WITNESS TO THE HISTORICITY
OF THE GOSPELS
Arthur Drews
1912
CHRISTIAN HEINRICH ARTHUR DREWS (1865-1935) was a German philosopher and one of the most prominent proponents of the theory that Jesus was a mythological figure. In such books as The Christ-Myth and Witness to the Historicity of the Gospels, Drews argued that Christ was a fabrication concocted from Jewish and pagan mythological sources. To that end, in Witness he argued that Jesus borrowed significantly from the widespread cult of Jason.
Now, in Isaiah vii, 14, the "son of the virgin" is named Emmanuel, and this is translated "God with us." That is also the meaning of the name Jesus, since in Matthew i, 21, the son of Mary receives this name, "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying. Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel." In the Septuagint, as we know, Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew Jeschua, which in turn is the same as Jehoschua or Joshua. Joshua, however, means something like "Jahveh is salvation," "Jah-Help," and corresponds to the German name "Gotthilf." We read in Matthew: "And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins." The name was fairly common among the Jews, and in this connection it is equivalent among the Hellenistic Jews to the name Jason or Jasios, which again is merely a Greek version of Jesus. How did it come about that the unusual name Emmanuel for the saviour of Israel was displaced by the commoner name Jesus?
Various reasons may be assigned for this. First, the fact that in the name Jesus the symbolic significance of salvation in the spiritual and bodily sense, as Isaiah attributed it to the servant of God, was perceived more clearly, especially among the dispersed Jews. Jaso (from iasthai, to heal) was the name of the daughter of the saver and physician Asclepios. He himself was in many places worshipped under the name of Jason. Thus we read in Strabo that temples and the cult of Jason were spread over the whole of Asia, Media, Colchis, Albania, and Iberia, and that Jason enjoyed divine honours also in Thessaly and on the Corinthian gulf, the cult of Phrixos, the ram or lamb, being associated with his (i, 2, 39). Justin tells us that nearly the whole of the west worshipped Jason and built temples to him (xlii, 3), and this is confirmed by Tacitus {Annals, vi, 34). Jason was also supposed to be the founder of the Lemnic festivity, which was celebrated yearly at the beginning of spring, and was believed to impart immortality to those who shared in it. Jasios (Jasion) was called Asclepios, or the "mediating god" related to him in this respect, and the conductor of souls, Hermes, at Crete and in the famous mysteries of Samothracia, which enjoyed the greatest repute about the beginning of the present era, and were frequented by high and low from all the leading countries. Here again the idea of healing and saving is combined in the name, and would easily lead to the giving of the name to the saviour of the Jewish mystery-cult. Epiphanius (HcBres. c, xxix) clearly perceived this connection when he translated the name Jesus "healer" or "physician" (curator, therapeutes). It is certain that this allusion to the healing activity of the servant of God and his affinity with the widely known Jason contributed not a little to the acceptance of the name of Jesus and to its apparent familiarity in ancient times.
Source: Arthur Drews, Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus,trans. Joseph McCabe (Chicago: Open Court Publishing, 1912).