The Case for the Real Jesus

by Lee Strobel

  Metzger agrees. “Whether this can be rightly called a resurrection is questionable, especially since, according to Plutarch, it was the pious desire of devotees to be buried in the same ground where, according to local tradition, the body of Osiris was still lying.”68

  French scholar Roland de Vaux, who was director of the École Biblique in Jerusalem, said Osiris “will never again come among the living and will reign only over the dead.” He concluded that “this revived god is in reality a ‘mummy’ god.”69 Wagner concurred. “Osiris knew no resurrection, but was resuscitated to be a ruler of the Netherworld,” he said.70

  The contrast with Jesus, said Yamauchi, couldn’t be more stark. “All of these myths are repetitive, symbolic representations of the death and rebirth of vegetation. These are not historical figures, and none of their deaths were intended to provide salvation,” he pointed out. “In the case of Jesus, even non-Christian authorities, like Josephus and Tacitus, report that he died under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. The reports of his resurrection are quite early and are rooted in eyewitness accounts.

  “They have the ring of reality,” he stressed, “not the ethereal qualities of myth.”

  CLAIMS OF OTHER VIRGIN BIRTHS

  Matthew, a follower of Jesus, and Luke, a first-century physician who said he “carefully investigated everything” about Jesus “from the beginning,”71 both report that Jesus was born to a virgin. It’s an extraordinarily improbable claim—unless the resurrection of Jesus is true, in which case his divinity was convincingly established and a virgin birth becomes not only believable but inexorably logical.

  One of the most popular objections to Jesus, however, is that his virgin birth was not historical but was stolen from earlier mythology and therefore is as fanciful as the outlandish stories about Zeus or Perseus.

  “The notion that Jesus had no human father because he was the Son of God…was originally a pagan notion,” said Robert J. Miller, associate professor of religion at Juniata College.72 “Gentiles in a pagan culture expect a man whose life embodied divinity to have a divine father and a human mother. The virgin birth thus corresponds to what Gentile Christians expected in a biography of Jesus.”73

  Walter E. Bundy, who started writing about the synoptic gospels in 1919 and taught at DePauw University, agreed that “the idea of a supernatural or virgin birth is pagan” and that “it must have found its way into the story of Jesus through Gentile-Christian channels.”74

  Similarly, skeptic Tom Flynn wrote in Free Inquiry magazine that if Jesus were a man “just remarkable enough to trigger the myth-making machinery of his time,” then it would be expected that “such formulaic and derivative claims” like the virgin birth should result.75

  I asked Yamauchi for his assessment. “The idea of the virgin birth of Jesus is distinctive because it’s based on ancient prophecy, specifically the Septuagint translation of Isaiah 7:14,” he began in response. “As you know, Isaiah uses the Hebrew word ‘almah, which means a ‘young woman’ would give birth, and the Septuagint makes her virginity more explicit by using the Greek word parthenos, which specifically means ‘virgin.’ Of course, it should be said that a young maiden in those days was assumed to be a virgin; we can’t necessarily say that in our contemporary society.”76

  “What about the parallels that are often cited between Jesus’ virgin birth and mythological gods?” I asked.

  “Some of these supposed parallels break down upon close examination,” he said. “Some of those that are often cited—like Zeus, for example—are anthropomorphic gods who lust after human women, which is decidedly different from Jesus’ story. The mythological off-spring are half gods and half men and their lives begin at conception, as opposed to Jesus, who is fully God and fully man and who is eternal but came into this world through the incarnation. Also, the Gospels put Jesus in a historical context, unlike the mythological gods. On top of that, even if a story of an extraordinary birth in mythology predates Christianity, that doesn’t mean Christians appropriated it.”

  That last point is also made by Robert Gromacki, a professor at Cedarville University, in his 2002 book The Virgin Birth:

  This is a perfect example of the logical fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc (“after this, therefore, because of this”). Plato wrote about the existence of God long before Paul authored his epistles, but the latter was in no way dependent upon the Greek philosopher. The argument of pagan derivation assumes too much in the way of parallelism and overlooks the radical differences.77

  I pulled out a list of the most commonly mentioned parallels to the Jesus account. “What about Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility who’s also known as Bacchus?” I asked. “He’s frequently cited as being the product of a virgin birth.”

  “No, there’s no evidence of a virgin birth for Dionysus,” Yamauchi said. “As the story goes, Zeus, disguised as a human, fell in love with the princess Semelê, the daughter of Cadmus, and she became pregnant. Hera, who was Zeus’s queen, arranged to have her burned to a crisp, but Zeus rescued the fetus and sewed him into his own thigh until Dionysus was born. So this is not a virgin birth in any sense.”78

  “What about the story of Zeus impregnating Danaë through a shower of gold and her giving birth to Perseus?” I asked.

  “There are many stories about Zeus and his liaisons with human women. Here’s the big difference: The Jewish God—Yahweh—could be anthropomorphic, but these were metaphors not to be taken literally, whereas in Greek mythology, the anthropomorphism was taken quite literally. The gods were very human—they lusted after mortal women. That’s the focus of these myths. Although Yahweh is sometimes expressed in human imagery, he is utterly unlike human beings. So these parallels break down on a very fundamental level. You’re talking about two very different concepts of God.”79

  The prominent scholar J. Gresham Machen, who taught New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary for twenty-three years, makes a similar point in his magnum opus, The Virgin Birth of Christ:

  Zeus may have union with Danaë not in human form, but in a shower of gold, but all the same the union is a satisfaction of his lust for the human maid. Everywhere it is the love of the god for the mortal woman, and not merely the exclusion of a human father of the child, which stands in the forefront of interest…. Could anything be more utterly remote from the representation in Matthew and Luke than these stories of the amours of Zeus?80

  Machen also notes that Christian apologist Justin Martyr, writing in the middle of the second century, argues that Jesus has a virgin birth “in common” with Perseus. Some have cited Justin’s writings as evidence that the two are, indeed, linked. Machen points out, however:

  We should never forget that the appeal of Justin Martyr and Origen to the pagan stories of divine begetting is an argumentum ad hominem. “You hold,” Justin and Origen say in effect to their pagan opponents, “that the virgin birth of Christ is unbelievable; well, is it any more unbelievable than the stories that you yourselves believe?”…When Justin…refers to the birth of Perseus as a birth from (or through) a virgin, he is going beyond what the pagan sources contained. There seems to be no clear evidence that pagan sources used the word “virgin” as referring to the mothers of heroes, mythical or historical, who were represented as being begotten by the gods.81

  Claims about extraordinary births of mythological gods were one thing, but quite another are the allegations that certain pre-Christian historical figures—from Buddha to Alexander the Great—are the products of virginal births. I planned to pursue these parallels next.

  OTHER REPORTS FROM HISTORY

  My first question along these lines involved the conception of Alexander the Great. Several stories swirl around his birth, and some writers have claimed he was immaculately conceived.

  “There’s no question that Alexander’s mother was Olympias and his father was Philip of Macedon,” Yamauchi explained. “It was only as Philip’s son that Alexander inherited the throne when his father was as
sassinated in 336 BC. The story about Olympias being impregnated by Zeus according to her dream was later propaganda designed to support Alexander’s demand for worship.”

  Indeed, there’s a report by Plutarch that Olympias explicitly rejected the story of Alexander’s conception by Zeus, saying in reference to Zeus’s wife, “Will not Alexander cease slandering me to Hera?”82 Actually, said historian Peter Green, “The truth of the matter is that we have surprisingly little direct evidence about Alexander’s childhood from any source, and what does exist is of very limited historical value.”83

  Yamauchi continued. “Buddha’s birth is often called virginal, but that’s not accurate either,” he said. “Sources for the life of Buddha do not appear in written form until five centuries after his death, so they’re not very reliable historically. According to legend, Buddha’s mother dreamed that he entered her in the form of a white elephant—fully formed! In addition, she had been married for many years prior to this, so she certainly wasn’t a virgin.84

  “The later sources for Buddha, coming five hundred to fifteen hundred years after his life, exaggerate the supernatural elements of his life. It’s even possible that some of the supposed parallels to the life of Jesus may have been borrowed from Christianity.”85

  As an aside, his reference to Buddha reminded me of a figure tied to another Eastern religion. “Some authors mention the Hindu god Krishna as having been born of a virgin,” I said.

  Yamauchi quickly dispatched that claim. “That’s not accurate,” he replied. “Krishna was born to a mother who already had seven previous sons, as even his followers readily concede.”86

  “What about Zoroaster?”

  “Zoroaster lived before 1000 BC, according to Mary Boyce, or in the sixth century BC, according to other scholars,” Yamauchi said. “The idea that his mother conceived him by drinking the sacred haoma drink appears in the Denkard, which dates to the ninth century AD. That’s an extremely long time later—and far after Jesus.”

  “What’s your opinion, then, of this allegation that the virgin birth of Jesus was copied from these other stories?”

  “No, there are too many differences,” he said. “I don’t think anyone can make a convincing case that the virgin birth of Jesus—which was reported quite soon after the fact and in documents that are sober in their reporting—was derived from any pagan or other sources.”

  Raymond E. Brown agrees. One of America’s premier New Testament scholars, he taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York for twenty-three years and was awarded honorary degrees from two dozen universities in the U.S. and abroad.

  He stressed that the supposed virgin-birth parallels “consistently involve a type of hieros gamos where a divine male, in human or other form, impregnates a woman, either through normal sexual intercourse or through some substitute form of penetration. They are not really similar to the non-sexual virginal conception that is at the core of the infancy narratives, a conception where there is no male deity or element to impregnate Mary.”87

  His conclusion was that “no search for parallels has given us a truly satisfactory explanation of how early Christians happened upon the idea of a virginal conception unless, of course, that is what really took place.”88

  Even Thomas Boslooper, a liberal professor who wrote a book on the virgin birth although he rejected its historicity, nevertheless scoffed at the suggestion that it was derived from pagan myths. I found his scathing conclusion to be astute:

  Contemporary writers invariably use only secondary sources to verify such claims. The scholars whose judgment they accept rarely produced or quoted the primary sources. The literature of the old German Religiongeschichtliche schule, which produced this conclusion and which has become the authority for contemporary scholars who wish to perpetrate the notion that the virgin birth in the New Testament has a non-Christian source, is characterized by brief word, phrase, and sentence quotations that have been lifted out of context or incorrectly translated and used to support preconceived theories. Sweeping generalizations based on questionable evidence have become dogmatic conclusions that cannot be substantiated on the basis of careful investigation.89

  In the end, allegations about Christianity stealing its belief about the virgin birth fared no better than the claims that it copied Jesus’ resurrection from dying and rising gods in antiquity. In the words of the University of Chicago’s renowned historian of religion, Mircea Eliade: “There is no reason to suppose that primitive Christianity was influenced by the Hellenistic mysteries.”90

  Efficiently and authoritatively, Yamauchi had dismantled the plagiarism case that has been hyped by so many critics of Christianity. With Boslooper’s blunt critique in mind, I decided to wrap up my interview by asking about ways that unsuspecting readers can protect themselves from fiction masquerading as fact.

  WILL TRUTH WIN OUT?

  My final line of questions triggered a strong response from Yamauchi. “Do you find that people are writing on these topics of mystery religions who lack the appropriate academic background and are often sloppy in the way they make generalizations?” I asked him.

  “Very much so,” he said sternly. “They don’t have the languages, they don’t study the original sources, they don’t pay attention to the dates, and they frequently quote ideas that were popular in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but have already been refuted. Reputable and careful scholars like Carsten Colpe of Germany, Günter Wagner of Switzerland, and Bruce Metzger of the United States have pointed out that, number one, the evidence for these supposed parallels is often very late, and number two, there are too many generalizations being made.

  “People see parallels and then jump to conclusions that one religion influenced another. Of course there are going to be some parallels—most religions talk about some sort of salvation, practice certain rituals, or have a common meal. But that doesn’t mean there is dependence.

  “Christianity is quite distinct in that it rose from a Jewish background, which is monotheistic, and it centers around a historical figure who was put to death in a barbaric manner, which is attested in non-Christian sources. Jesus’ followers were eyewitnesses in the first generation. Paul was converted by encountering the risen Christ and had access to eyewitnesses such as Peter and James. Christianity flourished and expanded in spite of persecution from the Roman authorities. It was a new message of love and God’s intervention in the world, and it incorporated all people, including slaves and women, the educated and noneducated—unlike Mithraism, which was confined primarily to soldiers.

  “So this new message was universal, yet it was rooted in an ancient tradition, fulfilling prophecies that had been foretold for many centuries. And it was exclusivistic. It wasn’t comfortable, as were the polytheistic pagan religions, in being eclectic or syncretistic—that is, enfolding beliefs and practices from other religions. That’s why, in fact, Christianity was persecuted. The mystery religions were inclusive—you could worship the emperor and you could still adhere to more than one of these at the same time.”

  “Do you think that in this age of the Internet, where half-truths and misinformation keep getting recycled, scholars are doomed to forever be responding to overblown claims that have long been answered?”

  “Yes, unfortunately, probably so,” he said, his tone resigned.

  “Do you think in the end the truth will win out?”

  “For some people,” he answered. “For others—they’re looking for what they want to find.”

  I wanted some guidance for those interested in pursuing the truth. “What advice would you give to people looking for reliable information?”

  Yamauchi put down his cup of coffee. “First, be careful of articles on the web. Even though the Internet is a quick and convenient source of information, it also perpetuates outdated and disproved theories,” he said. “Also check the credentials of the authors. Do they have the training and depth of knowledge to write authoritatively on these issues? And be sure to check the da
tes of sources that are quoted. Are they relying on anachronistic claims or discredited scholars? And finally, be aware of the biases of many modern authors, who may clearly have an axe to grind.”

  All of that made sense. At the same time, however, I was feeling a rising sense of indignation toward writers who either purposefully or carelessly confuse readers by making sweeping “copycat” allegations that sow unwarranted seeds of skepticism towards the real Jesus.

  Many of their claims are so outlandish—like the author who likened the sinking of Osiris’s coffin in the Nile to the Christian rite of baptism—that they would be laughable if the damage they wrought wasn’t so serious.91 Yet in many cases, people are believing them—a great illustration of the old saying that falsehood can make a trip around the world before truth can even get its boots on.

  I thanked Yamauchi for his help in setting the record straight. Battling the rain and wind again, I climbed into my rental car and began the long trek to the Cincinnati airport. The whole time, however, I couldn’t shake the frustration I felt over the proliferation of misleading information that has confused so many people. It was the same emotion that launched Nash on a crusade to expose the illegitimacy of the “copycat” argument prior to his untimely death in 2006.

  THE TIDE OF SCHOLARSHIP

  Ronald Nash, the author of such books as Faith and Reason and The Meaning of History, took truth seriously. He was a plain-talking professor with little patience for scholars or popular writers who took intellectual shortcuts or twisted the facts to support their own preconceived beliefs.

  His students quickly learned what it meant when Nash would mockingly sway his hips from side to side while quoting from a book. “It meant he believed what he was reading aloud was at best ridiculous and at worst heretical,” said a colleague. For Nash, he said, truth was more than an ideological parlor game: real lives were at stake.92

  So Nash was understandably intolerant of books that repeated worn-out Christian “copycat” claims that had been thoroughly answered decades ago. Offended by the blatant misrepresentations, sloppy logic, and trumped-up “parallels,” he sat down to write The Gospel and the Greeks as an antidote in 1992. When the onslaught didn’t stop, he updated his book in 2003.