The Jesus Problem: A Restatement of the Myth Theory

Published in 1917 amid the wreckage of the Great War, J. M. Robertson's masterwork takes aim at one of history's most contested questions: was Jesus a historical figure, or something stranger? Robertson, a pioneering Scottish philologist and comparative mythologist, applies the same analytical methods scholars used to decode ancient pagan myths directly to the Gospel narratives. His argument is systematic and relentless: the Jesus of the Gospels bears too many fingerprints of earlier religious archetypes, from dying-and-rising gods to solar deities, to be rooted in authentic historical memory. This isn't polemic; it's patient, evidentiary scholarship that traces parallels, excavates sources, and dismantles the apologetic tradition. The book endures because it asks a question that still haunts religious studies: what happens when you read the New Testament with the same critical rigor you would apply to any ancient text? For readers curious about the historical Jesus debate, the archaeology of belief, or the radical possibility that myth and history are not opposites.