By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
We don’t hear as much about the Jesus Seminar as we used to. The group seems to have had its 15 minutes of fame in the mid-1990s, when Time magazine devoted an issue to its theories and the television networks jumped on the bandwagon. But that does not mean that their influence has dissipated. We hear many “enlightened” Catholics these days making the same case as the Seminar proponents. They tell us that the biblical accounts of Christmas — the so-called “infancy narratives” — are myths created by early Christians seeking to make the case for the divinity of Jesus, and that modern enlightened Christians should reject the stories in the name of a more mature understanding of Jesus and His mission.
That is what separates the Jesus Seminar and like-minded folks from out-and-out atheists: The proponents of the Seminar theories argue they are seeking to rescue the historical Jesus, by making Him and His teachings relevant to modern thinkers who recoil from the supernatural elements found in the Bible. I contend they do nothing of the sort; that their thesis is indistinguishable from that of the atheists. I’ll use H.L. Mencken’s view of Christmas to make my point. But let us examine the Jesus Seminar thesis first.
The Seminar theorists begin with the assumption that the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ birth were compilations of oral traditions about Jesus and His life put to paper somewhere around A.D. 50. The goal of those who compiled the stories, they tell us, was to support their beliefs about Jesus and His divinity. To achieve that end they invented stories about the Virgin Birth, Jesus’ lineage to the House of David, and the journey of the Magi to greet the “newborn king.”
The Jesus Seminar scholars take the same position about the Gospels as a whole. They argue that the miracles found in the Gospels never took place. There was no feeding of the multitudes with a few loaves and fishes, no resurrection of Lazarus, no walking on water, no bodily Resurrection, no Transfiguration, no Ascension into Heaven. These are all tall-tales designed, they say, to manufacture an image of Jesus as the Son of God.
What bears repeating is that the Jesus Seminar theologians think this understanding of the Gospels is one that will make Jesus more acceptable to modern man; that once the myths about Jesus are dismissed we can focus on His words about peace and love and His call for His followers to become brothers and sisters in a human community based on sharing and a preferential option for the poor.
For the moment, let us take the Seminar members at their word and accept that they revere Jesus and want to make His message more palatable for the modern world. The question I have is whether there is any difference between their view of Jesus and that of the atheist H.L. Mencken. Mencken (1880-1956) is one of my favorite writers, even though I can’t think of an important issue where I agree with him, other than perhaps the joys of fine steaks and the boorishness of an occasional yahoo or two.
Mencken was a professional wise-guy, who achieved his greatest fame in the first half of the 20th century with denunciations of American politicians, religious leaders, and the masses who joined in the tub-thumping in support of them. He could be cruel and hypercritical in his attacks on the ordinary American, the people he called the “booboisie.” He was often a cheap-shot artist, but one who makes me laugh in spite of myself, an erudite and upscale W.C. Fields, if you will.
Here is his view of Jesus and Christmas, as found in his book Treatise on the Gods. Mencken argues that Christmas is just another version of worshipping the “sun god” found in the beliefs of the Mayas, the Incas, the Aztecs, the ancient Persians, and the Indians, specifically the “worship of Mithra.” Ancient pagans recalled the “days when his ancestors faced east and the risen sun, just as every Christian goes to church on Sun-day, celebrates Christmas on the dies nautilus solis invictus or birthday of Mithra.”
Jesus, insists Mencken, “avoided giving any hint that He [he capitalizes the pronouns referring to Jesus as a way of mocking Christians who do this] was a divine Personage, and it is very probable that the Disciples, while He lived, had no belief that He was.” The Gospel accounts that attribute divinity to Him, “were written years after Jesus’ death, and by men who had never seen Him. They show an assimilation of myths that were old before Jesus was born — some essentially Jewish, but others belonging to the common stock of religious ideas in the Near East.” The miracles? “They were the common accomplishments of all great preachers, whether Jewish or pagan” that could be found in the religious myths of the time.
Where did the notion of Jesus’ divinity come from then? “Once He was dead and the news got about that He had risen from the grave, a belief in His supernatural character began to be entertained, and soon it was enriched and reinforced by Ideas borrowed from a hundred other hero cults.” Beyond that, “it was just as natural that His mother should have the name of Mary, for that was the name borne by the mothers of a long line of other prophets and heroes with divine fathers, among them, Myrrha the mother of Adonis, Maya the mother of Buddha, Maia the mother of Hermes, and Maritala the mother of Krishna.”
Hence, says Mencken, what is found in the Bible does not deserve to be taken seriously. The biblical accounts, as well as later theological expositions upon them, were written by men who “believed the world was flat. All believed in visions, prophecies, demons, dragons, and leviathans. The yearning of the time was for easy assurances, facile doctrines, and comforting rhetoric.”
I don’t want to be unfair, but does not the logic of the Jesus Seminar theologians lead us down a path that takes us directly to Mencken’s view of religion. If not, why not? Myth-making is myth-making. The Jesus Seminar does not rescue Jesus and make Him more relevant. Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Dorothy Day were individuals who inspired those around them to live better lives. It makes them admirable human beings.
But putting Jesus in that category is serious diminution of His role in salvation history. The Jesus Seminar does that. Their depiction of Jesus corroborates Mencken’s thesis about His being an ancient Palestinian version of the pagan myths about the sun gods.
It may be unfair, but I am tempted by the thought that the Jesus Seminar proponents know that. It brings to mind a quotation from Edmund Burke: “If our religious tenets should ever want a further elucidation, we shall not call on Atheism to explain them. We shall not light up our temple from that unholy fire.”
Look: Accepting a literal or near literal reading of the infancy narratives requires a belief in the supernatural, in miracles, in divine intervention into life on Earth in an unprecedented, and never to be repeated manner.
So what? That is the way it should be. The Bible tells the story of the Word becoming Flesh, the greatest miracle of all. Once we accept the reality of that miracle, the Virgin Birth, the angels singing on high, the shepherds and Magi coming to worship Jesus present no intellectual difficulty for a thinking, intelligent, believing Christian. If the Jesus Seminar advocates can’t accept the reality of those things, it is their problem. It does Jesus no favor to depict Him as a Palestinian preacher with a message and a personal magnetism powerful enough to lead His followers to concoct tall tales — lies — about His life.
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