Why do people hold to the view that Jesus never existed and that the Gospels just borrow from existing pagan myths and add a Jewish flavour? It would be easy to create straw man. It is true that some mythicists are troublemakers and some just love to give Christians a hard time.
But what about the true believers?
There are people who genuinely believe in the Jesus Myth Theory and not just to get people all worked up. I have tried to understand things from their perspective.
I think much of it comes from distrust of the church. They have seen the church do some pretty bad things in the past. The church has not just made some mistakes, it has at times participated in evil.
In this time influenced by postmodernism, where we are questioning authority, the church seems to be the number own candidate to doubt. If the church has mislead in some areas, what other areas have they been less than honest?
The church has used belief in a Jesus of history as the test of who is in and who is out. Perhaps this historical Jesus was an attempt to control the masses and bring in the money.
here is an attraction to skepticism of those who claim to have true knowledge and recognized credentials. What if there are people outside of the power structures who have discovered what has been hidden all along? They would have the responsibility to share the “truth” they have discovered.
Once person is swimming in these waters, you can see the appeal of doubting the central claim of the church and uncovering the deception that has fooled people for centuries.
Does the mean that I think that the Jesus Myth Theory has any historical credibility? Absolutely not. But that is my attempt as being as generous as possible about their motivations.
