Warning: The following post contains shocking historical facts and hypotheses that may be unfit for some viewers.
Yesterday I posted a video of Richard Carrier’s talk about the “Jesus Myth” theory. New testament scholar James McGrath had this to say about it:
[Carrier] says that Philo says that the Logos was named “Jesus” – ignoring the fact that in the relevant passage (On the Confusion of Tongues 62-63), Philo is offering an allusive reference to, and allegorical treatment of, a text in Zechariah which mentioned a historical high priest named Joshua. To see this as an argument in favor of mythicism, you have to ignore the details and just really want Philo to call the Logos “Jesus.”
Here are the similarities to the New Testament Jesus and the entity Philo speaks of:
1. Both are referred to as “the logos.”
2. Both are seen as mediators between God and man.
3. Both are seen as playing the role of a high priest, and are specifically linked to the high priest Melchizedek.
4. Both are the things through which God created the world. For evidence of points 1-4, see here, pages 83-85.
5. Both are called “The Branch” (See Zechariah 6:12, which is the Old Testament passage that Philo alludes to, and John 15 in which Jesus refers to himself as a “branch”).
6. Both have the duty of building the temple (Zechariah 6:12 says that the Branch will build the Temple, In John 2:19 Jesus says he will destroy the temple and in three days raise it up).
7. The passage that Philo refers to has a saying which seemed originally to apply to Joshua, the high priest. Jesus’ name is a form of Joshua.
So, while Carrier was probably oversimplifying by saying that “The logos’ name is Jesus, according to Philo” it is true that the logos of Philo and the Jesus of the New Testament have numerous and significant points of contact and that Jesus’ name has a connection to logos that Philo talked about. If Philo and the early Christians were thinking along similar lines, and the evidence does seem to support this strongly, then it follows that early on Jesus was indeed thought of as a divine demi-god type of entity, just as Carrier said. I’m not sure if this means that Jesus was mythical. Was the logos able to manifest on earth, as John 1:14 seems to say? Did the early Christians believe as much? If they did, then it’s entirely possible that they applied this understanding to their memories of a historical person. So at present I cannot agree with Carrier’s contention that Jesus was a myth, even if he does get a lot more right than James has given him credit for.
I probably won’t blog on this issue again for some time, but if you’re interested in learning more, I’d recommend Richard Carrier’s book Not the Impossible Faith. He goes over a number of interesting things about Christian history, including a demonstration of several parallels between Jesus and other sons of God like Romulus.
