Christ myth theory

Short description: Fringe theory claiming that Jesus did not exist

"Christ myth" redirects here. For the 1909 book, see The Christ Myth.

For the scholarly study of Jesus in history, see Religion:Historicity of Jesus.

Christ myth theory

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The Christ myth theory rejects the mainstream consensus that Jesus was a historical person who was baptised and later executed. (The Baptism of Christ by Piero della Francesca, painted c. 1448–1450)

Early proponents|

* Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
* Charles-François Dupuis (1742–1809)
* Constantin-François Volney (1757–1820)
* Richard Carlile (1790–1843)
* Bruno Bauer (1809–1882)
* Edwin Johnson (1842–1901)
* Dutch Radical School (1880–1950)
* Albert Kalthoff (1850–1906)
* William Benjamin Smith (1850–1934)
* John Mackinnon Robertson (1856–1933)
* Thomas Whittaker (1856–1935)
* Arthur Drews (1865–1935)
* Paul-Louis Couchoud (1879–1959)

Later proponents|

* Alvin Boyd Kuhn (1880–1963)
* George Albert Wells (1926–2017)
* Tom Harpur (1929–2017)
* Michael Martin (1932–2015)

Living proponents|

* Earl Doherty (b. 1941)
* Thomas L. Brodie (b. 1943)
* Robert M. Price (b. 1954)
* Richard Carrier (b. 1969)

Subjects| Historical Jesus, historical reliability of the Gospels, historicity of Jesus

Template:Jesus The Christ myth theory, also known as the Jesus myth theory, Jesus mythicism, or the Jesus ahistoricity theory,[1][lower-alpha 1] is the fringe[lower-alpha 2] view that the story of Jesus is a work of mythology with no historical substance.[lower-alpha 3] Alternatively, in terms given by Bart Ehrman paraphrasing Earl Doherty, it is the view that "the historical Jesus did not exist. Or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity."[lower-alpha 4]

The mainstream scholarly consensus, developed in the three quests for the historical Jesus, holds that there was a historical Jesus of Nazareth who lived in first-century AD Roman Judea,[2][3][4] but his baptism and crucifixion are the only facts of his life about which a broad consensus exists.[lower-alpha 5] Beyond that, mainstream scholars have no consensus about the historicity of other major aspects of the gospel stories, nor the extent to which they and the Pauline epistles may have replaced the historical Jesus with a supernatural Christ of faith.[lower-alpha 6]

Proponents of mythicism, in contrast, argue that a historical Jesus never existed, and that the gospels historicized a mythological character.[lower-alpha 4][lower-alpha 7][lower-alpha 8] This view can be traced back to the Age of Enlightenment, when history began to be critically analyzed;[5] it was revived in the 1970s. Most mythicists employ a threefold argument:(Van Voorst, 2000) they question the reliability of the Pauline epistles and the gospels to establish Jesus's historicity; they argue that information is lacking on Jesus in secular sources from the first and early second centuries; and they argue that early Christianity had syncretistic and mythological origins as reflected in both the Pauline epistles and the gospels, with Jesus being a deity who was concretized in the gospels.[6][lower-alpha 9][lower-alpha 10]

The non-historicity of Jesus has never garnered significant support among scholars.[7][web 1][8][9] Mythicism is rejected by virtually all mainstream scholars of antiquity,[10][11][web 2][lower-alpha 11] and has been considered a fringe theory for more than two centuries,[lower-alpha 2] but has attracted more attention in popular culture with the rise of the Internet.[12][13]

## Contents

* 1 Traditional and modern approaches on Jesus
* 1.1 Quest for the historical Jesus
* 1.2 Historical existence of Jesus
* 1.3 Demise of authenticity and call for memory studies
* 1.4 Views of Christ myth theorists
* 2 Overview of main mythicist arguments
* 3 Mainstream and mythicist views on the arguments
* 3.1 Lack of detailed biographical information in Pauline epistles
* 3.1.1 Dating and attribution
* 3.1.1.1 Mainstream view
* 3.1.1.2 Mythicist view
* 3.1.2 Lack of biographical information
* 3.1.2.1 Mainstream view
* 3.1.2.2 Mythicist view
* 3.2 The Gospels are not historical records
* 3.2.1 Mainstream view
* 3.2.2 Mythicist view
* 3.2.3 Mainstream criticism
* 3.3 No independent eyewitness accounts
* 3.3.1 Lack of surviving historic records
* 3.3.1.1 Mythicist view
* 3.3.1.2 Mainstream criticism
* 3.3.2 Josephus and Tacitus
* 3.3.2.1 Mythicist view
* 3.3.2.2 Mainstream view
* 3.3.3 Other early ancient sources
* 3.3.3.1 Mainstream view
* 3.4 Jesus was a mythical being
* 3.4.1 Syncretism and diversity
* 3.4.1.1 Mainstream view
* 3.4.1.2 Mythicist view
* 3.4.2 Paul's Jesus is a deity
* 3.4.2.1 Mainstream view
* 3.4.2.2 Mythicist views
* 3.4.2.3 Mainstream criticism
* 3.4.3 Parallels with savior gods
* 3.4.3.1 Mainstream view
* 3.4.3.2 Mythicist view
* 3.4.3.3 Mainstream criticism
* 4 Late 18th to early 20th century
* 5 Revival (1970s–present)
* 5.1 Revival of the Christ myth theory
* 5.1.1 Paul-Louis Couchoud
* 5.1.2 George Albert Wells
* 5.1.3 Earl Doherty
* 5.1.4 Richard Carrier
* 5.2 Biblical scholars
* 5.2.1 Robert M. Price
* 5.2.2 Thomas L. Thompson
* 5.2.3 Thomas L. Brodie
* 5.3 Other modern proponents
* 6 Reception
* 6.1 Scholarly reception
* 6.1.1 Lack of support for mythicism
* 6.1.2 Questioning the competence of proponents
* 6.1.3 Bias
* 6.1.4 Other criticisms
* 6.2 Popular reception
* 7 Documentaries
* 8 See also
* 9 Notes
* 10 References
* 10.1 Footnotes
* 10.2 Sources
* 10.2.1 Printed sources
* 10.2.2 Web sources
* 11 Further reading
* 12 External links

## Traditional and modern approaches on Jesus

Main articles: Religion:Christology, History of Christianity, Jesus in Christianity, and Origins of Christianity

Mainstream scholarship asserts that there was a historical Jesus.[14][15] However, scholars differ about the accuracy of the biblical accounts about Jesus, with only two events supported by nearly-universal scholarly consensus: Jesus' baptism, and his crucifixion.[16][3][4][lower-alpha 5] The mainstream scholarly view is that the Pauline epistles and the gospels describe the "Christ of faith", presenting a religious narrative which replaced the historical Jesus who did live in first-century Roman Judea.[17][18][19][20][lower-alpha 12] Martin Kähler made the famous distinction between the "Jesus of history" and the "Christ of faith", arguing that faith is more important than exact historical knowledge.[21][22] According to Ehrman, Jesus was a first-century Judean Jew, who was not like the Jesus preached and proclaimed today,[lower-alpha 13] and that the most widely held view by critical scholars is that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet[23] who was subsequently deified.[24]

The origins and rapid rise of Christianity, as well as the historical Jesus and the historicity of Jesus, are a matter of longstanding debate in theological and historical research. While Christianity may have started with an early nucleus of followers of Jesus,[25] within a few years after the presumed death of Jesus in c. AD 33, at the time Paul started preaching, a number of "Jesus-movements" seem to have existed, which propagated divergent interpretations of Jesus' teachings.[26][27][28] A central question is how these communities developed and what their original convictions were,[26][29] as a wide range of beliefs and ideas can be found in early Christianity, including adoptionism and docetism,[web 3] and also Gnostic traditions which used Christian imagery,[30][31] which were all deemed heretical by proto-orthodox Christianity.[32][33]

### Quest for the historical Jesus

Main articles: Religion:Historical criticism, Quest for the historical Jesus, and Textual criticism

A first quest for the historical Jesus took place in the 19th century when hundreds of biographies about Jesus were proposed.[34] German theologian David Strauss (1808–1874) pioneered the search for the "historical Jesus" by rejecting all supernatural events as mythical elaborations. His 1835 work, Life of Jesus,[35] was one of the first and most influential systematic analyses of the life story of Jesus, aiming to base it on unbiased historical research.[36][37] The Religionsgeschichtliche Schule, starting in the 1890s, used the methodologies of higher criticism,[web 4] a branch of criticism that investigates the origins of ancient texts in order to understand "the world behind the text".[38] It compared Christianity to other religions, regarding it as one religion among others and rejecting its claims to absolute truth, and demonstrating that it shares characteristics with other religions.[web 4] It argued that Christianity was not simply the continuation of the Hebrew Bible, but syncretistic, and was rooted in and influenced by Hellenistic Judaism (Philo) and Hellenistic religions like the mystery cults and Gnosticism.[web 5] Martin Kähler questioned the usefulness of the search for the historical Jesus, making the famous distinction between the "Jesus of history" and the "Christ of faith", arguing that faith is more important than exact historical knowledge.[21][22] Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), who was related to the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule,[web 5] emphasized theology, and in 1926 argued that historical Jesus research was both futile and unnecessary; however, Bultmann slightly modified that position in a later book.[39][40] The first quest ended with Albert Schweitzer's 1906 critical review of the history of the search for Jesus' life in The Quest of the Historical Jesus—From Reimarus to Wrede. The first quest was challenged in the 19th and early 20th centuries by authors who denied the historicity of Jesus, notably Bauer and Drews.

The second quest started in 1953, in a departure from Bultmann.[39][40] Several criteria, the criterion of dissimilarity and the criterion of embarrassment, were introduced to analyze and evaluate New Testament narratives. This second quest declined in the 1970s[37][41] due to the diminishing influence of Bultmann,[37] and coinciding with the first publications of George Albert Wells, which marks the onset of the revival of Christ myth theories. According to Paul Zahl, while the second quest made significant contributions at the time, its results are now mostly forgotten, although not disproven.[42]

The third quest started in the 1980s and introduced new criteria.[43][44] Primary among these are[44][45] the criterion of historical plausibility,[43] the criterion of rejection and execution,[43] and the criterion of congruence (also called cumulative circumstantial evidence), a special case of the older criterion of coherence.[46] The third quest is interdisciplinary and global,[47] carried out by scholars from multiple disciplines[47] and incorporating the results of archeological research.[48] The third quest primarily yielded new insights into Jesus' Palestinian and Jewish context rather than the person of Jesus himself.[49][50][51] It also has made clear that all material on Jesus has been handed down by the emerging Church, raising questions about the criterion of dissimilarity, and the suitability of ascribing material solely to Jesus rather than the emerging Church.[52]

### Historical existence of Jesus

Main articles: Religion:Historical Jesus, Historicity of Jesus, and Sources for the historicity of Jesus

To establish the existence of a person without any assumptions, one source from one author (either a supporter or opponent) is needed; for Jesus there are at least 12 independent sources from five authors in the first century from supporters and 2 independent sources from two authors from non-supporters.[53] Since historical sources on other named individuals from first century Galilee were written by either supporters or enemies, these sources on Jesus cannot be dismissed.[53] Bart Ehrman estimates that there are about 30 surviving "independent sources that know there was a man Jesus" written by 25 authors, including 16 in the New Testament.[54] With at least 14 sources by supporters and non-supporters, within a century of the crucifixion, there is much more evidence available for Jesus than for any other notable person from first-century Galilee.[55]

These critical methods have led to a demythologization of Jesus. The mainstream scholarly view is that the Pauline epistles and the gospels describe the "Christ of faith", presenting a religious narrative that replaced the historical Jesus who lived in first-century Roman Judea,[17][18][19][20][lower-alpha 12] but that a historical Jesus did exist. New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman states that Jesus "certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees".[14][15]

Following the criteria of authenticity-approach, scholars differ on the historicity of specific episodes described in the biblical accounts of Jesus,[56] but the baptism and the crucifixion are two events in the life of Jesus that are subject to "almost universal assent".[lower-alpha 14] According to historian Alanna Nobbs,

> While historical and theological debates remain about the actions and significance of this figure, his fame as a teacher, and his crucifixion under the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, may be described as historically certain.[57]

Historical portraits of Jesus have often differed from each other and from the image portrayed in the gospel accounts.[15][58][59][lower-alpha 15] The primary portraits of Jesus resulting from the third quest are: apocalyptic prophet; charismatic healer; cynic philosopher; Jewish Messiah; and prophet of social change.[60][61] According to Ehrman, the most widely held view is that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet[23] who was subsequently deified.[24]

According to New Testament scholar James Dunn, it is not possible "to construct (from the available data) a Jesus who will be the real Jesus".[lower-alpha 16] According to Philip R. Davies, a biblical minimalist, "what is being affirmed as the Jesus of history is a cipher, not a rounded personality".[web 7] According to Ehrman, "the real problem with Jesus" is not the mythicist stance that he is "a myth invented by Christians", but that he was "far too historical", that is, a first-century Judean Jew, who was not like the Jesus preached and proclaimed today.[62] According to Ehrman, "Jesus was a first-century Jew, and when we try to make him into a twenty-first century American we distort everything he was and everything he stood for."[63]

### Demise of authenticity and call for memory studies

Since the late 2000s, concern has grown about the usefulness of the criteria of authenticity.[64][65][66][web 8] According to Chris Keith, the criteria are literary tools, indebted to form criticism, not historiographic tools.[67] They were meant to discern pre-gospel traditions, not to identify historical facts,[67] but have "substituted the pre-literary tradition with that of the historical Jesus".[68] According to Anthony Le Donne, the usage of such criteria is a form of "positivist historiography".[69]

Keith, Le Donne, and others[lower-alpha 17] argue for a "social memory" approach, which states that memories are shaped by the needs of the present and that instead of searching for a historical Jesus, scholarship should investigate how the memories of Jesus were shaped, and how they were reshaped "with the aim of cohesion and the self-understanding (identity) of groups".[68] James D. G. Dunn's 2003 study, Jesus Remembered, prompted the "increased ... interest in memory theory and eyewitness testimony".[web 9] Dunn argues that "[t]he only realistic objective for any 'quest of the historical Jesus' is Jesus remembered."[70] Dunn argues that Christianity started with the impact Jesus himself had on his followers, who passed on and shaped their memories of him in an oral gospel tradition. According to Dunn, to understand who Jesus was, and what his impact was, scholars have to look at "the broad picture, focusing on the characteristic motifs and emphases of the Jesus tradition, rather than making findings overly dependent on individual items of the tradition".[70]

Le Donne elaborated on Dunn's thesis, basing "his historiography squarely on Dunn's thesis that the historical Jesus is the memory of Jesus recalled by the earliest disciples".[web 9] According to Le Donne, memories are refactored, and not an exact recalling of the past.[web 9] He argues that the remembrance of events is facilitated by relating it to a common story or "type", which shapes the way the memories are retained and narrated. He therefore means that the Jesus tradition is not a theological invention of the early Church, but is shaped and refracted by the restraints that the type puts on the narrated memories, due to the mold of the "type".[web 9]

According to Chris Keith, an alternative to the search for a historical Jesus "posits a historical Jesus who is ultimately unattainable but can be hypothesized on the basis of the interpretations of the early Christians, and as part of a larger process of accounting for how and why early Christians came to view Jesus in the ways that they did". According to Keith, "these two models are methodologically and epistemologically incompatible", calling into question the methods and aim of the first model.[71]

### Views of Christ myth theorists

Mythicists variously argue that the accounts of Jesus are completely or mostly of a mythical nature, questioning the mainstream paradigm of a historical Jesus in the beginning of the first century who was subsequently deified. Most mythicists note that Christianity developed within Hellenistic Judaism, which was influenced by Hellenism, and that early Christianity and the accounts of Jesus are to be understood in this context. Yet, where contemporary New Testament scholarship has introduced several criteria to evaluate the historicity of New Testament passages and sayings, most Christ myth proponents have relied on comparisons of Christian mythemes with contemporary religious traditions, emphasizing the mythological nature of the Bible accounts.[72][lower-alpha 18]

The most radical mythicists hold, in terms given by Price, the "Jesus atheism" viewpoint, that is, there never was a historical Jesus, only a mythological character, and the mytheme of his incarnation, death, and exaltation. They hold that this character developed out of a syncretistic fusion of Jewish, Hellenistic and Middle Eastern religious thought; was put forward by Paul; and historicised in the gospels, which are also syncretistic. Notable 'Jesus atheists' are Paul-Louis Couchoud, Earl Doherty,[lower-alpha 4] Thomas L. Brodie, and Richard Carrier.[lower-alpha 19][lower-alpha 20]

Some authors argue for the Jesus agnosticism viewpoint. That is, whether there was a historical Jesus is unknowable and if he did exist, close to nothing can be known about him.[74] Notable 'Jesus agnosticists' are Robert Price and Thomas L. Thompson.[75][76] According to Thompson, the question of the historicity of Jesus also is not relevant for the understanding of the meaning and function of the Biblical texts in their own times.[75][76]

Wells in his early works and Alvar Ellegård have argued that "the first Christians had in mind Jesus who had lived as a historical figure, just not of the recent past."[77] Ellegård identified this figure with the Essene Teacher of Righteousness,[78] de facto proposing a historical Jesus.[79] Wells, in his later writings, came to view the gospel stories of Jesus as containing elements of a historical figure "traceable to the activity of a Galilean preacher of the early first century,"[80] preserved in the Q source, who was added to Paul's mythical Jesus in the gospels, arguing for "two originally quite independent streams of tradition", which were fused in the gospels,[81][lower-alpha 21] leaving open the question regarding Paul's Christ "as to whether such a person had in fact existed and lived the obscure life that Paul supposed of him." According to Wells, "There is no means of deciding this issue."[82]

## Overview of main mythicist arguments

According to New Testament scholar Robert Van Voorst, most Christ mythicists follow a threefold argument first set forward by German historian Bruno Bauer in the 1800s: they question the reliability of the Pauline epistles and the Gospels to postulate a historically existing Jesus; they note the lack of information on Jesus in non-Christian sources from the first and early second century; and they argue that early Christianity had syncretistic and mythological origins.[83] More specifically:

* Paul's epistles lack detailed biographical information—most mythicists agree that the Pauline epistles are older than the gospels, and note that aside from a few passages which may have been interpolations, there is a complete absence of any detailed biographical information such as might be expected if Jesus had been a contemporary of Paul,[84] nor do they cite any sayings from Jesus, the so-called argument from silence.[85][86][87][lower-alpha 22] Some mythicists have argued that the Pauline epistles are from a later date than usually assumed, and therefore not a reliable source on the life of Jesus.[88][90][91]
* The gospels are not historical records, but a fictitious historical narrative—mythicists argue that although the gospels seem to present a historical framework, they are not historical records, but theological writings,[92][93] myth or legendary fiction resembling the Hero archetype.[94][95] They impose "a fictitious historical narrative" on a "mythical cosmic savior figure",[96][86] weaving together various pseudo-historical Jesus traditions,[97][98] though there may have been a real historical person, of whom close to nothing can be known.[99][need quotation to verify]
* There are no independent eyewitness accounts—No independent eyewitness accounts survive, in spite of the fact that many authors were writing at that time.[100][96] Early second-century Roman accounts contain very little evidence[101][102] and may depend on Christian sources.[92][103]
* Jesus was a mythological being, who was concretized in the Gospels—early Christianity was widely diverse and syncretistic, sharing common philosophical and religious ideas with other religions of the time.[104] It arose in the Greco-Roman world of the first and second centuries AD, synthesizing Greek Stoicism and Neoplatonism with Hebrew Bible writings[105][106][76] and the exegetical methods of Philo,[101][104][107] creating the mythological figure of Jesus. Paul refers to Jesus as an exalted being, and is probably writing about either a mythical[86] or supernatural entity,[lower-alpha 23] a celestial deity[lower-alpha 10] named Jesus.[108][109][110][web 10] This deity is derived from personified aspects of God, notably the personification of Wisdom, or "a savior figure patterned after similar figures within ancient mystery religions,"[lower-alpha 9][6][lower-alpha 24] which were often (but not always) a dying-and-rising god.[111][112][113] While Paul may also contain proto-Gnostic ideas,[114][115] some mythicists have argued that Paul may refer to a historical person who may have lived in a dim past, long before the beginnings of the Common Era.[77][79][116]

## Mainstream and mythicist views on the arguments

### Lack of detailed biographical information in Pauline epistles

#### Dating and attribution

##### Mainstream view

The mainstream view is that the seven undisputed Pauline epistles considered by scholarly consensus to be genuine epistles are generally dated to circa 48–62 AD and are the earliest surviving Christian texts that include information about Jesus.[117][lower-alpha 25] Most scholars view the Pauline letters as essential elements in the study of the historical Jesus,[117][118][119][120] and the development of early Christianity.[26]

##### Mythicist view

Mythicists agree on the importance of the Pauline epistles, some agreeing with this early dating, and taking the Pauline epistles as their point of departure from mainstream scholarship.[86] They argue that those letters point solely into the direction of a celestial or mythical being, or contain no definitive information on a historical Jesus. Some mythicists, though, have questioned the early dating of the epistles, raising the possibility that they represent a later, more developed strand of early Christian thought.

Theologian Willem Christiaan van Manen of the Dutch school of radical criticism noted various anachronisms in the Pauline epistles. Van Manen claimed that they could not have been written in their final form earlier than the second century. He also noted that the Marcionite school was the first to publish the epistles, and that Marcion (c. 85 – c. 160) used them as justification for his gnostic and docetic views that Jesus' incarnation was not in a physical body. Van Manen also studied Marcion's version of Galatians in contrast to the canonical version and argued that the canonical version was a later revision that de-emphasized the Gnostic aspects.[121]

Price also argues for a later dating of the epistles, and sees them as a compilation of fragments (possibly with a Gnostic core),[122] contending that Marcion was responsible for much of the Pauline corpus or even wrote the letters himself. Price criticizes other Christ myth theorists for holding the mid-first-century dating of the epistles for their own apologetical reasons.[123][lower-alpha 26]

#### Lack of biographical information

##### Mainstream view

According to Gregory A. Boyd and Paul Rhodes Eddy modern biblical scholarship notes that "Paul has relatively little to say on the biographical information of Jesus" compared to the Gospels. However, Paul was "a recent contemporary" of Jesus.[125][126] and he alludes to some aspects of Jesus' life in the letters.[127] Paul's letters states that he knew eyewitnesses of Jesus including his close disciples and Jesus' brother James going as far back as 36 CE.[lower-alpha 27][128][129] Paul and other sources enumerate that Jesus had siblings named James, Joseph, Symeon, and Jude.[130]

Paul viewed Jesus as being a descendant of David, having an upbringing in the Jewish Law, gathering disciples, involved in the Last Supper, being betrayed, being executed, and resurrecting.[131][127] The early references by Paul about the life of Jesus support that Jesus existed and that Paul had a general interest in his life.[132] According to Christopher Tuckett, "[e]ven if we had no other sources, we could still infer some things about Jesus from Paul's letters" such that he was a Jew with siblings, and that he was a preacher who was executed.[133]

##### Mythicist view

Robert Price says that Paul does not refer to Jesus' earthly life, also not when that life might have provided convenient examples and justifications for Paul's teachings. Instead, revelation seems to have been a prominent source for Paul's knowledge about Jesus.[73]

### The Gospels are not historical records

#### Mainstream view

The consensus among scholars is that the gospels are a type of ancient biography[134][135][136][137][138] similar to Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates.[139] Ancient biography is a genre which was concerned with providing examples for readers to emulate while preserving and promoting the subject's reputation and memory, as well as including propaganda and kerygma (preaching) in their works.[140][lower-alpha 28] Biblical scholarship regards the gospels to be the literary manifestation of oral traditions that originated during the life of a historical Jesus, who according to Dunn had a profound impact on his followers.[144]

There are archeological finds that corroborate aspects of the time of Jesus mentioned in the Gospels, such as context from Nazareth, the High Priest Caiaphas' ossuary, numerous synagogue buildings, and Jehohanan, a crucified victim who had a Jewish burial after execution.[145][146] Written sources and excavations on Nazareth correlate with Jesus' existence, Joseph and Jesus' occupation as craftworkers, presence of literacy, existence of synagogues, Gospel accounts relating to Nazareth, and other Roman period sources on Nazareth.[147]

Oral traditions in the gospels precede the surviving gospels by decades, going back to the time of Jesus and the time of Paul's persecution of the early Christian Jews, prior to his conversion.[148][lower-alpha 29] Most available sources are collections of early oral traditions about Jesus and the historical value of traditions are not necessarily correlated with the later dates of composition of writings since even later sources can contain early tradition material.[151] Theissen and Merz state that these traditions can be dated back well before the composition of the synoptic gospels, that such traditions show local familiarity of the region, and that such traditions were explicitly called "memory", indicating biographical elements that included historical references such as notable people from his era.[152] According to Maurice Casey, some of the sources, such as parts of the Gospel of Mark, are translations of early Aramaic sources which indicate proximity with eyewitness testimony.[153]

#### Mythicist view

Mythicists argue that in the gospels "a fictitious historical narrative" was imposed on the "mythical cosmic savior figure" created by Paul.[96] According to Robert Price, the gospels "smack of fictional composition",[web 11] arguing that they are a type of legendary fiction[94] and that the story of Jesus portrayed in the gospels fits the mythic hero archetype.[94][95] The mythic hero archetype, present in many cultures, often has a miraculous conception or virgin births heralded by wise men and marked by a star, is tempted by or fights evil forces, dies on a hill, appears after death and then ascends to heaven.[154] According to Earl Doherty, the gospels are "essentially allegory and fiction".[155]

According to Wells in his later writings, a historical Jesus existed, whose teachings were preserved in the Q source.[156] Wells said the gospels weave together two Jesus narratives, namely the Galilean preacher of the Q document, and Paul's mythical Jesus.[156] Doherty disagrees with Wells regarding the teacher of the Q-document, arguing that he was an allegorical character who personified Wisdom and came to be regarded as the founder of the Q-community.[97][157] According to Doherty, Q's Jesus and Paul's Christ were combined in the Gospel of Mark by a predominantly Gentile community.[97]

#### Mainstream criticism

Ehrman notes that the gospels are based on oral sources, which played a decisive role in attracting new converts.[158] Christian theologians have cited the mythic hero archetype as a defense of Christian teaching while completely affirming a historical Jesus.[159][160] Secular academics Kendrick and McFarland have also pointed out that the teachings of Jesus marked "a radical departure from all the conventions by which heroes had been defined".[161]

### No independent eyewitness accounts

#### Lack of surviving historic records

##### Mythicist view

Myth proponents claim there is significance in the lack of surviving historic records about Jesus of Nazareth from any non-Christian author until the second century,[162][163][lower-alpha 30] adding that Jesus left no writings or other archaeological evidence.[164] They note that Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria did not mention Jesus when he wrote about the cruelty of Pontius Pilate around 40 AD.[165]

##### Mainstream criticism

No ancient sources, even by enemies of Christianity, never claimed that Jesus never existed.[166][167][168][169] Bart Ehrman estimates that there are about 30 surviving independent sources written by 25 authors who attest to Jesus.[54] Including by non-Christians in the first century.[169] According to archeologist Ken Dark, for Jesus there are at least 14 independent sources from seven authors who were supporters and non-supporters within a century of the crucifixion.[53] Since historical sources on other named individuals from first century Galilee were written by either supporters or enemies, these sources on Jesus cannot be dismissed.[53] With at least 14 sources by supporters and non-supporters there is much more evidence available for Jesus than for any other notable person from first-century Galilee.[55]

Paul's letters are the earliest surviving sources on Jesus.[170][171] Paul states he personally knew eyewitnesses of Jesus such as his closest disciples and even his brother James since the mid 30s CE.[lower-alpha 27] Paul's reference to James as Jesus' brother in particular is distinctive.[172] Additionally, there are other independent sources (Mark, John, Paul, Josephus) affirming that Jesus had brothers.[173]

Theissen and Merz observe that even if ancient sources were to be silent on any individual, they would not impact their historicity since there are numerous instances of people whose existence is never doubted and yet were not mentioned by contemporary authors. For instance, Paul is not mentioned by Josephus or non-Christian sources; John the Baptist is not mentioned by Paul, Philo, or rabbinic writings; Rabbi Hillel is not mentioned by Josephus - despite him being a Pharisee; Bar Kochba, a leader of the Jewish revolt against the Romans is not mentioned by Dio Cassius in his account of the revolt.[174] Nonetheless, even non-Christian sources do exist and they do corroborate key details of the life of Jesus that are also found in New Testament sources.[169]

According to Classical historian Michael Grant, that when the New Testament is analyzed with the same criteria used by historians on ancient writings that contain historical material, Jesus's existence cannot be denied any more than secular figures whose existence is never questioned.[175]

Mainstream biblical scholars point out that much of the writings of antiquity have been lost[176] and that there was little written about any Jew or Christian in this period.[177][178] Ehrman points out that there is no known archaeological or textual evidence for the existence of most people in the ancient world, even famous people like Pontius Pilate, whom the myth theorists agree to have existed.[177] Robert Hutchinson notes that this is also true of Josephus, despite the fact that he was "a personal favorite of the Roman Emperor Vespasian".[179] Hutchinson quotes Ehrman, who notes that Josephus is never mentioned in first-century Greek or Roman sources, despite being "a personal friend of the emperor".[179]

#### Josephus and Tacitus

Main articles: Religion:Josephus on Jesus and Tacitus on Jesus

There are three non-Christian sources that are typically used to study and establish the historicity of Jesus, namely two mentions in Josephus, and one mention in the Roman source Tacitus.[180][181][182][183][184]

##### Mythicist view

Myth proponents note that the Testimonium Flavianum is likely a forgery by Christian apologist Eusebius in the 4th century or by others.[185][lower-alpha 31] Richard Carrier further argues that the original text of Antiquities 20 referred to a brother of the high priest Jesus son of Damneus, named James, and not to the Jesus of Christianity.[190] Carrier further argues that the words "the one called Christ" likely resulted from the accidental insertion of a marginal note added by some unknown reader.[190]

Christ myth theory supporters such as Carrier note that sources such as Tacitus and others, which were written decades after the supposed events, include no independent traditions that relate to Jesus, and hence can provide no confirmation of historical facts about him.[92][103][191]

##### Mainstream view

From these two independent sources alone (Josephus and Tacitus), we can adduce certain facts about Jesus: that he existed, his personal name was Jesus, he was called a messiah, he had a brother named James, he won over Jews and gentiles, Jewish leaders had unfavorable opinions of him, Pontius Pilate decided his execution, he was executed by crucifixion, was executed during Pilate's governorship.[169]

Josephus was a Jewish historian and commander in Galille who trained 100,000 men in the region, stationed in Sepphoris for a time, which was 3 miles away from Nazareth, the hometown of Jesus; and so he dwelled with inhabitants who would have known Jesus and knew participants in the trials of Jesus and his brother James such as the Sanhedrin and Ananus II.[192] Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, written around 93–94 AD, includes two references to the biblical Jesus in Books 18 and 20. On the first reference, known as the Testimonium Flavianum in Book 18, since the late 20th century, the general consensus has held that the Testimonium is partially authentic in that an authentic nucleus referencing the life of Jesus was original to Josephus.[193][194][195] Josephus scholars note that up to the Enlightenment, the Testimonium was never used against the existence of Jesus since no ancient source or ancient reference to the Testimonium supports that hypothesis.[168] On the second reference to Jesus from Josephus, Josephus scholar Louis H. Feldman states that "few have doubted the genuineness" of Josephus' reference to Jesus in Antiquities 20, 9, 1 ("the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James").[196][197][198][199]

Roman historian Tacitus referred to "Christus" and his execution by Pontius Pilate in his Annals (written c. AD 116), book 15, chapter 44.[200][lower-alpha 32] The very negative tone of Tacitus' comments on Christians makes most experts believe that the passage is extremely unlikely to have been forged by a Christian scribe.[183] The Tacitus reference is now widely accepted as an independent confirmation of Jesus' crucifixion.[202][133]

#### Other early ancient sources

##### Mainstream view

In Jesus Outside the New Testament (2000), Van Voorst considers references to Jesus in classical writings, Jewish writings, hypothetical sources of the canonical Gospels, and extant Christian writings outside the New Testament. He concludes that non-Christian sources provide "a small but certain corroboration of certain New Testament historical traditions on the family background, time of life, ministry, and death of Jesus", as well as "evidence of the content of Christian preaching that is independent of the New Testament", while extra-biblical Christian sources give access to "some important information about the earliest traditions on Jesus". However, New Testament sources remain central for "both the main lines and the details about Jesus' life and teaching".[203]

### Jesus was a mythical being

See also: Religion:Origins of Christianity and Gnosticism

#### Syncretism and diversity

##### Mainstream view

Most historians agree that Jesus or his followers established a new Jewish sect that attracted both Jewish and gentile converts. Out of this Jewish sect developed Early Christianity, which was very diverse, with proto-orthodoxy and "heretical" views like Gnosticism alongside each other.[204][32] According to Ehrman, a number of early Christianities existed in the first century AD, from which developed various Christian traditions and denominations, including proto-orthodoxy.[205] According to Dunn, four types of early Christianity can be discerned: Jewish Christianity, Hellenistic Christianity, Apocalyptic Christianity, and early Catholicism.[206]

##### Mythicist view

In Christ and the Caesars (1877), philosopher Bruno Bauer suggested that Christianity was a synthesis of the Stoicism of Seneca the Younger, Greek Neoplatonism, and the Jewish theology of Philo as developed by pro-Roman Jews such as Josephus. This new religion was in need of a founder and created its Christ.[207][101] In a review of Bauer's work, Robert Price notes that Bauer's basic stance regarding the Stoic tone and the fictional nature of the gospels are still repeated in contemporary scholarship.[web 11]

Doherty notes that, with the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Greek culture and language spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean world, influencing the already existing cultures there.[104] The Roman conquest of this area added to the cultural diversity, but also to a sense of alienation and pessimism.[104] A rich diversity of religious and philosophical ideas was available and Judaism was held in high regard by non-Jews for its monotheistic ideas and its high moral standards.[104] Yet monotheism was also offered by Greek philosophy, especially Platonism, with its high God and the intermediary Logos.[104] According to Doherty, "Out of this rich soil of ideas arose Christianity, a product of both Jewish and Greek philosophy",[104] echoing Bruno Bauer, who argued that Christianity was a synthesis of Stoicism, Greek Neoplatonism, and Jewish thought.[101]

Robert Price notes that Christianity started among Hellenized Jews, who mixed allegorical interpretations of Jewish traditions with Jewish Gnostic, Zoroastrian, and mystery cult elements.[208][115][lower-alpha 33] Some myth proponents note that some stories in the New Testament reinforce Old Testament prophecies[209] and repeat stories about figures such as Elijah, Elisha,[210] Moses and Joshua in order to appeal to Jewish converts.[211] Price notes that almost all the gospel stories have parallels in the Old Testament and other traditions, concluding that the gospels are not independent sources for a historical Jesus, but "legend and myth, fiction and redaction".[212]

According to Doherty, the rapid growth of early Christian communities and the great variety of ideas cannot be explained by a single missionary effort, but points to parallel developments that arose at various places and competed for support. Paul's arguments against rival apostles also point to this diversity.[104] Doherty further notes that Yeshua (Jesus) is a generic name, meaning "Yahweh saves" and refers to the concept of divine salvation, which could apply to any kind of saving entity or Wisdom.[104]

#### Paul's Jesus is a deity

##### Mainstream view

See also: Religion:Resurrection of Jesus

A third-century fragment of Paul's letter to the Romans

According to mainstream scholarship, Jesus was an eschatological preacher or teacher, who was believed by his followers to be exalted after his death.[213][18] The Pauline letters incorporate creeds, or confessions of faith, that predate Paul, and give essential information on the faith of the early Jerusalem community around James, 'the brother of Jesus'.[214][215][216][26] These pre-Pauline creeds date to within a few years of Jesus' death and developed within the Christian community in Jerusalem.[217] The First Epistle to the Corinthians contains one of the earliest Christian creeds[218] expressing belief in the risen Jesus, namely 1 Corinthians 15:3–41:[219][220]

> For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures,[lower-alpha 34] and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,[lower-alpha 35] and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.[225]

James Dunn states that in 1 Corinthians 15:3 Paul "recites the foundational belief", namely "that Christ died". According to Dunn, "Paul was told about a Jesus who had died two years earlier or so."[226] 1 Corinthians 15:11 also refers to others before Paul who preached the creed.[216]

According to New Testament scholar Larry Hurtado, Jesus' death was interpreted as a redemptive death "for our sins" in accordance with God's plan as contained in the Jewish scriptures.[227][lower-alpha 34] The significance lay in "the theme of divine necessity and fulfillment of the scriptures," rather than the later Pauline emphasis on "Jesus' death as a sacrifice or an expiation for our sins."[228] For the early Jewish Christians, "the idea that Messiah's death was a necessary redemptive event functioned more as an apologetic explanation for Jesus' crucifixion",[228] "proving that Jesus' death was no surprise to God."[229][lower-alpha 36] According to Krister Stendahl, the main concern of Paul's writings on Jesus' role, and salvation by faith, is not the individual conscience of human sinners, and their doubts about being chosen by God or not, but the problem of the inclusion of gentile (Greek) Torah observers into God's covenant.[231][232][233][234][web 13][lower-alpha 37]

Secular scholars often explain the appearances of Jesus as visionary experiences, in which the presence of Jesus was felt.[235][236]Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". According to Ehrman, the visions of Jesus and the subsequent belief in Jesus' resurrection radically changed the perceptions of his early followers, concluding from his absence that he must have been exalted to heaven, by God himself, exalting him to an unprecedented status and authority.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". According to Hurtado, the resurrection experiences were religious experiences that "seem to have included visions of (and/or ascents to) God's heaven, in which the glorified Christ was seen in an exalted position",Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". and that may have occurred mostly during corporate worship.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Johan Leman contends that the communal meals provided a context in which participants entered a state of mind in which the presence of Jesus was felt.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Conservative Christian scholars object against this theory, but instead argue in favor of a real, bodily resurrection.[237][238][239][240][241] According to Wright, Paul "believed he had seen the risen Jesus in person, and [...] his understanding of who this Jesus was included the firm belief that he possessed a transformed but still physical body."[242]

The Pauline creeds contain elements of a Christ myth and its cultus,Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". such as the Christ hymn of Philippians 2:6–11,[lower-alpha 38] which portrays Jesus as an incarnated and subsequently exalted heavenly being.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[lower-alpha 39] Scholars view these as indications that the incarnation and exaltation of Jesus was part of Christian tradition a few years after his death and over a decade before the writing of the Pauline epistles.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[243][lower-alpha 40]

Recent scholarship places the exaltation and devotion of Jesus firmly in a Jewish context. Andrew Chester argues that "for Paul, Jesus is clearly a figure of the heavenly world, and thus fits a messianic category already developed within Judaism, where the Messiah is a human or angelic figure belonging ... in the heavenly world, a figure who at the same time has had specific, limited role on earth".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". According to Ehrman, Paul regarded Jesus to be an angel, who was incarnated on earth.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[lower-alpha 41][lower-alpha 42] According to James Waddell, Paul's conception of Jesus as a heavenly figure was influenced by the Book of Enoch and its conception of the Messiah.[249][web 15][lower-alpha 43]

##### Mythicist views

Christ myth theorists generally reject the idea that Paul's epistles refer to a historical individual.[lower-alpha 44] According to Doherty, the Jesus of Paul was a divine Son of God, existing in a spiritual realmLua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". where he was crucified and resurrected.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". This mythological Jesus was based on exegesis of the Old Testament and mystical visions of a risen Jesus.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". According to Carrier, the genuine Pauline epistles show that the Apostle Peter and the Apostle Paul believed in a visionary or dream Jesus, based on a pesher of Septuagint verses and Zechariah 3 and 6, Daniel 9 and Isaiah 52–53.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Carrier notes that there is little if any concrete information about Jesus' earthly life in the Pauline epistles.[250]

According to Carrier, originally Jesus was a celestial or "angelic extraterrestrial"[251] who came from a "cosmic sperm bank"Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". and was tortured and crucified by Satan and his demons, buried in a tomb above the clouds, and resurrected - everything occurring in outer space.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". According to Carrier "[t]his 'Jesus' would most likely have been the same archangel identified by Philo of Alexandria as already extant in Jewish theology",Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". that Philo knew by all of the attributes by which Paul knew Jesus.[lower-alpha 45] According to Carrier, Philo says this being was identified as the figure named Jesus in the Book of Zechariah, implying that "already before Christianity there were Jews aware of a celestial being named Jesus who had all of the attributes the earliest Christians were associating with their celestial being named Jesus".[web 10]

Raphael Lataster, following Carrier, also argues that "Jesus began as a celestial messiah that certain Second Temple Jews already believed in, and was later allegorised in the Gospels."[252]

##### Mainstream criticism

Ehrman notes that Doherty, like many other mythicists, "quotes professional scholars at length when their views prove useful for developing aspects of his argument, but he fails to point out that not a single of these scholars agrees with his overarching thesis."Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Ehrman has also criticized Doherty for misquoting scholarly sources as if in support of his celestial being-hypothesis, whereas those sources explicitly "[refer] to Christ becoming a human being in flesh on earth—precisely the view he rejects."[web 2]

James McGrath criticizes Carrier, stating that Carrier is ignoring the details, adding that "Philo is offering an allusive reference to, and allegorical treatment of, a text in Zechariah which mentioned a historical high priest named Joshua."[web 17]

According to Hurtado, for Paul and his contemporaries Jesus was a human being, who was exalted as Messiah and Lord after his crucifixion.[web 1] According to Hurtado, "There is no evidence whatsoever of a 'Jewish archangel Jesus' in any of the second-temple Jewish evidence. ... Instead, all second-temple instances of the name are for historical figures."[web 1] Hurtado rejects Carrier's claim that "Philo of Alexandria mentions an archangel named 'Jesus'", instead stating that Philo mentions a priestly figure called Joshua, and a royal personage whose name can be interpreted as "rising", among other connotations. According to Hurtado, there is no "Jesus Rising" in either Zechariah nor Philo.[web 18][web 19]

Ehrman notes that "there were no Jews prior to Christianity who thought that Isaiah 53 (or any of the other "suffering" passages) referred to the future messiah."Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Only after his death were these texts used to interpret his suffering in a meaningful way,Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". though "Isaiah is not speaking about the future messiah, and he was never interpreted by any Jews prior to the first century as referring to the messiah."Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[lower-alpha 46]

Simon Gathercole at Cambridge also evaluated the mythicist arguments for the claim that Paul believed in a heavenly, celestial Jesus who was never on Earth. Gathercole concludes that Carrier's arguments--and more broadly, the mythicist positions on different aspects of Paul's letters--are contradicted by the historical data and that Paul says a number of things regarding Jesus' life on Earth, his personality, family, etc.[253]

#### Parallels with savior gods

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##### Mainstream view

Jesus should be understood in the Palestinian and Jewish context of the first century AD.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Most of the themes, epithets, and expectations formulated in the New Testamentical literature have Jewish origins and are elaborations of these themes. According to Hurtado, Roman-era Judaism refused "to worship any deities other than the God of Israel," including "any of the adjutants of the biblical God, such as angels, messiahs, etc."[web 20] The Jesus-devotion which emerged in early Christianity should therefore be regarded as a specific, Christian innovation in the Jewish context.[web 20]

##### Mythicist view

According to Wells, in his early years, Doherty, and Carrier, the mythical Jesus was derived from Wisdom traditions, the personification of an eternal aspect of God, who came to visit human beings.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[web 21] Doherty notes that the concept of a spiritual Christ was the result of common philosophical and religious ideas of the first and second century AD, in which the idea of an intermediary force between God and the world were common.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

According to Doherty, the Christ of Paul shares similarities with the Greco-Roman mystery cults.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Authors Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy argue that Jesus was a deity, akin to the mystery cults,Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". while Dorothy Murdock argues that the Christ myth draws heavily on the Egyptian story of Osiris and Horus.[254] According to Carrier, Jesus came from a tradition of "dying-and-rising" savior gods like Romulus, Osiris, and Zalmoxis. Along with Mithras, these gods were all the children of a higher god, underwent a passion, conquered death, and existed on Earth within human history.[255]

Alvar Ellegård has argued that Paul's Jesus may have lived far earlier, in a dimly remembered remote past.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Wells argues that Paul's Jesus did not have a definite historical moment in mind for when he was supposedly crucified.[lower-alpha 47]Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

According to Price, the Toledot Yeshu places Jesus "about 100 BCE", while Epiphanius of Salamis and the Talmud make references to "Jewish and Jewish-Christian belief" that Jesus lived about a century earlier than usually assumed. According to Price, this implies that "perhaps the Jesus figure was at first an ahistorical myth and various attempts were made to place him in a plausible historical context, just as Herodotus and others tried to figure out when Hercules 'must have' lived".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[lower-alpha 49]

##### Mainstream criticism

Mainstream scholarship disagrees with these interpretations, and regards them as outdated applications of ideas and methodologies from the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule. According to Philip Davies, the Jesus of the New Testament is indeed "composed of stock motifs (and mythic types) drawn from all over the Mediterranean and Near Eastern world" but this does not mean that Jesus was "invented"; according to Davies, "the existence of a guru of some kind is more plausible and economical than any other explanation".[web 7] Ehrman states that mythicists make too much of the perceived parallels with pagan religions and mythologies. According to Ehrman, critical-historical research has clearly shown the Jewish roots and influences of Christianity.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

According to historian of religion Jonathan Z. Smith, modern scholars hold that the "dying and rising gods" trope is wrong since early sources on numerous gods show that gods who have died, do not resurrect or even go through rebirth.[256] Furthermore, claims of dying and resurrected gods is based on dubious reconstructions of later sources since early indigenous sources never make such claims, and there is no clear instance of a dying and rising deity.[257]

Many mainstream biblical scholars respond that most of the perceived parallels with mystery religions are either coincidences or without historical basis and/or that these parallels do not prove that a Jesus figure did not live.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[lower-alpha 50] Boyd and Eddy doubt that Paul viewed Jesus similar to the savior deities found in ancient mystery religions.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Ehrman notes that Doherty proposes that the mystery cults had a neo-Platonic cosmology, but that Doherty gives no evidence for this assertion.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Furthermore, "the mystery cults are never mentioned by Paul or by any other Christian author of the first hundred years of the Church," nor did they play a role in the worldview of any of the Jewish groups of the first century.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

Boyd and Eddy criticize the idea that "Paul viewed Jesus as a cosmic savior who lived in the past", referring to various passages in the Pauline epistles that seem to contradict this idea. In Galatians 1:19, Paul says he met with James, the "Lord's brother"; 1 Corinthians 15:3–8 refers to people to whom Jesus' had appeared, and who were Paul's contemporaries; and in 1 Thessalonians 2:14–16 Paul refers to the Jews "who both killed the Lord Jesus" and "drove out us" as the same people, indicating that the death of Jesus was within the same timeframe as the persecution of Paul.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

## Late 18th to early 20th century

French historian Constantin-François Volney, one of the earliest myth theorists

According to Van Voorst, "The argument that Jesus never existed, but was invented by the Christian movement around the year 100, goes back to Enlightenment times, when the historical-critical study of the past was born", and may have originated with Lord Bolingbroke, an English deist.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

According to Walter Weaver, the beginnings of the formal denial of the existence of Jesus can be traced to late 18th-century France with the works of Constantin François Chassebœuf de Volney and Charles-François Dupuis.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Volney and Dupuis argued that Christianity was an amalgamation of various ancient mythologies and that Jesus was a totally mythical character.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Dupuis argued that ancient rituals in Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and India had influenced the Christian story which was allegorized as the histories of solar deities, such as Sol Invictus.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Dupuis also said that the resurrection of Jesus was an allegory for the growth of the sun's strength in the sign of Aries at the spring equinox.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Volney argued that Abraham and Sarah were derived from Brahma and his wife Saraswati, and that Christ was related to Krishna.[260][261] Volney made use of a draft version of Dupuis' work and at times differed from him, for example, in arguing that the gospel stories were not intentionally created, but were compiled organically.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Volney's perspective became associated with the ideas of the French Revolution, which hindered the acceptance of these views in England.[262] Despite this, his work gathered significant following among British and American radical thinkers during the 19th century.[262]

German Professor David Strauss

In 1835, David Strauss published his extremely controversial The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined (Das Leben Jesu). According to Elisabeth Hurt, Strauss "arrived at a Christianity depersonalized and anonymous, reducing Jesus to nothing more than a gifted genius whom legend had gradually deified."[263][264] While not denying that Jesus existed, he did argue that the miracles in the New Testament were mythical additions with little basis in fact.[265][266]Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". According to Strauss, the early church developed these stories in order to present Jesus as the Messiah of the Jewish prophecies. This perspective was in opposition to the prevailing views of Strauss' time: rationalism, which explained the miracles as misinterpretations of non-supernatural events, and the supernaturalist view that the biblical accounts were entirely accurate. Strauss' third way, in which the miracles are explained as myths developed by early Christians to support their evolving conception of Jesus, heralded a new epoch in the textual and historical treatment of the rise of Christianity.[265][266]Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

German Professor Bruno Bauer

German Bruno Bauer, who taught at the University of Bonn, took Strauss' arguments further and became the first author to systematically argue that Jesus did not exist.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[267][268] Beginning in 1841 with his Criticism of the Gospel History of the Synoptics, Bauer argued that Jesus was primarily a literary figure, but left open the question of whether a historical Jesus existed at all. Then in his Criticism of the Pauline Epistles (1850–1852) and in A Critique of the Gospels and a History of their Origin (1850–1851), Bauer argued that Jesus had not existed.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Bauer's work was heavily criticized at the time, as in 1839 he was removed from his position at the University of Bonn and his work did not have much impact on future myth theorists.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

In his two-volume, 867-page book Anacalypsis (1836), English gentleman Godfrey Higgins said that "the mythos of the Hindus, the mythos of the Jews and the mythos of the Greeks are all at bottom the same; and are contrivances under the appearance of histories to perpetuate doctrines",Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". and that Christian editors "either from roguery or folly, corrupted them all".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". In his 1875 book The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors, American Kersey Graves said that many demigods from different countries shared similar stories, traits or quotes as Jesus and he used Higgins as the main source for his arguments. The validity of the claims in the book have been greatly criticized by Christ myth proponents including Richard Carrier, and are largely dismissed by biblical scholars.[269]

Starting in the 1870s, English poet and author Gerald Massey became interested in Egyptology and reportedly taught himself Egyptian hieroglyphics at the British Museum.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". In 1883, Massey published The Natural Genesis, in which he asserted parallels between Jesus and the Egyptian god Horus. His other major work, Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World, was published shortly before his death in 1907. His assertions have influenced various later writers such as Alvin Boyd Kuhn and Tom Harpur.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

In the 1870s and 1880s, a group of scholars associated with the University of Amsterdam, known in German scholarship as the Radical Dutch school, rejected the authenticity of the Pauline epistles and took a generally negative view of the Bible's historical value.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Abraham Dirk Loman argued in 1881 that all New Testament writings belonged to the second century and doubted that Jesus was a historical figure, but later said the core of the gospels was genuine.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

Additional early Christ myth proponents included Swiss skeptic Rudolf Steck,[270] English historian Edwin Johnson,[271] English radical Reverend Robert Taylor and his associate Richard Carlile.[272][273]

During the early 20th century, several writers published arguments against Jesus' historicity, often drawing on the work of liberal theologians, who tended to deny any value to sources for Jesus outside the New Testament and limited their attention to Mark and the hypothetical Q source.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". They also made use of the growing field of religious history which found sources for Christian ideas in Greek and Oriental mystery cults, rather than Judaism.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[lower-alpha 51]

The work of social anthropologist James George Frazer has also influenced various myth theorists, although Frazer himself believed that Jesus existed.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". In 1890, Frazer published the first edition of The Golden Bough which attempted to define the shared elements of religious belief. This work became the basis of many later authors who argued that the story of Jesus was a fiction created by Christians. After a number of people claimed that he was a myth theorist, in the 1913 expanded edition of The Golden Bough he expressly stated that his position assumed a historical Jesus.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

In 1900, Scottish Member of Parliament John Mackinnon Robertson argued that Jesus never existed, but was an invention by a first-century messianic cult of Joshua, whom he identifies as a solar deity.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". The English school master George Robert Stowe Mead argued in 1903 that Jesus had existed, but that he had lived in 100 BC.[275]Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Mead based his argument on the Talmud, which pointed to Jesus being crucified c. 100 BCLua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".. In Mead's view, this would mean that the Christian gospels are mythical.[276]

In 1909, school teacher John Eleazer Remsburg published The Christ, which made a distinction between a possible historical Jesus (Jesus of Nazareth) and the Jesus of the Gospels (Jesus of Bethlehem). Remsburg thought that there was good reason to believe that the historical Jesus existed, but that the "Christ of Christianity" was a mythological creation.[277] Remsburg compiled a list of 42 names of "writers who lived and wrote during the time, or within a century after the time" who Remsburg felt should have written about Jesus if the gospel accounts were reasonably accurate, but who did not.[278]

German Professor Arthur Drews

Also in 1909, German philosophy Professor Christian Heinrich Arthur Drews wrote The Christ Myth to argue that Christianity had been a Jewish Gnostic cult that spread by appropriating aspects of Greek philosophy and life-death-rebirth deities.[279] In his later books The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus (1912) and The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus in Past and Present (1926), Drews reviewed the biblical scholarship of his time, as well as the work of other myth theorists, attempting to show that everything reported about the historical Jesus had a mythical character.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[lower-alpha 52]

## Revival (1970s–present)

Beginning in the 1970s, in the aftermath of the second quest for the historical Jesus, interest in the Christ myth theory was revived by George A. Wells, whose ideas were elaborated by Earl Doherty. With the rise of the internet in the 1990s, their ideas gained popular interest, giving way to a multitude of publications and websites aimed at a popular audience, most notably Richard Carrier, often taking a polemical stance toward Christianity. Their ideas are supported by Robert Price, an academic theologian, while somewhat different stances on the mythological origins are offered by Thomas L. Thompson and Thomas L. Brodie, both also accomplished scholars in theology.

### Revival of the Christ myth theory

#### Paul-Louis Couchoud

The French philosopher Paul-Louis Couchoud (1879–1959),Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". who published in the 1920s and 1930s, was a predecessor for contemporary mythicists. According to Couchoud, Christianity started not with a biography of Jesus but "a collective mystical experience, sustaining a divine history mystically revealed".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Couchaud's Jesus is therefore a "religious conception", rather than a "myth" in the strictest sense.[284]

Robert Price mentions Couchoud's comment on the Christ Hymn, one of the relics of the Christ cults to which Paul converted. Couchoud noted that in this hymn the name Jesus was given to the Christ after his death, implying that there cannot have been a ministry by a teacher called Jesus.

#### George Albert Wells

George Albert Wells (1926–2017), a professor of German, revived interest in the Christ myth theory. In his early work,[285] including Did Jesus Exist? (1975), Wells argued that because the gospels were written decades after Jesus' death by Christians who were theologically motivated but had no personal knowledge of him, a rational person should believe the gospels only if they are independently confirmed.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

From the mid-1990s onwards, Wells came to accept that the Jesus of the gospel stories was partly based on a historical figure.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". In The Jesus Myth (1999) and later works, Wells argues that two Jesus narratives were fused into one, namely Paul's mythical Jesus, and a historical Jesus from a Galilean preaching tradition, whose teachings were preserved in the Q source.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[lower-alpha 21] According to Wells, both figures owe much of their substance to ideas from Jewish Wisdom literature.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

In 2000, Van Voorst gave an overview of proponents of the "Nonexistence Hypothesis" and their arguments, presenting seven arguments against the hypothesis as put forward by Wells and his predecessors, detailing his criticisms.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". According to Maurice Casey, Wells' work repeated the main points of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule, which are deemed outdated by mainstream scholarship. His works were not discussed by New Testament scholars, because it was "not considered to be original, and all his main points were thought to have been refuted long ago, for reasons which were very well known".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

#### Earl Doherty

Canadian writer Earl Doherty (born 1941) was introduced to the Christ myth theme by a lecture by Wells in the 1970s.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Doherty follows the lead of Wells, but disagrees on the historicity of Jesus, arguing that "everything in Paul points to a belief in an entirely divine Son who 'lived' and acted in the spiritual realm, in the same mythical setting in which all the other savior deities of the day were seen to operate".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[lower-alpha 53] According to Doherty, Paul's Christ originated as a myth derived from middle Platonism with some influence from Jewish mysticism and belief in a historical Jesus emerged only among Christian communities in the second century.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Doherty agrees with Richard Bauckham that the earliest Christology was already a "high Christology", that is, Jesus was an incarnation of the pre-existent Christ, but deems it "hardly credible" that such a belief could develop in such a short time among the Jews.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[lower-alpha 40] Therefore, Doherty concludes that Christianity started with the myth of this incarnated Christ, who was subsequently historicised. According to Doherty, the nucleus of this historicised Jesus of the Gospels can be found in the Jesus-movement that wrote the Q source.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Eventually, Q's Jesus and Paul's Christ were combined in the Gospel of Mark by a predominantly gentile community.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". In time, the gospel narrative of this embodiment of Wisdom became interpreted as the literal history of the life of Jesus.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

Eddy and Boyd characterize Doherty's work as appealing to the "History of Religions School".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". In a book criticizing the Christ myth theory, New Testament scholar Maurice Casey describes Doherty as "perhaps the most influential of all the mythicists",Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". but one who is unable to understand the ancient texts he uses in his arguments.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

#### Richard Carrier

Richard Carrier

American independent scholarLua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Richard Carrier (born 1969) reviewed Doherty's work on the origination of JesusLua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". and eventually concluded that the evidence favored the core of Doherty's thesis.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". According to Carrier, following Couchoud and Doherty, Christianity started with the belief in a new deity called Jesus,[lower-alpha 19] "a spiritual, mythical figure".[lower-alpha 20] According to Carrier, this new deity was fleshed out in the gospels, which added a narrative framework and Cynic-like teachings, and eventually came to be perceived as a historical biography.[lower-alpha 19] Carrier argues in his book On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt that the Jesus figure was probably originally known only through private revelations and hidden messages in scripture, which were then crafted into a historical figure to communicate the claims of the gospels allegorically. Those allegories were subsequently believed as fact during the struggle for control of the Christian churches of the first century.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Citing the methodological failure of the criteria of authenticity and asserting a failure of the "entire quest for criteria", Richard Carrier writes, "The entire field of Jesus studies has thus been left without any valid method."[286]

### Biblical scholars

#### Robert M. Price

American New Testament scholar Robert M. Price

American New Testament scholar and former Baptist pastor Robert M. Price (born 1954) has questioned the historicity of Jesus in a series of books, including Deconstructing Jesus (2000), The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man (2003), Jesus Is Dead (2007) and The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems (2011). Price uses critical-historical methods,Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". but also uses "history-of-religions parallel[s]",Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". or the "Principle of Analogy",Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". to show similarities between gospel narratives and non-Christian Middle Eastern myths.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Price criticises some of the criteria of critical Bible research, such as the criterion of dissimilarityLua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". and the criterion of embarrassment.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Price further notes that "consensus is no criterion" for the historicity of Jesus.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". According to Price, if critical methodology is applied with ruthless consistency, one is left in complete agnosticism regarding Jesus' historicity.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[lower-alpha 54]

In Deconstructing Jesus, Price claims that the Jesus of the New Testament is a "composite figure" out of which a broad variety of historical Jesuses can be reconstructed, any one of which may have been the real Jesus, but not all of them together.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". According to Price, various Jesus images flowed together at the origin of Christianity, some of them possibly based on myth, some of them possibly based on a historical "Jesus the Nazorean",Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". and that the historical Jesus has become obscured behind the dogma.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Price concluded that it is plausible that there might have been a historical Jesus, whose story was completely assimilated into the "Mythic Hero Archetype", but that it was no longer possible to be sure there had ever been a real person underneath all the fiction.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

In Jesus is Dead (2007) Price again stated the possibility that the gospel Jesus is not based on a historical individual, and that the "Christ of faith" is "a synthetic construct of theologians".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

In his later contribution, "Jesus at the Vanishing Point", appearing in The Historical Jesus: Five Views (2009), Price concludes that the gospel story is a "tapestry of Scripture quotes from the Old Testament." He further states that the gospel story also incorporates many of the recurrent features of the Indo-European and Semitic hero myths—what Price calls the "Mythic Hero Archetype".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Price acknowledges that he stands against the majority view of scholars, but cautions against attempting to settle the issue by appeal to the majority.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

#### Thomas L. Thompson

Thomas L. Thompson (born 1939), professor emeritus of theology at the University of Copenhagen, is a leading biblical minimalist of the Old Testament. According to Thompson, "questions of understanding and interpreting biblical texts" are more relevant than "questions about the historical existence of individuals such as ... Jesus".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". In his view, Jesus' existence is based more on theological necessity than historical evidence.[287] He believes that most theologians accept that large parts of the Gospels are not to be taken at face value, while also treating the historicity of Jesus as not an open question.[288] In his 2007 book The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David, Thompson argues that the biblical accounts of both King David and Jesus of Nazareth are not historical accounts, but are mythical in nature and based on Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Babylonian and Greek and Roman literature.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Those accounts are based on the Messiah mytheme, a king anointed by God to restore the Divine order at Earth.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Thompson also argues that the resurrection of Jesus is taken directly from the story of the dying and rising god, Dionysus.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Thompson concludes, "A negative statement, however, that such a figure did not exist, cannot be reached: only that we have no warrant for making such a figure part of our history."Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

Thompson co-edited the contributions from a diverse range of scholars in the 2012 book Is This Not the Carpenter?: The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[289] In the introduction he writes, "The essays collected in this volume have a modest purpose. Neither establishing the historicity of a historical Jesus nor possessing an adequate warrant for dismissing it, our purpose is to clarify our engagement with critical historical and exegetical methods."Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

Ehrman[lower-alpha 55][lower-alpha 56] and Casey have characterized Thompson's position as mythicist, and Ehrman has criticised Thompson, questioning his qualifications and expertise regarding New Testament research.[lower-alpha 55] In a 2012 online article, Thompson defended his qualifications to address New Testament issues, and objected to Ehrman's statement that "[a] different sort of support for a mythicist position comes in the work of Thomas L. Thompson."[lower-alpha 57] According to Thompson, "Bart Ehrman has attributed to my book arguments and principles which I had never presented, certainly not that Jesus had never existed", and reiterated his position that the issue of Jesus' existence cannot be determined one way or the other.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Thompson further states that Jesus is not to be regarded as "the notoriously stereotypical figure of ... (mistaken) eschatological prophet", as Ehrman does, but is modelled on "the royal figure of a conquering messiah", derived from Jewish writings.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". In response to Thompson's article, Maurice Casey dismissed Thompson as "an incompetent New Testament scholar".[290]

#### Thomas L. Brodie

In 2012, the Irish Dominican priest and theologian Thomas L. Brodie (born 1943), holding a PhD from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome and a co-founder and former director of the Dominican Biblical Institute in Limerick, published Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery. In this book, Brodie, who previously had published academic works on the Hebrew prophets, argued that the gospels are essentially a rewriting of the stories of Elijah and Elisha when viewed as a unified account in the Books of Kings. This view led Brodie to the conclusion that Jesus is mythical.[210] Brodie's argument builds on his previous work, in which he stated that rather than being separate and fragmented, the stories of Elijah and Elisha are united and that 1 Kings 16:29 – 2 Kings 13:25 is a natural extension of 1 Kings 17 – 2 Kings 8 which have a coherence not generally observed by other biblical scholars.[291] Brodie then views the Elijah–Elisha story as the underlying model for the gospel narratives.[291]

In response to Brodie's publication of his view that Jesus was mythical, the Dominican order banned him from writing and lecturing, although he was allowed to stay on as a brother of the Irish Province, which continued to care for him.[292] According to Gerard Norton, "There is an unjustifiable jump between methodology and conclusion" in Brodie's book that "are not soundly based on scholarship". According to Norton, they are "a memoir of a series of significant moments or events" in Brodie's life that reinforced "his core conviction" that neither Jesus nor Paul of Tarsus were historical.[293]

### Other modern proponents

British academic John M. Allegro

In his books The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (1970) and The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth (1979), British archaeologist and philologist John M. Allegro advanced the view that stories of early Christianity originated in a shamanistic Essene clandestine cult centered around the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[294][295] He also argued that the story of Jesus was based on the crucifixion of the Teacher of Righteousness in the Dead Sea Scrolls.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[296] Allegro's position was criticised sharply by Welsh historian Philip Jenkins, who wrote that Allegro relied on texts that did not exist in quite the form he was citing them.[297] Based on this and many other negative reactions to the book, Allegro's publisher later apologized for issuing the book and Allegro was forced to resign his academic post.[294][298]

Alvar Ellegård, in The Myth of Jesus (1992), and Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ. A Study in Creative Mythology (1999), argued that Jesus lived 100 years before the accepted dates, and was a teacher of the Essenes. According to Ellegård, Paul was connected with the Essenes, and had a vision of this Jesus.

Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, in their 1999 publication The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God? propose that Jesus did not exist as a historically identifiable individual, but was instead a syncretic re-interpretation of the fundamental pagan "godman" by the Gnostics, who were the original sect of Christianity. The book has been negatively received by scholars, and also by Christ mythicists.[299][300][301]

Canadian author Tom Harpur

Influenced by Massey and Higgins, Alvin Boyd Kuhn (1880–1963), an American Theosophist, argued an Egyptian etymology to the Bible that the gospels were symbolic rather than historic and that church leaders started to misinterpret the New Testament in the third century.[302] Building on Kuhn's work, author and ordained priest Tom Harpur in his 2004 book The Pagan Christ listed similarities among the stories of Jesus, Horus, Mithras, Buddha and others. According to Harpur, in the second or third centuries the early church created the fictional impression of a literal and historic Jesus and then used forgery and violence to cover up the evidence.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[lower-alpha 58]

In 2014, Raphael Lataster, a lecturer in religious philosophy at the University of Sydney wrote an opinion piece in The Conversation and The Washington Post, stating that the historical evidence for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth "just doesn't add up" and that "there are clearly good reasons to doubt the existence of Jesus".[306][307] His works were met with widespread criticism from the scholarly community.[lower-alpha 59] His 2019 peer-reviewed publication Questioning the historicity of Jesus received negative reviews.[309]

The Christ myth theory enjoyed brief popularity in the Soviet Union, where it was supported by Sergey Kovalev, Alexander Kazhdan, Abram Ranovich, Nikolai Rumyantsev and Robert Vipper.[310] However, several scholars, including Kazhdan, later retracted their views about a mythical Jesus, and by the end of the 1980s Iosif Kryvelev remained as virtually the only proponent of the Christ myth theory in Soviet academia.[311]

## Reception

### Scholarly reception

#### Lack of support for mythicism

In modern scholarship, the Christ myth theory is considered a fringe theory, and finds virtually no support from scholars,Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[web 2]Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[lower-alpha 2] to the point of being addressed in footnotes or almost completely ignored due to the obvious weaknesses they espouse.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Common criticisms against the Christ myth theory include: general lack of expertise or relationship to academic institutions and current scholarship; reliance on arguments from silence, lack of evidence, dismissal or distortion of what sources actually state, questionable methodologies, and outdated or superficial comparisons with mythologies.[lower-alpha 11]

According to scholar Bart D. Ehrman, nearly all scholars who study the early Christian period believe that Jesus did exist, and Ehrman observes that mythicist writings are generally of poor quality because they are usually authored by amateurs and non-scholars who have no academic credentials or have never taught at academic institutions.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Maurice Casey, a scholar of New Testament and early Christianity, stated that the belief among professors that Jesus existed is generally completely certain. According to Casey, the view that Jesus did not exist is "the view of extremists", "demonstrably false" and "professional scholars generally regard it as having been settled in serious scholarship long ago".[312]

In 1977, classical historian and popular author Michael Grant in his book Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels, concluded that "modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". In support, Grant quoted Roderic Dunkerley's 1957 opinion that the Christ myth theory has "again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars".[313] He also quoted Otto Betz' 1968 opinion that in recent years "no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus—or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary".[314] In the same book, he also wrote:

> If we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

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Graeme Clarke, emeritus Professor of Classical Ancient History and Archaeology at Australian National University[315] stated in 2008: "Frankly, I know of no ancient historian or biblical historian who would have a twinge of doubt about the existence of a Jesus Christ—the documentary evidence is simply overwhelming".[316] R. Joseph Hoffmann, who had created the Jesus Project, which included both mythicists and historicists to investigate the historicity of Jesus, wrote that an adherent to the Christ myth theory asked to set up a separate section of the project for those committed to the position. Hoffmann felt that to be committed to mythicism signaled a lack of necessary skepticism and he noted that most members of the project did not reach the mythicist conclusion.[web 22] Hoffmann also called the mythicist theory "fatally flawed".[lower-alpha 60]

Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University, wrote, "What you can't do, though, without venturing into the far swamps of extreme crankery, is to argue that Jesus never existed. The 'Christ-Myth Hypothesis' is not scholarship, and is not taken seriously in respectable academic debate. The grounds advanced for the 'hypothesis' are worthless. The authors proposing such opinions might be competent, decent, honest individuals, but the views they present are demonstrably wrong. ... Jesus is better documented and recorded than pretty much any non-elite figure of antiquity."[web 23]

According to Daniel Gullotta, most of the mythicist literature contains "wild theories, which are poorly researched, historically inaccurate, and written with a sensationalist bent for popular audiences."Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

According to James F. McGrath and Christopher Hansen, mythicists sometimes rely on questionable and outdated methods like Rank and Raglan mythotypes that end up resulting in misclassifying real historical persons as mythical figures.[317][318]

#### Questioning the competence of proponents

Critics of the Christ myth theory question the competence of its supporters.[lower-alpha 56] Maurice Casey has criticized mythicists, pointing out their complete ignorance of how modern critical scholarship actually works. He also criticizes their frequent assumption that modern New Testament scholarship is Christian fundamentalism,Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". insisting that this assumption is not only totally inaccurate, but also exemplary of the mythicists' misconceptions about the ideas and attitudes of mainstream scholars.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

According to Bart Ehrman:

> Few of these mythicists are actually scholars trained in ancient history, religion, biblical studies or any cognate field, let alone in the ancient languages generally thought to matter for those who want to say something with any degree of authority about a Jewish teacher who (allegedly) lived in first-century Palestine. ... These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99% of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology[319]

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#### Bias

According to Van Voorst, mythicism has a long history of being pushed by individuals with anti-religious sentiment from radical Deists, to Freethought advocates, to radical secular humanists and activist atheists.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Contemporary mythicists are usually atheists or agnostics. According to Ehrman "It is no accident that virtually all mythicists (in fact, all of them, to my knowledge) are either atheists or agnostics. The ones I know anything about are quite virulently, even militantly, atheist."[319]Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". According to Casey, mythicists are former fundamentalists who push for an atheist agenda and tend to be related to atheist activism.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Gullota notes that mythicists are "apologists for a kind of dogmatic atheism" and that usually the proponents are atheist activists who have disdain for religion.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

#### Other criticisms

Robert Van Voorst has written, "Contemporary New Testament scholars have typically viewed [Christ myth] arguments as so weak or bizarre that they relegate them to footnotes, or often ignore them completely. ... The theory of Jesus' nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question."Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Paul L. Maier, former professor of Ancient History at Western Michigan University and current professor emeritus of its Department of History has stated, "Anyone who uses the argument that Jesus never existed is simply flaunting his ignorance."[320]

In 2000, Van Voorst gave an overview of proponents of the "Nonexistence Hypothesis" and their arguments, presenting seven arguments against the hypothesis as put forward by "Wells and his predecessors":Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

1. "Arguments from silence" are to be rejected, because "it is wrong to suppose that what is unmentioned or undetailed did not exist". Van Voorst further argued that the early Christian literature was not written for historical purposes.
2. Dating the "invention" of Jesus around 100 AD is too late: the Gospel of Mark is generally considered to have been written around 70 AD.
3. The "development [of the Gospel traditions] does not necessarily mean wholesale invention, and difficulties do not prove nonexistence".
4. Wells could not explain why "no pagans and Jews who opposed Christianity denied Jesus' historicity or even questioned it"
5. The rejection of Tacitus (Annals) and Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews) ignores the scholarly consensus.
6. Proponents of the "nonhistoricity hypothesis" are not driven by scholarly interests, but by anti-Christian sentiments.
7. Wells and others do not offer "other, credible hypotheses" for the origins of Christianity.

In 2003, Van Voorst added an eighth "final argument"—that Wells had since accepted the "historical basis for the existence of Jesus".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

In his book Did Jesus Exist?, Bart Ehrman surveys the arguments "mythicists" have made against the existence of Jesus since the idea was first raised at the end of the 18th century. Regarding the lack of contemporaneous records for Jesus, Ehrman notes that no comparable Jewish figure is mentioned in contemporary records either and there are mentions of Christ in several Roman works of history from only decades after the death of Jesus.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". He adds that the authentic letters of the apostle Paul in the New Testament were likely written within a few years of Jesus' death and that Paul likely personally knew James, the brother of Jesus. Ehrman writes that although "our best sources about Jesus, the early Gospels, are riddled with problems ... written decades after Jesus' life by biased authors", they "can be used to yield historically reliable information". He adds, "With respect to Jesus, we have numerous, independent accounts of his life in the sources lying behind the Gospels (and the writings of Paul)", which he says is "pretty astounding for an ancient figure of any kind".[319] Ehrman dismisses the idea that the story of Jesus is an invention based on pagan myths of dying-and-rising gods, maintaining that the early Christians were primarily influenced by Jewish ideas, not Greek or Roman ones,[319]Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". and repeatedly insisting that the idea that there was never such a person as Jesus is not seriously considered at all by historians or experts in the field.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

Alexander Lucie-Smith, Catholic priest and doctor of moral theology, states that "People who think Jesus didn't exist are seriously confused," but also notes that "the Church needs to reflect on its failure. If 40 per cent believe in the Jesus myth, this is a sign that the Church has failed to communicate with the general public."[321]

Stanley E. Porter, president and dean of McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, and Stephen J. Bedard, a Baptist minister and graduate of McMaster Divinity, respond to Harpur's ideas from an evangelical standpoint in Unmasking the Pagan Christ: An Evangelical Response to the Cosmic Christ Idea, challenging the key ideas lying at the foundation of Harpur's thesis. Porter and Bedard conclude that there is sufficient evidence for the historicity of Jesus and assert that Harpur is motivated to promote "universalistic spirituality".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[lower-alpha 61]

### Popular reception

In a 2015 poll conducted by the Church of England, 22% of British respondents indicated that they did not believe Jesus was a real person.[322] A 2020 poll by Yougov stated that the number of British respondents who did not believe Jesus existed is just 15%.[323]

Ehrman notes that "the mythicists have become loud, and thanks to the Internet they've attracted more attention".[12] Within a few years of the inception of the World Wide Web (c. 1990), mythicists such as Earl Doherty began to present their argument to a larger public via the internet.[lower-alpha 62] Doherty created the website The Jesus Puzzle in 1996,[web 24] while the organization Internet Infidels has featured the works of mythicists on their website[324] and mythicism has been mentioned on several popular news sites.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

According to Derek Murphy, the documentaries The God Who Wasn't There (2005) and Zeitgeist (2007) introduced the Christ myth theory to a larger audience and gave the topic broad coverage on the Internet.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Daniel Gullotta notes the relationship between the organization "Atheists United" and Carrier's work related to mythicism, which has increased "the attention of the public".[lower-alpha 63]

## Documentaries

Several 21st-century English-language documentary films have addressed the Christ myth theory, at least in part:

* The God Who Wasn't There (2005), directed by Brian Flemming and featuring Richard Carrier and Robert M. Price
* The Pagan Christ (2007), produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and featuring Tom Harpur
* Zeitgeist: The Movie (2007), directed by Peter Joseph
* The Hidden Story of Jesus (2007), produced by Channel 4 and featuring Robert Beckford
* Religulous (2008), directed by Larry Charles and featuring Bill Maher
* Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus (2012), based on the 2005 book of the same name by Joseph Atwill[325]
* Creating Christ (2022), based on the 2018 book Creating Christ: How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity by James Valliant and Warren Fahy[326]

## See also

* Bible conspiracy theory
* Christian mythology
* Criticism of the Bible
* Criticism of Christianity
* Criticism of Jesus
* Euhemerism
* Francesco Carotta
* Historical background of the New Testament
* Historical reliability of the Gospels
* Historicity of the Bible
* Jesus in comparative mythology
* List of Christ myth theory proponents
* List of messiah claimants
* Rank-Raglan mythotype

Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".

## Notes

1. ↑ (Gullotta 2017): "Originally known as the 'Christ Myth theory,' this school of thought has more recently adopted the moniker 'Jesus Myth theory' or 'mythicism'."
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 The Christ myth theory is regarded as a fringe theory in mainstream scholarship:
* Larry Hurtado (December 2, 2017), Why the "Mythical Jesus" Claim Has No Traction with Scholars: "The "mythical Jesus" view doesn't have any traction among the overwhelming number of scholars working in these fields, whether they be declared Christians, Jewish, atheists, or undeclared as to their personal stance. Advocates of the "mythical Jesus" may dismiss this statement, but it ought to count for something if, after some 250 years of critical investigation of the historical figure of Jesus and of Christian Origins, and the due consideration of "mythical Jesus" claims over the last century or more, this spectrum of scholars have judged them unpersuasive (to put it mildly)."
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "[Per Jesus mythicism] Given the fringe status of these theories, the vast majority have remained unnoticed and unaddressed within scholarly circles."
* Patrick Gray (2016), Varieties of Religious Invention, chapter 5, Jesus, Paul, and the birth of Christianity, Oxford University Press, p.114: "That Jesus did in fact walk the face of the earth in the first century is no longer seriously doubted even by those who believe that very little about his life or death can be known with any certainty. [Note 4:] Although it remains a fringe phenomenon, familiarity with the Christ myth theory has become much more widespread among the general public with the advent of the Internet."
* Michael Grant (2004), Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels, p.200: "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary."
* Bart Ehrman (2012), Did Jesus Exist?, p.20: "It is fair to say that mythicists as a group, and as individuals, are not taken seriously by the vast majority of scholars in the fields of New Testament, early Christianity, ancient history, and theology. This is widely recognized, to their chagrin, by mythicists themselves."
* Raphael Lataster (2019), Questioning the Historicity of Jesus: Why a Philosophical Analysis Elucidates the Historical Discourse, BRILL, p. 1: "One common criticism is that we are on the fringes of scholarship."
* Robert M. Price, The Pre-Nicene New Testament: Fifty-Four Formative Texts (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2006) p. 1179: "New Testament criticism treated the Christ Myth Theory with universal disdain." Price, a Christian atheist who denies the existence of Jesus, agrees that this perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars; Robert M. Price "Jesus at the Vanishing Point" in The Historical Jesus: Five Views edited by James K. Beilby & Paul Rhodes Eddy, 2009 InterVarsity, Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". p. 6.
3. ↑ Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "... the story of Jesus is a piece of mythology [possessing no] substantial claims to historical fact".
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 (Ehrman 2012): "[Per] Jesus mythicism, Earl Doherty, defines the view as follows: it is "the theory that no historical Jesus worthy of the name existed, that Christianity began with a belief in a spiritual, mythical figure, that the Gospels are essentially allegory and fiction, and that no single identifiable person lay at the root of the Galilean preaching tradition." [Earl Doherty (2009), Jesus: Neither God nor Man: The Case for a mythical Jesus (Ottawa, ON: Age of Reason Publications), vii–viii.] In simpler terms, the historical Jesus did not exist. Or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity."
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Basic assent about baptism and crucifixion:
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". states of baptism and crucifixion that these "two facts in the life of Jesus command almost universal assent."
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be, since both Josephus and Tacitus [...] agree with the Christian accounts on at least that basic fact."
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "There is a consensus of sorts on a basic outline of Jesus' life. Most scholars agree that Jesus was baptized by John, debated with fellow Jews on how best to live according to God's will, engaged in healings and exorcisms, taught in parables, gathered male and female followers in Galilee, went to Jerusalem, and was crucified by Roman soldiers during the governorship of Pontius Pilate (26-36 CE). But, to use the old cliché: the devil is in the details."
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". "...a considerable number of specific facts about Jesus are so well supported historically as to be widely acknowledged by most scholars, whether Christian (of any stripe) or not:...(lists 18 points)...Nevertheless, what can be known about Jesus with a high degree of confidence, apart from theological or ideological agendas, is perhaps surprisingly robust."
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "No serious historian of any religious or nonreligious stripe doubts that Jesus of Nazareth really lived in the first century and was executed under the authority of Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea and Samaria. Though this may be common knowledge among scholars, the public may well not be aware of this."
6. ↑ No consensus about the historicity of the other major details of the gospel stories, or on the extent to which the Pauline epistles and the gospels replaced the historical human Jesus with a religious narrative of a supernatural "Christ of faith":
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "Contrary to previous times, virtually everyone in the field today acknowledges that Jesus was considered by his contemporaries to be an exorcist and a worker of miracles. However, when it comes to historical assessment of the miracles tradition itself, the consensus quickly shatters. Some, following in the footsteps of Bultmann, embrace an explicit methodological naturalism such that the very idea of a miracle is ruled out a priori. Others defend the logical possibility of miracle at the theoretical level, but, in practice, retain a functional methodological naturalism, maintaining that we could never be in possession of the type and/or amount of evidence that would justify a historical judgment in favor of the occurrence of a miracle. Still others, suspicious that an uncompromising methodological naturalism most likely reflects an unwarranted metaphysical naturalism, find such a priori skepticism unwarranted and either remain open to, or even explicitly defend, the historicity of miracles within the Jesus tradition."
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". "By the end of the first century Christianity had lost sight of the real Jesus and of the original meaning of his message. Paul, John and their churches replaced him by the otherworldy Christ of faith."
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "The problem with the historical Jesus for Schweitzer was that he was in fact all too historical. That is, Jesus was so firmly rooted in his own time and place, that he does not translate to modern idiom. The Jesus proclaimed by preachers and theologians today had no existence. That particular Jesus is (or those particular Jesuses are) a myth. But there was a historical Jesus, who was very much a man of his time."
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "As I have repeatedly emphasized, different scholars come to radically different conclusions about how to understand the life of the historical Jesus...Nearly all critical scholars agree at least on those points about the historical Jesus. But there is obviously a lot more to say, and that is where scholarly disagreements loom large - disagreements not over whether Jesus existed but over what kind of Jewish teacher and preacher he was."
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "No single picture of Jesus has convinced all, or even most, scholars; all methods and their combinations find their critics as well as their advocates."
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "The historical Jesus has gotten lost behind the stained glass curtain of the Christ of dogma".
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "All this suggests that the relationship between Christian faith and historical research is to be seen as an ongoing critical dialogue about Jesus and his significance. There is no pre-established harmony between the two sides, and the hope for an eventual consensus is in current circumstances utopian. But neither is this a purely negative relationship of absolute antagonism or indifference. The dialogue may at least serve to clarify why it is that for some Jesus is one of the prophets, whereas for others he is the Christ. Each side in the dialogue remains an unresolved problem to the other—and, as such, an opportunity to learn something new."
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "When Christians tried to make the Messiahship of Jesus credible in their sermons and then in epistles and gospels, they always made use of two kinds of evidence: personal testimony to his resurrection, based on experience, and the witness of the Scriptures. As the living Lord he was for them the Messiah of the Old Covenant. Therefore we, too, speak of the historic Christ of the Bible."
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "To look at the situation from the other end, all of the generally accepted facts about Jesus are consistent with the church's beliefs about Jesus. That is, there is not a single well-evidenced historical fact about Jesus that undermines the "orthodox" view of Jesus."
* (Ehrman 2014)
* (Stanton 2002)
7. ↑ Proponents broadly argue that a historical Jesus never existed:
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Constantin-François Volney, Charles François Dupuis, and Bruno Bauer all advocated for the theory that Jesus did not exist as a historical person. While their arguments failed to convince the academy, their questions have persisted and inspired a new movement within North America, which also argues that Jesus did not exist. Originally known as the 'Christ Myth theory,' this school of thought has more recently adopted the moniker 'Jesus Myth theory' or 'mythicism'"
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "G. A. Wells, like his predecessors advocating the Christ Myth theory, discounted the gospel story of an historical Jesus [...] implying that there was no Jesus tradition floating around in either oral or written form at the time Paul and Peter were writing letters"
8. ↑ "obscured by myths and dogma":
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "What I am describing is something different, a "Jesus agnosticism". There may have been a Jesus on earth in the past, but the state of the evidence is so ambiguous that we can never be sure what this figure was like or, indeed, whether there was such a person."
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "The historical Jesus has gotten lost behind the stained glass curtain of the Christ of dogma."
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "It doesn't prove there was no historical Jesus, for it is not implausible that a genuine, historical individual might become so lionised, even so deified, that his life and career would be completely assimilated to the Mythic Hero Archetype. But if that happened, we could no longer be sure there had ever been a real person at the root of the whole thing."
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". leaves open the question regarding Paul's Christ "as to whether such a person had in fact existed and lived the obscure life that Paul supposed of him." According to Wells, "There is no means of deciding this issue."
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 (Eddy Boyd): "While New Testament scholars agree that Paul has relatively little to say about the life and ministry of Jesus, most grant that Paul viewed Jesus as a recent contemporary. The most extreme legendary-Jesus theorists, however—particularly the Christ myth theorists—deny this. They argue that nothing in Paul's letters indicates that he believed Jesus was a contemporary of his. Rather, they contend, the Jesus of Paul's theology is a savior figure patterned after similar figures within ancient mystery religions. According to the theory, Paul believed that Christ entered the world at some point in the distant past—or that he existed only in a transcendent mythical realm—and died to defeat evil powers and redeem humanity. Only later was Jesus remythologized [i.e. historicized] as a Jewish contemporary."
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 (Carrier 2014): "At the origin of Christianity, Jesus Christ was thought to be a celestial deity much like any other. ... Like some other celestial deities, this Jesus was originally believed to have endured an ordeal of incarnation, death, burial and resurrection in a supernatural realm [not on Earth]."
11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Criticisms of mythicism:
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". "In short, the majority of mythicist literature is composed of wild theories, which are poorly researched, historically inaccurate, and written with a sensationalist bent for popular audiences." "Criticized for being Euro-centric and male-centric, these holistic-comparative theories have been almost universally rejected by scholars of folklore and mythology..."
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". "I therefore conclude that the mythicist arguments are completely spurious from beginning to end. They have been mainly put forward by incompetent and unqualified people. Most of them are former fundamentalist Christians who were not properly aware of critical scholarship then, and after conversion to atheism, are not properly aware of critical scholarship now. They frequently confuse any New Testament scholarship with Christian fundamentalism."
* (Marina 2022) states that Carrier's work is guided by his ideological agenda and lacks positive evidences from primary sources and notes that his mythicist views have not won any supporters from critical scholars to date
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". "The theory of a pre-Christian Jesus, while exceptionally intriguing, still has not found any decent footing in recent years. Though there have been some attempts at innovating the concept, invariably the arguments for this have relied heavily on conjectural interpretations of biblical and extrabiblical literature in an attempt to validate the hypothesis. The arguments tend to rely on specious interpretations of the ancient texts, various conjectures, and, in Price's case, a reliance on outdated and long-since disproven concepts. All of these issues, and more, demonstrate that the pre-Christian Jesus hypothesis is still an unreliable thesis, and likely should be discounted as it was a century ago. The renovated theories fail to convincingly explain the evidence at hand."
12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". "By the end of the first century Christianity had lost sight of the real Jesus and of the original meaning of his message. Paul, John and their churches replaced him by the otherworldy Christ of faith."
13. ↑ Ehrman 2012, pp. 13, 334–335: "The Jesus proclaimed by preachers and theologians today had no existence. That particular Jesus is (or those particular Jesuses are) a myth. But there was a historical Jesus, who was very much a man of his time."
14. ↑ The basic facts of Jesus' life according to scholars:
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "[these] two facts [of baptism and crucifixion] in the life of Jesus command almost universal assent."
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be, since both Josephus and Tacitus...agree with the Christian accounts on at least that basic fact."
* According to Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24"., Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, preached about the coming Kingdom of God, attracted numerous followers including the twelve disciples, and was subsequently crucified by the order of the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, which eventually led to his immediate followers continuing his movement which soon became known as Christianity.
* E. P. Sanders, in "Jesus and Judaism" (1985), says there are eight facts that can be discerned about the historical Jesus: his Baptism, that he was a Galilean itinerant preacher who was reputed to do healings and other 'miracles', he called disciples and spoke of there being 12, that he confined his activity to Israel, that he engaged in controversy over the Temple, that he was crucified outside of Jerusalem by the Romans, that those disciples continued as a movement after his death. In his 1993 work, "The Historical figure of Jesus" he added six more: that Jesus was likely born in 4–6 BC under Herod the Great (the Gregorian calendar is wrong), Jesus grew up in Nazareth, Jesus taught in small villages and towns and seemed to avoid cities, Jesus ate a final meal with his disciples, he was arrested and interrogated by Jewish authorities apparently at the instigation of the high priest, his disciples abandoned him at his death, later believed they saw him and thereafter believed Jesus would return.
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". summarizes the view of mainstream historians regarding what Paul records regarding the historical Jesus: "Even if we had no other sources, we could still infer some things about Jesus from Paul's letters. Paul clearly implies that Jesus existed as a human being ('born of a woman' Gal 4.4), was born a Jew ('born under the Law' Gal 4.4; cf. Rom 1.3) and had brothers (1 Cor 9.5; Gal 1.19). Paul also claims possible character traits for Jesus (cf. 'meekness and gentleness' 2 Cor 10.1; Jesus 'did not please himself' Rom 15.3) and he refers to the tradition of the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper (1 Cor 11.23–25), taking place 'at night' (1 Cor 11.23). Above all, he refers very frequently to the fact that Jesus was crucified (1 Cor 1.23; 2.2; Gal 3.1 etc.), and at one point ascribes prime responsibility for Jesus' death to (some) Jews (1 Thess 2.15). He also occasionally explicitly refers to Jesus' teaching, e.g. on divorce (1 Cor 7.10–11) and on Christian preachers or missionaries claiming support (1 Cor 9.14)."
15. ↑ According to Lataster, a Christ mythicist, "the only thing New Testament scholars seem to agree on is Jesus' historical existence".[web 6]
16. ↑ No reconstruction possible:
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "the historical Jesus is properly speaking a nineteenth- and twentieth-century construction using the data supplied by the Synoptic tradition, not Jesus back then", (the Jesus of Nazareth who walked the hills of Galilee), "and not a figure in history whom we can realistically use to critique the portrayal of Jesus in the Synoptic tradition".
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "Dunn points out as well that 'the Enlightenment Ideal of historical objectivity also projected a false goal onto the quest for the historical Jesus', which implied that there was a 'historical Jesus', objectively verifiable, 'who will be different from the dogmatic Christ and the Jesus of the Gospels and who will enable us to criticize the dogmatic Christ and the Jesus of the Gospels' (Jesus Remembered, p. 125)."
17. ↑ Crook (2013; Foster 2012, 2013; Keith 2011; 2012a, 2012b; Rodríguez 2012, 2013); Le Donne (2011; 2012a; 2012b); Schröter (1996; 2012; 2013)[68]
18. ↑ A notable exception is Robert Price, who has used those same criteria to dissect the Jesus to the "vanishing point".[73]
19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 (Carrier 2014): "[T]he basic thesis of every competent mythologist, then and now, has always been that Jesus was originally a god just like any other god (properly speaking, a demigod in pagan terms; an archangel in Jewish terms; in either sense, a deity), who was later historicized."
20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 (Doherty 2009): "[The Mythical Jesus viewpoint holds] that Christianity began with a belief in a spiritual, mythical figure..."
21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 In his later works, Wells argued that Paul's Jesus was a mythical character, which was woven together in the gospels with stories about a Galilean preacher. Wells insisted that this figure of the Q-source is distinct from the sacrificial Christ myth of Paul's epistles and other early Christian documents, and that these two figures have different sources before being fused in Mark:
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "When I first addressed these problems, more than thirty years ago, it seemed to me that, because the earliest Christian references to Jesus are so vague, the gospel Jesus could be no more than a mythical expansion and elaboration of this obscure figure. But from the mid-1990s I became persuaded that many of the gospel traditions are too specific in their references to time, place, and circumstances to have developed in such a short time from no other basis, and are better understood as traceable to the activity of a Galilean preacher of the early first century, the personage represented in Q (the inferred non-Markan source, not extant, common to Matthew and Luke; cf. above, p. 2), which may be even earlier than the Paulines. This is the position I have argued in my books of 1996, 1999, and 2004, although the titles of the first two of these—The Jesus Legend and The Jesus Myth—may mislead potential readers into supposing that I still denied the historicity of the gospel Jesus. These titles were chosen because I regarded (and still do regard) the virgin birth, much in the Galilean ministry, the crucifixion around A.D. 30 under Pilate, and the resurrection as legendary."
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "What we have in the gospels is surely a fusion of two originally quite independent streams of tradition [...] the Galilean preacher of the early first century who had met with rejection, and the supernatural personage of the early epistles, [the Jesus of Paul] who sojourned briefly on Earth and then, rejected, returned to heaven—have been condensed into one. The [human] preacher has been given a [mythical] salvific death and resurrection, and these have been set not in an unspecified past (as in the early epistles) but in a historical context consonant with the Galilean preaching. The fusion of the two figures will have been facilitated by the fact that both owe quite a lot of their substance in the documents—to ideas very important in the Jewish Wisdom literature."
Compare David Tacey (2015), Religion as Metaphor: Beyond Literal Belief, Transaction Publishers: "I do not doubt the existence of a real Jesus, but I adopt the view that the representation of this figure in the gospels is not historical but mythological. This has caused some to draw a distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of theology. We know little about the former, but I concur with Jung that "this Christ of St. Paul's would hardly have been possible without the historical Jesus.
My reading of Jesus is not to be confused with the tradition known as the "Christ Myth Theory".
22. ↑ Argument from silence:
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "[The basic mythicist position is] the negative argument, that we have no reliable witness that even mentions a historical Jesus, and the positive one, that his story appears to have been modeled on the accounts told of other divinities..."
* Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "[Some Christ myth theorists] make much of the claim that there is little or no credible information about the historical Jesus to be found in first—and second—century non-Christian sources or in Paul, the earliest Christian source. Surely if a miracle-working prophet like the Jesus of the Gospels actually existed, it is argued, Paul and pagan contemporaries would have mentioned his feats and his teachings. Instead, they argue, we find a virtual silence."
23. ↑ (Wells 1999):
* (Wells 1999b): "The Jewish literature describes Wisdom [personified] as God's chief agent, a member of his divine council, etc., and this implies supernatural, but not, I agree, divine status."
* (Wells 2009): "I have always allowed that Paul believed in a Jesus who, fundamentally supernatural, had nevertheless been incarnated on Earth as a man."
24. ↑ (Price 2003): "This astonishingly complete absence of reliable gospel material begins to coincide, along its own authentic trajectory ...with another minimalist approach to the historical Jesus, namely, that there never was one. Most of the Dutch Radical scholars, following Bruno Bauer, argued that all of the gospel tradition was fabricated to historicize an originally bare datum of a savior, perhaps derived from the Mystery Religions or Gnosticism or even further afield. The basic argument offered for this position, it seems to me, is that of analogy, the resemblances between Jesus and Gnostic and Mystery Religion saviors being just too numerous and close to dismiss."
25. ↑ (Johnson 2010): "Nearly all critical scholars accept seven letters as written by Paul: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. There is almost equal unanimity in rejecting 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. Serious debate can occasionally be found concerning 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, and Ephesians, but the clear and growing scholarly consensus considers them to be non-Pauline."
26. ↑ Price argues that passages such as Galatians 1:18–20, Galatians 4:4 and 1 Corinthians 15:3–11 are late Catholic interpolations and that 1 Thessalonians 2:14–16 was unlikely to have been written by a Jew.[124]
27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 (Ehrman 2012): "He was a member of an even closer inner circle made up of Peter, James, and John. In the Gospels these three spend more time with Jesus than anyone else does during his entire ministry...In about the year 36, Paul went to Jerusalem to confer with Peter (Galatians 1:18–20). Paul spent fifteen days there...But it defies belief that Paul would have spent over two weeks with Jesus's closest companion and not learned something about him—for example, that he lived. Even more telling is the much-noted fact that Paul claims that he met with, and therefore personally knew, Jesus's own brother James... And so in the letter to the Galatians Paul states as clearly as possible that he knew Jesus's brother. Can we get any closer to an eyewitness report than this? The fact that Paul knew Jesus's closest disciple and his own brother throws a real monkey wrench into the mythicist view that Jesus never lived."
28. ↑ Michael Vines notes that the gospel of Mark may have aspects similar to a Jewish novel,[141] while some scholars have argued that the Gospels are symbolical representations of the Torah, which were written in response to the Roman occupation and the suppression of Jewish religiosity.[142][143]
29. ↑ Paul's conversion occurred two years after the crucifixion of Jesus.[149][150]
30. ↑ Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "[P]agan witnesses indicate that there is no reliable evidence that supports the historicity of Jesus. This is surely surprising given the fact that Jesus was supposed to be a well-known person in the area of the world ruled by Rome. One would surely have supposed that there would have been some surviving records of Jesus if he did exist. Their absence, combined with the absence of Jewish records, suggests that NEP [Negative Evidence Principle] applies and that we are justified in disbelieving that Jesus existed."
31. ↑ No one seemed to notice this passage until the 4th century, not even Origen who quotes Josephus extensively in his works,[186] thus leading mythicists to think that the Testimonium Flavianum is a forgery of the 4th century, perhaps written by Eusebius[187] in order to provide an outside Jewish authority for the life of Jesus.[188][189]
32. ↑ Tacitus: "... a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus."[201]
33. ↑ Price:
* (Price 2010): "Bolland, De Evangelische Jozua; Rylands, The Evolution of Christianity; Rylands, The Beginnings of Gnostic Christianity; Zindler, The Jesus the Jews Never Knew, 340, and others similarly held that Christianity began variously among Hellenized Jewish settlements throughout the Diaspora, with allegorized Jewish elements being made almost unrecognizable by their intermingling with gnostic mythemes."
* (Price 2002): "The temptations and challenges of the Diaspora only served to increase the diversity of ancient Judaism, a diversity directly reflected in emerging Christianity, which demonstrably partakes of Jewish Gnosticism [Schmithals, 1975; Scholem, 1965], Zoroastrianism [Welburn, 1991], the Mystery Cults, etc.

[Walter Schmithals, The Apocalyptic Movement: Introduction and Interpretation. Trans. John E. Steely (NY: Abingdon Press, 1975; Gershom Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition. NY: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2nd ed., 1965), esp. chapter IX, "The Relationship between Gnostic and Jewish Sources," pp. 65–74.] [Andrew Welburn, The Beginnings of Christianity: Essene Mystery, Gnostic Revelation and the Christian Vision (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1991), pp. 44–51. The identification of the Nag Hammadi Apocalypse of Adam as Zoroastrian in substance has enormous implications.]"
34. ↑ 34.0 34.1 The kerygma from 1:Cor.15:3–5 refers to two mythologies: the Greek myth of the noble dead, to which the Maccabean notion of martyrdom and dying for ones people is related; and the Jewish myth of the persecuted sage or righteous man, c.q. the "story of the child of wisdom".[221][222] The notion of 'dying for' refers to this martyrdom and persecution.[223] James F. McGrath refers to 4 Maccabees 6, "which presents a martyr praying 'Be merciful to your people, and let our punishment suffice for them. Make my blood their purification, and take my life in exchange for theirs' (4 Maccabees 6:28-29). Clearly there were ideas that existed in the Judaism of the time that helped make sense of the death of the righteous in terms of atonement."[web 12] See also Herald Gandi (2018), The Resurrection: "According to the Scriptures"?, referring to Isaiah 53, among others:

> Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed ... Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain. When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the Lord shall prosper. Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.

35. ↑ See Why was Resurrection on "the Third Day"? Two Insights for explanations on the phrase "third day". According to Pinchas Lapide, "third day" may refer to Hosea 6:1–2:

> Come, let us return to the Lord;
>  for he has torn us, that he may heal us;
>  he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.
>  After two days he will revive us;
>  on the third day he will raise us up,
>  that we may live before him.

See also 2 Kings 20:8: "Hezekiah said to Isaiah, 'What shall be the sign that the Lord will heal me, and that I shall go up to the house of the Lord on the third day?'" According to Sheehan, Paul's reference to Jesus having risen "on the third day ... simply expresses the belief that Jesus was rescued from the fate of utter absence from God (death) and was admitted to the saving presence of God (the eschatological future)".[224]
36. ↑ Hurtado cites Green, The Death of Jesus, p.323.[230]
37. ↑ Dunn quotes Stendahl: "Cf Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles, passim—e.g "... a doctrine of faith was hammered out by Paul for the very specific and limited purpose of defending the rights of Gentile converts to be full and genuine heirs to the promise of God to Israel"(p.2)"[232]

Stephen Westerholm: "For Paul, the question that "justification by faith" was intended to answer was, "On what terms can Gentiles gain entrance to the people of God?" Bent on denying any suggestion that Gentiles must become Jews and keep the Jewish law, he answered, 'By faith—and not by works of the (Jewish) law.'"[web 13] Westerholm refers to: Krister Stendahl, The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West, Harvard Theological Review 56 (1963), 199–215; reprinted in Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles and Other Essays (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 78–96.

Westerholm quotes Sanders: "Sanders noted that "the salvation of the Gentiles is essential to Paul's preaching; and with it falls the law; for, as Paul says simply, Gentiles cannot live by the law (Gal. 2.14)" (496). On a similar note, Sanders suggested that the only Jewish "boasting" to which Paul objected was that which exulted over the divine privileges granted to Israel and failed to acknowledge that God, in Christ, had opened the door of salvation to Gentiles."
38. ↑ See Philippians#2:6–11 for full text:
5 Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
6 who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped,
7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men;
8 and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient [even] unto death, yea, the death of the cross.
9 Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name;
10 that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of [things] in heaven and [things] on earth and [things] under the earth,
11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
39. ↑ The New Testament writings contain both an exaltation and an incarnation Christology, that is, the view that Jesus became Christ when he was resurrected and taken up to Heaven, and the view that Jesus was a heavenly being who was incarnated on earth.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". According to Ehrman, the synoptic Gospels reflect exaltation Christologies, which present different views on the exaltation, from the resurrection to the moment of his baptism, and still earlier to his conception; whereas Paul and the Gospel of John reflect incarnation theologies.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".
40. ↑ 40.0 40.1 The development of the early Christian views on Jesus' divinity is a matter of debate within contemporary scholarship. According to a longstanding consensus, the oldest Christology was an "exaltation Christology", according to which Jesus was subsequently "raised to divine status".[244] This "exaltation Christology" may have developed over time,Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[245] as witnessed in the Gospels,Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". with the earliest Christians believing that Jesus became divine when he was resurrected.[245][246] Later beliefs shifted the exaltation to his baptism, birth, and subsequently to the idea of his eternal existence, as witnessed in the Gospel of John.[245] This "High Christology" is "the view that Jesus was a pre-existent divine being who became a human, did the Father's will on earth, and then was taken back up into heaven whence he had originally come".[244]Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Yet, as Ehrman notes, this subsequent "incarnation Christology" was also preached by Paul, and even predates him.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". According to the "Early High Christology Club", which includes Martin Hengel, Larry Hurtado, and Richard Bauckham,[243] this "incarnation Christology" or "high Christology" did not evolve over a longer time, but was a "big bang" which arose in the first few decades of the church, as witnessed in the writings of Paul.[243]Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".
41. ↑ Ehrman-blog, Paul's View of Jesus as an Angel: "Paul understood Christ to be an angel who became a human." See also Paul's View of Jesus as an Angel, Christ as an Angel in Paul (10 April 2014), Christ as an Angel in Paul (7 June 2014); and Carrier's response at Bart Ehrman on How Jesus Became God.
42. ↑ Mainstream scholars have noted the extent and significance of Jewish belief in a chief angel acting as a heavenly mediator during the Second Temple period,[247][248][web 14] as well as the similarities between Jesus and this chief celestial angel.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".
43. ↑ The Book of Enoch (3rd–1st century BCE) is the first text to contain the idea of a preexistent heavenly Messiah, called the "Son of Man".[web 16] He is described as an angelic being,[web 16]Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". who "was chosen and hidden with God before the world was created, and will remain in His presence forevermore".[web 16] He is the embodiment of justice and Wisdom, seated on a throne in Heaven, who will be revealed to the world at the end of times when he will judge all beings.[web 16]Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".
44. ↑ (Price 2009):
* See p. 55 for his argument that it is quite likely Jesus did not exist.
* See pp. 62–64, 75 for the three pillars
45. ↑ The firstborn son of God (Epistle to the Romans 8:29), the celestial image of God (Second Epistle to the Corinthians 4:4) and God's agent of creation (First Epistle to the Corinthians 8:6). He was also God's celestial high priest (Hebrews 2:17, 4:14, etc.) and God's Logos.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".[web 10]
46. ↑ See also Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".; and #32 Richard Carrier and earliest Christians "copying" pre-dating Jewish concepts of a suffering & dying (for a purpose) messiah: Part 1[Usurped!].
47. ↑ Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "My view is that Paul knew next to nothing of the earthly life of Jesus, and did not have in mind any definite historical moment for his crucifixion. As we saw, holy Jews had been crucified alive in the first and second centuries B.C., but traditions about these events, and about the persecuted Teacher of Righteousness, could well have reached Paul without reference to times and places, and he need not have regarded their occurrences as anything like as remote in time as they in fact were."
48. ↑ Panarion 29.5.6
49. ↑ According to Epiphanius in his Panarion,[lower-alpha 48] the fourth-century Jewish-Christian Nazarenes (Ναζωραιοι) were originally Jewish converts of the Apostles. Richard Carrier contends that "Epiphanius, in Panarion 29, says there was a sect of still-Torah-observant Christians who taught that Jesus lived and died in the time of Jannaeus, and all the Jewish sources on Christianity that we have (from the Talmud to the Toledot Yeshu) report no other view than that Jesus lived during the time of Jannaeus".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".
50. ↑ In particular, the transformations faced by deities have distinct differences from the resurrection of Jesus. Osiris regains consciousness as king of the underworld, rather than being "transformed into an eschatological new creation" as Craig S. Keener writes.[258] While Jesus was born from a human woman (traditionally a virgin) and accompanied by shepherds, Mitra is born (unaccompanied by shepherds) from the goddess Aditi (to whom the word "virgin" is only rarely, loosely, and indirectly applied in a highly poetic sense), while Mithras (granted, accompanied by shepherds later) emerges full-grown from a rock.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". The rebirth of many of these deities was a clear metaphor for the renewal of spring that repeated the death every year, rather than a historic event meant to proclaim the god's cancellation of death. Some of these parallels appear after Christianity (e.g. the earliest references to Adonis rising from the dead is in the second century AD, Attis a century later), and are often only known through later Christian sources. Most other and later parallels were made in the works of James George Frazer,[258] or may be guilty of parallelomania[259] and even misrepresentation of religious (both Christian and non-Christian) and linguistic sources[258]Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". (for example, ignoring the false cognate relationship between Christ and Krishna).Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".
51. ↑ Joseph Klausner wrote that biblical scholars "tried their hardest to find in the historic Jesus something which is not Judaism; but in his actual history they have found nothing of this whatever, since this history is reduced almost to zero. It is therefore no wonder that at the beginning of this century there has been a revival of the eighteenth and nineteenth century view that Jesus never existed".[274]
52. ↑ Drews' work found fertile soil in the Soviet Union, where Marxist–Leninist atheism was the official doctrine of the state. Soviet leader Lenin argued that it was imperative in the struggle against religious obscurantists to form a union with people like Drews.[280][281] Several editions of Drews' The Christ Myth were published in the Soviet Union from the early 1920s onwards and his arguments were included in school and university textbooks.[282] Public meetings asking "Did Christ live?" were organized, during which party operatives debated with clergymen.[283]
53. ↑ According to Doherty, it was Paul's view that Jesus' death took place in the spiritual not the earthly realm.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". According to Ehrman, not only is there "no evidence to support Doherty's assertion of what Paul's view of Jesus was", but there are also "a host of reasons for calling Doherty's view into serious question".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".
54. ↑ Price: "One wonders if all these scholars came to a certain point and stopped, their assumption being "If Jesus was a historical figure, he must have done and said something!" But their own criteria and critical tools, which we have sought to apply here with ruthless consistency, ought to have left them with complete agnosticism.Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".
55. ↑ 55.0 55.1 (Ehrman 2012) "[Per "A Brief History of Mythicism"] ... some of the more influential contemporary representatives who have revitalized the [Mythicism] view in recent years. ... A different sort of support for a mythicist position comes in the work of Thomas L. Thompson, The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David. Thompson is trained in biblical studies, but he does not have degrees in New Testament or early Christianity. He is, instead, a Hebrew Bible scholar who teaches at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. In his own field of expertise, he is convinced that figures from the Hebrew Bible such as Abraham, Moses, and David never existed. He transfers these views to the New Testament and argues that Jesus too did not exist but was invented by Christians who wanted to create a savior figure out of stories found in the Jewish scriptures."
56. ↑ 56.0 56.1 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "I introduce here the most influential mythicists who claim to be 'scholars', though I would question their competence and qualifications [...] [Thomas L. Thompson] was Professor of Theology at the University of Copenhagen from 1993–2009. His early work, which is thought to have successfully refuted the attempts of Albright and others to defend the historicity of the most ancient parts of biblical literature history, is said to have negatively affected his future job prospects."
57. ↑ Ehrman (2012), Did Jesus Exist? 336–37Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".
58. ↑ Harpur's book received a great deal of criticism, including a response book, Unmasking the Pagan Christ: An Evangelical Response to the Cosmic Christ Idea.[303] Fellow mythicist Robert M. Price also wrote a negative review, saying that he did not agree that the Egyptian parallels were as forceful as Harpur thought.[304] In 2007, Harpur published a sequel, Water Into Wine.[305]
59. ↑ John Dickson, Honorary Fellow of the Department of Ancient History at Macquarie University and once a teacher of Lataster himself, wrote on ABC News that "as his former lecturer, I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that Raphael's 1000 words on Jesus would not receive a pass mark in any history class I can imagine, even if it were meant to be a mere "personal reflection" on contemporary Jesus scholarship"; Dickson also accused Lataster of distorting the truth to support his views (such as claiming that there is a scholarly debate about the historicity of Jesus, while in fact there is no debate about it) or stating that many scholars believe that the description of Jesus in the Pauline Epistles is believed to be celestial and uncorporeal (a view that is actually rejected by the scholarly consensus).[308]
60. ↑ Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "This essay is in part an attempt to clarify procedural issues relevant to what is sometimes called the 'Christ-myth' or 'Non-historicity' thesis—an argumentative approach to the New Testament based on the theory that the historical Jesus of Nazareth did not exist. I have come to regard this thesis as fatally flawed and subject to a variety of objections that are not often highlighted in the academic writings of New Testament scholars. ... It is my view, simply stated, that while facts concerning the Jesus of history were jeopardized from the start by a variety of salvation myths, by the credulity of early believers, by the historiographical tendencies of the era, and by the editorial tendencies of early writers, the gospels retain a stubbornly historical view of Jesus, preserve reliable information about his life and teachings, and are not engulfed by any of the conditions under which they were composed. Jesus "the Nazarene" did not originate as a myth or a story without historical coordinates, but as a teacher in first century Roman Palestine."
61. ↑ See also Stephen J. Bedard, Jesus Myth Theory, for an overview of blogs by Bedard on the Jesus Myth Theory.
62. ↑ Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".. Earl Doherty has published a much-expanded version of this review at the following Web site, where he has also reproduced his series "The Jesus Puzzle", which appeared in recent issues of Humanist in Canada: http://www.magi.com/~oblio/jesus.html.
63. ↑ Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".: "What is also significant about [Richard] Carrier's body of work related to Mythicism is that it represents the result of a $20,000 research grant from various supporters and donations overseen by Atheists United, which demonstrates the public's interest in the subject matter. ... [T]he academic community committed to the study of the New Testament and Christian origins needs to pay attention to Carrier and engage with his thesis (even if they end up rejecting his conclusions); and if for no other reason than that he has the attention of the public."

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## References

### Footnotes

1. ↑ Lataster 2015a
2. ↑ "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees, based on certain and clear evidence." B. Ehrman, 2011 Forged : writing in the name of God Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".. p. 256-257
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Herzog 2005, pp. 1–6.
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Powell 1998, pp. 168–173.
5. ↑ Van Voorst 2000, p. 568.
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Eddy & Boyd 2007, p. 34.
7. ↑ Weaver 1999, pp. 71 "The denial of Jesus' historicity has never convinced any large number of people, in or out of technical circles, nor did it in the first part of the century.".
8. ↑ Casey 2010, p. 33.
9. ↑ Wells 2007, p. 446 "by around 1920 nearly all scholars had come to regard the case against Jesus's historicity as totally discredited".
10. ↑ Van Voorst 2003, pp. 660.
11. ↑ Burridge & Gould 2004, p. 34.
12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Ehrman, Bart D. (June 26, 2015). "Kickstarting a Debate". https://ehrmanblog.org/kickstarting-a-debate/.
13. ↑ Gullotta 2017, p. 313-314, 346.
14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Ehrman 1999, p. 248.
15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Ehrman 2011, p. 285.
16. ↑ Dunn 2003, p. 339.
17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Ehrman 2012, p. 13.
18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Ehrman 2014.
19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Stanton 2002, pp. 143ff.
20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Vermes 2001, ch.8.
21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Dunn 2005, p. 76.
22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Reed 2018, p. 5, note 19.
23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Ehrman 2012, p. 298.
24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Ehrman 2012.
25. ↑ Dunn 2003, pp. 174ff.
26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 26.2 26.3 Mack 1995
27. ↑ King 2008, p. 70.
28. ↑ Behr 2013, pp. 5–6.
29. ↑ King 2011
30. ↑ Pagels 1979, pp. 1, 196.
31. ↑ Ehrman 2003, pp. 125, 225.
32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 Ehrman 2003
33. ↑ Green 2008, p. 239.
34. ↑ Powell 1998, pp. 13-15 "During the period following the Enlightenment, scholars embarked on what came to be known as "the quest for the historical Jesus." They went beyond the production of Gospel harmonies to write biographies, called Lives of Jesus....Hundreds of these Lives of Jesus were produced, mainly during the nineteenth century".
35. ↑ Strauss, David Friedrich (1835). Das leben Jesu: Kritisch bearbeitet. C.F. Osiander. https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_vn4sAAAAYAAJ.
36. ↑ Jesus as a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man from Galilee by Mark Allan Powell, Westminster John Knox Press, 1998 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pages 13–15
37. ↑ 37.0 37.1 37.2 The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth. by Ben Witherington III, InterVarsity Press, 1997 (second expanded edition), Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pp. 9–13
38. ↑ Soulen, Richard N.; Soulen, R. Kendall (2001). Handbook of biblical criticism (3rd ed., rev. and expanded. ed.). Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press. p. 78. ISBN 978-0-664-22314-4.
39. ↑ 39.0 39.1 Edwin Broadhead "Implicit Christology and the Historical Jesus" in the Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus edited by Tom Holmen and Stanley E. Porter, Brill 2010 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pp. 1170–1172
40. ↑ 40.0 40.1 The First Christian by Paul F. M. Zahl, Eerdmans 2003 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pp. 23–25
41. ↑ Arnal 2005, pp. 41–43.
42. ↑ The First Christian: Universal Truth in the Teachings of Jesus by Paul F. M. Zahl, Eerdmans 2003 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". p. 12
43. ↑ 43.0 43.1 43.2 Criteria for Authenticity in Historical-Jesus Research by Stanley E. Porter, Bloomsbury 2004 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pp. 100–120
44. ↑ 44.0 44.1 Who Is Jesus? by Thomas P. Rausch (Jul 1, 2003) Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pages 35–40
45. ↑ John P. Meier "Criteria: How do we decide what comes from Jesus?" in The Historical Jesus in Recent Research by James D. G. Dunn and Scot McKnight, Eisenbrauns 2006 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pages 126–142
46. ↑ Petr Pokorny "Jesus Research as Feedback" Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus by Tom Holmen and Stanley E. Porter, Brill 2010 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pp. 338–339
47. ↑ 47.0 47.1 Soundings in the Religion of Jesus: Perspectives and Methods in Jewish and Christian Scholarship by Bruce Chilton Anthony Le Donne and Jacob Neusner 2012 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". page 132
48. ↑ "Jesus Research and Archaeology: A New Perspective" by James H. Charlesworth in Jesus and archaeology edited by James H. Charlesworth 2006 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pp. 11–15
49. ↑ Hagner 2011, p. 1063.
50. ↑ Evans 2004, p. 163.
51. ↑ Bernier 2016, pp. 2–3.
52. ↑ Bernier 2016, p. 4.
53. ↑ 53.0 53.1 53.2 53.3 Dark 2023, p. 150-151.
54. ↑ 54.0 54.1 Ehrman, Bart (October 28, 2016). "Gospel Evidence that Jesus Existed". https://ehrmanblog.org/gospel-evidence-that-jesus-existed/.
55. ↑ 55.0 55.1 Dark 2023, p. 151-152.
56. ↑ Powell 2013, p. 168.
57. ↑ Alanna Nobbs and Edwin Judge ap. Dickson, John (24 December 2012). "Best of 2012: The irreligious assault on the historicity of Jesus". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. https://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/12/24/3660194.htm.
58. ↑ Theissen & Winter 2002, p. 5.
59. ↑ Cross & Livingstone 2005
60. ↑ The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown: An Introduction to the New Testament by Andreas J. Köstenberger, L. Scott Kellum 2009 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pp. 124–125
61. ↑ The Cambridge History of Christianity, Volume 1 by Margaret M. Mitchell and Frances M. Young, Cambridge University Press 2006 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". page 23
62. ↑ Ehrman 2012, pp. 13, 334–335.
63. ↑ Ehrman 2012, p. 335.
64. ↑ Keith & Le Donne 2012.
65. ↑ Licona 2016.
66. ↑ Bernier 2016, p. 1.
67. ↑ 67.0 67.1 Keith & Le Donne 2012, chapter 1.
68. ↑ 68.0 68.1 68.2 Van Eck 2015.
69. ↑ Thinkapologtics.com, Book Review: Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity, by Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne
70. ↑ 70.0 70.1 Dunn 2003, p. 882.
71. ↑ Keith, Chris (2016). "The Narratives of the Gospels and the Historical Jesus: Current Debates, Prior Debates and the Goal of Historical Jesus Research". Journal for the Study of the New Testament 38 (4): 426–455. doi:10.1177/0142064X16637777. https://research.stmarys.ac.uk/3459/3/Keith-Narratives-of-the-Gospels-Historical-Jesus.pdf.
72. ↑ Casey 2014.
73. ↑ 73.0 73.1 Price 2003.
74. ↑ Price 2000, p. 17.
75. ↑ 75.0 75.1 Thompson 2007.
76. ↑ 76.0 76.1 76.2 Thompson 2012.
77. ↑ 77.0 77.1 Price 2009, p. 65.
78. ↑ Ellegård, Alvar; Albrektson, Bertil; Bilde, Per; Klinge, Matti; Olsson, Birger; and Torstendahl, Rolf. "Theologians as historians" , Scandia, 2008.
79. ↑ 79.0 79.1 Price 2011, pp. 387–388.
80. ↑ Wells 2013, p. 16.
81. ↑ Wells 1999, p. 103.
82. ↑ Wells 2013, p. 19.
83. ↑ Van Voorst 2000, pp. 8–9.
84. ↑ Lataster 2016, p. 191.
85. ↑ Wells 1982, p. 22.
86. ↑ 86.0 86.1 86.2 86.3 Doherty 1995a.
87. ↑ Eddy & Boyd 2007, pp. 202–203.
88. ↑ Detering 1995, p. 11.
89. ↑ 89.0 89.1 Thompson & Verenna 2012, §. "Does the Christ Myth Theory Require an Early Date for the Pauline Epistles?" by Robert M. Price.
90. ↑ Price 2011, pp. 354ff [reproduced 2012[89]]
91. ↑ Price, Robert M. (2012). "Ch. 2: By Posthumous Post §. The historical Paul". The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul. Signature Books. Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". and ASIN B00IB3YSMO.
92. ↑ 92.0 92.1 92.2 Van Voorst 2000, p. 13.
93. ↑ Thompson 2007, p. 3.
94. ↑ 94.0 94.1 94.2 Price 2003, p. 21.
95. ↑ 95.0 95.1 Eddy & Boyd 2007, pp. 137–138.
96. ↑ 96.0 96.1 96.2 Eddy & Boyd 2007, p. 163.
97. ↑ 97.0 97.1 97.2 Doherty 1995d.
98. ↑ Price 2000, p. 86.
99. ↑ Wells 2012, pp. 15–16.
100. ↑ Van Voorst 2000, p. 69, n.120.
101. ↑ 101.0 101.1 101.2 101.3 Van Voorst 2000, p. 9.
102. ↑ Eddy & Boyd 2007, p. 32.
103. ↑ 103.0 103.1 Carrier 2015, p. 418.
104. ↑ 104.0 104.1 104.2 104.3 104.4 104.5 104.6 104.7 104.8 Doherty 1995c
105. ↑ Price 2003, pp. 31, 41–42, n. 14.
106. ↑ Price 2005, p. 534.
107. ↑ Lataster 2014a, p. 19.
108. ↑ Couchoud 1939, p. 33.
109. ↑ Price 2003, pp. 351–355.
110. ↑ Price 2009, p. 64.
111. ↑ Bromiley 1982, p. 1034.
112. ↑ Eddy & Boyd 2007, p. 30.
113. ↑ Price 2000, pp. 86, 88, 91.
114. ↑ Price 2010, p. 103, n. 5.
115. ↑ 115.0 115.1 Price 2002.
116. ↑ Doherty 2012.
117. ↑ 117.0 117.1 Tuckett 2001
118. ↑ Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making by James D. G. Dunn (2003) Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". p. 143
119. ↑ Jesus Christ in History and Scripture by Edgar V. McKnight 1999 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". p. 38
120. ↑ Victor Furnish in Paul and Jesus edited by Alexander J. M. Wedderburn 2004 (Academic Paperback) Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pp. 43–44
121. ↑ Detering, Hermann (1996). "The Dutch Radical Approach to the Pauline Epistles". Journal of Higher Criticism 3 (2): 163–193. https://depts.drew.edu/jhc/detering.html. Retrieved September 2, 2016.
122. ↑ Price, Robert M. (2012). The Amazing Colossal Apostle. Salt Lake City: Signature Books. p. viii. ISBN 978-1-56085-216-2.
123. ↑ Price 2011, pp. 353ff [reproduced 2012[89]]
124. ↑ Price, Richard M. (2012). The Amazing Colossal Apostle. Salt Lake City: Signature Books. pp. 360–361, 415, 426, 491. ISBN 978-1-56085-216-2.
125. ↑ Eddy & Boyd 2007, p. 202.
126. ↑ Stout 2011, p. 64.
127. ↑ 127.0 127.1 Eddy & Boyd 2007, p. 209-228.
128. ↑ Hansen, Chrissy M. (1 August 2025). "Familial Brother(s) of the Lord? On Recent Disagreements on Galatians 1.19 and 1 Corinthians 9.5" (in EN). The Expository Times 136 (11): 483–493. doi:10.1177/00145246251346748. ISSN 0014-5246. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00145246251346748. "Showing that Paul’s language almost certainly refers to biological kinship means that Paul was definitely aware of, and met, Jesus’ biological family, and as such we can infer there was probably some information contained in his epistles that may have stemmed from firsthand witnesses to Jesus’ life.".
129. ↑ Evans, Craig (2016). "Mythicism and the Public Jesus of History.". Christian Research Journal 39 (5).
130. ↑ "Brethren of the Lord". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press. 2022. https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199642465.001.0001/acref-9780199642465-e-1034?rskey=BScfxB&result=1032. "References to ‘the Lord’s brethren’, who include James, Joseph, Symeon, and Jude, occur at Mk 6: 3 etc., Jn 7: 3, Acts 1: 14, 1 Cor. 9: 5...The traditional view (1), first found explicitly in the Book of James, is that they were sons of Joseph by a former marriage (still the view of the E. Churches). The most natural inference from the NT (though see Lightfoot, Joseph Barber) is that they were (2) sons of the Virgin Mary and Joseph, born after Christ, which was accepted by Tertullian and perhaps by Hegesippus."
131. ↑ Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey by Craig L. Blomberg 2009 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pp. 441-442
132. ↑ Edward Adams (2010). Delbert Burkett. ed. The Blackwell Companion to Jesus. Wiley. pp. 94–98. ISBN 978-1405193627.
133. ↑ 133.0 133.1 Tuckett 2001, pp. 121–137, esp. 125.
134. ↑ Stanton, G. H. (2004). Jesus and Gospel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 192.
135. ↑ Burridge, R. A. (2006). Gospels. In J. W. Rogerson & Judith M. Lieu (Eds) The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 437
136. ↑ Talbert, C. H. (1977). What is a Gospel? The Genre of the Canonical Gospels. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
137. ↑ Wills, L. M. (1997). The Quest of the Historical Gospel: Mark, John and the Origins of the Gospel Genre. London: Routledge. p. 10.
138. ↑ Burridge, R. A. (2004). What are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography. rev. updated edn. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans.
139. ↑ Gray, Patrick, ed (2021). The Cambridge Companion to the New Testament. Cambridge University Press. pp. 98–99. ISBN 9781108437707. "At the moment, the consensus in scholarship is that the gospels are best described as a variation of Greco-Roman biography. David Aune defines an ancient biography as “a discrete prose narrative devoted exclusively to the portrayal of the whole life of a particular individual perceived as historical."...they stand in some literary analogy to the Greco-Roman biographical tradition and books such as Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates and similar works."
140. ↑ Dunn 2005, p. 174.
141. ↑ Vines, M. E. (2002). The Problem of the Markan Genre: The Gospel of Mark and the Jewish Novel. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. pp. 161–162. ISBN 978-1-5898-3030-1.
142. ↑ Peter J. Tomson (2001), If This be from Heaven... Jesus and the New Testament Authors in Their Relationship to Judaism, Bloomsbury
143. ↑ Dan Lioy (2007), Jesus as Torah in John 1–12, Wipf and Stock Publishers
144. ↑ Dunn 2003, pp. 883–884.
145. ↑ Evans, Craig A. (2013). Jesus and his World: The Archaeological Evidence (Paperback ed.). Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 9780664239329.
146. ↑ Evans, Craig (26 March 2012). "The Archaeological Evidence for Jesus" (in en). https://www.huffpost.com/entry/archaeological-evidence-for-jesus_b_1370995.
147. ↑ Dark 2023, pp. 160, 162.
148. ↑ Ehrman 2012, pp. 83–85.
149. ↑ Byrskog 2011, p. 2189.
150. ↑ Ehrman 2012, p. 144.
151. ↑ Tuckett 2001, p. 122.
152. ↑ Theissen & Merz 1998, p. 100-104.
153. ↑ Casey 2010, p. 63-64 "It also provides evidence that Mark is an unrevised literal translation of an Aramaic source, and this at a point where there is every reason to believe that the story is literally true. This means that our oldest source is sometimes perfectly accurate, because parts of it were originally written by people who were in close touch with the events of the historic ministry. This is only one short step away from eyewitness testimony"..
154. ↑ Price 2011, p. 425.
155. ↑ Doherty 2009, pp. vii–viii.
156. ↑ 156.0 156.1 Wells 1999.
157. ↑ Doherty 1997.
158. ↑ Ehrman 2012, p. 261.
159. ↑ What Is Christianity? An Introduction to the Christian Religion, by Gail Ramshaw, Fortress Press, 2013. pp. 52–54
160. ↑ God and Caesar: Troeltsch's Social Teaching as Legitimation, by Constance L. Benson, Transaction Publishers. p. 55
161. ↑ The Heroic Ideal: Western Archetypes from the Greeks to the Present, by M. Gregory Kendrick, McFarland, 2010. p. 43
162. ↑ Ehrman 2012, p. 47.
163. ↑ Eddy & Boyd 2007, p. 165.
164. ↑ Gerald O'Collins, Christology: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Study of Jesus. 2009, pp. 1–3 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".
165. ↑ Peder Borgen, Philo of Alexandria. 1997, p. 14 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".
166. ↑ Van Voorst 2000, p. 15.
167. ↑ Theissen & Merz 1998, p. 63.
168. ↑ 168.0 168.1 Whealey, Alice (2015). "The Testimonium Flavianum". A Companion to Josephus. Wiley Blackwell. p. 350. ISBN 978-1-118-32516-2. "Proponents of the Christ as myth thesis, who continue to promote this idea in popular media, including the Internet, often appear to assume that the Testimonium had been fabricated precisely to prove the historicity of Christ. However, ancient literature in general and the ancient literature citing the Testimonium in particular reveal that this cannot have been the case. No extant ancient literature indicates that the ancient critics of Christianity ever charged that Jesus of Nazareth had never existed; the claim that Jesus never existed is not known to have been made before the Enlightenment."
169. ↑ 169.0 169.1 169.2 169.3 Mykytiuk, Lawrence (January 2015). "Did Jesus Exist? Searching for Evidence Beyond the Bible" (in en). https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/jesus-historical-jesus/did-jesus-exist/.
170. ↑ Ehrman 2012, pp. 144–146.
171. ↑ Evans, Craig (2016). "Mythicism and the Public Jesus of History.". Christian Research Journal 39 (5).
172. ↑ Gullotta 2017, p. 334-336.
173. ↑ Ehrman 2012, p. 151.
174. ↑ Theissen & Merz 1998, p. 93.
175. ↑ Grant 1977, p. 199-200 "But above all, if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned.".
176. ↑ Allan, William (2014). Classical Literature: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. p. 15. ISBN 978-0199665457.
177. ↑ 177.0 177.1 Ehrman 2012, p. 44.
178. ↑ Timothy Barnes Pagan Perceptions of Christianity" in Early Christianity: Origins and Evolution to AD 600. 1991, p. 232 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".
179. ↑ 179.0 179.1 Hutchinson, Robert (2015). Searching for Jesus. Nashville: Nelson Books. p. 9. ISBN 978-0-7180-1830-6.
180. ↑ The Cambridge Companion to Jesus by Markus N. A. Bockmuehl 2001 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pp. 121–125
181. ↑ Bruce David Chilton; Craig Alan Evans (1998). Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research. Brill. pp. 460–470. ISBN 978-90-04-11142-4. https://books.google.com/books?id=AJM9grxOjjMC.
182. ↑ Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey by Craig L. Blomberg 2009 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pp. 431–436
183. ↑ 183.0 183.1 Van Voorst 2000, pp. 39–53.
184. ↑ Crossan 1995, p. 145.
185. ↑ Eddy & Boyd 2007, p. 197 n. 103.
186. ↑ Louth 1990.
187. ↑ McGiffert 2007.
188. ↑ Olson 1999.
189. ↑ Wallace-Hadrill 2011.
190. ↑ 190.0 190.1 Carrier 2012.
191. ↑ Martin 1993, pp. 50–51.
192. ↑ T C Schmidt (2025). Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ. Oxford University Press. p. 9,145-147,149-151,188. ISBN 9780191957697.
193. ↑ Whealey, Alice (2015). "The Testimonium Flavianum". A Companion to Josephus. Wiley Blackwell. p. 354. ISBN 978-1-118-32516-2. "By the late twentieth century, the view that the text was partly authentic gained scholarly ground: in part because stylistic studies revealed it to be closer to Josephus’s language than was once assumed, and in part because scholars of the primitive church no longer assume that a Jew of priestly background—like Josephus—could not have written in such a positive way about Jesus or those he attracted. The discovery that a literal Syriac translation of the text containing a phrase parallel to Jerome’s phrase reading “he was believed to be the Christ” reveals that there must once have been a Greek Testimonium with such a reading, and this has played a role in shifting the view that the text is at least partly authentic towards what seems to be a current scholarly consensus"
194. ↑ Schreckenberg, Heinz; Kurt Schubert (1992). Jewish Traditions in Early Christian Literature. Van Gorcum. ISBN 978-90-232-2653-6.
195. ↑ Kostenberger, Andreas J.; L. Scott Kellum; Charles L. Quarles (2009). The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown: An Introduction to the New Testament. B&H Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8054-4365-3.
196. ↑ The new complete works of Josephus by Flavius Josephus, William Whiston, Paul L. Maier Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pp. 662–663
197. ↑ Josephus XX by Louis H. Feldman 1965, Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". p. 496
198. ↑ Van Voorst 2000, p. 83.
199. ↑ Flavius Josephus; Maier, Paul L. (December 1995). Josephus, the essential works: a condensation of Jewish antiquities and The Jewish war Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pp. 284–285
200. ↑ P. E. Easterling, E. J. Kenney (general editors), The Cambridge History of Latin Literature, p. 892 (Cambridge University Press, 1982, reprinted 1996). Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24".
201. ↑ Translation from Latin by A. J. Church and W. J. Brodribb, 1876
202. ↑ Eddy & Boyd 2007, p. 127.
203. ↑ Van Voorst 2000, p. 217.
204. ↑ Pagels 1979.
205. ↑ Ehrman 2005.
206. ↑ Dunn 2006, pp. 253–255.
207. ↑ Moggach, Douglas. The Philosophy and Politics of Bruno Bauer. Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 184. *Also see Engels, Frederick. "Bruno Bauer and Early Christianity", Der Sozialdemokrat, May 1882.
208. ↑ Price 2010, p. 103, n.5.
209. ↑ Dawkins 2006, p. 97.
210. ↑ 210.0 210.1 Brodie, Thomas L. (2012). Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery. Sheffield Phoenix Press. ISBN 978-1-9075-3458-4.
211. ↑ Price 2011, p. 381.
212. ↑ Price 2003, p. 347.
213. ↑ Hurtado 2005.
214. ↑ Paul's Letter to the Romans by Colin G. Kruse (2012) Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pp. 41–42.
215. ↑ The Blackwell Companion to The New Testament edited by David E. Aune 2010 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". p. 424.
216. ↑ 216.0 216.1 Worship in the Early Church by Ralph P. Martin 1975 Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pp. 57–58
217. ↑ Creeds of the Churches, Third Edition by John H. Leith (1982) Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". p. 12.
218. ↑ Cullmann, Oscar (1949). The Earliest Christian Confessions. London: Lutterworth.
219. ↑ Neufeld 1964, p. 47.
220. ↑ Taylor 2014, p. 374.
221. ↑ Mack 1995, pp. 86–87.
222. ↑ Finlan 2004, p. 4.
223. ↑ Mack 1997, p. 88.
224. ↑ Sheehan 1986, p. 112.
225. ↑ oremus Bible Browser, 1 Corinthians 15:3–15:41
226. ↑ Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, Volume 1 by James D. G. Dunn (2003) Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pp. 142–143.
227. ↑ Hurtado 2005, p. 185.
228. ↑ 228.0 228.1 Hurtado 2005, p. 186.
229. ↑ Hurtado 2005, p. 187.
230. ↑ Hurtado 2005, p. 187, n.55.
231. ↑ Stendahl 1963.
232. ↑ 232.0 232.1 Dunn 1982, p. n.49.
233. ↑ Finlan 2004, p. 2.
234. ↑ Hurtado 2005, pp. 130–131.
235. ↑ De Conick 2006, p. 6.
236. ↑ Koester 2000, pp. 64–65.
237. ↑ Dale Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, page 269, 324-325 (2005)
238. ↑ Craig L. Blomberg (1987), The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, p.253
239. ↑ Mike Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus, Page 484 (2010)
240. ↑ Wright, N. T. Resurrection of the Son of God. Spck Publishing, 2003. 690-691.
241. ↑ N.T. Wright, Simply Christian, p.96-97 (2009)
242. ↑ Wright, N. T. Resurrection of the Son of God. Spck Publishing, 2003. p.398.
243. ↑ 243.0 243.1 243.2 Bouma, Jeremy (March 27, 2014). "The Early High Christology Club and Bart Ehrman—An Excerpt from "How God Became Jesus"". HarperCollins Christian Publishing. https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/how-god-became-jesus-bart-ehrman-high-christology-excerpt/.
244. ↑ 244.0 244.1 Ehrman, Bart D. (February 14, 2013). "Incarnation Christology, Angels, and Paul". https://ehrmanblog.org/incarnation-christology-angels-and-paul-for-members/.
245. ↑ 245.0 245.1 245.2 Bart Ehrman, How Jesus became God, Course Guide
246. ↑ Geza Vermez (2008), The Resurrection, pp. 138–139
247. ↑ Garrett, Susan R. (2008). No Ordinary Angel: Celestial Spirits and Christian Claims about Jesus. Yale University Press. p. 238. ISBN 978-0-300-14095-8. https://archive.org/details/noordinaryangelc00garr.
248. ↑ Gieschen, Charles A. (1998). Angelomorphic Christology: Antecedents and Early Evidence. Brill. p. 316, n. 6. ISBN 978-90-04-10840-0. https://books.google.com/books?id=ddLqKDaOQdMC&pg=PA316.
249. ↑ James Waddell (2010), The Messiah: A Comparative Study of the Enochic Son of Man and the Pauline Kyrios
250. ↑ Carrier, Richard (2014). On the Historicity of Jesus (Kindle ed.). Sheffield Phoenix Press. p. location 34725. ISBN 978-1-909697-70-6.
251. ↑ Carrier, Richard (2020). Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ (First ed.). Pitchstone Publishing. p. 8-9. ISBN 9781634311946. "The most accurate description of earliest Christian thought is that Jesus was an angelic extraterrestrial, who descended from outer space to become a man, teach the gospel, suffer an atoning death, and rise again to return to his throne among the stars, even more powerful than before."
252. ↑ BRILL, summary of Questioning the Historicity of Jesus.
253. ↑ Gathercole, Simon. "The Historical and Human Existence of Jesus in Paul's Letters". Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 16.2–3 (2018): 183–212.
254. ↑ Price, Robert M. (2009). "Book review of D. M. Murdock (Acharya S.), Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection. Stellar House Publishing". http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/reviews/murdock_christ_egypt.htm.
255. ↑ Carrier, Richard (July 13, 2012b). "So...if Jesus Didn't Exist, Where Did He Come from Then?". http://www.richardcarrier.info/Historicity_of_Jesus.pdf.
256. ↑ Smith, Jonathan Z. (1990). Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of early Christianities and the Religions of late antiquity. University of Chicago Press. pp. 100–102. ISBN 9780226763637.
257. ↑ "Dying and Rising Gods". Encyclopedia of Religion (2nd ed.). Macmillan Reference USA. 2005. pp. 2535–2536,2539. ISBN 9780028659978. "The category of dying and rising gods, once a major topic of scholarly investigation, must now be understood to have been largely a misnomer based on imaginative reconstructions and exceedingly late or highly ambiguous texts... There is no unambiguous instance in the history of religions of a dying and rising deity....The majority of evidence for Near Eastern dying and rising deities occurs in Greek and Latin texts of late antiquity, usually post-Christian in date....This pattern will recur for many of the figures considered: an indigenous mythology and ritual focusing on the deity’s death and rituals of lamentation, followed by a later Christian report adding the element nowhere found in the earlier native sources, that the god was resurrected....As the above examples make plain, the category of dying and rising deities is exceedingly dubious. It has been based largely on Christian interest and tenuous evidence."
258. ↑ 258.0 258.1 258.2 The Historical Jesus of the Gospels, by Craig S. Keener, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2012. p. 336
259. ↑ Jesus and His Contemporaries: Comparative Studies, by Craig A. Evans, Brill, 2001. p. 48
260. ↑ British Romantic Writers and the East by Nigel Leask (2004) Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Cambridge Univ Press pp. 104–105
261. ↑ Stuart, Tristram (2007). The Bloodless Revolution. W. W. Norton. p. 591. ISBN 978-0-3930-5220-6. https://archive.org/details/bloodlessrevolut00stua. Retrieved September 20, 2018. "volney."
262. ↑ 262.0 262.1 Stephen Prickett (1995). "The Bible as holy book". Companion Encyclopedia of Theology. pp. 154–155. ISBN 978-0415064477.
263. ↑ Hurth, Elisabeth (2007). Between faith and unbelief : American transcendentalists and the challenge of atheism. Leiden: Brill. p. 77. ISBN 9789004161665. "Strauss arrived at a Christianity depersonalized and anonymous, reducing Jesus to nothing more than a gifted genius whom legend had gradually deified. In this account, the Christian faith could be explained without reference to the Jesus of history. Strauss in this way firmly stayed on the side of the negative critique. He did not arrive at a historical core of the life of Jesus..."
264. ↑ Beiser, Frederick C. (2020). David Friedrich Strauß, father of unbelief : an intellectual biography (First ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198859857.
265. ↑ 265.0 265.1 David Friedrich Strauss (2010), The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined, Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pp. 39–43, 87–91
266. ↑ 266.0 266.1 James A. Herrick (2003), The Making of the New Spirituality, Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pp. 58–65
267. ↑ Beilby, James K. and Eddy, Paul Rhodes. "The Quest for the Historical Jesus", in James K. Beilby and Paul Rhodes Eddy (eds.). The Historical Jesus: Five Views. Intervarsity, 2009, p. 16.
268. ↑ Strauss, David. The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, Calvin Blanchard, 1860.
269. ↑ "Kersey Graves and The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors" by Richard Carrier (2003)
270. ↑ Arthur Drew, 1926, The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus in Past and Present
271. ↑ Edwin Johnson (1887). Antiqua Mater: A Study of Christian Origins. Trübner. https://archive.org/details/antiquamaterast01johngoog.
272. ↑ Gray, Patrick (2016-04-19) (in de). Paul as a Problem in History and Culture: The Apostle and His Critics through the Centuries. Baker Academic. p. 85. ISBN 9781493403332. https://books.google.com/books?id=BQ4_CgAAQBAJ&pg=PT85.
273. ↑ Lockley, Philip (2013). Visionary Religion and Radicalism in Early Industrial England: From Southcott to Socialism. OUP Oxford. p. 168. ISBN 9780199663873. https://books.google.com/books?id=scL4a56tdM0C&pg=PA168.
274. ↑ Klausner, Joseph. Jesus of Nazareth. Bloch, 1989; first published 1925, pp. 105–106.
275. ↑ G. R. S. Mead and the Gnostic Quest by Clare Goodrick-Clarke (2005) Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". pp. 1–3
276. ↑ Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.? by G. R. S. Mead (1903) Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". (Cosimo Classics 2005) pp. 10–12
277. ↑ The Christ by John Remsburg 1909, Chapter 1: "Christ's Real Existence Impossible"
278. ↑ The Christ Myth by John Remsburg 1909, Chapter 2: "Silence of Contemporary Writers"
279. ↑ Drews' book was reviewed by A. Kampmeier in The Monist, volume 21, Number 3 (July 1911), pp. 412–432. [1]
280. ↑ James Thrower: Marxist-Leninist "Scientific Atheism" and the Study of Religion and Atheism. Walter de Gruyter, 1983, p. 426
281. ↑ Also see Edyth C. Haber: "The Mythic Bulgakov: 'The Master and Margarita' and Arthur Drews's 'The Christ Myth'", Slavic & East European Journal, vol. 43, issue 2, 1999, p. 347.
282. ↑ Nikiforov, Vladimir. "Russian Christianity", in James Leslie Houlden (ed.) Jesus in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO, 2003, p. 749.
283. ↑ Peris, Daniel. Storming the Heavens. Cornell University Press, 1998, p. 178.
284. ↑ Hibbert Journal Volume 37 (1938–39), pp. 193–214
285. ↑ Wells 1971, 1975, 1982
286. ↑ Carrier, Richard (2012). Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (pp. 11, 293f, n. 2–7).
287. ↑ Pfoh, Emanuel (2012). "Jesus and the Mythic Mind: An Epistemological Problem". in Thomas L. Thompson. "Is this Not the Carpenter?": The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus. Thomas S. Verenna. Equinox. pp. 80–81. ISBN 978-1-84553-986-3. "The main reason for holding to the historicity of the [gospel] figure of Jesus ... resides not primarily in historical evidence but derives instead from a modern theological necessity."
288. ↑ Ellegård, Alvar (1993). "Theologians as historians". Scandia 59 (2): 169–181 (170–171). "[M]ost present-day theologians also accept that large parts of the Gospel stories are, if not fictional, at least not to be taken at face value as historical accounts. On the other hand, no theologian seems to be able to ... admit that the question of the historicity of Jesus must be judged to be an open one.".
289. ↑ Is This Not the Carpenter? (Contents). Cambridge University Press. July 2012. ISBN 9781845539863. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/is-this-not-the-carpenter/23611D6CA766967BBE1A1A1AB66684FA. Retrieved May 4, 2017.
290. ↑ "Is Not This an Incompetent New Testament Scholar? A Response to Thomas L. Thompson | Bible Interp". https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/opeds/cas368006.
291. ↑ 291.0 291.1 Brodie, Thomas L. (2000). The crucial bridge: the Elijah–Elisha narrative as an interpretive synthesis of Genesis–Kings and a literary model of the Gospels. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press. pp. 1–3. ISBN 9780814659427. https://books.google.com/books?id=8ittqkiibm0C&pg=PA1.
292. ↑ "Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus—Official Dominican Response to a Controversial Book". Doctrine and Life. May–June 2014.
293. ↑ Barry, Cathal (April 10, 2014). "Cleric faces dismissal over claim that Jesus Christ 'did not exist'". Dublin: Irish Catholic. http://www.irishcatholic.ie/article/cleric-faces-dismissal-over-claim-jesus-christ-did-not-exist.'&rft.atitle=&rft.aulast=Barry&rft.aufirst=Cathal&rft.au=Barry, Cathal&rft.date=April+10,+2014&rft.place=Dublin&rft.pub=Irish+Catholic&rft_id=http://www.irishcatholic.ie/article/cleric-faces-dismissal-over-claim-jesus-christ-did-not-exist&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikibooks.org:Biography:Christ_myth_theory">
294. ↑ 294.0 294.1 The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Peter Flint and James VanderKam (2005) Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". T&T Clark pages 323–325
295. ↑ The Essenes, the Scrolls, and the Dead Sea by Joan E. Taylor (2012) Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". Oxford University Press p. 305
296. ↑ Hall, Mark. Foreword to Allegro, John M. The Dead Sea Scrolls & the Christian Myth. Prometheus 1992, first published 1979, p. ix.
297. ↑ Jenkins, Philip. Hidden Gospels. Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 180.
298. ↑ A History of the Middle East by Saul S. Friedman (2006) Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24". p. 82
299. ↑ "The Jesus Mysteries—a critique". http://your.sydneyanglicans.net/culture/thinking/387a/.
300. ↑ Bart Ehrman, interview with David V. Barrett, "The Gospel According to Bart", Fortean Times (221), 2007
301. ↑ "Ehrman on Jesus: A Failure of Facts and Logic". http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1026.
302. ↑ "Alvin Boyd Kuhn, Ph.D. A Biographical Sketch of his life and work", by Richard Alvin Sattelberg, B.A., M.S.., 2005
303. ↑ Porter, Stanley E.; Bedard, Stephen J. (2006). Unmasking the Pagan Christ: An Evangelical Response to the Cosmic Christ Idea. Clements Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-8946-6771-5. https://books.google.com/books?id=NwPvu3r6ZzUC.
304. ↑ "Review—Tom Harpur, The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light reviewed by Robert M. Price". 2009. http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/reviews/harpur_pagan_christ.htm.
305. ↑ Harpur, Tom (2008). Water Into Wine: An Empowering Vision of the Gospels. Dundurn.com. ISBN 9780887628276. https://books.google.com/books?id=5dZsAAAAQBAJ.
306. ↑ Lataster, Raphael (15 December 2014). "Weighing up the evidence for the 'Historical Jesus'" (in en). http://theconversation.com/weighing-up-the-evidence-for-the-historical-jesus-35319.
307. ↑ "Did historical Jesus really exist? The evidence just doesn't add up". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/18/did-historical-jesus-exist-the-traditional-evidence-doesnt-hold-up/.
308. ↑ Dickson, John (2014-12-24). "It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas ... Mythicism's in the Air". https://www.abc.net.au/religion/its-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-christmas-mythicisms-in-the-air/10098732.
309. ↑ Hansen, Christopher M. (2019–2020). "Book review: Questioning the Historicity of Jesus: Why A Philosophical Analysis Elucidates the Historical Discourse". McMaster Journal of Theology and Ministry 21: 75–79.
310. ↑ A. V. Andreyev (2015). "Diskussiya ob istorichnosti Yisusa Khrista v sovyetskom religiovyedeny" (in ru). Newspaper of Saint Tikhon's Orthodox University. http://pstgu.ru/download/1430825026.5_andreev_73-88.pdf.
311. ↑ Gololob G.. "Bogosloviye i natsional'ny vopros" (in ru). Gumer Library. http://www.gumer.info/bogoslov_Buks/bogoslov/Golol/03.php.
312. ↑ Casey, Maurice (2010) (in en). Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian's Account of His Life and Teaching. T&T Clark. pp. 33, 104, 499. ISBN 9780567645173. https://books.google.com/books?id=lXK0auknD0YC.
313. ↑ Dunkerley, Roderic (1957) (in en). Beyond the Gospels. Penguin Books. pp. 12. https://books.google.com/books?id=HlqkQgAACAAJ.
314. ↑ Betz, Otto (1968) (in en). What do we know about Jesus?. SCM Press. pp. 9. https://books.google.com/books?id=AV2YmQEACAAJ.
315. ↑ "The Academy Fellows". Australian Academy of the Humanities. http://www.humanities.org.au/Fellowship/FindFellows/tabid/123/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1092/Clarke-Graeme.aspx.
316. ↑ Dickson, John (March 21, 2008). "Facts and friction of Easter". Brisbane Times. http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/national/facts-and-friction-of-easter/2008/03/21/1205602592557.html?page=3.
317. ↑ McGrath, James. "Rankled by Wrangling over Rank-Raglan Rankings: Jesus and the Mythic Hero Archetype". University of Arizona. https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/2014/12/mcg388023.
318. ↑ Hansen, Christopher M. (2020). "Lord Raglan's Hero and Jesus: A Rebuttal to Methodologically Dubious Uses of the Raglan Archetype". Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism 16: 129–149. http://jgrchj.net/volume16/JGRChJ16-7_Hansen.pdf.
319. ↑ 319.0 319.1 319.2 319.3 Ehrman, Bart D. (March 20, 2012). "Did Jesus Exist?". Huffington Post. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bart-d-ehrman/did-jesus-exist_b_1349544.html.
320. ↑ Grace, John Patrick (July 21, 2015). "Questioning Jesus' existence is sheer madness". The Herald-Dispatch. http://www.herald-dispatch.com/opinion/john-patrick-grace-questioning-jesus-existence-is-sheer-madness/article_2223a091-477e-5f55-a8a8-ee50b372fe9e.html.
321. ↑ Alexander Lucie-Smith, People who think Jesus didn't exist are seriously confused, Catholic Herald
322. ↑ "Executive Summary". talkingjesus.com. https://talkingjesus.org/research/executive-summary.cfm.
323. ↑ "Jesus, his Birth and Resurrection: Fact or Fiction?" (in en-gb). December 29, 2020. https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/33539-jesus-his-birth-and-resurrection-fact-or-fiction.
324. ↑ "Historicity of Jesus". Internet Infidels. https://infidels.org/library/modern/theism/christianity/historicity.html.
325. ↑ Carrier, Richard (2013-10-10). "Atwill's Cranked-up Jesus". https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/4664.
326. ↑ Carrier, Richard (2024-08-12). "James Valliant's Bogus Theory of a Roman Invention of Christianity". https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/29939.

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* Zwartz, Barney. "Australians not so sceptical about Jesus, survey finds", The Age, April 7, 2009.

#### Web sources

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Larry Hurtado (December 2, 2017 ), Why the "Mythical Jesus" Claim Has No Traction with Scholars
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Ehrman, Bart D. (April 25, 2012). "Fuller Reply to Richard Carrier". https://ehrmanblog.org/fuller-reply-to-richard-carrier/.
3. ↑ Ehrman, Bart D. (September 28, 2015). "Early Christian Docetism". https://ehrmanblog.org/early-christian-docetism/.
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Duignan, Brian (2016), Religionsgeschichtliche Schule, Encyclopedia Britannica
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Kurt Rudolph (1987), Religionsgeschichtliche Schule, Encyclopedia of Religion
6. ↑ Lataster, Raphael (December 18, 2014). "Did historical Jesus really exist? The evidence just doesn't add up.". The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/18/did-historical-jesus-exist-the-traditional-evidence-doesnt-hold-up/.
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Philip Davies, Did Jesus Exist?
8. ↑ April DeConinck (2007), The Fourth Quest for the Historical Jesus?
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Benjamin I. Simpson, review of The Historiographical Jesus. Memory, Typology, and the Son of David
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Carrier, Richard (2014b). "Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt: Should We Still Be Looking for a Historical Jesus?". http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/2014/08/car388028.shtml.
11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Price, Robert (2009). "Bruno Bauer, Christ and the Caesars, reviewed by Robert M. Price". http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/reviews/bauer_christ_caesars.htm.
12. ↑ James F. McGrath (2007), What's Wrong With Penal Substitution?
13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Stephen Westerholm (2015), The New Perspective on Paul in Review, Direction, Spring 2015 · Vol. 44 No. 1 · pp. 4–15
14. ↑ Ehrman, Bart D. (June 7, 2014). "Christ as an Angel in Paul". https://ehrmanblog.org/christ-as-an-angel-in-paul-2/.
15. ↑ Bob Foster, The Messiah (Waddell)
16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 Joseph Jacobs, Moses Buttenwieser (1906), Messiah, Jewish Encyclopedia
17. ↑ James McGrath (sept. 16, 2012), Further Problematizing Richard Carrier's Claims about Jesus
18. ↑ Larry Hurtado (December 7, 2017 ), Gee, Dr. Carrier, You're Really Upset!
19. ↑ Larry Huratdo (December 11, 2017 ), On Accurate Representation of Texts
20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Larry Hurtado (29 June 2019), "Honoring the Son": An Entree Work
21. ↑ Carrier, Richard (February 13, 2016). "Can Paul's Human Jesus Not Be a Celestial Jesus?". http://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/9710.
22. ↑ Hoffmann, R. Joseph (2009). "Threnody: Rethinking the Thinking behind The Jesus Project". https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/opeds/hoffman1044.
23. ↑ Jenkins, Phillip (April 18, 2016). "The Myth of the Mythical Jesus". http://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2016/04/the-myth-of-the-mythical-jesus/#IGPQmrQ3pSPteW5M.99.
24. ↑ Godfrey, Neil (April 2, 2011). "Interview with Earl Doherty". http://vridar.org/2011/04/02/interview-with-earl-doherty/.

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## Further reading

Mainstream methodology

Journals

* Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, BRILL

Surveys

* Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus (4 Vols), BRILL, 2011, ISBN 9789004210219, https://brill.com/view/title/17737
* Evans, Craig A., ed. (2014), The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus, Routledge
* Eerdmans Historical Jesus Studies Collection (5 vols.)

History

* Weaver, Walter P. (1999), The Historical Jesus in the Twentieth Century: 1900–1950, A&C Black

Criteria for Authenticity

* Porter, Stanley E. (2004), Criteria for Authenticity in Historical-Jesus Research, Bloomsbury, ISBN 978-0567043603
* Jesus Research: New Methodologies and Perceptions—The Second Princeton-Prague Symposium on Jesus Research, Princeton 2007, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2014

Demise of Authenticity and call for Memory Studies

* Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012
* Kirk, Alan (2018), Memory and the Jesus Tradition, Bloomsbury Publishing

Criticism

* James Dunn (2005), A New Perspective on Jesus: What the Quest for the Historical Jesus Missed, Baker Academic

Proponents

* George Albert Wells (1975), Did Jesus Exist?
* Earl Doherty (1999), The Jesus Puzzle; republished (2009) as Jesus: Neither God nor Man—The Case for a Mythical Jesus; online
* Varieties of Jesus Mythicism: Did He Even Exist?. Hypatia Press. November 18, 2021. ISBN 978-1839191589.
* Robert M. Price (2003), The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man
* Robert M. Price (2011), The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems
* Price, Robert M. (2018). Bart Ehrman Interpreted. Pitchstone Publishing.
* "Is this Not the Carpenter?": The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus. Equinox. 2012. ISBN 978-1-84553-986-3. http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/carp358009.shtml.
* Brodie, Thomas L. (2012). Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery. Sheffield Phoenix Press. ISBN 978-1-9075-3458-4.
* Carrier, Richard (2014). On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix Press. ISBN 978-1-909697-35-5.

Scholarly critics

* G. W. F. Hegel, Das Leben Jesu, Bern, 1795
* Van Voorst, Robert E. (2000). Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8028-4368-5. https://books.google.com/books?id=lwzliMSRGGkC.
* Ehrman, Bart D. (2012). Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-220460-8.
* Casey, Maurice (2014). Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths?. Bloomsbury T & T Clark. ISBN 978-0-5672-9458-6. https://books.google.com/books?id=YTFiAgAAQBAJ.

## External links

Overview

* Religious Tolerance[Usurped!] General outline of range of views on Jesus from classical Christian to Jesus a mere man and Jesus entirely mythical
* Demolishing the historicity of Jesus – A History – List of Contemporary and Early proponents of Christ Myth Theory.
* A timeline of Jesus mythicism

Proponents

* Richard Carrier (2012), So...if Jesus Didn't Exist, Where Did He Come from Then?

Scholarly critics

* Larry Hurtado (December 4, 2017), "Mythical Jesus": The Fatal Flaws

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