Tag Archives: myth

How Is Ancient Myth-Making Tested? Part 2

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In part 1 we introduced A. N. Sherwin-White’s analysis of myth-making in the ancient near east in his book Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament. Sherwin-White uses the Greek historian Herotodus to test the tempo of myth-making. He concludes:

Herodotus enables us to test the tempo of myth-making, and the tests suggest that even two generations are too short a span to allow the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historic core of the oral tradition.

So, what is his evidence?

A revealing example is provided by the story of the murder of the Athenian tyrant Hipparchus at the hands of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who became the pattern of all tyrannicides. The true story was that they assassinated Hipparchus in 514 B.C., but the tyranny lasted another four years before the establishment of the Athenian democracy. Popular opinion created a myth to the effect that Harmodius and Aristogeiton destroyed the tyranny and freed Athens. This was current in the mid-fifth century.

The assassination happened in 514 B.C., but by about 450 B.C. there was a story going around that the assassination occurred in 514 B.C. and the tyranny ended in 514 B.C. The second part of the story was false, as the tyranny did not end for four more years. Sherwin-White continues:

Yet Herodotus, writing at that time, and generally taking the popular view of the establishment of the democracy, gives the true version and not the myth about the death of Hipparchus. A generation later the more critical Thucydides was able to uncover a detailed account of exactly what happened on the fatal day in 514 B.C. It would have been natural and easy for Herodotus to give the mythical version. He does not do so because he had a particular interest in a greater figure than Harmodius or Aristogeiton, that is, Cleisthenes, the central person in the establishment of the democracy.

What are we to make of Herodotus and Thucydides accurate re-telling of the events of 514 B.C.?

All this suggests that, however strong the myth-forming tendency, the falsification does not automatically and absolutely prevail even with a writer like Herodotus, who was naturally predisposed in favour of certain political myths, and whose ethical and literary interests were stronger than his critical faculty. The Thucydidean version is a salutary warning that even a century after a major event it is possible in a relatively small or closed community for a determined inquirer to establish a remarkably detailed account of a major event, by inquiry within the inner circle of the descendants of those concerned with the event itself.

How can we relate this to the Gospel authors?

Not that one imagines that the authors of the Gospels set to work precisely like either Herodotus or Thucydides. But it can be maintained that those who had a passionate interest in the story of Christ, even if their interest in events was parabolical and didactic rather than historical, would not be led by that very fact to pervert and utterly destroy the historical kernel of their material. It can also be suggested that it would be no harder for the Disciples and their immediate successors to uncover detailed narratives of the actions and sayings of Christ within their closed community, than it was for Herodotus and Thucydides to establish the story of the great events of 520-480 B.C.

Notice that Sherwin-White’s conclusion is extremely cautious. He is not saying that it can be shown that every event recorded in the Gospels can be historically corroborated. He is saying, however, that the authors of the Gospels can reasonably be expected to get the historical kernels of Jesus’s life correct.

In my view, since the resurrection is reported in all the Gospels, as well as other books in the New Testament, it is quite fair to say that the resurrection is part of the historical kernel that would not be distorted. If the resurrection is not part of the historical kernel, then nothing is. Therefore, to say that the resurrection narratives are mythical flies directly in the face of Sherwin-White’s analysis.

How Is Ancient Myth-Making Tested? Part 1

Post Author: Bill Pratt 

The stories about Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, as reported in the 27 New Testament documents, were all written down within 70 years of Jesus’s death. In fact, most of the documents were written within 50 years of his death. Given that average life expectancy in first century Palestine was around 30 years, this means that, conservatively, most of these documents were written within two generations of Jesus’s death.

Many skeptics of Christianity claim that even 50 years is enough time for myths and legends to completely obscure the central facts around the life of Jesus. Skepticism runs the gamut from “Jesus never existed” to “we know only a few trivial facts about Jesus and nothing more.”

Can we test the rate of myth-making in the ancient near east? Maybe we can. The famous historian A. N. Sherwin-White addressed the issue of whether the central facts around a historical event could be obscured by myth-making in his book Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament. Sherwin-White identifies the work of ancient Greek historian Herodotus as a means to test myth-making. Why Herotodus? Sherwin-White explains:

In his history, written in mid-fifth century B.C., we have a fund of comparable material in the tales of the period of the Persian Wars and the preceding generation. These are retold by Herodotus from forty to seventy years later, after they had been remodeled by at least one generation of oral transmission.

Is if fair to compare Herotodus to the Gospel writers?

The parallel with the authors of the Gospels is by no means so far-fetched as it might seem. Both regard their material with enthusiasm rather than detached criticism. Both are the first to produce a written narrative of great events which they regard as a mighty saga, national or ecclesiastical and esoterical as the case may be. For both their story is the vehicle of a moral or a religious idea which shapes the narrative.

Can modern historians extract accurate historical facts from Herotodus?

The material of Herodotus presents no intractable difficulty to a critical historian. The material has not been transformed out of all recognition under the influence of moral and patriotic fervour, in a period of time as long, if not longer, than can be allowed for the gestation of the form-myths of the synoptic gospels.

How, then, can we use Herotodus to test the tempo of myth-making? We’ll cover that in part 2.