Peter Jensen (Orientalist)

Peter Christian Albrecht Jensen (16 August 1861 - 16 August 1936), best known as Peter C. Jensen was a German orientalist and proponent of the Christ myth theory.

Peter Christian Albrecht Jensen
Born	16 August 1861 Bordeaux
Died	16 August 1936 (aged 75) Marburg
Occupation	Orientalist, Professor of Semitic Languages

Jensen held the view that Biblical figures such as Jesus, Moses and Paul were based on Babylonian myths.[1][2]

Biography

Jensen was born as the son of the pastor of the German-Danish Protestant congregation in Bordeaux, Conrad Jensen. He grew up in Holstein, later in Nustrup Sogn (Nordschleswig), where the family moved to 1871, and visited the Schleswig-Holstein town gymnasium until 1879. In 1880 he began his theological studies at Leipzig University. There he soon moved to Oriental Studies with a focus on Assyriology under Friedrich Delitzsch. In 1883 Jensen went to Eberhard Schrader in Berlin. After completing his doctorate under Schrader and Eduard Sachau in 1884, Jensen first went to Kiel and to Strasbourg, where he qualified as a librarian in 1888. In 1892 Jensen was called to the University of Marburg as successor to Julius Wellhausen, where he taught Semitic languages as a professor from 1895 to 1928.

He studied the Babylonian-Assyrian religious literature in his doctoral dissertation and in 1890 published Die Kosmologie der Babylonier (The Cosmology of the Babylonians). His hypotheses on the comparison of myths pointed to parallels between the Epic of Gilgamesh and Greek (especially Homer) and Israelite "legends," including the story of Jesus in the New Testament. He then worked on this theory as a monumental work Das Gilgamesch-Epos in der Weltliteratur (Gilgamesh in world literature) in 1906 in such a way that he subjected the Old Testament figures from Abraham to the Judaic kings, as well as Jesus and Paul, to an arbitrary interpretation as an Israelite Gilgamesh legend.[3] Jensen has been described as an advocate of Panbabylonism.[4]

In his pamphlet Hat der Jesus der Evangelien wirklich gelebt? (1910), he contended that the historicity of Jesus was a myth based upon the Epic of Gilgamesh.[5]

Jensen's theories were largely criticized by Biblical scholars and theologians.[6][7]

Publications

• Die Kosmologie der Babylonier (1890)
• Das Gilgamesch-Epos in der Weltliteratur (Volume 1, Volume 2, 1906)
• Moses, Jesus, Paul: Three Variants of the Babylonian God-Man Gilgamesh (two volumes, 1909)
• Hat der Jesus der Evangelien wirklich gelebt? (1910)

References

1. Hinnells, John R. (2007). A Handbook of Ancient Religions. Cambridge University Press. p. 207. ISBN 978-0521847124 "Peter Jensen, a distinguished Assyriologist, argued that Abraham, Jesus and John the Baptist, for example, were borrowed from Babylonian mythology and that the Gilgamesh epic, to him a kind of astral saga, was the basis for the New Testament and the Koran."
2. Heschel, Susannah. (2008). The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. Princeton University Press. pp. 57-58. ISBN 978-0691148052 "Peter Jensen, professor at the University of Marburg, published a pamphlet in 1909 asserting that Moses, Jesus and Paul were three variants of Babylonian divinities. A year later he published another pamphlet, questioning the reliability of sources for Jesus's life as related in the gospels, and suggesting it was contrived along the lines of hero myths such as the Gilgamesh epic."
3. Barton, George A. (1907). Review: The Metamorphoses of Gilgamesh. The American Journal of Theology 11 (3): 519–524.
4. Gold, Daniel. (2003). Aesthetics and Analysis in Writing on Religion: Modern Fascinations. University of California Press. p. 156. ISBN 978-0520236141
5. Smith, Warren Allen. (2000). Who's Who in Hell: A Handbook and International Directory for Humanists, Freethinkers, Naturalists, Rationalists, and Non-theists. Barricade Books. p. 590. ISBN 978-1569801581
6. Clemen, Carl. (1908). Does the Fourth Gospel Depend Upon Pagan Traditions? The American Journal of Theology 12 (4): 529–546.
7. Case, Shirley Jackson. (1912). The Historicity of Jesus: A Criticism of the Contention that Jesus Never Lived, a Statement of the Evidence for His Existence, an Estimate of His Relation to Christianity. University of Chicago Press. pp. 77-88

Further reading

• George Aaron Barton. (1908). The Astro-Mythological School of Biblical Interpretation. The Biblical World 31 (6): 433–444.
• Shirley Jackson Case. (1911). The Historicity of Jesus an Estimate of the Negative Argument. The American Journal of Theology 15 (1): 20–42.
• G. H. Richardson. (1916). The Abuse of Biblical Archaeology. The Biblical World 47 (2): 94-99.