOs just as the early Jesus cult myth believers are looking for something bigger than just the phenomena itself. For a somewhat obscure and recent book on the intersection between UFOs and religious myth believers check out the book ‘American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology’ by Diana Walsh Pasulka.

Even if one were to believe the NT and that every matter of fact that was presented in it was true, it still doesn’t lead to the conclusion ‘that Jesus died for your sins [scapegoat theory, discussed at length within this book] and that He was the Son of God’ and so on. My least favorite lines in the NT and cited in this book is ‘Truly He must be the Son of God’ because he knew everything about the woman at the well, or because how he died on the cross. Is that really the best explanation you can come up with to explain the facts that you think you know?

What do you call someone who murders people because he didn’t like their beliefs and then goes on zealously propagating that same set of beliefs? Christians call him Paul, I call him a psychotic. Yes, a psychotic really and truly could have heard a spirit say ‘Paul, Paul, why do you persecute me’, but at face value I’ll just call him a psychotic and not take what he has to say with any more credence than it deserves and even if he wasn’t a psychotic isn’t a better explanation was that the voice Paul heard was an alien from outer space, an undigested piece of meat, or the first ventriloquist practicing her act?

The author deconstructs the Jesus myth while constructing what most likely happened instead. There was no uniformed agreed upon template for what was developing into the canonical Jesus myth. As the world and the word of the Jesus myth was revealing itself, there were very many crops in the field trying to take hold and from time to time they were getting meshed together while other schools of thought were getting plucked from the field as if they were weeds and the strongest myth was the one that incorporated the others while making their own myth all the stronger.

The author makes a strong case that the historical Jesus is mostly fictional and perhaps even completely fictional. The strongest believers of the Jesus Myth cult and those who appeal to special pleading and think the New Testament was created out of whole cloth (creatio ex nihilo) through a direct mystical Godly inspiration are today most likely to be Evangelical Christians and when they are white are 80% likely to support Donald Trump. Myths and myth makers need context free fake news with relational free alternative facts in order to reconcile their inherent contradictions or in other words they need special pleading and creatio ex nihilo.

[Aaron Lord · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-researched

Price has done amazing research of extra-biblical sources to cast doubt on the traditional view of Jesus' uniqueness. Virtually nothing he said was not said by others, whether the Cynics or even much-maligned Jews of the first century who were teaching the same things. Even the uniqueness of the crucifixion and resurrection was preceded by identical myths or even novels of the time. Price is sympathetic, as he came from an Evangelical background and you can see an evolution of thought in his writings. After exposing the idea of originality in the gospels he reaches a point of agnosticism about whether we can know that there ever was a man named Jesus of Nazareth at all.

[Clay · Rating 3 out of 5]

The content in this book is worth five stars; however, it is a difficult book to read at times. Price enthusiastically writes in a very scholarly prose, which adds credibility, but it also makes it a tougher nut to crack for the layperson. Having said that - if you are interested what historical evidence we have that Jesus was in fact a historical figure, if any, this is a good reference book to read and I feel like Price achieved his goals.

Quotes:
"Generations of Rationalists and freethinkers have held that Jesus Christ corresponds to no historical character: There never was a Jesus of Nazareth. We might call this categorical denial "Jesus atheism." What I am describing is something different, a "Jesus agnosticism." There may have been a Jesus on the earth in the past, but the state of the evidence is so ambiguous that we can never be sure what this figure was like or, indeed, whether there was such a person."

"Thus it seems to me that Jesus must be categorized with other legendary founder figure including the Buddha, Krishna, and Lao-tzu. There may have been a real figure there, but there is simply no longer any way of being sure."


The evidence and scholarship that R. M. Price employs to back these statements up is overwhelming impressive and at the end of the read one must admit that the evidence for a historical Jesus is slim to non-existent. I was unable to reach any other conclusion: I was forced to say, "Did Jesus really exist? Maybe, but we can't know, and if he did, there are so many plausible forms that he may have embodied that it is futile to even try and answer the question; "Who was he?.""

[Geoff Glenister · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found parts of this fascinating and helpful for working some things out myself. But at times it seemed like Price had made a jump and expected us to do the same, and his strategy was just to pile on tons of details until the reader gave up trying to comprehend and just decided to accept that Price was right. For example, there was a section of the book where Price examined "Sufi Q" - sayings that Sufi Muslims attributed to Jesus. Price proposed that it's possible that these sayings may actually be preserved oral traditions of versions of Jesus' sayings that predate the "Q source" sayings of the Gospels. But I found his arguments along those lines to be completely unconvincing - oh, it might be possible, but he failed to even come close to proving anyone should take that possibility seriously. Later on in the same chapter, he examines some of the sayings of Greek Cynics. Some of them were uncannily close to sayings in the Gospels. But many of them really didn't have anything in common except, for example, that laughing was part of the theme. So while a few of the sayings may have been the original source from which the Q sayings came, I find no reason to jump to the conclusion that Jesus, all the stories about him and all the saying attributed to him were all a work of fiction. I have no doubt that some were - but I think Price is making a big ask. That being said, I think it's good to think about these things and take these challenges seriously and I wish more Christians would do so.

[Steven H · Rating 4 out of 5]

A "JESUS AGNOSTIC" NEW TESTAMENT SCHOLAR LOOKS AT THE GOSPEL EVIDENCE

Robert McNair Price (born 1954) is a former Baptist minister who teaches philosophy and religion at the Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary, is professor of biblical criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute, and was the editor of the Journal of Higher Criticism from 1994 until it ceased publication in 2003. He is a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, notwithstanding his doubts about the historical existence of Jesus. He has written other books such as 'The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition?,' 'Jesus Is Dead,' 'The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul,' 'The Case Against The Case For Christ,' etc.

He wrote in the Introduction to this 2000 book, "this book treats of the historical Jesus and whether we can know anything about him, whether even there is anyone to know about!... I intend to deconstruct 'Jesus Christ' on a deeper level, one underlying believers' imaginary relationships with their Savior... What I do not propose to do is what an increasing ocean of books endeavor, namely reconstructing a historical Jesus from what scanty evidence remains to us... Generations of Rationalists and freethinkers have held that Jesus Christ corresponds to no historical character: There never was a Jesus of Nazareth... What I am describing is something different, a 'Jesus agnosticism.' There may have been a Jesus on earth in the past, but the state of the evidence is so ambiguous that we can never be sure what this figure was like or, indeed, whether there was such a person." (Pg. 9,12,17)

He points out, "The power of Burton Mack's case [The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins] is such that he has managed to convince the great proponent of the Christ-Myth in our day, George A. Wells, to abandon the ground he defended for so long. Wells now significantly qualifies his own argument to the effect that, while there was a Cynic-style sage named Jesus underlying Q1, this shadowy figure did not give rise to the full-blown mythic Christ of the gospels... And Mack would agree." (Pg. 115)

He argues, "Let me hasten to point out that a multiple-root origin theory for Christianity would not automatically mean there had been no original historical Jesus. Indeed, Mack certainly holds for... at least one historical Jesus, the sage whose sayings have been collected for our edification in Q1. But I wonder if Mack's work does not set loose implications that he himself does not yet appreciate... Q1, far from allowing us access for the first time to the historical Jesus, is instead inconsistent with a historical Jesus." (Pg. 150)

He concludes, "Traditionally, Christ-Myth theorists have argued that one finds a purely mythic conception of Jesus in the epistles and that the life of Jesus the historical teacher and healer as we read it in the gospels is a later historicization. This may indeed be so, but it is important to recognize the obvious: The gospel story of Jesus is itself apparently mythic from first to last. In the gospels the degree of historicization is actually quite minimal, mainly consisting of the addition of the layer derived from contemporary messiahs and prophets... One does not need to repair to the epistles to find a mythic Jesus." (Pg. 260)

Price is an unusual figure (not many Jesus skeptics are also New Testament scholars), but his books are important reading for anyone studying the historical evidence for Jesus.