Book Jacket: Dennis R. MacDonald shows how the stories told in the Gospels parallel many in Greek and Roman epics with the aim of compelling their readers into life-changing decisions to follow Jesus. MacDonald doesn't call into question the existence of Jesus but rather asks readers to examine the biblical stories about him through a new, mythological lens.
If you have ever recited the Apostles Creed and found yourself actually thinking about the words coming out of your mouth, then I am fairly certain you've wondered about Jesus. I mean, really wondered. Wondered about his origins. His upbringing. As an adolescent in confirmation the stories you were taught about him probably felt a little weird, but as you grew into an intellectual teenager and adult they began to feel downright preposterous. Impossible. Untrue. And yet, I'll bet you have been able to accept some pretty radical plots and action sequences in the movies you've seen throughout your lives. Aliens visiting Earth and befriending kids and helping them fly. Life as a simulated computer program. Time travel. It's no big deal that Obi-Wan Kenobi or Luke Skywalker can get away with mind-control in Star Wars, but Jesus doing the same thing with the Samaritan woman at the well is utterly unbelievable. Seeing James Bond survive getting shot in the chest and falling off of a moving train and into a raging river is acceptable, and yet Jesus getting nailed to a cross and rising from the dead three days later is not.
The key difference is that we walk into a movie theater willing to suspend real life rules for awhile, all for the sake of (hopefully) encountering a story that will make us think, feel or come to life--but the Bible, no, we have likely been conditioned differently on that front. For me, it wasn't until college that I felt like I had to believe everything the Bible said was true in order to be considered a real Christian. My faith had become like a house of cards--questions were taboo, doubt was a sin and considering anything in the Bible mythical? Not a chance.
But what if we could recite those words of that ancient creed and not feel like an imbecile? What if we could re-think the way we understand Jesus and the stories about him? What if we could suspend real life rules when we opened the Bible in order to encounter something there that would help us think, feel and come to life? That's what Dennis MacDonald, (and Joseph Campbell) did for my faith journey by helping me come to an understanding of the Gospels as part history, part mythology and part theology. In that collection of letters, stories, songs, poems and Leviticus, no longer did I have to understand the Bible as true or untrue, that I had to take it or leave it--instead, it was transformed into the gold standard of ancient creative collaboration, the Gospels as four different screenplays of Jesus, the superhero of compassion. So I have begun to think on the Bible much differently lately. It doesn't make me stumble as much as it used to.
"I am convinced that one should evaluate Gospel stories not as naive attempts to record a historical biography but as sophisticated attempts to create a rival to Greek and Roman superheroes. Their value lies not in their historical reliability but in their mythological and ethical power, in their ability to compel readers to life-changing decisions to follow Jesus."
MacDonald asserts that no book was more widely available in antiquity than the Illiad and it was not uncommon, illegal nor looked down upon for "authors to seek to impress the reader with the superiority of the imitation in literary style, philosophical insights, or ethical values."
"The importance of Homeric epics in antiquity is undisputed. A contemporary of Mark and Luke praised them as follows: 'From the earliest age, children beginning their studies are nursed on Homer's teaching. One might say that while we were still in swathing bands we sucked from his epics as from fresh milk. He assists the beginner and later adult in his prime. In no stage of life, from childhood to old age, do we ever cease to drink from him.'"
Theater Photo by Jake Hills on Unsplash
Delorean Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash
Bible Photo by Emmanuel Phaeton on Unsplash
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