Jesus, Myth, and Metaphor

[Note: With me being busier than usual lately, I thought I would dredge up some old material. Years ago at the old FRDB discussion board, I posted the following (edited for format and clarity) in response to a general repudiation of Jesus' historicity by contributors there on a thread called "The Best Case for an Historical Jesus."[1]]

 

'I've heard it said often that Paul knew nothing of the historical Jesus. Now I confess that I lack the education in Biblical Studies, Historiography, or Ancient Languages supposedly required to understand the intricacies of the arguments in support of this thesis. But I do know that mythicism entails a mythical interpretation of Paul. I decided therefore to personally review Paul's letters, starting with Romans (generally accepted as authentic), his first in the canon, and got no further than this:

 

"Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead" (Rom. 1:1-4).

 

So three verses into Paul's writings and we have what for all the world appears to be a reference to Jesus born into the world as a flesh-and-bone person. (Galatians 4:4 suggests the same, in that Jesus was "born of a woman, born under the law.") Evidently the emphasized portion has been described as cryptic, or perhaps ambiguous, by some, but it is commonly used by Paul in reference to physical realities (except when speaking of the flesh as the "sinful nature," which clearly Paul would not say of Christ, let alone in the context of his birth and resurrection by the "Spirit of holiness"). This passage seems to me, then, to indicate an important theological point on the part of Paul – that Jesus, though Lord and Messiah, was born into our world as a man. That is, Jesus was both Son of David and Son of God. Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles (Greeks), and his decidedly theological message centered on Jesus' fundamental identity, so he had little need to rehash the various historical circumstances of the life of Jesus (other than his becoming a man for the purpose of salvation). Besides, it may well be that his audience was already immersed in the various writings and oral traditions that made up the Gospels.

At the same time, Paul was keenly aware of proto-Gnostic movements afoot at the time, as his apologetic addresses to the Corinthians and Colossians indicate. Best known primarily for his direct witness to the overwhelming power of Christ, Paul was nonetheless, and perhaps for that very reason, reminding the Romans of Jesus' genuine humanity (historicity) in the introduction to his theological magnum opus. For this reason and others, I don't buy Bultmann's miracle = myth assumption, which leads to the false history-or-myth dichotomy that too often dominates discussions of Jesus and historicity. It really makes more sense of the facts to say that an ongoing, seemingly unresolvable dispute over Historical Jesus vs. Mythical Jesus points to an original, Traditional Jesus, the God-man who incorporates both historical and theological elements. In other words, the current controversy amounts to prima facie evidence that the apostles, church fathers and church councils had it right all along.

Now it's generally understood that the apostolic writers as a group (including Paul, and especially John), along with the early church fathers, took great exception to Docetism, which could be roughly defined as the belief that Christ was a spirit who merely "appeared" in the flesh. It hardly makes sense to say that otherwise strident anti-Docetists and anti-Gnostics like Paul were really mythicists at some mysterious deeper level. And if they were not mythicists, is it reasonable to suggest that they should have gone out of their way to anticipate twenty-first century historical criticism and formulate a preemptive "response"? To me, trying to demonstrate that Jesus wasn't a myth is like trying to demonstrate that we aren't all currently living in The Matrix, or that the axioms of logic aren't merely social constructs. Once called into question, the most obvious truths become notoriously difficult to prove.'

 

To this the mythicist Earl Doherty replied:

 

'Apparently you did not finish your reading of the Pauline epistles, or did not pick up on the fact that Paul speaks of "flesh" and "body" in quite mystical ways which do not refer to physical realities. He regularly refers to the "body of Christ" of which believers form the limbs, Christ being the "head" (as in 1 Cor. 12:27, or Col. 1:18, or Eph. 1:22-23 in which the church becomes Christ's "body.") In Eph. 2:14-16, Christ "abolishes the Law in his flesh" with the result that "he might create in himself a new man out of the two, and in this one body reconcile both [Jew and gentile] to God through the cross." Hebrews, non-Pauline, speaks of Christ's "flesh" as the "curtain" through which believers can enter the new sanctuary where Christ made his sacrifice (in the heavenly world) by offering his blood. Here, "blood" is clearly presented as a form of non-material/earthly blood in a non-earthly dimension.

 

There is no support for finding an 'out' here by declaring that all these things are metaphors or allegories. Paul never states or treats them as such. They seem to be literal concepts within a mystical, spiritual dimension. When he wants to present an allegory, Paul states it as such, as in Galatians 4's allegory of the sons of Abraham. And even there, the phrase kata sarka is applied in some kind of mystical way, since he makes it a point of applying it only to one of the sons, while declaring the other was born kata pneuma. (Would they not both have been born kata sarka if all the phrase meant was a literal physical birth?)

 

It is also possible to understand the kata sarka of Romans 1:3 as not referring specifically to Christ's flesh itself, whether material or spiritual, but rather is a phrase which conveys the idea of being 'in relation to flesh, to the fleshly realm,' or if you like, even the world of human flesh. A similar form of non-literal meaning one finds in 2 Cor. 5:16. The phrase, then, describes Christ's relationship to the human David, but not in the sense of physical descent. Whether he understood it or not, he got it from scripture which states that the Christ will be of the seed of David. Even the word "seed" in Romans 1:3 need not have a literal meaning, as we know from Romans 9:6-8 and Galatians 3:29, where the gentiles are Abraham's "seed" even though they are not physically descended from him. Even Christ, declared to be Abraham's "seed" in Gal. 3:16, is said to be so solely on the basis of a single word in scripture, with no appeal made to him being in a physical descent from Abraham.

 

Also, if you know any of the OT Pseudepigrapha, you would realize that Jewish sectarian writers were very capable of presenting pictures of activities that go on in various layers of the heavens which have very human-sounding descriptions, but involve spiritual equivalents.

 

So things are not quite as straightforward as you might imagine.'

 

And to Doherty I answered (again edited):

 

'It would be a non sequitur to suggest that Paul's use of various terms in a mystical-spiritual context prohibits him from using them in a historical context. If he is like virtually every writer ever born, he frequently uses the same terms in different contexts, with different meanings emerging as a result. Understanding this fact is one of the guiding principles of biblical exegesis, indeed of verbal communication generally. And context here offers a "clue" to Christ's historicity, namely reference to "resurrection from the dead" (v. 4). This refers to the same phenomenon which Paul explains quite thoroughly in 1 Corinthians as a dead physical or fleshly or corrupt body being transformed into a living spiritual (spiritually whole, hence "glorified") body and thereby rising bodily from a physical death, i.e., a death experienced in historical time and space. From this perspective, it is no wonder that Pilate, a mundane Roman official, should be found playing a prominent role in the execution of Christ.

 

Like any other author, Paul is under no obligation to explain his use of literary devices, not even as he is using them. Indeed, as C.S. Lewis and many other scholars and theologians have pointed out, it is virtually impossible for humans to speak at any length of spiritual realities without earthly referents and anthropomorphisms. That fact should not be taken to mean that such references are literal depictions of the spiritual realm. Even if kata sarka referred strictly to physical, corrupted flesh, it would not prevent other phrases from being used in comparison to it for a theological purpose. Although I have not studied the particular language to nearly the same extent as you, I would say that the very point Paul is making in Galatians 4, that there is a vital difference between physical and spiritual realities, underscores the pointedly physical or "fleshly" connotation of kata sarka.

As for the metaphor or analogy of a physical body in 1 Cor. and elsewhere, it's obvious enough to me that the various bodily appendages should not be expected to exactly correspond with individuals constituting a quickly growing population of believers. The truth of that contention becomes all the more evident in light of Paul's other metaphors for the church, such as a household (many bodies rather than one) or a building (an altogether non-biological structure), which are clearly not compatible with a single literal body. The church cannot literally be all those entities at once, whereas its functions and characteristics can be described legitimately and concurrently with multiple metaphors.

 

Now regarding allegories: There appears to be a false dichotomy at work here. We supposedly know that Paul did not use allegories when he did not state it as such, because, after all, we know that when he does use allegories "he states it as such." Left unaddressed is the distinct likelihood that Paul often used figurative language but did not always announce the fact. Recall the many instances in the Gospels involving both scenarios -- where the evangelist states that the story to follow is a parable, while Jesus tells the same story without calling it a parable.

 

Of course it is possible to read kata sarka here as a reference to some flesh other than Christ's, especially when there appears to be no great difference between being born directly into human flesh and being born in relation to "the world of human flesh" -- whatever the latter is supposed to mean exactly. Given Paul's immediate context and his general appreciation as a Jew for the role of history in the plan of God (a major theme of Romans as it happens), however, mythicism seems the less plausible interpretation.

 

In a sense I agree that "things are not quite as straightforward" as we would like. That's precisely why I drew the comparison between Christ-myth theories and epistemological idealism. Once we openly call into question the obvious, like the objective reality of the physical world we live in, or in this case the prima facie textual evidence indicating apostolic belief in the Incarnation (hence historicity) of Christ, all sorts of strange possibilities begin to emerge.'
 

So ended my brief exchange with Doherty and my participation in that thread, though the discussion continued involving other contributors for a few more pages. That was almost fifteen years ago, so I'm not sure how our respective arguments would hold up today. But given that "Christ myth" theories refuse to go away, I thought some
readers might find it interesting.

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[1] "The Best Case for an Historical Jesus," posted at the Freethought and Rationalism Discussion Board (archives), 2002, http://bcharchive.org/2/thearchives/showthread70fb.html?t=283124&page=13. My part in the conversation takes place at the bottom of page 13.