Jesus a Myth?

I was browsing the Web and stumbled across an argument I had never considered before, at least in not such a concise manner. Mark created Jesus from Scripture. In other words, there was no historical Jesus upon which Mark (assuming his to be first and the one upon which Matthew and Luke based their later renditions upon) based his work. In other words, he made him up.

At first glance, that's a pretty striking argument, one with a lot of merit as reading the Gospel accounts it becomes clear quickly that the Hebrew Scriptures are the backbone of everything Jesus says. But the argument is that Mark created Jesus based on a reinterpretation of the Hebrew Bible (a recent book I stumbled across claims that the Acts of the Apostles is a rewrite of Homer's Iliad).

Gotta admit, that one floored me for a moment. As one who studies the Scriptures and thier history (from a critical perspective lest I be accused of being a Biblical inerrantist), it sounds like a valid argument, especially considering that in the New Testament the sayings, events, miracles and such of Jesus are all reinterpretations or recontextualizations of Hebrew stories.

This would make Mark a brilliant writer, one of the most brilliant writers to have ever existed, to have been able to create such a character and have him followed by billions two thousand years later.

But as I meditated upon it, I realized that it raises one question in me: how is it that billions of people can be so snowballed by such a fiction? This would make it the greatest hoax ever perpetrated upon mankind, especially when considering that many (most?) Jews accept Jesus' existence as do Muslims consider it a basic tenet of their faith that a real Jesus existed. That would make roughly two-thirds of the world, no matter how Jesus is understood theologically, victims of a deception on a scale unprecedented.

Granted, many of these believers have perhaps never given much, if any, though to Jesus ever, if at all. Perhaps many, even most, are followers in name though they've never given it any thought beyond Christmas and Easter and perhaps a periodic visit to a place of worship.

This isn't to say that such a hoax isn't possible.

But is the argument about his historicity one of a real person or one of church dogma/doctrine? Is this a denial of Jesus completely or just the theology derived from his character in the Bible? Or does this stem from a denial of God?

The difficulty in refuting such arguments is that in the walk of faith there comes a point where reasoning and the intellect is transcended. This does not mean it is laid aside, abandoned or otherwise discarded. No, in the walk of faith there is something that is far greater than the intellect - love.

The love revealed through faith in Christ, even if not displayed by those who claim to follow him, is, in my experience, the deepest love available to be unveiled. The life of Jesus presents the quintessential self-sacrifice (and not, as some may argue, suicide).

If it is a delusion, it's a pretty amazing delusion. If it's a delusion, it has been overlaid with the intellectual arguments and reasonings of a bunch of deluded geniuses (though, of course, history attests to many deluded geniuses).

I guess what I see lacking is a specific criteria to judge the truth of the matter. Is reason the final criteria? If it is, by what definition? To me, defense of Christianity is possible by use of reason.

Faith is a funny thing as faith and reason often appear opposed if only because faith is something that goes deeper than or beyond the reasoning intellect. The intellect may, after the fact, shed light on what is revealed by faith but the intellect cannot reveal the mysteries of faith, any faith, on its own.

It is this, the unwillingness to embrace anything that cannot be penetrated by the intellect before believing, that sets "believers" from those who refuse to believe.

If Jesus is in fact a fiction, he is hands down the greatest fiction ever created in the history of mankind. I suppose, however, that these mythicists would extend this argument to every Hebrew figure and could most likely extend that to Muhammad (as some do) and the characters found in the early history of the Muslim community.

Where does it end? As I've not spent much time in the debate, I just wonder about such things as hope, purpose and a source of selfless love. From whence do these things come? Or are these fictions as well?

I'd be hard pressed to sacrifice my wants and desires for a fictional character, no matter how inspiring or what 'truths' (and by what criteria do we judge what is 'true' in such a work?) it reveals.

So if Jesus is not Real the whole thing is a sham. I find this more difficult to believe than what Christianity posits as Truth.