Is Jesus a myth? Is Jesus just a copy of the pagan gods of other ancient religions?

Bear in mind that revealed truth condemns the world, and must be so unpalatable to men, that one cannot expect their testimony save unwittingly. Yet the Roman remains (for we have no more) testify by the way to the appearance of Christ at the very time when Scripture puts Him in Palestine; and to a new faith in His followers, most offensive to those who loved, or at least sanctioned, the demoralising idolatries of Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and the other imaginary deities, or real demons, the empire honoured. I am away from my library or any books that I could cite. But if you are familiar with the scanty residue of the Latin classics so-called, you will not have forgotten the references in the brief historical works of Tacitus (bitter, haughty, and cynical as he was), or in the Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius, or in the Letters of Pliny the younger from his Bithynian government with the Emperor Trajan's replies. The later scoffing sketches in Greek of Lucian (of Samosata) also bear witness to the facts of Christ's history ("more suo," of the Punch style, or indeed lower still), and notably of His most widely known follower the apostle Paul. It is irrational (taking the ground of nature) to doubt what even these avowed enemies of Christianity attest. The men who then defended traditional and effete Paganism, regarded it as a new and dangerous superstition. That they did write of Christ and of His religion in a hostile spirit is beyond controversy, as then uprising and progressing far and wide. Pilate's act, as crucifying Him, is disputed neither by Jew nor by Gentile. So that we assuredly have adequate proof of His birth, life, and death from His enemies, confirming the allegations of scripture. Later still, Celsus and Porphyry wrote against Christianity as philosophers. But the outward facts are not disputed; and Christ's allowed miracles are imputed by Gentiles to magic, as the Jews at the time imputed them to Beelzebub.

The following extract is well worth reproducing. It has been well said: “We must destroy the Annals of Tacitus, the Biographies of Suetonius, the Letters of Pliny, if we wish to get rid of the testimony to the fact that in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius there lived one called Christ, that Judea and Galilee were the places of His teaching, that He was put to death by the command of Pontius Pilate, that after His death His doctrines and teaching spread rapidly through Greek-speaking and Roman-speaking lands, that multitudes of converts were made, who worshipped Jesus as God, and for His sake suffered bitter persecution.

“In the New Testament we have the names of Roman Emperors—Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius; Roman Governors as Cyrenius, Pontius Pilate, Felix, Festus, Sergius Paulus, Gallio; Jewish kings as Herod the Great, Archelaus, Herod Antipas, Agrippa I, Agrippa II. Classical history and the writings of Josephus attest that they existed at the time specified, bore the offices assigned them in the Bible, and in the chronological order in which their names appear. Every quotation from Josephus, Tacitus, or Suetonius; every fresh archaeological discovery in Asia Minor, Cyprus, Greece, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, serves to illustrate the minute accuracy with which every particular respecting them is recorded, even in facts apparently the most insignificant.”

The history of Christianity no one attempted to deny, when any denial of it would have been of the smallest value. They hated it, opposed it, sought to destroy it by force, and to subvert it by argument and ridicule: but it was there to be hated. No man thought of denying that. The documents were reasoned against, and objections made to them; but they, and they only, were received as the authentic documents of the religion professed by Christians, by friends and foes. This is beyond all question. The Jews exist to this day the living witnesses of the truth of this history. They possess the books of the Old Testament, which we do. Their state confirms the Christianity they deny. It is well known that the Talmudists* confirm the history of Christ's death, His flight into Egypt, and His miracles, though attributing it to sorcery He had learned when there, or, as some say, He wrought there by the means of God's ineffable name which He stole.

[*These testimonies are of comparatively late date. They are in the Gemaras, not the Mishna; but this rather confirms the truth. If we receive the Christian records, the Jews were forced to own notable undeniable miracles done before the eyes of the multitude. Comparatively speaking, contemporary hostile accounts are silent on the subject (I speak of Jewish doctors), and later ones do not dream of denying them, admit the facts, and attribute them to magic. Celsus (a heathen author, who lived some fifty years after St. John, as quoted by Origen) does not deny the miracles, but ascribes them also to magic. The Talmudists speak of instantaneous cures wrought by the name of Jesus. The passages are quoted by all the authors and commentators who have treated this subject at any length. Lightfoot is the usual book of reference for the English reader.]

The history of Christianity no one attempted to deny when any denial of it would have been of the smallest value. They hated it, opposed it, sought to destroy it by force, and to subvert it by argument and ridicule; but it was there to be hated. No man thought of denying that. The documents were reasoned against, and objections made to them; but they, and they only, were received, by friends and foes, as the authentic documents of the religion professed by Christians. This is beyond all question. The Jews exist to this day the living witnesses of the truth of this history. They possess the books of the Old Testament, which we do. Their state confirms the Christianity they deny. It is well known that the Talmudists confirm the history of Christ's death, His flight into Egypt, and His miracles (though attributing them to sorcery He had learned when there, or, as some say, He wrought them by the means of God's ineffable name, which He stole).

It has largely escaped the notice of Christians at the present time that such a history exists as that of Flavius Josephus. And further, the few who do know of its existence are largely unaware how very providential it is, that such a history, written by a Jew, living in Palestine at the time when the incidents of our Lord’s life were largely known, is available. Later on Josephus was an eye-witness of the horrors that marked the siege of Jerusalem under Vespasian, the Roman general, and the destruction of the Temple by Titus, and has written an account of these terrible happenings in great detail.

The reason why Josephus’ History is so remarkable is that when men call in question the incidents of the Gospels, the Christian has an answer in that here is a secular history, that in many ways corroborates what the Gospels say. For it is a strange thing that unregenerate men will readily receive the testimony of secular writers as to facts of history, and yet call in question the statements of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul. Does this show a bias in the wrong direction?

We are told that the heathen religions of India, China, Japan, Mexico, etc. have much in common with the Bible as to details. We are told there were virgin births, sacrificial deaths, and the like, before ever the Bible story was known, that the heathen have stories about our first parents, about the flood, etc. We are not surprised at this. As to stories of our first parents and the flood, seeing those were events in the early history of the world, we should expect that the account of them would be handed down from earliest times. We should be surprised if it were not so. Nor are we surprised at the garbled way they come down to us, as they are only the traditions of men. The reason why they have come to us in the Bible so vividly, so full of detail in their verisimilitude, in so great contrast to the stories of the heathen, where fable is plainly mixed up with fact, is because the account the Bible gives is God-inspired. And as to the virgin births and sacrificial deaths before the Bible story came, we know that the devil is a great imitator, and doubtless originated these things so as to bring into discredit the gospel story. They were foretold in the Old Testament Scriptures, and Satan could anticipate them for his own evil ends.

On the other hand, Hercules, and other such mystic personages answering to Thor in many respects, a kind of god-man, destroys serpents in all manner of fables. And Krishna in India, and Teotl in Mexico, reproduce traditional accounts of scripture redemption, connected with what is said of the serpent in Genesis. Caesar produces as the doctrine of the Druids, that man's sins could only be expiated by man's death.

Now idolatry, as far as we can say from scripture, came in only after the flood. Hence we have the next step in idolatry, a vague tradition of a reign of bliss under Saturn, which recalled Paradise; and then his three sons, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, who become the supreme gods of heaven, earth, and sea; that is the three sons of Noah (the ark being so distinctly remembered, that in the grand procession they carried a statue about in a kind of ship). Indeed, it is very probable that the Greek word translated "temple" is really identical with that of "ship." In fine, the worship of the serpent connected itself with that of the sun and whole host of heaven; and, in cultivated Greece and Rome, merged, though retaining both, into traditions as to Paradise, Noah's three sons, and the flood. The purest of all serpent worship was perhaps in England.*

That before the incarnation of Christ the demons, having some knowledge of what He would accomplish, enabled the heathen poets and priests in some points to anticipate, though in a distorted form, the facts of the incarnation. This is the most curious part of the Apology. He says that the pagan poets spoke of the sons of Jupiter, and that certain of them ascended to, and descended from, heaven. And after our Lord had appeared, Satan enabled others to do wonderful things, that they might be on a level with Christ. Thus Justin speaks of one Simon, who did such wonderful things at Rome, before the senate and people, that they accounted him to be a god, and honoured him as such. We shall have occasion to quote from this Apology on the forms of worship, etc.

In time the worship of Bacchus was sternly prohibited by the Romans, apparently not without recourse to military force, and finally completely extinguished. If the heathen power of Rome was driven to take action against this disgusting and obscene worship, and stamped it off the face of the earth, how is it that Christians can respond to the invitation to “join hands” with such? Look at the claim made for Bacchus, that he died and rose again. Is this not an attempt to put the death of our adorable Lord on a level with the imaginary and revolting god of the heathen? We may well ask, “What concord hath Christ with Belial?”

What shall we say of Osiris, the corn-god of Egypt? He was claimed to be the offspring of an unholy intrigue between the earth-god (Keb or Geb) and the sky-goddess, Nut. The story is so indecent that it would be unseemly to defile our pages with it. His soul was supposed to be continually present among men in the sacred bull, Apis. How degrading are the thoughts of men, who do not glorify God as God, but make images of birds, four-footed beasts and creeping things (see Romans 1:21-23). Yet this god, who never existed save in the minds of the ancient Egyptians, is said to have risen from the dead and thus saved mankind. It may be said that this was symbolic of the germination and growth of wheat, on the harvest of which the nation depended for sustenance; but, in the lines we have just quoted, it is placed as if the rising of Osiris from the grave, thus saving mankind, was on a level with the resurrection of the Saviour of mankind, our Lord Jesus Christ. Can the Christian “join hands” with this, and preserve his loyalty to his Lord? Impossible!

The gods of the heathen are by the makers of them indued with passions such as men have; they are morally like men, but with greater strength. And if I take the heroes of the novelist, pride and self-reliance are the prominent features, for these are the characteristics in which men delight, but not one of them is like Jesus. There is nothing in common between men, as I know man, and the Son of God. It is only in the Bible I can find Him. How is this? If those fishermen of Galilee invented Him, how is it that no one has been able to invent another who can be compared with Him? and how is it that now that He has been invented, He is so little understood that the greatest minds on earth, even when well-intentioned, cannot reproduce Him? Their frequent attempts have been at best but miserable caricatures. Apart from the holy anointing, the indwelling Spirit of God, no one can know the Father and the Son.