In 1943, C.S. Lewis made the seemingly convincing argument (which is still used today as a staple of Christian rhetoric) that Jesus could not have been a “great moral teacher.” Instead, he was either a lunatic, a liar or what he claimed to be – the Son of God.
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg – or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.[i]
The logic of this argument falls apart when we don’t take the Bible literally, and consider the alternative that the gospel writers may have written a great many things about Jesus Christ that have no historical basis. Moreover, even Lewis could not deny the fact of Jesus’ similarities to other pagan mythological figures, which he claims actually motivated his conversion to Christianity:
If my religion is erroneous then occurrences of similar motifs in pagan stories are, of course, instances of the same, or a similar error. But if my religion is true, then these stories may well be a preparatio evangelica, a divine hinting in poetic and ritualform at the same central truth which was later focused and (so to speak) historicised in the Incarnation. To me, who first approached Christianity from a delighted interest in, and reverence for, the best pagan imagination, who loved Balder before Christ and Plato before St. Augustine, the anthropological argument against Christianity has never been formidable. On the contrary, I could not believe Christianity if I were forced to say that there were a thousand religions in the world of which 999 were pure nonsense and the thousandth (fortunately) true. My conversion, very largely, depended on recognizing Christianity as the completion, the actualization, the entelechy, of something that had never been wholly absent from the mind of man.[ii]
I can understand how, as a spiritually minded individual, Lewis came to understand Jesus Christ as the culmination of world literature and the natural religious inclination of mankind. And in at least some sense – he is. However, at the same time, Lewis’ modern inversion of the Diabolical Mimicry argument over-simplifies. For one, it ignores the probability that the gospel writers copied or borrowed from other contemporary traditions – something which is infinitely more likely and easier to explain than a God who revealed the full Truth of His intentions only once, to one small group, while teasing everyone else with a message 99% similar but only mythical. It also ignores the early church controversy over the historical Jesus, the deliberate and falsified history of apostolic tradition, and the violent conflict with and destruction of the pagan traditions which Jesus is “the completion” of.
Most importantly, Lewis takes for granted that Jesus Christ’s miraculous physical resurrection and bodily ascension into heaven is a “myth become fact” – that unlike other pagan deities, Jesus Christ alone actually rose from the dead. This conviction, although supported not by historical evidence, logic or reason (and in fact counter-intuitive – even “impossible”), continues to be used in nearly all scholarly works which distinguish Jesus from his parallels. The following passage from Burkert’s Ancient Mystery Cults demonstrates how deeply this faith can color research conclusions.
The Frazerian construct of a general “Oriental” vegetation god who periodically dies and rises from the dead has been discredited by more recent scholarship. There is no evidence for a resurrection of Attis; even Osiris remains with the dead; and if Persephone returns to this world every year, a joyous event for gods and men, the initiates do not follow her. There is a dimension of death and rebirth in all the mystery initiations, but the concept of rebirth or resurrection is anything but explicit. On the other hand, tales of suffering gods, who may die and still come back, are not confined to institutional mysteries.[iii]
Burkert claims that “there is no evidence” for the resurrection of Attis or Osiris (as opposed to the presumed evidence that Jesus actually rose from the dead) and that Persephone’s followers are not resurrected (as opposed to Christians, who will be). These assumptions are the result of Christianity’s fascination with the flesh; it is true that the distinguishing characteristic of Jesus, according to his earliest followers, was his physical incarnation and fleshly resurrection – which guarantees also a resurrection of the flesh for his followers. It is the inherent absurdity and foulness of this idea which made the Christians so unpopular in their day; and facing criticism on this one doctrine, Christian theology expanded and focused peculiarly on Jesus the man, come in the flesh. This was, however, a theological necessity, rather than a historical certainty.
The purpose of Part One was to explore whether the similarities between Jesus Christ and Harry Potter can be swept aside by appealing to the fact of Jesus’ historicity; now we find that they cannot. I have shown that the claim that Jesus was historical has been protested against from the early days of Christianity, noting also that his similarity to pagan saviors, as well as his physical birth, death and resurrection, have caused the major points of controversy. I’ve also demonstrated that many of the earliest Christian communities and teachers had no consistent beliefs about the historical Jesus, and that the historical events in the gospels were always meant to be taken on faith rather than evidence. Moreover it appears that Paul’s Jesus was, like the Jesus of the Gnostics, a spiritual metaphor for personal enlightenment rather than a recently crucified savior; and that this tradition (preached by Simon) may have predated the tradition later recorded in the gospels.
Does this prove that Jesus wasn’t historical? Not at all. Even though most of the words in the gospels are probably not his, even though he may not have performed the miraculous deeds ascribed to him, and even though historical references to him are not unquestioned, there is no way to prove that there was not a historical figure that sparked the legend. However – for our present study – the historical figure of Jesus is not important. We are interested in the literary Jesus, the image of popular culture that people recognize, as found in the Bible. This Jesus is a composite of various mythological traditions and preserves many ancient symbols; although modern readers enjoy the story and take the moral lessons without knowledge of the esoteric values of those symbols.
In this sense, the Harry Potter books are the Bible of modern times. They interest children (and adults) in reading, they offer a comprehensive story full of issues of morality, guilt, sacrifice, friendship, and they depict a fight between good and evil where eventually good triumphs. They also teach the importance of Love and Faith. More specifically, they employ the powerful emotional devices of Catharsis as the hero dies, but then comes back triumphantly; of the rise of a hero fulfilling prophecy; and of magical healings and displays.
If nothing else, I have proven that there is the possibility that Jesus may not have been historical (or more precisely, that his chief traits are due to Christianity’s inclusion of mythical literature), that the evidence surrounding the growth of the early church does not lead us infallibly to a historical founder, and that therefore Jesus Christ and Harry Potter might both be literary creations, which drew on the various mystical and spiritual traditions before them to present readers of their times with an engaging story.
Now that we’ve created space for the possibility of Jesus as a literary character, we can proceed to the more satisfying investigation of alternative, perhaps more fitting, theories about how the story of Jesus came about. Many researchers focus on the similarities between Christianity and paganism but fail to delve into what for me is one of the most exciting facets of this topic: where the common features came from, and what they actually mean. In the next several chapters we’ll explore the symbols of the lion, the snake, the Ankh or Cross, the sheep, the death and resurrection, and argue that they were developed in response to astronomical observations, which later evolved into a mystical spirituality that included ideas of a suffering savior who promised eternal life.
[i]C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Chapter 3, O.C.R, December 12, 2003, revised July 1, 2005, http://www.lib.ru/LEWISCL/mere_engl.txt.
[ii]C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock, 66-67.
[iii]Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults, 75.
Tags: C.S. Lewis, Christ Myth, Christian history, pagan Christs
