The Myth about Mythicism

The most pivotal element of roused-readied-reaped is choice.  We are roused to innumerable instances in our lives, many of them overlapping.  All such instances—moments, episodes, fits, days, phases, careers, what-have-you—begin out of the haze of the past and tend to an uncertain future.  All we can do is choose how we will respond to what we already own.  Our duty of choice is ceaseless.

We would much prefer to experience some unique defining instance through which our future would be assured.  Some of us would probably opt for some imposed experience, such being informed that we have been chosen inalterably among the elect since the dawn of time.  Others of us might prefer some one-time task to accomplish.  Such differences in preference must not blind us to the inherent commonality of our desire to have our futures decided pleasantly once and for all.

The entire opposite of this is displayed in Jesus’ post-Resurrection questioning of Peter in the Gospel of John—the “Do you love me?” refrains that Peter found so agonizing in their repetition.  This was the remorse-ridden Peter who had floundered frantically to the shore ahead of his companions, obviously eager for some soothing reassurance.  Instead Peter was confronted with a future of endless demands, wrapped in uncertainty.

Is it any wonder that the Luke-Acts narrative has the disciples (apparently having forgotten all about going to Galilee) cowering in Jerusalem until they concoct a communal hysteria of mission, a once-for-all initiation that their Savior’s words and career had stinted to provide?

This, then, brings us to the central myth of the mythicism debate: the notion of the centrality of the “Did Jesus Exist?” question.  As regards the beginnings of Christianity, that question is overblown, and it leads to conjectures such as “Would people suffer and die for a myth?”  More to the point is the question, “Given a belief in a suffering and resurrected savior, would not believers be tempted to mythologize into existence some tension-resolving method ostensibly to serve that savior?”  That is where Christianity comes from.