Peter Jensen (Orientalist)


Peter Christian Albrecht Jensen, best known as Peter C. Jensen was a German orientalist and proponent of the Christ myth theory.
Jensen held the view that Biblical figures such as Jesus, Moses and Paul were based on Babylonian myths.

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, 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. His hypotheses on the comparison of myths pointed to parallels between the Epic of Gilgamesh and Greek 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 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. Jensen has been described as an advocate of Panbabylonism.
In his pamphlet Hat der Jesus der Evangelien wirklich gelebt?, he contended that the historicity of Jesus was a myth based upon the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Jensen's theories were largely criticized by Biblical scholars and theologians.

Publications