Homer and Christianity

Here you see a picture of Achilles making sacrifices to Zeus. It is a unique image, coming from a 5th-century CE manuscript thought to be the only one from Antiquity illustrating Homer’s epic poem _The Illiad_. The scarcity of such depictions belies the importance of Homer on Ancient Roman culture, because all educated people would have been familiar with his works. For scholar Dennis MacDonald, the importance of Homer has profound implications for Christianity.

In his book _The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark_, MacDonald argues that the writer of this earliest gospel (ca. 65-75 CE) deliberately used _The Odyssey_ and _The Illiad_ to tell the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Here are some of the similarities he points out:.

Both Homer and the Gospel author have heroes who are carpenters who go on journeys. Odysseus and Jesus both suffer many things at the hands of “murderous usurpers” and have clueless companions that fail the heroes. _Mark_ and _The Odyssey_ both have key moments where the hero is not recognized, where the heroes are transfigured, and which women recognize the heroes’ identities before others, and anoint them.

MacDonald thinks that the author of _Mark_ was trying to show that Jesus was better than Odysseus: he had all the recognizable heroic cachet of the Ancient heroes but was more loving, more powerful, and divine. MacDonald’s thesis, while fascinating, has a lot of holes — it is possible to make the comparisons he does with many examples of literature. The Gospel author doesn’t include any quotations from Homer. Moreover, the parallels between the two works were unrecognized by early Christians — not good if the Gospel author was intending to make an overt comparison.

However, paying attention to the cultural vibes that made up the author of _Mark’s_ world is super important for understanding this critical early Christian text.