Easter Myths

Please note that due to software, not everything in this transcript will be accurate.

Media – Ricky Gervais clip

Studio – John Dickson:

It’s Easter, and around this time a couple of billion people pause in some way to contemplate the death and resurrection of Jesus. Alongside them are plenty of folks who look at Christ quite differently. Studies continue to show that most people like Ricky Gervais have a fairly positive view of the founder of Christianity, but that’s a long way from accepting that there’s any history, let alone relevance, in the alleged events of Easter. Was the story of Jesus’ final days a fiction cobbled together from a range of earlier myths? Did Jesus actually die on a cross, and if so, was it part of his own plan or just a tragic failure? And of course, what on earth can be said about him rising from the dead? We had a lot of fun looking into the Christmas story through the lens of history, so we thought it’d be good to do the same for Easter. It’s no small question. I agree with the statement of the Apostle Paul in the New Testament. If the Easter events aren’t real, Christian faith is useless (he says), and Christians are of all people most to be pitied. They deserve every bit of mockery dreamt up by comedians like Ricky Gervais.

I’m John Dickson and this is Undeceptions.

Undeceptions theme

Studio – John Dickson:

So, where do we start with our Easter myth-busting? What about the name itself? It’s a festival stolen from a more ancient pagan world, right? That’s what the US TV series American Gods suggests.

Media – American Gods

Studio – John Dickson:

So the early church just appropriated a Pagan festival. Not so much. The original name of Easter is pretty interesting. Some say it goes back to the Pagan god Ishtar. Ishtar. Easter. Sounds similar, right? Maybe that’s the origin. No, the fact is only English and German – both latecomers to the Christian party – have words that sound like Easter. Have a listen to how most of the world calls what we call Easter.

“Easter” in different languages

Studio – John Dickson:

Greek, French, Italian, Russian, Dutch, Danish, Javanese, Sudanese, and many, many more. They sound so similar because in most languages, sadly not English or German, the thing we call Easter is actually derived from the Hebrew word Pesach, which means Passover. Passover is the Central Jewish Festival that celebrates Israel’s deliverance from Egypt a millennia ago. God’s judgment fell on the oppressors and passed over the Israelites. That’s what Passa or Passover is all about. Now, according to all four gospels, Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem by the Romans during the Jewish Passover Festival in the early thirties AD. Christians immediately saw the connections. Just as a lamb was always sacrificed during the Passover, so Jesus gave his life so that through him God’s judgment would pass over all who trust in Christ. Ever since, most Christians have called their annual celebration of Jesus’ death and resurrection Pesach, or a word related to that, until, of course, Christianity made its way into German and English lands centuries later. And those people gave it the more pedestrian name Easter, relating to the word spring, simply because the festival falls in a northern spring. Boo. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. Some have claimed that the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection itself isn’t history, but a concoction of bits and pieces of much older myths.

Media – Zeitgeist

Studio – John Dickson:

The internet film zeitgeist managed to turn this idea of a patchwork Jesus into a movie with millions of views.

Media – Zeitgeist clip

Studio – John Dickson:

Studio – John Dickson:

And the list. goes on of alleged connections between Jesus and Horace and other gods and goddesses like Attis of Phrygia, Krishna of India, and Dionysus of Greece. It all sounds plausible, sort of, and the Zeitgeist movie certainly was an online hit, but basically it’s nuts. That’s a technical term in this case, and you don’t have to take my word for it. I did an interview for the Centre for Public Christianity with Dr. Chris Forbes, who specialises in these ancient religions and myths at Macquarie University’s ancient history department.

Chris Forbes:
I ended up almost laughing because the claims it makes are mostly wildly wrong and in some cases simply silly.

John Dickson:
Can, can we focus in on what is really the heart of the claim of the movie as it connects with Jesus, and that is that the whole Jesus story  of him being born right through to his crucifixion and resurrection is a mishmash of ancient mythologies. In particular, the mythology of the Sun God of Egypt, Horace, we’re told …

Chris Forbes:
Can I stop you there? Horace isn’t a sun God.

John Dickson:
Okay, but the movie says that he is.

Chris Forbes:
Yes it does.

John Dickson:
But he’s not. What sort of God was he?

Chris Forbes:
He’s the God of the sky. RA is the sun God.

John Dickson:
Okay. That makes the connection between him being a son God and Jesus being the son of God, uh, more difficult, doesn’t it?

Chris Forbes:
I thought it was only a pun to start with. I mean, the Son of God, S-U-N-S-O-N. It’s a perfectly good pun in English. Well, it’s a fairly bad pun in English, but it doesn’t work in Egyptian and it doesn’t work in Greek and it doesn’t work in Latin. Okay. It’s just a pun.

John Dickson:
So leaving all that aside. Yeah. Uh, the, the claims about this particular sky, God, then a Horace, um, are that he was born on December 25th. He was adored by three kings. He grew up, he had 12 disciples. Uh, he was crucified and then he was resurrected. Well, that sounds like the Jesus story.

Chris Forbes:
It does, because that’s what it is. But it’s not the Horace story. Oh, by the way, you left out born of a virgin. Uh, born of a virgin, indeed. Yes. Except that his mother Isis wasn’t a virgin. And there’s no suggestion in the Egyptian sources that she was. This whole list of parallels are true of Jesus aren’t actually true of Horace at all.

John Dickson:
The ancient sources don’t mention these details.

Chris Forbes:
It’s pretty unlikely that the ancient Egyptians would say that Horace was born on December the 25th, because December is a Latin month and their calendar is completely different. Was Horace crucified and raised from the dead? No. Horace wasn’t crucified. Horace wasn’t killed at all. Osiris was killed, betrayed, and killed by his brother Seth, who then cut up his body into very small pieces and had them scattered all over Egypt so they couldn’t be patched back together and resuscitated. And the rest of the myth of Osiris is about Isis gathering the pieces of his body, binding them up with bandages so that he can become the first mummy and therefore be resuscitated. All of that happens not in historical time. That all happens in the Egyptian equivalent of the dream time in mythological time.

John Dickson:
I guess the punchline of the Zeitgeist movie as it connects with Jesus is that because the Jesus story is just a mythical construct, which you’re saying it isn’t, the movie is saying he didn’t exist. He’s not a historical figure. Does that have currency in, um, serious historical research today?

Chris Forbes:
No, there’s no serious question for historians that Jesus actually lived. There’s really issues about whether he is really the way the Bible described him. There’s real issues about particular incidents in his life, but no serious ancient historian doubts that Jesus was a real person really living in Galilee in the first century.

Studio – John Dickson:

Hey, we’ll put a link in the show notes to the full interview with Dr. Forbes. It’s well worth watching, but let’s dig into some of those real issues about incidents in Jesus’ life that Chris mentions. The most obvious is the crucifixion itself. The popular French philosopher Michel Onfray has argued that Jesus was more myth than history, and among his reasons for saying this is the fact, well, he says it’s a fact that someone like Jesus would not have been crucified. History again, bears witness on Onfray writes in his atheist manifesto. At that time, Jews were not crucified, but stoned to death On Fre goes on to say that even if Jesus was crucified, which he wasn’t, there’s no way he would’ve been properly buried in a tomb like the Gospel say he was Onfray’s quite adamant about all this. There was no question, he writes of bodies being laid to rest in tombs. Fabrications. I’m sure it sounds even better in French. It’s strong stuff, but it’s pretty wide of the mark. Every ancient historian knows that Jews were among the most crucified people in antiquity. The Dead Sea Scrolls and Josephus both report one incident where 800 Pharisees were crucified on one day while their wives and children were forced to look on. The first-century writer Josephus also tells us that during the siege of Jerusalem in the year 70, the Romans crucified hundreds of Jews every day while taking the city. And actually, our only solid archeological remains of a crucifixion victim, a male heel bone with a huge nail still in place, were discovered in a first-century Jewish tomb. This Jew was crucified and properly buried. Just like the gospels say Jesus was. So we know Jewish crucifixions did take place and that crucifixion victims were sometimes, not always, but sometimes buried in tombs. On the face of it, the early Christian accounts about Jesus are plausible as history. But what if Jesus’ crucifixion didn’t quite work? What if he didn’t actually die? And here’s another Easter myth, and it comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Jesus didn’t die on the cross, but was rescued by his followers. Jesus followers bribed Pontius Pilate to let them take Jesus down from the cross before he died,. Jesus just lost consciousness due to his injuries and then in the coolness of the tomb. Got better. Finally, Jesus swapped places with John, who was wearing exactly the same loincloth in the Leonardo da Vinci painting, and slipped into the crowd dressed as a Jewish woman. Okay, I made that one up. But these sorts of ideas are all collectively known as the “swoon theory”. Their basic idea is Jesus didn’t really die. So let’s review what our early accounts record. Jesus was imprisoned and probably sleepless as he underwent a midnight trial. He was then beaten at various points by Roman guards. He was scourged, basically whipped with pieces of bone, glass, and metal built into the leather. He was forced to carry his cross for quite a distance, and then he was crucified. More about that later. Oh, and one of the gospels says he was stabbed in the torso with a Roman spear, it all sounds pretty brutal. How  effective was crucifixion as a death penalty? I’m no doctor of the relevant kind, so let me phone a friend.

Melanie Lovell:
Hello, Melanie speaking.

Studio – John Dickson:

Dr. Melanie Lovell is an associate professor at the University of Sydney and an expert in palliative care. She specializes in pain assessment and management, especially among the dying. She has in her hand a report published by the Journal of the American Medical Association. It’s titled On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ, and she’s gonna make sense of it for us.

John Dickson:
So the simple thing we want to know is what’s the effect of crucifixion on the human body?

Melanie Lovell:
It’s thought that there’s a number of effects of crucifixion and that different people who are crucified might have different, died from different elements. Um, so people in the process were, um, had nails placed throughout their wrists and into the feet and were, were effectively hung by their hands and feet on the cross. On … it was customary prior to crucifixion for people to be flogged. That was done with a, um, I think it was called a flagrant, you’ll know better than me John, about that. But it was a leather, um, tool that had embedded in it pieces of metal and bone, and people were stripped naked and actually whipped on both sides of the body down the back. Um. The buttocks and into the legs and would’ve lost a really considerable amount of blood during that time so that by the time they then, uh, carried their cross, um, for a period of time and then were hung on the cross, were already, um, suffering the effects of a significant amount of blood loss and the exhaustion. So hanging on the cross then had a number of effects. Um, people were there for a very long amount of time before they died. Um, as far as we understand. Um, hours, days, and over time people would become increasingly dehydrated. There is some discussion about the effects on respiration, as well as the effects of Edwards wrote, in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1986, specifically regarding the impact on exhalation. That, that because people were hung from the cross, they were no longer able to, um, passively exhale, but in fact needed to push up through the uh, feet that the nail was through in order to get enough purchase to exhale. And so that the, um, volume of respiration would become increasingly small as  people become more and more exhausted and the levels of heart, carbon dioxide would rise, and eventually people may become asphyxiated. So there’s, uh, two things that would happen that people would have a dehydration and blood loss, they would have difficulty, um, with respiration. There are a number of other postulated, uh, thoughts, uh, including, you know, unfortunately people would, um, be at the mercy of, um, uh, animals and birds as they, as they were unable to defend themselves, and the wounds that they had would be at risk of becoming infected. A really gruesome, it’s an overall, a really gruesome, uh, horrible, horrible way to die.

John Dickson:
Can we say anything about what medical indications there are that Jesus really died?

Melanie Lovell:
We can. I mean there were many eyewitnesses. Um. So we do know that he was, um, whipped, uh, flogged prior to going on the cross. We know that he was so weak when he was walking the four kilometers or so from, um, where he was whipped to the cross that he was so weak he could not carry his own cross. We know that he was offered a drink, which he declined, and I think that was a requirement of law that he’d be offered this drink with galle and mhyyr which he declined. We know that he made a number of utterances from the the cross. At the end when it was thought that he had died, uh, he was pierced with a spear, um, through, um, the  best we can, the best we can understand was through the right side of the chest up and into the heart, and it was seen that blood and water, um, flowed. Now that may have been, uh, fluid from around the lungs, around the heart and blood, um, from the heart itself. Has this spear pierced, uh, the right side, the chambers of the heart. And it is, um, that’s a fatal wound. Uh, and particularly in his circumstances, uh, that was good evidence that in fact he had, he had died.

John Dickson:
You see death every day in your work, sadly. How confident are you that Jesus crucifixion worked? That he really died?

Melanie Lovell:
I’m confident. What happened was that the centurion saw that he had died, and what often happened if people hadn’t died yet, they had their legs broken below the knee, and that didn’t happen to Jesus, but instead he had the spear. What he went through, um, was not survivable. Interestingly, he cried out at the moment of his death. And so there’s some discussion in the literature about what would’ve triggered that, whether he had, um, a sudden, um, abnormal rhythm of the heart, um, that caused his death, whether he had some clotting coming from his heart because of his overall, um, very deteriorated health, and we’ll never know the answer to that, but I think what we can know is that the, this, this was a common method of, of, um, killing people in those days and that what happened to him was not survivable and that his body wouldn’t have been released to the family unless there was confidence that he was, uh, dead and had died, um, probably sometime prior to his body being released. Um, uh, so yeah, I have no doubt that he died.

John Dickson:
Thanks so much, Mel. God bless.

Melanie Lovell:
My pleasure. All the best. Bye.

Studio – John Dickson:

Jesus was real. He was crucified and buried, and he really did die. I think we can tick all of that off the list, but that’s not the end of the controversy of course. Why did Jesus die? Was he really trying to atone, make up for our sins, or is that just made up by later Christians? And of course the big question is what can historians say about the resurrection of Jesus? All of that fun after the break.

Break

Studio – John Dickson:

Did Jesus rise again? Ah, we should probably give this a whole episode. Someone should maybe write a book on it one day. The question takes us, of course, to the pointy end of Christianity, and the first thing to say is something that I’ve said before about, uh, miracles generally, the rationality or otherwise of believing. In a miracle, like a resurrection or healing or whatever, is shaped by the background beliefs we hold about the universe. I mean, if I reckon the laws of nature define the limits of what’s possible in the universe, that there’s no law giver, there’s no God behind the laws, then in principle, miracles like the resurrection just can’t be rational. It doesn’t matter how much evidence there is, it, it can’t be evidence of a resurrection. But on the other hand, if, if I reckon the laws of nature don’t define the limits of what’s possible, that perhaps the laws themselves point to a law giver, then, given that such a law giver could act through and beyond these natural laws, it’s entirely rational to believe, at least in the possibility of miracles, where the evidence in their favor is pretty good. So what evidence is there for the resurrection?

The evidence boils down to good testimony. That is testimony that is early, widespread and credible. It’s not the sort of testimony we’d expect if the resurrection were a developing legend. It’s not the sort of testimony we’d expect if the resurrection were a complete fraud. It is the kind of testimony we’d expect if the first Christians really did find Jesus tomb empty and really did experience what they thought were appearances of Jesus risen from the dead. And it’s not just Christians who say this kind of stuff, it’s an observation made by the likes of, uh, great scholars such as Geza Vermes the great professor of Jewish studies at Oxford University, who writes, “From these various records to reasonably convincing points merge. The women belonging to the entourage of Jesus discovered an empty tomb, and were definite that it was the tomb. The rumor that the apostles stole the body is most improbable”. One of the things that convinced Vermes that there probably was an empty tomb is that all the gospels agree it was women who found the empty tomb, and that’s not the sort of thing that would be invented because, frankly, women were not regarded as credible witnesses in the period. If you were making up a story about the discovery of an empty tomb and you wanted first-century folks to believe you, it’s pretty unlikely you would write women into the narrative. But of course an empty tomb can be interpreted in a variety of ways. That alone isn’t what makes the resurrection an enduring historical puzzle. It’s the empty tomb combined with the fact that we have very strong evidence that people testified they saw Jesus alive from the dead. And again, this is not something just Christians who are trying to sort of defend the faith, say. Even someone like Ed Sanders of Duke University who is not known for his defending the Christian faith writes these words:

“That Jesus followers and later Paul had resurrection experiences is, in my judgment, a fact. What the reality was that gave rise to the experiences. I do not know.”

This is typical of the secular approach to this topic. Something strange happened, we’re just not sure what it was, and I’d say the best historical analysis makes plain that Jesus tomb really was empty, and that plenty of people really did think they saw him alive. We have the kind of historical evidence a resurrection would leave behind and much more evidence pointing in that direction than we could expect if the whole thing were a legend or a fraud. But of course, how we interpret the empty tomb and the sightings of Jesus is gonna depend not on historical evidence. On our background beliefs, whether we reckon there’s a God in the universe in the first place who could raise the dead.

Media: John Shelby Spong

Studio – John Dickson:

That’s John Shelby Spong speaking for the Living Questions website. He’s an Anglican theologian – a bishop actually – who’s become famous over the years for suggesting, among other things, that the resurrection wasn’t part of the original form of Christianity. His assertions have led many people to label the resurrection a huge myth. But again, we’ve gotta ask, what does a historian have to say about all this as opposed to a liberal theologian? Let’s begin with the claim that the resurrection isn’t mentioned in the earliest gospel. The gospel of Mark.  I hate to say this sort of thing, but frankly, that’s a bit slippery. It’s one of those things that is highly misleading, but it grants the speaker some plausible deniability. Now, it’s true that the end of Mark’s gospel has no narrated appearance of the risen Jesus. Mark as we have it today, ends with the women running away from the empty tomb, frightened saying nothing to anyone. Now, if you know Mark’s gospel, you’ll know that there are these extra verses, uh, verses nine to 20, at the very end that were added sometime later. A scribe copying out the gospel of Mark decided to add a kind of a appendix of what happened after Mark’s weird finish. And this scribe pulls the information from the other gospels and puts it in sort of brief summary form. He isn’t trying to deceive, by the way. He doesn’t even hide the fact that he writes in a very, very different style. From that of Mark, it’s clearly an addition. An appendix. So is spong, right? There’s no resurrection in Mark’s gospel. Not a chance. Earlier in Mark, we have had several references to Jesus being raised. One has Jesus saying, “we are going up to Jerusalem. The son of man will be betrayed, handed over, killed, et cetera. They will mock him, scourge him, spit on him, kill him, and on the third day he will rise again”. I mean, that’s pretty clear. It is, frankly, impossible, historically speaking, that Mark’s gospel doesn’t assume the resurrection; it mentions it, but we can do better than that. There are two earlier references in Mark to Jesus appearing to his disciples later in Galilee after the resurrection. So in Mark 14:27, a roundabout where he is saying, Peter and the other disciples will betray him, Jesus says “After I have risen, [this is Mark 14:27] after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee”. Well, that’s pretty clear. And then in Mark 16, verse seven, uh, a strange messenger at the empty tomb tells the women, “Go tell his disciples. And Peter, he’s going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him just as he told you”. I mean, come on. This puts beyond doubt that Mark knew not only of a resurrection, but of stories of the risen Jesus appearing to the disciples in Galilee. By the way, we have just such stories in Matthew and John. Luke only records appearances in Jerusalem. So where is the missing narrative of Jesus appearing in Galilee? Well, I’m persuaded by those scholars who argue that the final page of Mark is missing. It’s broken off at some early period in the copying process, which is why a scribe later added the appendix we have there now. But what can’t be doubted is that Mark knew and wanted his readers to know that Jesus was raised and that he appeared to his disciples in Galilee. And we can go one step further. We’ve got evidence that’s way earlier than Mark. So it is just impossible to think Mark didn’t know of the resurrection. In one Corinthians 15, the Apostle Paul quotes a creed, uh, pithy formal summary of beliefs that most experts, even the atheist ones, date to within about five years of Jesus. Mid-thirties AD, and it goes like this.

For I handed onto you as of first importance, what I in turn had received, [and here comes the quote], that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cphas (or Peter) and then to the 12.

This puts it beyond doubt that the death of burial, resurrection, and appearances of Jesus were all known, known so widely. They’re put into an early creed very, very soon after the events. Whatever else you’re gonna make of the resurrection there’s no way it can be a late accumulating legend and there’s no way Mark didn’t know about it. Now all of that may sound a bit nerdy, but sometimes nerdy is needed to expose the slippery. Far from being something made up much later, the resurrection is part of the church’s earliest statements of belief. But there’s another more moral problem some people have with Easter. What’s with all that creepy stuff about Jesus dying for our sins? Here’s well-known atheist Richard Dawkins.

Media – Richard Dawkins

Studio – John Dickson:

Let’s press pause. I’ve got a Five-Minute Jesus for you.

At the Passover Festival of Jesus Day, the male representative of a household brought a lamb to the Jerusalem temple on the afternoon of the 14th of the month of Nisan. After presenting it to one of the thousands of priests on duty that day, the worshiper killed the animal while the priest caught the blood in a sacred bowl, which he passed back along the priestly line to be tossed against the base of the temple altar. The Passover lamb was far more than a simple memorial. It had a clear, sacrificial dimension. Its blood was literally poured out before the Lord, and its fatty portions were offered in sacrifice. This sacrificial dimension becomes really important as we try to understand Jesus’ striking words spoken during his farewell meal later that Passover evening.

“This is my blood of the covenant”, he said, “which is poured out for many”.

There can be no doubt that he was speaking of his impending death. In language designed to recall, the lamb was sacrificed for the deliverance of God’s people. The blood of the original Passover land ensured that while judgment fell on the oppressors in Egypt, it passed over the Jewish households. But the idea of blood sacrifice for atonement is often criticised today as barbaric and bloodthirsty. Professor Dawkins with typical zest says it’s “vicious, sadomasochistic and repellent”. He calls it “barking mad”, and asks “if God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them”?

The answer of the ancient Jew and Christian is that God must be and appear to be just in the performance of his mercy. As a judge won’t freely release a convicted criminal simply because he is positively inclined to warn him, so God doesn’t forgive the guilty without exacting payment at the same time. That is the ancient logic of atonement, whether or not we actually like it. When Jesus, at his last supper, spoke of his blood as the blood of the covenant poured out for many, he was recalling a centuries-old tradition. Mercy and judgment coexist in Jewish thought because both are intrinsic to the character of Israel’s God. God was always willing to forgive, but never at the expense of justice. He would always deal justly with evil, but never without the offer of mercy. Atonement is the resolution of this tension that’s in the heart of God. It’s how he shows himself to be just towards sin and yet forgiving toward the sinner.

Coincidentally, as I was preparing this material, I read a story in the local newspaper that deserves retelling. Melbourne woman, Kimberly Deer, was set to fulfil a life ambition when she enrolled for skydiving lessons. Recently on holidays in Missouri in the US. Her hopes were dashed when the plane, she was flying in lost power and started careering toward the ground. Her instructor, his name was Robert Cook, responded instantly. He apparently took hold of her and calmly talked her through what would happen next. As the plane is about to hit the ground, make sure you are on top of me, so I take the force of the impact. They crashed. Several died including Robert Cook. Kimberly survived and, from the hospital, reported that in the seconds just before the crash, she felt Mr.Cook swivel his body into position as he pushed her head against his shoulder to cushion the blow.

Now, I’ve never been a big fan of attempts, even my own attempts to illustrate the meaning of Jesus’ death by modern stories. There’s a danger of trivialising one or the other. But when I read of the actions of Robert Cook, I couldn’t help but think again of the words of Jesus at the Last Supper.

“This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.”

You can press now.

Undeceptions theme

Studio – John Dickson:

Leaving Jesus with the last word on his own death and resurrection seems to be the best place to end this time round. But if you’ve got questions about this or any other episode, I’d love to hear them, and we’ll try to answer them in our upcoming Q&A episode. You can tweet us @undedeceptions, send us a regular old email at questions@underdeceptions.com, or if you’re brave, and I really love this, try record your question. All you’ve gotta do is go to undedeceptions.com and there’s a little button thing that you click and it’ll actually record you talking, and we love to hear what people have to say.

While you’re there, check out everything related to this episode.

And if you like my show, let me give a little shout out to my buddies, Megan Powell du Toit and Michael Jensen and their show With All Due Respect.

Next episode, I’ve got a story you’re gonna be telling everyone you know about. A leading Hindu activist and preacher trained for seven years in the Indian desert, admired across Europe, then found himself developing in his own words, “an unhealthy fascination with Jesus Christ”. Don’t miss it. We are breaking the Undeceptions format just to bring you the whole thing. See you.