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Doherty follows the thesis established by Bruno Bauer, Arthur Drews, Paul-Louis Couchoud, and G.A. Wells that the Jesus myth was given a historical setting only by the second generation of Christians, somewhere between the 1st and 2nd century. Using the argument established by Bauer in 1842,<ref>See Albert Schweitzer, ''The Quest of the Historical Jesus, A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede'' (1906, transl. W. Montgomery, 1910). </br>Ch. X, "The Marcan Hypothesis", p. 121-136, describes the discovery of the "priority of Mark" by Christian H. Weisse (1838) and Christian G. Wilke (1838). </br>Ch. XI, "The First Skeptical Life of Jesus", p. 137-160, is dedicated to Bruno Bauer and his revolutionary conclusions. After having first shown in 1840 that the Gospel of John was a "work of art" with "a purely literary origin", and not a historical one, (p. 139), Bauer accepted the "Marcan hypothesis" as demonstrated by Wilke and Weisse, which led him in 1841 to the inescapable conclusion that the Gospel of Mark was also "of purely literary origin" (p. 140).</ref> Doherty asserts as well that even the author of the [[Gospel of Mark]] probably did not consider his gospel to be a literal work of history, but an allegorical [[midrash]]ic composition based on the [[Old Testament]] [[Bible prophecy|prophecies]]. In the widely supported [[two-source hypothesis]], already endorsed by G.A. Wells, the story of Mark was later fused with a separate tradition of anonymous sayings embodied in the [[Q document]] into the other gospels; Doherty, echoing the thesis promoted by G.A. Wells,<ref>See G.A. Wells, ''The Jesus Legend'' (1996) and ''The Jesus Myth'' (1999)</ref> similarly asserts that these became interpreted as the literal history of the life of Jesus.
Doherty follows the thesis established by Bruno Bauer, Arthur Drews, Paul-Louis Couchoud, and G.A. Wells that the Jesus myth was given a historical setting only by the second generation of Christians, somewhere between the 1st and 2nd century. Using the argument established by Bauer in 1842,<ref>See Albert Schweitzer, ''The Quest of the Historical Jesus, A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede'' (1906, transl. W. Montgomery, 1910). </br>Ch. X, "The Marcan Hypothesis", p. 121-136, describes the discovery of the "priority of Mark" by Christian H. Weisse (1838) and Christian G. Wilke (1838). </br>Ch. XI, "The First Skeptical Life of Jesus", p. 137-160, is dedicated to Bruno Bauer and his revolutionary conclusions. After having first shown in 1840 that the Gospel of John was a "work of art" with "a purely literary origin", and not a historical one, (p. 139), Bauer accepted the "Marcan hypothesis" as demonstrated by Wilke and Weisse, which led him in 1841 to the inescapable conclusion that the Gospel of Mark was also "of purely literary origin" (p. 140).</ref> Doherty asserts as well that even the author of the [[Gospel of Mark]] probably did not consider his gospel to be a literal work of history, but an allegorical [[midrash]]ic composition based on the [[Old Testament]] [[Bible prophecy|prophecies]]. In the widely supported [[two-source hypothesis]], already endorsed by G.A. Wells, the story of Mark was later fused with a separate tradition of anonymous sayings embodied in the [[Q document]] into the other gospels; Doherty, echoing the thesis promoted by G.A. Wells,<ref>See G.A. Wells, ''The Jesus Legend'' (1996) and ''The Jesus Myth'' (1999)</ref> similarly asserts that these became interpreted as the literal history of the life of Jesus.


Doherty denies any historical value of the [[Acts of the Apostles]], and refers to works by John Knox, Joseph B. Tyson, J.C. O'Neill, [[Burton L. Mack]] and [[Richard Pervo]] in dating Acts into the 2nd century and regarding it as largely based on legend.<ref>{{cite web |last=Doherty |first=Earl |url=http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/newadvert.htm |title=Jesus: Neither God nor Man |page=470}}</ref> In 2009 Doherty self-published a revised edition of his book, with a new title of ''Jesus: Neither God nor Man'', expanded by incorporating the rebuttals to criticisms received since 1999 and accumulated on his website.<ref>{{cite web |last=Doherty |first=Earl |url=http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/newadvert.htm |title=Jesus: Neither God nor Man}}.</ref>
As part of the Christ Myth thesis,<ref>See Bruno Bauer, ‘’Die Apostelgeschichte : eine Ausgleichung des Paulinismus und des Judenthums innerhalb der christlichen Kirche’’ (‘’The Acts of the Apostles: a Balance of Paulinism and Judaism in the Christian Church’’, Berlin, G. Hempel, 1850), 
and G.A. Wells, ‘’The Historical Evidence for Jesus’’, (Prometheus Books, 1982)</ref> Doherty denies any historical value of the [[Acts of the Apostles]], and refers to works by John Knox, Joseph B. Tyson, J.C. O'Neill, [[Burton L. Mack]] and [[Richard Pervo]] in dating Acts into the 2nd century and regarding it as largely based on legend.<ref>{{cite web |last=Doherty |first=Earl |url=http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/newadvert.htm |title=Jesus: Neither God nor Man |page=470}}</ref> In 2009 Doherty self-published a revised edition of his book, with a new title of ''Jesus: Neither God nor Man'', expanded by incorporating the rebuttals to criticisms received since 1999 and accumulated on his website.<ref>{{cite web |last=Doherty |first=Earl |url=http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/newadvert.htm |title=Jesus: Neither God nor Man}}.</ref>


==Reception==
==Reception==

Revision as of 05:39, 8 May 2013

Earl Doherty
Born1941
EducationB.A. in Ancient History and Classical Languages (institution and date not identified)
OccupationWriter
Known forResearch into the Christ myth theory
Websitewww.jesuspuzzle.com

Earl J. Doherty (born 1941)[1] is a Canadian author of The Jesus Puzzle (1999), Challenging the Verdict (2001), and Jesus: Neither God Nor Man (2009). Doherty argues for a version of the Christ myth theory, the thesis that Jesus did not exist as an historical figure.

Education

Doherty claimed in 2009 to have a bachelor's degree in Ancient History and Classical Languages,[2] but no advanced degrees.[3][4] His undergraduate studies gave him knowledge of Greek and Latin, to which he has added a basic knowledge of Hebrew and Syriac.[4]

Writings

Doherty was introduced to the idea of a mythical origin of Jesus by, among other things, the work of G. A. Wells, who has authored a number of books arguing a moderate form of the "Christ myth" theory.[4] In 1999, his book The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? was published by Canadian Humanist Publications.[5] He self-published a 2005 re-release of The Jesus Puzzle under his own imprint, Age of Reason Publications,[6] along with two other books. Challenging the Verdict (2001) is a critique of The Case for Christ, a book of Christian apologetics by author Lee Strobel. Jesus: Neither God Nor Man (2009) is a revised and expanded version of The Jesus Puzzle.

The Jesus Puzzle

Doherty has used the title "The Jesus Puzzle" for four different works. In Fall 1997, the Journal of Higher Criticism published his article, "The Jesus Puzzle: Pieces in a Puzzle of Christian Origins."[7] His non-fiction book The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? was published two years later. He uses the title for a website where he publishes additional commentary and responses to reviews and criticisms of his work.[8] He also used the title for a novel which he provides for download on his website.[9]

In all four of these works, Doherty presents views on the origins of Christianity, specifically promoting the view that Jesus is a mythical figure rather than a historical person, in continuance of the denial of Jesus's historicity first formulated by Bruno Bauer (1842),[10] publicized by Arthur Drews in his Christ Myth (1909), William B. Smith in Ecce Deus (1913), John M. Robertson in The Jesus Problem (1917), Paul-Louis Couchoud in The Creation of Christ (1939), and recently revived by G.A. Wells in The Jesus of the Early Christians (1971). Doherty argues that Paul and other writers of the earliest existing proto-Christian Gnostic documents did not believe in Jesus as a person who incarnated on Earth in an historical setting. Rather, they believed in Jesus as a heavenly being who suffered his sacrificial death in the lower spheres of heaven in the hands of the demon spirits, and was subsequently resurrected by God. This Christ myth was not based on a tradition reaching back to a historical Jesus, but on the Old Testament exegesis in the context of Jewish-Hellenistic religious syncretism heavily influenced by Middle Platonism, and what the authors believed to be mystical visions of a risen Jesus.

Doherty follows the thesis established by Bruno Bauer, Arthur Drews, Paul-Louis Couchoud, and G.A. Wells that the Jesus myth was given a historical setting only by the second generation of Christians, somewhere between the 1st and 2nd century. Using the argument established by Bauer in 1842,[11] Doherty asserts as well that even the author of the Gospel of Mark probably did not consider his gospel to be a literal work of history, but an allegorical midrashic composition based on the Old Testament prophecies. In the widely supported two-source hypothesis, already endorsed by G.A. Wells, the story of Mark was later fused with a separate tradition of anonymous sayings embodied in the Q document into the other gospels; Doherty, echoing the thesis promoted by G.A. Wells,[12] similarly asserts that these became interpreted as the literal history of the life of Jesus.

As part of the Christ Myth thesis,[13] Doherty denies any historical value of the Acts of the Apostles, and refers to works by John Knox, Joseph B. Tyson, J.C. O'Neill, Burton L. Mack and Richard Pervo in dating Acts into the 2nd century and regarding it as largely based on legend.[14] In 2009 Doherty self-published a revised edition of his book, with a new title of Jesus: Neither God nor Man, expanded by incorporating the rebuttals to criticisms received since 1999 and accumulated on his website.[15]

Reception

Among authors sympathetic to the view that Jesus never existed, Doherty's work has received mixed reactions. The Jesus Puzzle has received favorable reviews from skeptics Robert M. Price and Richard Carrier.[16] Frank Zindler, former editor of American Atheist, in a review of The Jesus Puzzle described it as "the most compelling argument against the historical Jesus published in my life-time".[17]

George Albert Wells, who now argues a more moderate form of the Christ myth and who rejects Doherty's view that the mythical Jesus of Paul did not also descend to Earth,[18] has nonetheless described The Jesus Puzzle as an "important book".[19] R. Joseph Hoffmann considers that there are "reasons for scholars to hold" the view that Jesus never existed, but considers Doherty "A 'disciple' of Wells" who "has rehashed many of the former’s views in The Jesus Puzzle (Age of Reason Publications, 2005) which is qualitatively and academically far inferior to anything so far written on the subject".[20] Doherty has responded that his work owes very little to Wells.[21]

Writers who do not necessarily support the hypothesis that Jesus did not exist have found merit in some of Doherty's arguments. Hector Avalos has written that The Jesus Puzzle outlines a plausible theory for a completely mythical Jesus."[22]

Doherty on the other hand has received strong criticism for his work. Bart Ehrman, an expert on textual criticism of the NT and Early Christianity, has dismissed Jesus, Neither God nor Man as "filled with so many unguarded and undocumented statements and claims, and so many misstatements of fact, that it would take a 2,400-page book to deal with all the problems...Not a single early Christian source supports Doherty's claim that Paul and those before him thought of Jesus as a spiritual, not a human being, who was executed in the spiritual, not the earthly realm."[23] Richard Carrier has commented: "Doherty’s monstrous second book... is 90% speculative digression (hundreds and hundreds of pages worth) which is exactly the kind of thing that chaps the hide of professional scholars." [24]

Christian apologist Michael R. Licona compared Doherty's views to the Holocaust denial of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: "Doherty & Associates are baffled that all but a few naïve onlookers pass them by quickly, wagging their heads and rolling their eyes. They never see that they have a fellow picketer less than a hundred yards away, a distinguished looking man from Iran. He too is frustrated and carries a sign that says “The Holocaust Never Happened!"[25]

Bibliography

  • Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus. Age of Reason Publications. 2009. ISBN 0-9689259-2-8.
  • The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ?. Ottawa: Age of Reason Publications. 2005 [1999]. ISBN 0-9689259-1-X.
  • Challenging the Verdict: A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel's "The Case for Christ". Ottawa: Age of Reason Publications. 2001. ISBN 0-9689259-0-1.
  • "The Jesus Puzzle: Pieces in a Puzzle of Christian Origins". This is the version published in the Age of Reason site. Originally published in Journal of Higher Criticism 4/2 (Fall 1997), p.68-102.
  • The End of an Illusion: How Bart Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist?" Has Laid the Case for an Historical Jesus to Rest. Ottawa: Age of Reason Publications 2012

References

  1. ^ Library of Congress authority file, accessed April 18, 2010.
  2. ^ Jesus, Neither God nor Man, 2009, Preface p. ix: "I will end here on a personal note that was lacking in the original book [1999, reprint 2005]. My formal education consisted of a B.A. with Distinction in Ancient History and Classical Languages, (Greek and Latin, the former being essential in any research into the New Testament). Unfortunately, I was forced to suspend my M.A. program due to health reasons and did not return."
  3. ^ Ehrman, Bart D (2012). Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. New York: HarperCollins. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-06-220460-8.
  4. ^ a b c Doherty, Earl. "The Jesus Puzzle: Main Articles - Preamble". Retrieved 21 December 2012.
  5. ^ Doherty, Earl (2005) [1999]. The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ?. Ottawa: Age of Reason Publications. ISBN 0-9689259-1-X.
  6. ^ Age of Reason Publications website
  7. ^ Doherty, Earl (1997). "The Jesus Puzzle: Pieces in a Puzzle of Christian Origins". Journal of Higher Criticism. 4 (2). {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  8. ^ Doherty, Earl. "The Jesus Puzzle: Was There No Historical Jesus?". Retrieved 2009-07-02.
  9. ^ Doherty, Earl (1999). The Jesus Puzzle: A Novel About the Greatest Question of Our Time.
  10. ^ See Albert Schweitzer's The Quest of the Historical Jesus, A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (1906, transl. W. Montgomery, 1910), Ch. XI on Bruno Bauer, p. 157. Bruno Bauer denied the historicity of Christ in vol. III, 1842, p. 308, of Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker (Criticism of the Gospel History of the Synoptics, 3 vols., Leipzig, 1841-1842). The denial was repeated and strengthened ten years later in Kritik der Evangelien (Criticism of the Gospels, 2 vols., 1850-1851, Berlin). Those key books have never been translated into English, but are thoroughly analyzed by Schweitzer in Ch. XI dedicated to Bruno Bauer.
  11. ^ See Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (1906, transl. W. Montgomery, 1910).
    Ch. X, "The Marcan Hypothesis", p. 121-136, describes the discovery of the "priority of Mark" by Christian H. Weisse (1838) and Christian G. Wilke (1838).
    Ch. XI, "The First Skeptical Life of Jesus", p. 137-160, is dedicated to Bruno Bauer and his revolutionary conclusions. After having first shown in 1840 that the Gospel of John was a "work of art" with "a purely literary origin", and not a historical one, (p. 139), Bauer accepted the "Marcan hypothesis" as demonstrated by Wilke and Weisse, which led him in 1841 to the inescapable conclusion that the Gospel of Mark was also "of purely literary origin" (p. 140).
  12. ^ See G.A. Wells, The Jesus Legend (1996) and The Jesus Myth (1999)
  13. ^ See Bruno Bauer, ‘’Die Apostelgeschichte : eine Ausgleichung des Paulinismus und des Judenthums innerhalb der christlichen Kirche’’ (‘’The Acts of the Apostles: a Balance of Paulinism and Judaism in the Christian Church’’, Berlin, G. Hempel, 1850), 
and G.A. Wells, ‘’The Historical Evidence for Jesus’’, (Prometheus Books, 1982)
  14. ^ Doherty, Earl. "Jesus: Neither God nor Man". p. 470.
  15. ^ Doherty, Earl. "Jesus: Neither God nor Man"..
  16. ^ Carrier, Richard (2002). "Did Jesus Exist? Earl Doherty and the Argument to Ahistoricity". The Secular Web. Retrieved 2009-06-23.
  17. ^ Zindler, Frank R. (2000–2001). "The Christ Myth Revisited". American Atheist. 39 (1). Archived from the original on Jan 08, 2008. Retrieved 2009-06-23. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |year= and |archivedate= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  18. ^ Wells, G. A. (1999). "Earliest Christianity". New Humanist. 114 (3): 13–18. Retrieved 2009-06-23. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  19. ^ Wells, G. A. (2004). Can We Trust the New Testament?. Peru, Illinois: Open Court. p. 202. ISBN 0-8126-9567-4.
  20. ^ Hoffmann, R. Joseph (2006). "Maurice Goguel and the 'Myth Theory' of Christian Origins". In Goguel, Maurice (ed.). Jesus the Nazarene: Myth or History?. translated by Frederick Stephens, with a new introduction by R. Joseph Hoffmann. Amherst, NY: Prometheus. pp. 15, 39 n. 31. ISBN 1-59102-370-X.
  21. ^ http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/JesusProject.htm
  22. ^ Avalos, Hector (2007). The End of Biblical Studies. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books. p. 197. ISBN 978-1-59102-536-8.
  23. ^ Ehrman, Bart (2012). Did Jesus Exist?. pp. 252–258.
  24. ^ Richard Carrier, "Proving History", Feb. 8, 2012, Comment 7.2
  25. ^ Licona, Michael R. "Licona's Reply to Doherty". Retrieved June 26, 2012.

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