(Part 3/4, AFTERWORD) Christianity, A Question of Reasoning: The Christ Myth Theory and the Lord’s Supper

John MacDonald | October 21, 2024

(1)

Last time one of the things I talked about was the crucifixion seems to frame the evidence in a way that shows the Christ Myth theory is false. I wrote:

One popular idea is Jesus started out as a vague dying/rising savior myth who was later placed in historical fictions/gospels (Euhemerized). But the key point is that the dying/rising salvation theme of the Jesus tale is a later development, and so is not at our earliest level of the Jesus salvation message. Against Christ-mythicism, Prof Bart Ehrman notes for Paul righteousness came through the cross/resurrection, that if it came through the law Chris died for nothing (Gal 2:21). Mark wrote a Paul-inspired propaganda document/gospel (euaggelion, as per the Augustus use of the term) selling Jesus’ cross and resurrection as the way to salvation like Paul argued, and yet contrarily Mark said salvation also came through repentance and the Kingdom (Mark 1:14-15), and following the law and giving everything to the poor (Mark 10:17-22). Mark unwittingly or deliberately (which would be my guess) incorporated material about the historical Jesus that contradicted his Pauline cross/resurrection bias. Similarly, Matthew says He will divide those judged into two groups: “sheep” and “goats.” The sheep will be welcomed and praised for serving those in need. The goats will be sent away from Jesus to fire and condemned for not serving those in need.

I try to make the more difficult argument above that Mark intentionally incorporated conflicting paths to salvation, whereas Ehrman makes the simpler argument that Mark was just collecting different traditions about Jesus – but the argument works either way against the Christ Myth theory.

Lets consider the viability of mythicism as an interpretive lens for understanding the Lord’s Supper given that Mark is lifting the Lord’s Supper from Paul. In general, concerning Mark’s use of Paul, Walsh notes:

Yet, among his collected texts, our author has some material expressing an interest in Jesus, including copies of the letters of another elite cultural producer who is a Pharisee and a divination specialist by the name of Paul. There he finds talk of Jesus as Christ, possessing divine pneuma (Rom. 8:9; Mark 1:10); a divine lineage of Abraham (Rom. 3, 4, 9; Mark 1); “pneumatic” demonstrations (1 Cor. 2:4–5; Mark 2:8, 5:1ff., 5:41ff.), including divination; demonstrations of power over demons, archons, and unclean pneuma (Rom. 8:38–39; 1 Cor. 15:24; Mark 1:23, 39, 5:2ff., 7:25); Jesus as a prophet for a new age (Rom. 3:21–22; Mark 1:1–15) or a New Adam (1 Cor. 15:45; Mark 1:12ff.); a failure to recognize Jesus as the messiah during his lifetime (1 Cor. 2:6–8; Mark 4:41, 6:2, 8:29, 11:27ff.); and an active principle of God’s pneuma bounding people “in Christ” through baptism (Rom. 6; Mark 1). He even finds talk of fellowship meals and a meal hosted by Jesus anticipating his death (the so-called Last Supper) with dialogue (1 Cor. 11:23–25; Mark 14:22–25) and mention of other characters like James and Peter (e.g., Gal. 2; Mark 3:20–21, 31– 35, 8:31–33, 14:26, 66). The proper interpretation of Judean law and allegory also looms large in these letters (e.g., Gal. 1:6–11; Rom. 1:16–17; 1 Cor. 9:16; Mark 1:1, 2:18ff.), as one might expect from a Pharisee. Perhaps our writer also finds through exchanges within his literary network other Jesus material or a collection of related teachings in the style of Pythagoras’ Golden Verses. (Walsh, Robyn Faith. The Origins of Early Christian Literature: Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture (p. 132). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.)

(2)

The Christ Myth theory wants to argue in Paul the last supper is a celestial Jesus miming for all time a ritual to be repeated for all future Christians. Carrier summarizes:

Another example is “the last supper.” This began as a vision Paul had of Jesus relating to him what he spoke mystically to all future generations of Christians, as we see in 1 Corinthians 11:23-27. As Paul there says, he received this “from the Lord.” Directly. Just as he says he received all his teachings (Galatians 1:11-12; Romans 10:14-15; Romans 16:25-26). In Paul’s version, no one else is present. It is not a “last” supper (as if Jesus had had any others before), but merely “the bread and cup of the Lord.” And Jesus is not speaking to “disciples” but to the whole Christian Church unto the end of time—including Paul and his congregations.

The text in Paul reads as follows (translating the Greek as literally as I can):

For I received from the Lord what I also handed over to you, that the Lord Jesus, during the night he was handed over, took bread, and having given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in the remembrance of me.” Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, as often as you might drink it in remembrance of me.” For as often as you might eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

Notably, “until he comes,” and not “until he returns.” This becomes in Mark (emphasis added):

While they were eating, having taken bread, and having blessed it, he broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “Take; this is my body.” Then, having taken a cup, and having given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it. And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I tell you, that never again shall I drink from the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God.” And having sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Mark 14:22-26

Notice what’s changed. Paul is describing Jesus miming some actions and explaining their importance. His audience is future Christians. Mark has transformed this into a narrative story by adding people being present and having Jesus interact with them: now “they were eating” (Paul does not mention anyone actually eating) and Jesus gave the bread “to them” (does not occur in Paul) and instructs them to “take” it (no such instruction in Paul); and Jesus gave the cup “to them” (does not occur in Paul) and “they all drink it” (no such event in Paul); and Jesus describes the meaning of the cup “to them” (no such audience in Paul).

Then Jesus says he will not drink “again” until the kingdom comes, a statement that fits a narrative event, implying Jesus drank, and here drank, and often drank, and will pause drinking until the end times. Likewise Jesus “blesses” the bread (which also doesn’t happen in Paul), implying the actual literal bread he has in his hand is thereby rendered special to the ones about to eat it; whereas in Paul that makes no sense, because no one is there to eat it, Jesus is just depicting and explaining a ritual others will perform in his honor, not that he is performing for them. So it is notable that all of these things are absent from Paul. There is no narrative context of this being the last of many cups Jesus has drunk and of Jesus pausing drinking or of his blessing the bread and giving it to people present. In Paul, the whole scene is an instruction to future followers, not a description of a meal Jesus once had.

This is how Mark reifies a revelation in Paul, relating Jesus’s celestial instructions for performing a sacrament and its meaning, into a narrative historical event. Mark has even taken Paul’s language, about Jesus being “handed over,” which in Paul means by God (Romans 8:32, exact same word) and even by himself (Galatians 2:20, exact same word), not by Judas, and converted it into a whole new narrative of a betrayal by “the Jews” (the meaning of Judas, i.e. Judah, i.e. Judea). Paul has no knowledge of a betrayal. Indeed in Paul, all of “the twelve” get to see Jesus right after his death and are recognized as apostles (1 Corinthians 15:5; see Proving History, pp. 151-55).

Mark in fact constructed his own Judah-as-betrayer narrative and integrated it into his equally fabricated “last supper” narrative from a pastiche of scriptures, including lost scriptures, wherefrom Mark gets whole chunks of his narrative (see Proving History, ibid.). We are only lucky enough to be sure of this because it’s exposed by 1 Clement, who clearly wrote before Mark’s narrative existed (or was known to the author of 1 Clement). Clement also has no knowledge of any betrayal by anyone, much less a Judah—and also is unaware of the destruction of Jerusalem, so this letter must predate 66 A.D., contrary to a much later tradition placing it in 95 (see OHJ, Ch. 8.5). More importantly, Clement frequently quotes scriptures, both ones we know and ones now lost, as being “the words of our Lord Jesus,” evidently under the belief that Jesus spoke through the ancient prophets, and thus their words are his words.

So when Clement says:

Remember the words of our Lord Jesus, for he said, ‘Woe to that man! It would have been good for him not to be born, rather than cause one of my chosen to stumble. Better for him to have a millstone cast about his neck and be drowned in the sea than to have corrupted one of my chosen’

1 Clement 46.7-8

He doesn’t even know about Judas. For several pages Clement’s whole discourse is on examples of betrayal; not one of which is the paradigmatic Christian betrayal narrative, that of Judas—which means that that legend had not yet formed; Mark probably invented it, as an allegory for his overall message and as a useful tale for missionaries to tell, precisely to meet the need Clement struggled to find examples for.

Here, Clement appears to conflate into one saying two different things Mark has Jesus say. But we know Mark must have written after, and Clement is the one quoting a complete coherent saying. In fact this appears to be a quotation from a lost scripture, whom Clement is again assuming is the voice of Jesus speaking through an ancient prophet. So Mark just clipped a line from this scripture and used it to form part of his Judas tale.

As I wrote of Clement’s quotation in OHJ:

This is clearly represented here as a quotation of one unified saying, yet in the Gospels it is two completely unrelated ones: one part spoken during Jesus’ ministry, in the presence of a group of children, about people tempting his followers to sin (‘Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea’ [Mark 9:42]…), another part spoken about Judas at the Last Supper (‘Woe to that man, by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man not to be born’ [Mark 14:18-21]…). Clement clearly does not know of the Judas story, and the phrase ‘Woe to that man! It would have been good for him not to be born’ was evidently never originally anything Jesus said about Judas, but a generic statement about those who lead the Lord’s ‘children’ to sin, meaning Christians (Jesus’ ‘chosen ones’…). Which means Jesus almost certainly never said this—because it reflects the concept of a church community, of ‘believers’ in Jesus that did not exist until after he had died.

OHJ, pp. 311-12.

So we can see clues here to how Mark is fabricating his story of the last supper, turning a ritual vision in Paul into a story of a historical meal, and integrating an allegory of betrayal throughout that was unknown to Paul, using other sources, e.g. lost and extant scriptures, to build that in.

Richard Carrier, Mark’s Use of Paul’s Epistles (2019)

(3)

There’s obviously an issue here because Paul says he learned about the Lord’s Supper through revelation from Jesus, which suggests that the disciples weren’t involved such as how Mark constructs his narrative. It’s not a slam dunk in favor of historicity that we saw earlier with the multiple paths to salvation, but I think a historicist argument can also be made here.

As has been identified by critical scholars like Robyn Faith Walsh, the origin of the Lord’s Supper story is not memory of the activities of the historical Jesus with his disciples, but a mystical revelation Paul thinks he received from Jesus (1 Corinthians 11:17-34) about what happened the night God handed Jesus over. Mark learned this from Paul, and Mark narrativized the Last Supper by turning it into an event in the life of Jesus and his disciples. Why? Given what I posted about previously with the historical Jesus not teaching his own death/resurrection, it is clear Mark winks at Paul here and satirizes the point that the crucifixion/resurrection were not topics for Jesus when he was alive. Mark parodies Jesus repeatedly predicting his death, but the disciples as clueless simply couldn’t understand. By way of a vision Paul identifies Jesus did in fact predict his death by having this happen during his last meal he spent alone in prison. Remember Mark notes the embarrassing detail that Jesus was abandoned by all his disciples at the arrest.

The disciples in Mark fled at the arrest and got violent, which wouldn’t have happened if the arrest/death was the expectation of the Jesus group. Why did Paul not learn of the Lord’s Supper from other disciples who attended it? Because none did. For Paul Jesus revealed the last supper to him because it was a meal Jesus ate alone in his prison cell in which he gave a general meal ritual for all future Christians. Paul’s Lord’s Supper vision is so important to the history of Christianity because it is a ritual commemorating Jesus knew his death to be salvific, something the historical Jesus never thought, Jesus thinking instead salvation came through repentance and charitable works.

MY ESSAYS