cover image Mythologizing Jesus: From Jewish Teacher to Epic Hero

Mythologizing Jesus: From Jewish Teacher to Epic Hero

Dennis R. MacDonald. Rowman & Littlefield, $34 (180p) ISBN 978-0-7425-5891-5

It’s not groundbreaking news that the Christian scriptures took shape within a rich literary landscape, as the gnostic gospels and the Dead Sea Scrolls make clear. But MacDonald, a biblical studies professor at Claremont Graduate School and Claremont School of Theology, sheds light on a different dimension of literary dependence: Homeric material, especially the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey. MacDonald (author of The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, to which he directs interested readers for more scholarly treatments) aims here to distill his findings and present a cogent comparison of Homeric tropes with the Christian gospels of Mark and Luke. To that end, in brief chapters, the author shows some 24 major parallels explored chapter by chapter, from “Born Divine and Human” to “Disappearing into the Sky.” Some examples may strike readers as a stretch, but the evidence certainly seems to demonstrate at least some dependence by the gospel writers on their masterful Greek predecessor in their stories about and portrayals of Jesus. To what end, MacDonald only begins to elaborate, spending too little time on the implications of his argument. (May)