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This article is about the view that Jesus never existed. For a discussion of Jesus in the context of comparative mythology, see Jesus Christ in comparative mythology.
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The Christ myth theory (sometimes called the Christ myth, Jesus myth, or nonexistence hypothesis) is the contention that Jesus of Nazareth did not exist as a historical person, that the Jesus of early Christianity was a personification of an ideal saviour or mythical being to whom earthly events were later attached.[10] Proponents of a mythical origin of Christianity occasionally allow that some gospel material may have been drawn from a historical preacher or preachers, but that these individuals were not in any sense "the founder of Christianity". Rather, they contend that Christianity emerged organically from Hellenistic Judaism.[11]

The proponents of the theory trace the evolution of Christianity through a conjectural understanding of the evolution of the New Testament literature and thus give primacy to the epistles over the gospels in determining the views of the earliest Christians. Attention is often drawn to a lack of contemporary allusions to Jesus in literature produced in the first century and ostensible parallels between Jesus' biography and those of mythological figures popular at the time, such as Dionysis, Osiris, and Mithras.

The origins of the theory can be traced to the French Enlightenment thinkers Constantin-François Volney and Charles François Dupuis in the 1790s and the first academic advocate was the 19th century historian and theologian Bruno Bauer. Proponents such as Arthur Drews were notable in biblical studies during the early 20th century. And authors such as George Albert Wells, Robert M. Price, and Earl Doherty have recently re-popularised the theory among lay audiences.

The Christ myth theory is essentially without supporters in modern academic circles, biblical scholars and historians being highly dismissive of it,[51] viewing it as pseudo-scholarship.[42] Some of these specialists have even gone so far as to compare the theory's methodological basis with that of flat-earthism, Holocaust denial and moon landing skepticism.[55]

History of advocacy

Early proponents

Doubt about the historical existence of Jesus emerged when critical study of the gospels developed in the 18th century,[56] and some English deists towards the end of that century are said to have believed that no historical Jesus existed.[57]

Constantin-François Volney and Charles François Dupuis

The "great forerunners" of the nonhistoricity hypothesis, though, are usually identified as two thinkers of the French Enlightenment, Constantin-François Volney and Charles François Dupuis.[58] In works published in the 1790s, both argued that numerous ancient myths, including the life of Jesus, were based on the movement of the sun through the zodiac.[59]

Dupuis identified pre-Christian rituals in Syria, Egypt and Persia which he believed represented the birth of a god to a virgin mother at the winter solstice and connected this to the winter rising of the constellation of Virgo. He believed that this and other annual occurrences were allegorised as the life-histories of solar deities (such as Sol Invictus), who passed their childhoods in obscurity (low elevation of the sun after the solstice), died (winter) and were resurrected (spring equinox). Dupuis argued that Jewish and Christian scriptures could also be interpreted according to the solar pattern: the Fall of Man in Genesis was an allegory of the hardship caused by winter, and the resurrection of Christ the "paschal lamb" at Easter represented the growth of the Sun's strength in the sign of Aries at the spring solstice.[60] Drawing on this conceptual foundation, Dupuis rejected the historicity of Jesus entirely, explaining Tacitus' reference to Jesus as nothing more than an echo of the inaccurate beliefs of Christians current in Tacitus' own day.[61]

Volney, who published before Dupuis but made use of a draft version of Dupuis' work,[62] followed much of his argument. Volney differed, though, in thinking that the gospel story was not a conscientious extended allegory grounded in solar-myths, but was compiled organically/accidentally when simple allegorical statements like "the virgin has brought forth" were misunderstood as history.[63] Volney further parted company from Dupuis by allowing that confused memories of an obscure historical figure may have contributed to Christianity when they were integrated with the solar mythology.[64]

The works of Volney and Dupuis moved rapidly through numerous editions, allowing the thesis to circulate widely.[65] Napoleon may have been basing his opinion on Volney's work when he stated privately that the existence of Jesus was an open question.[66] However, their influence even in France did not outlast the first quarter of the nineteenth century.[65] They had based their views on limited historical data and later critics showed, for example, that the birth of Jesus was not placed in December until the 4th century.[67]

Bruno Bauer

Main article: Bruno Bauer
Young man with delicate features wearing a black jacket looking slightly to the viewer's left
Bruno Bauer

Scholarly attention to the possibility of Jesus' non-existence began with the 19th-century German historian Bruno Bauer. In a series of studies produced while he was teaching at the University of Bonn (1839–1842), Bauer disputed the historical value of the New Testament gospels. In his view, the Gospel of John was not a historical narrative but an adaptation of the traditional Jewish religio-political idea of the Messiah to Philo's philosophical concept of the "Logos". Turning to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Bauer followed earlier critics in regarding them as dependent on Mark's narrative, but he rejected the standard view that they also drew upon a common tradition apart from Mark which is now lost—a source scholars generally call "Q". For Bauer, this latter possibility was ruled out by the incompatible stories of Jesus' nativity found in Matthew and Luke, as well as by the way the non-Markan material found in these documents still appeared to develop Markan ideas. Bauer instead concluded that Matthew depended on Luke for the content found only in those two gospels. The entire gospel tradition could be traced to a single author (Mark), Bauer felt that the hypothesis of outright invention became credible.[68] He further believed that there was no expectation of a Messiah among Jews in the time of Tiberius and that Mark's portrayal of Jesus as the Messiah must therefore be a retrojection of later Christian beliefs and practices, an interpretation Bauer extended to many of the specific stories recounted in the Gospels.[69]

While Bauer initially left open the question of whether a historical Jesus existed at all, his published views were sufficiently unorthodox that in 1842 they cost him his lectureship at Bohn.[70] In a revised edition of his work on the gospels, published in 1850–1851, Bauer dated all the New Testament epistles to the late 2nd century and concluded that Jesus had not existed. Bauer's own comprehensive explanation of Christian origins appeared in 1877. The religion was a synthesis of the Stoicism of Seneca the Younger whom Bauer believed had planned to create a new Roman state based on his philosophy, with the Jewish theology of Philo as developed politically by pro-Roman Jews such as Josephus.[71] Bauer held that Mark was an Italian who had been influenced by Seneca's Stoic philosophy,[72] and that the Christian movement originated in Rome and Alexandria.[73]

Bauer's views proved to be foundational for much of the Christ myth community of later generations. While subsequent arguments against a historical Jesus were not all directly dependent on Bauer's work, they usually echoed it on several general points: New Testament references to Jesus lacked historical value, the lack of 1st-century non-Christian references to Jesus was evidence against his existence, and Christianity originated through syncretism.[74]

Radical Dutch school

In the 1870s and 1880s, a group of scholars associated with the University of Amsterdam, who were known in German scholarship as the "Radical Dutch school", followed Bauer in rejecting the authenticity of the Pauline epistles and took a generally negative view of the Bible's historical value. Within this group, the existence of Jesus was rejected by Allard Pierson, S. Hoekstra and Samuel Adrian Naber, while others came close to that position but concluded that the Gospels contained a core of historical fact.[75]

Early 20th century

By the early twentieth century a number of writers had published arguments against Jesus' historicity, ranging from the fairly scholarly to the highly fanciful. For example, Edwin Johnson denied not only a historical Jesus but nearly all recorded history prior to the 16th century A.D. as well.[76] Despite their uneveness, these treatments were sufficiently influential to merit several book-length responses by historians and New Testament scholars. Proponents of the Christ myth theory increasingly drew on the work of liberal theologians, who tended to deny any value to sources for Jesus outside the New Testament and to limit their attention within the canon to Mark and the hypothetical Q document.[77] Thus when the Zurich professor Paul Wilhelm Schmiedel identified just nine "pillar passages" in the gospels which he thought early Christians could not have invented, they "proved to be a tempting target for the deniers of Jesus' historicity"—despite Schmiedel's intention that these passages serve as the foundation for a fuller reconstruction of Jesus' life.[78] These authors also made use of the growing field of Religiongeschichte—the "history of religions"—which seemed to find sources for many Christian ideas in Greek and Oriental mystery cults rather than in the life of Jesus and Palestinian Judaism.[79]

J. M. Robertson

Main article: J. M. Robertson

Against this intellectual backdrop, in 1900 J. M. Robertson, a British freethinker and journalist, began to promote his account of Christian origins.[80] In Robertson's view, belief in a slain Messiah arose before the New Testament period within sects later known as Ebionites or Nazarenes. Robertson argued that these groups would have expected a Messiah named Jesus, a hope possibly based on a conjectured divinity of that name reflected in the biblical Joshua.[81] He further felt that an additional but less significant basis for early Christian belief may have been the executed Jesus Pandira, placed by the Talmud in about 100 BCE.[82]

Robertson noted that while the undisputed letters of Paul of Tarsus are the earliest surviving Christian writings, these epistles are primarily concerned with theology and morality, largely glossing over the life of Jesus. Once references to "the twelve" and to Jesus' institution of the Eucharist were rejected as interpolations, Robertson argued that the Jesus of the Pauline epistles is reduced to a crucified savior who "counts for absolutely nothing as a teacher or even as a wonder-worker".[83] As a result, Robertson concluded that those elements of the Gospel narrative which attribute such characteristics to Jesus must have developed later, probably among Gentile believers who were converted by Jewish evangelists like Paul.[84] The Gentile party represented Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection in mystery-plays in which, wishing to disassociate the cult from Judaism, they attributed his execution to the Jewish authorities and his betrayal to "a Jew" (Ioudaios, misunderstood as Judas).[85] Such plays evolved over time into the gospels.[86] Christianity sought to further enhance its appeal to Gentiles by adopting myths from pagan cults, albeit with some "Judaic manipulation"─thus Jesus' healings came from Asclepius, feeding of multitudes from Dionysus, the Eucharist from the worship of Dionysus and Mithras, and walking on water from Poseidon, but his descent from David and his raising of a widow's son from the dead were in deference to Jewish Messianic expectations.[87] And while the Fourth Gospel's portrayal of Jesus as Logos was ostensibly Jewish, Robertson argued that the underlying concept ultimately derived from the function of Mithras, Thoth and Hermes as representatives to humanity from the supreme god.

William Benjamin Smith

Main article: William Benjamin Smith

At around the same time, William Benjamin Smith, a professor of mathematics at Tulane University, argued in a series of books that the earliest Christian sources, particularly the Pauline epistles, stress Christ's divinity at the expense of any human personality, and that this would have been implausible if there had been a human Jesus. Smith therefore believed that Christianity's origins lay in a pre-Christian Jesus cult—that is, in a Jewish sect that had worshipped a divine being named Jesus in the centuries before the human Jesus was supposedly born.[88] Evidence for this cult was supposedly found in Hippolytus' mention of the Naassenes[89] and Epiphanius' report of a Nazaraean or Nazorean sect that existed before Christ, as well as in passages in Acts.[90] On this view the seemingly historical details in the New Testament were built by the early Christian community around narratives of the pre-Christian Jesus.[91] In keeping with his theory, Smith also argued against the historical value of non-Christian writers regarding Jesus, particularly Josephus and Tacitus.[92]

Arthur Drews

A middle-aged man with a small pointed beard and black bow-tie in profile
Arthur Drews.
Main article: Arthur Drews

Whatever modest fame Robertson and Smith had achieved, they were soon over-shadowed by Arthur Drews, a professor of philosophy at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe, when he published Die Christusmythe ("The Christ Myth") in 1909.[93] This work brought together the scholarship of the day in defense of the idea that Christianity had been a Jewish Gnostic cult that spread by appropriating aspects of Greek philosophy and Frazerian death-rebirth deities. Drews' claimed that his "purpose was to show that everything about the historical Jesus had a mythical character and thus it was not necessary to presuppose that a historical figure ever existed."[94] His work proved popular enough in both his native Germany and abroad that prominent theologians and historians addressed Drews' arguments. Responses appeared in the Hibbert Journal, the American Journal of Theology, and other leading journals of religion.[95] Further, at least two monographs on the historicity of Jesus were written partially in refutation of Drews.[96] In response to his critics, Drews appeared at a series of public debates, the most famous of which occurred on January 31–February 1, 1910 at the Berlin Zoological Garden against Hermann von Soden of the Berlin University.[97]

Other writers

A variety of other less well known authors advocated versions of the Christ myth theory during this period as well. A. D. Loman argued that episodes in Jesus' life, such as the Sermon on the Mount, were fictions written to justify compilations of pre-existing liberal Jewish sayings. G. J. P. J. Bolland developed the hypothesis that Christianity evolved from Gnosticism and that Jesus was merely a symbolic figure representing Gnostic ideas about God.[98] G. R. S. Mead took a somewhat different approach, not explicitly denying the historicity of Jesus but rather arguing that he was based on an obscure personage, recorded in the Talmud, who lived around 100 BCE. Albert Kalthoff wrote that Jesus was an idealized personification created by a proto-communist community and that incidents in the gospels were adapted from first-to-third century Roman history.[99] Peter Jensen saw Jesus as a Jewish adaptation of Gilgamesh whom Jensen regarded as a solar deity.[100] And Joseph Wheless claimed there was an active conspiracy among Christians, going back as far as the second century, to forge documents to make a mythical Jesus seem historical.[101] Even the celebrated philosopher Bertrand Russell, in his famous lecture "Why I Am Not a Christian", referred to the possible non-existence of a historical Jesus.[102]

A firing squad aims at a bound man while Jesus approaches the condemned
"The Mystery of Christ", anti-Christian agitprop.

Soviet adoption

In addition to these men, the Christ myth theory had appealed to both Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, and it became something of an official view within Marxism.[103] The government of the Soviet Union adopted the theory, promoting the work of Arthur Drews especially as a central element in its larger anti-religious campaign.[104] In keeping with this campaign, the Christ myth theory was disseminated throughout the USSR by official mandate through secondary schools and university text books.[105] Public debates were organized in the 1920s in which government operatives, including the Commissar of Education, Anatoly Lunacharsky, debated clergymen over the historical existence of Jesus.[106] Academics in the Soviet Union would continue to promote the Christ myth theory throughout the nation's early history, only slowly revising their views in the later portion of the 20th century.[107]

Recent proponents

John M. Allegro

Main article: John M. Allegro

The Dead Sea scrolls scholar John M. Allegro is likely the earliest well-known modern advocate of the Christ myth theory. In a number of books including The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross and The Dead Sea Scrolls & the Christian Myth, Allegro proposed that Christianity began as a shamanic cult centering around the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms. He claimed the faith had derived its central mythos from Essene sources.[108]

George Albert Wells

Main article: George Albert Wells

G. A. Wells, professor of German at the University of London, quickly superseded Allegro as the premier advocate of the Christ myth theory. Emphasizing the New Testament epistles and the paucity of early non-Christian documents attesting to a historical Jesus, Wells originally argued that the Jesus of earliest Christianity was a pure myth, derived from mystical speculations stemming from the Jewish Wisdom tradition. According to this view, the earliest strata of the New Testament literature presented Jesus as "a basically supernatural personage only obscurely on Earth as a man at some unspecified period in the past".[109]

In The Jesus Myth (1999), however, Wells drastically altered his position, contending that there were two distinct figures of Jesus: the mythic Jesus of Paul and a minimally historical Jesus found in the gospels. Wells spelled out his new position in Can We Trust the New Testament? (2003): "This Galilean Jesus [behind the gospels] was not crucified and was not believed to have been resurrected after his death. The dying and rising Christ─devoid of time and place─of the early epistles is a quite different figure, and must have a different origin." Robert Van Voorst has described this change of mind as an "about-face" and a rejection of the Christ myth,[110] a sentiment shared by some within the Christ myth community itself.[111]

An older man with a full beard grimacing playfully at the viewer
Robert M. Price

Robert M. Price

Main article: Robert M. Price

While not unequivocally supporting the Christ myth theory, Robert M. Price has sought to revive the thesis in a series of books including Deconstructing Jesus, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, and his contributions to The Historical Jesus: Five Views.[112] In these works and elsewhere Price argues that Christianity is largely a Judaized and historicized synthesis of Egyptian, Greek, and Buddhist myths.[113] Price further claims that if critical methodology is applied with "ruthless consistency", one is left in complete agnosticism regarding Jesus' historicity,[114] and that therefore to assert such a person ever actually existed is "almost arbitrary."[115]

Other writers

In addition to the academics and semi-academics mentioned above, the Christ myth theory has been advanced by several non-specialists in recent years, often through self-published books and websites. While largely uncredentialed, a few of these authors have achieved a degree of notability in their own right: Earl Doherty claims no historical Jesus stands behind even the most primitive hypothetical sources of the New Testament,[116] since Jesus was originally a myth derived from Middle Platonism with some influence from Jewish mysticism,[117] with belief in a historical Jesus only emerging among Christian communities well into the second century.[118] Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy have stated that the gospels "can tell us nothing at all about an historical Jesus because no such man ever existed."[119] They maintain that a Gnostic belief in a purely mythical Jesus was the original form of Christianity which was supplanted and then suppressed by the Catholic Church—a development the authors describe as "the greatest cover-up in history."[120] D. M. Murdock (publishing in part pseudonymously as Acharya S) has argued that virtually all the New Testament documents are "forgeries"[121] with the canonical gospels (all composed in the late second century)[122] misrepresenting as historical a Jesus who was initially understood as a solar myth.[123]

Finally, the Christ myth theory has entered popular culture through a variety of avenues. Films such as the conspiratorial Zeitgeist and the satirical Religulous discuss the theory at some length. Also, like Russell before him, "New Atheism" advocate Richard Dawkins has made passing reference to the theory in his book The God Delusion.[124] Slogans such as "Jesus never existed" have become something of a meme, appearing in graffiti and on merchandise of various sorts.[125]

Arguments

While the different proponents of the theory have held sometimes significantly differing views, a number of broadly identifiable themes appear with some regularity in literature advocating the Christ myth.

Evolution of New Testament literature

Many proponents of the Christ myth theory note that among the New Testament documents, the epistles—specifically the undisputed epistles of Paul—constitute the oldest sources related to Jesus. Advocates also note that within this earliest stratum of Christian literature, references to biographical details and teachings associated with Jesus are relatively rare.[126] Further, the fuller depictions of Jesus’ life and ministry found in the gospels demonstrate a textual interdependence which Christ myth theory advocates argue undermines the notion that multiple independent sources stand behind the accounts. On this basis, proponents often theorize that the epistles present an early belief in a purely mythical savior-figure who was subsequently historicized (perhaps in a conscientiously allegorical fashion) by the Gospel According to Mark, with Matthew, Luke, and John further imaginatively embellishing Mark’s narrative in their own derivative gospels.[68]

Scarcity and unreliability of extra-biblical sources

Christ myth theorists often reject the testimony of the Apostolic Fathers, who seem to indicate an early belief in a historical Jesus (such as Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch), by either deeming their writings spurious forgeries or by bracketing off the most pertinent passages in their works as later interpolations.[127]

Advocates also often cite the relative paucity of contemporary non-Christian sources that mention Jesus, arguing that such an absence of evidence constitutes evidence of absence.[128] The few non-Christian sources that do, however, refer to Jesus are routinely deconstructed, with some (such as the remarks of Josephus) being rejected as corrupt and others (such as Tacitus’ passing reference) being relativized as dependent on the confused beliefs of later Christians and thus providing no independent corroboration of their claims.[92]

Mythological parallels

Main article: Jesus Christ in comparative mythology
Symmetrical depictions of two mothers, seated, with their respective children on their laps
Isis & Horus and Mary & Jesus

Perhaps the most common argument presented in connection with the Christ myth theory is that the biblical material related to the life of Jesus bears allegedly striking similarities to both Jewish and pagan stories which preceded it. Parallels are often cited between Jesus and Old Testament figures such as Moses, Joseph, and Elisha and a wide range of pagan mythological personages.[129] For example, exponents have claimed that, according to classical mythological sources, Mithras was born to a virgin mother,[130] Horus had twelves disciples,[131] Attis was crucified,[132] Osiris was resurrected from the dead,[133] and so on. Sometimes appeal is made to broader anthropological understandings of religion and ritual patterns of human behavior as postulated by James Frazer and others in such works as The Golden Bough.[134] Christ myth advocates believe that the parallels demonstrate borrowing, with the early Christian community adapting existing mythologies to their particular socio-religious tastes.[135] These parallels are further thought to extend to every identifiable element of Jesus' biography, rendering the biblical portrait of Jesus entirely explicable with reference to literary antecedents and thus making a historical figure superfluous.[136]

Scholarly reception

Historical responses

Despite the efforts of its promoters, the Christ myth theory has never achieved mainstream academic credibility.[24] From its very inception it provoked scholarly refutations, often of rather dismissive sorts. The earliest of these were satirical treatments by Richard Whately and Jean-Baptiste Pérès entitled "Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Buonaparte" (1819)[137] and "Grand Erratum" (1827)[138] respectively. These works utilized the skepticism of Dupuis and others in a tongue-in-cheek fashion to argue against the historical existence of Napoleon Bonaparte—who was still alive at the time Whately published.[139]

More sober refutations of the Christ myth were published at the dawn of the twentieth century.[140] In 1914 Fred C. Conybeare published The Historical Christ[141] in which he argued vigorously against Robertson, Drews, and Smith in favor of Jesus' historical existence. Conybeare was followed by the French biblical scholar Maurice Goguel, who published Jesus of Nazareth: Myth or History? in 1926.[142] In this text, described by R. Joseph Hoffmann as "perhaps the best of its kind",[143] Goguel rejected arguments for a "pre-Christianity" and argued that prima facie evidence for a historical Jesus came from the agreement on his existence between ancient orthodox Christians, Docetists, and opponents of Christianity. Goguel proceeded to examine the theology of the Pauline epistles, the other New Testament epistles, the gospels, and the Book of Revelation, as well as belief in Jesus' resurrection and divinity, arguing in each case that early Christian views were best explained by a tradition stemming from a recent historical Jesus.[144]

Later editions of Albert Schweitzer's magisterial The Quest of the Historical Jesus likewise contained a lengthy section on the Christ myth theory, ultimately concluding "that Jesus did exist is exceedingly likely, whereas its converse is exceedingly unlikely."[38] Further refutations were produced by various scholars in response to novel articulations of the theory throughout the last century, with some of the more substantial contemporary treatments being R. T. France's The Evidence for Jesus (1986),[145] Robert Van Voorst's Jesus Outside the New Testament (2000),[146] and The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition (2007),[147] coauthored by Paul Eddy and Greg Boyd.

Beyond these general treatments of the Christ myth theory as a whole, responses connected to specific exponents of the theory have also been offered. Of the theory's more recent advocates, John Allegro,[148] G. A. Wells,[22] Robert Price,[150] Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy and D. M. Murdock,[33] and Earl Doherty have each been the subject of such critical comments.[41][45]

Affirmation of a historical Jesus

Main article: Historicity of Jesus

The scholarly mainstream routinely notes that while many versions of the Christ myth theory assume that Christianity had obscure beginnings, such views fail to notice that early Christians appealed to historical events already known by the general public.[151] For example, Acts records such an appeal before King Agrippa: "For the king knows about these matters, and I speak to him also with confidence, since I am persuaded that none of these things escape his notice; for this has not been done in a corner.”Ac 26:26Template:Bibleverse with invalid book Further, early Christians opposed speculative and mythical notions by appealing to eyewitness accounts.[152]

In addition to these preliminary points, a number of commonly accepted critical criteria establish the historicity of Jesus and thus oppose the Christ myth theory: the principles of multiple attestation, enemy attestation, and double dissimilarity (sometimes called the "principle of embarrassment").

  • Multiple attestation
In contrast to Bruno Bauer, modern scholars believe that Mark is not the only source behind the synoptic gospels. The predominant view within the field is known as the Two-Source hypothesis. It postulates that the Synoptic gospels are based on at least two independent sources (Mark and "Q"), and potentially as many as four (Mark, "Q", "M", and "L").[153] On top of this, relatively early material related to a historical Jesus is also found in the Gospel According to John,[154] and the epistles of Paul.[155]
  • Enemy attestation
Despite the misgivings of Christ myth theorists, mainstream scholarship believes the writings of Josephus contain multiple authentic references to Jesus. Josephus' allusion in The Antiquities of the Jews to the death of James is almost universally accepted as legitimate.[156] This reference states that James was "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ." The fuller reference to Jesus, known as the Testimonium Flavianum, while suspected of containing later interpolations, is nevertheless believed by a large majority of scholars to also preserve a comment regarding Jesus original to the text.[157]
  • Embarrassment
Will Durant has stated, "Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed—the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus' arrest, Peter's denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them."[19] If the gospels were entirely imaginative, these and other issues in the life of Christ likely wouldn't exist: for example, his association in Mark and elsewhere with Nazareth instead of Bethlehem. Purely creative narratives would likely present Jesus in strict conformity with preexisting messianic expectations. The fact that the New Testament documents record otherwise embarrassing elements therefore strongly indicates their rootedness in historical events.[27]

Rejection of alleged mythological parallels

In addition to affirming the historical existence of Jesus on the basis of documentary evidence, mainstream critical scholarship rejects the central supportive argument of the Christ myth theory: that early material related to Jesus can be explained away with reference to pagan mythological parallels.[158] Scholars believe that Jesus is to be understood against the backdrop of first century Palestinian Judaism,[159] an emphasis on broader Hellenistic religious categories having been "largely abandoned."[160] Further, mainstream scholarship generally rejects the whole concept of homogenous dying and rising gods—[161] the validity of which is often presupposed by advocates of the Christ myth theory. The few academics who continue to support the "dying and rising gods" construct nevertheless repudiate the idea that Jesus fits the wider pattern.[162]

Attempts to equate elements of Jesus' biography with those of mythological figures are widely seen as inaccurate and historically slipshod.[163] Often such supposed parallels are based on the interpolations of skeptical critics themselves: parts of Jesus' biography and early Christianity being inappropriately projected onto the stories of mythical pagan personages, only to be then "discovered" and cited as parallels.[164] Scholars further note that the very idea that early Christians would consciously incorporate pagan myths into their religion is "intrinsically most improbable,"[165] given their cultural background,[166] as evidenced by the strenuous opposition that Paul encountered from other Christians for even his minor concessions to gentile believers.[167]

Methodological concerns

Aside from these specific arguments, scholars often note wider methodological problems with the Christ myth theory. While advocates often rely heavily on arguments from silence (the lack of references to Jesus in histories produced during the period,[168] and the silence of Paul regarding much of Jesus' life), experts regard such arguments with deep suspicion, noting that various sources may not mention Jesus for any number of reasons.[169] Further, while many Christ myth theorists draw parallels between early Christianity and Hellenistic mystery religions, little is actually known about the beliefs and practices of the latter. As a result, Bart Ehrman has labeled such neccesarily speculative approaches "crazy".[33]

Scholars from a range of ideological viewpoints have further suggested that since the Christ myth theory is plainly unsupported by the evidence, it can only be maintained through willful disregard of that evidence.[47][170] Attempts to prove or disprove the existence of a historical Jesus in such a context, then, often degenerate into a methodological "black hole" in which all would-be evidence for a historical Jesus is deconstructed into irrelevancy.[171] These issues have led a number of scholars to class the Christ myth theory as a form of denialism, comparing its evidential deconstructionism to that employed by flat-earthism, Holocaust denial and moon landing skepticism.[172]

Modern scholarly consensus

For the above reasons the Christ myth theory is rejected by essentially all biblical scholars and historians.[173] As N. T. Wright has stated:

"How Do We Know that Jesus Existed? It is quite difficult to know where to start, because actually the evidence for Jesus is so massive that, as a historian, I want to say we have got almost as much good evidence for Jesus as for anyone in the ancient world. Obviously there are some characters from the ancient world for whom we have statues and inscriptions. On the other hand, we have statues of gods and goddesses in the ancient world too, and so you can never quite be sure. But in Jesus' case, the evidence all points firmly back to the existence of this great figure in the 20s through to around 30 of the first century. And all the evidence fits so well with what we know of the Judaism of the period (even though much of it was eventually written down a generation later) that I think there are hardly any historians today, in fact I don't know of any historians today who doubt the existence of Jesus. There are one or two. A man called [G. A.] Wells is the only one who has made much of it recently. From time to time you get someone like J. M. Allegro, who a generation ago wrote a book on the basis of the Dead Sea Scrolls saying that Christianity was all about a cult of the sacred mushroom. No Jewish, Christian, atheist, or agnostic scholars have ever taken that seriously since. It is quite clear that in fact Jesus is a very, very well documented character of real history. So I think that question can be put to rest."[174]

Bibliography

  • Allegro, John M. (1970), The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross: A Study of the Nature and Origins of Christianity Within the Fertility Cults of the Ancient Near East, London: Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 978-0340128756
  • Bevan, Edwyn R. (1929), The History of Christianity in the Light of Modern Knowledge: A Collective Work, many others contributors, Glasgow: Blackie & Son, ISBN 978-0061285547
  • Borg, Marcus (2007), "A Vision of the Christian Life", The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, Marcus Borg & N. T. Wright, San Francisco: HarperCollins, pp. 227–250, ISBN 978-0061285547
  • Eddy, Paul; Boyd, Greg (2007), The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, ISBN 978-0801031144
  • Bromiley, Geoffrey W. (1982), "Jesus Christ", in Geoffrey W. Bromiley (ed.), The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, vol. 2, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, pp. 1034–1049, ISBN 978-0802837820
  • Bultmann, Rudolf (1962), "The Study of the Synoptic Gospels", Form Criticism: Two Essays on New Testament Research, Rudolf Bultmann & Karl Kundsin; translated by Frederick C. Grant, New York: Harper Torchbooks {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |authormask= ignored (|author-mask= suggested) (help)
  • Burridge, Richard A. (2004), Jesus Now and Then, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ISBN 978-0802809773
  • Case, Shirley Jackson (1911), "The Historicity of Jesus: An Estimate of the Negative Argument", The American Journal of Theology, 15 (1): 20–42, doi:10.1086/478974
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  • Craig, William Lane (2009a), "Question 90: Jesus and Pagan Mythology", Reasonable Faith {{citation}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Unknown parameter |→→→→→→→→url= ignored (help)
  • Dunn, James D. G. (1992), "Myth", Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, pp. 566–569, ISBN 978-0830817771 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |authormask= ignored (|author-mask= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |editors= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help)
  • Dunn, James D. G. (2009), "Response to Robert M. Price", in James K. Beilby & Paul Rhodes Eddy (ed.), The Historical Jesus: Five Views, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, pp. 94–98, ISBN 978-0830838684 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |authormask= ignored (|author-mask= suggested) (help)
  • Eddy, Paul R.; Boyd, Gregory A. (2007), The Jesus Legend: a Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, ISBN 978-0801031144
  • Evans, Henry Ridgely (1905), The Napoleon Myth, Chicago: Open Court
  • Farmer, William R. (1975), "A Fresh Approach to Q", in Jacob Neusner (ed.), Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults, vol. 4, Leiden: Brill, ISBN 978-9004042193
  • Gerrish, Brian A. (1975), "Jesus, Myth, and History: Troeltsch's Stand in the "Christ-Myth" Debate", The Journal of Religion, 55 (1): 13–35, doi:10.1086/486407
  • Gerrish, Brian A. (2004), The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage, London: T. & T. Clark, ISBN 978-0567080486 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |authormask= ignored (|author-mask= suggested) (help)
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  • Hoffmann, R. Joseph (2006), "Maurice Goguel and the 'Myth Theory' of Christian Origins", in Maurice Goguel (ed.), Jesus the Nazarene: Myth or History?, translated by Frederick Stephens, with a new introduction by R. Joseph Hoffmann, Amherst, NY: Prometheus, pp. 11–41, ISBN 978-1591023708
  • Horbury, William (2003), "The New Testament", in Ernest Nicholson (ed.), A Century of Theological and Religious Studies in Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 51–134, ISBN 978-0197263051
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  • Licona, Michael R. (2007), "Challenge #3, Interview #3: Michael Licona", in Lee Strobel (ed.), The Case for the Real Jesus, interview with Lee Strobel, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, ISBN 978-0310242109 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |authormask= ignored (|author-mask= suggested) (help)
  • McClymond, Michael James (2004), Familiar Stranger: an Introduction to Jesus of Nazareth, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ISBN 978-0802826800
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  • Metzger, Bruce M. (1968), Historical and Literary Studies, Pagan, Jewish, and Christian, New Testament Tools and Studies, vol. 8, Leiden: Brill
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  • Moggach, Douglas (2003), The Philosophy and Politics of Bruno Bauer, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0521819770
  • Murdock, D. M. (1999), The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold, written under the pen-name Acharya S, Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited, ISBN 978-0932813749
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  • Price, Robert M. (2009a), "Jesus at the Vanishing Point, et al.", in James K. Beilby & Paul Rhodes Eddy (ed.), The Historical Jesus: Five Views, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, pp. 55–83, 133–137, 178–182, 226–232, 282–287, ISBN 978-0830838684 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |authormask= ignored (|author-mask= suggested) (help)
  • Puskas, Charles B.; Crump, David (2008), An Introduction to the Gospels and Acts, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ISBN 978-0802845573
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  • Walsh, George (1998), The Role of Religion in History, New Brunswick: Transaction, ISBN 978-1560003687
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  • Wright, N. T. (2007), "The Self-Revelation of God in Human History: A Dialogue on Jesus with N. T. Wright", There is a God, Antony Flew & Roy Abraham Vargese, New York: HarperOne, pp. 185–214, ISBN 978-0061335297

See also

References

  1. ^ "The radical solution was to deny the possibility of reliable knowledge of Jesus, and out of this developed the Christ myth theory, according to which Jesus never existed as a historical figure and the Christ of the Gospels was a social creation of a messianic community." Farmer 1975, p. 43
  2. ^ "Negative as these [hyper-minimalist] conclusions appear, they must be strictly distinguished from the theories of the mythologists. According to the critics whom we may term minimalists, Jesus did live, but his biography is almost totally unknown to us. The mythologists, on the other hand, declare that he never existed, and that his history, or more exactly the legend about him, is due to the working of various tendencies and events, such as the prophetic interpretation of Old Testament texts, visions, ecstasy, or the projection of the conditions under which the first group of Christians lived into the story of their reputed founder." Goguel 1926b, pp. 117–118
  3. ^ "The Christ-Myth theory (that Jesus never lived) had a certain vogue at the beginning of this century but is not supported by contemporary scholarship." Richardson 1973, p. 113
  4. ^ "If this account of the matter is correct, one can also see why it is that the 'Christ-myth' theory, to the effect that there was no historical Jesus at all, has seemed so plasible to many," Meynell 1991, p. 166
  5. ^ "Defense of Biblical criticism was not helped by the revival at this time of the 'Christ-Myth' theory, suggesting that Jesus had never existed, a suggestion rebutted in England by the radical but independant F. C. Conybeare." Horbury 2003, p. 55
  6. ^ "[W}e have to explain the origin of Christianity, and in so doing we have to choose between two alternatives. One alternative is to say that it originated in a myth which was later dressed up as history. The other is to say that it originated with one historical individual who was later mythologized into a supernatural being. The theory that Jesus was originally a myth is called the Christ-myth theory, and the theory that he was an historyical individual is called the historical Jesus theory." Walsh 1998, p. 58
  7. ^ Gerrish 1975, p. 13
  8. ^ Bennett 2001, p. 202
  9. ^ Townsend 2006, p. 150n2
  10. ^ See the definitions of Farmer,[1] Gougel,[2] Richardson,[3] Meynell,[4] Horbury,[5] Walsh,[6] and others. [7][8][9]
  11. ^ Wells 1999a, p. 99
  12. ^ a b "There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more." Burridge 2004, p. 34
  13. ^ a b "Although Wells has been probably the most able advocate of the nonhistoricity theory, he has not been persuasive and is now almost a lone voice for it. The theory of Jesus' nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question." and "The nonhistoricity thesis has always been controversial, and it has consistently failed to convince scholars of many disciplines and religious creeds... Biblical scholars and classical historians now regard it as effectively refuted." Van Voorst 2000, p. 14 & 16
  14. ^ a b "No reputable scholar today questions that a Jew named Jesus son of Joseph lived; most readily admit that we now know a considerable amount about his actions and his basic teachings." Charlesworth 2006, p. xxiii
  15. ^ a b "Today, nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed and that the gospels contain plenty of valuable evidence which has to be weighed and assessed critically. There is general agreement that, with the possible exception of Paul, we know far more about Jesus of Nazareth than about any first or second century Jewish or pagan religious teacher." Stanton 2002, p. 145
  16. ^ a b "To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars'. 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." Grant 1995, p. 200
  17. ^ a b "I think that there are hardly any historians today, in fact I don't know of any historians today, who doubt the existence of Jesus... So I think that question can be put to rest." Wright 2007, p. 188
  18. ^ "While The Christ Myth alarmed many who were innocent of learning, it evoked only Olympian scorn from the historical establishment, who were confident that Jesus had existed... The Christ-myth theory, then, won little support from the historical specialists. In their judgement, it sought to demonstrate a perverse thesis, and it preceded by drawing the most farfetched, even bizarre connection between mythologies of very diverse origin. The importance of the theory lay, not in its persuasiveness to the historians (since it had none), but in the fact that it invited theologians to renewed reflection on the questions of faith and history." Gerrish 2004, p. 231 & 233
  19. ^ a b "Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed—the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus' arrest, Peter's denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospel." Durant 1972, p. 557
  20. ^ "The alternative thesis... that within thirty years there had evolved such a coherent and consistent complex of traditions about a non-existent figure such as we have in the sources of the Gospels is just too implausible. It involves too many complex and speculative hypotheses, in contrast to the much simpler explanation that there was a Jesus who said and did more or less what the first three Gospels attribute to him." Dunn 1985, p. 29
  21. ^ a b "This is always the fatal flaw of the 'Jesus myth' thesis: the improbability of the total invention of a figure who had purportedly lived within the generation of the inventors, or the imposition of such an elaborate myth on some minor figure from Galilee. [Robert] Price is content with the explanation that it all began 'with a more or less vague savior myth.' Sad, really." Dunn 2009, p. 98
  22. ^ a b "[A]n attempt to show that Jesus never existed has been made in recent years by G. A. Wells, a Professor of German who has ventured into New Testament study and presents a case that the origins of Christianity can be explained without assuming that Jesus really lived. Earlier presentations of similar views at the turn of the century failed to make any impression on scholarly opinion, and it is certain that this latest presentation of the case will not fare any better. For of course the evidence is not confined to Tacitus; there are the New Testament documents themselves, nearly all of which must be dated in the first century, and behind which there lies a period of transmission of the story of Jesus which can be traced backwards to a date not far from that when Jesus is supposed to have lived. To explain the rise of this tradition without the hypothesis of Jesus is impossible." Marshall 2004, pp. 15–16
  23. ^ a b c "[Robert] Price thinks the evidence is so weak for the historical Jesus that we cannot know anything certain or meaningful about him. He is even willing to entertain the possibility that there never was a historical Jesus. Is the evidence of Jesus really that thin? Virtually no scholar trained in history will agree with Price's negative conclusions... In my view Price's work in the gospels is overpowered by a philosophical mindset that is at odds with historical research—of any kind... What we see in Price is what we have seen before: a flight from fundamentalism." Evans 2008, p. 25
  24. ^ a b "The scholarly mainstream, in contrast to Bauer and company, never doubted the existence of Jesus or his relevance for the founding of the Church." Evans 1993, p. 8
  25. ^ a b "There's no serious question for historians that Jesus actually lived. There’s real issues about whether he is really the way the Bible described him. There’s real issues about particular incidents in his life. But no serious ancient historian doubts that Jesus was a real person, really living in Galilee in the first century." Forbes 2009
  26. ^ "We know a lot about Jesus, vastly more than about John the Baptist, Theudas, Judas the Galilean, or any of the other figures whose names we have from approximately the same date and place." Sanders 1993, p. xiv
  27. ^ a b "Since the Enlightenment, the Gospel stories about the life of Jesus have been in doubt. Intellectuals then as now asked: 'What makes the stories of the New Testament any more historically probable than Aesop's fables or Grimm's fairy tales?' The critics can be answered satisfactorily...For all the rigor of the standard it sets, the criterion [of embarrassment] demonstrates that Jesus existed." Segal 2005
  28. ^ "Some writers may toy with the fancy of a 'Christ-myth,' but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians who propagate the 'Christ-myth' theories." Bruce 2003, p. 123
  29. ^ "Even the most critical historian can confidently assert that a Jew named Jesus worked as a teacher and wonder-worker in Palestine during the reign of Tiberius, was exicuted by crucifiction under the prefect Pontius Pilate, and continued to have followers after his death." Johnson 1996, p. 121
  30. ^ "It is certain, however, that Jesus was arrested while in Jerusalem for the Passover, probably in the year 30, and that he was executed...it cannot be doubted that Peter was a personal disciple of Jesus", (emphasis added) Koester 2000, pp. 80 & 166
  31. ^ "Jesus is in no danger of suffering Catherine [of Alexandria]'s fate as an unhistorical myth," Allison 2009, p. 37
  32. ^ a b "I don't think there's any serious historian who doubts the existence of Jesus. There are a lot of people who want to write sensational books and make a lot of money who say Jesus didn't exist. But I don't know any serious scholar who doubts the existence of Jesus." Ehrman 2008
  33. ^ a b c d "What about those writers like Acharya S (The Christ Conspiracy) and Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy (The Jesus Mysteries), who say that Jesus never existed, and that Christianity was an invented religion, the Jewish equivalent of the Greek mystery religions? 'This is an old argument, even though it shows up every 10 years or so. This current craze that Christianity was a mystery religion like these other mystery religions-the people who are saying this are almost always people who know nothing about the mystery religions; they've read a few popular books, but they're not scholars of mystery religions. The reality is, we know very little about mystery religions-the whole point of mystery religions is that they're secret! So I think it's crazy to build on ignorance in order to make a claim like this. I think the evidence is just so overwhelming that Jesus existed, that it's silly to talk about him not existing. I don't know anyone who is a responsible historian, who is actually trained in the historical method, or anybody who is a biblical scholar who does this for a living, who gives any credence at all to any of this.'" Ehrman 2007, p. 55
  34. ^ "By no means are we at the mercy of those who doubt or deny that Jesus ever lived." Bultmann 1962, p. 62 and "Of course the doubt as to whether Jesus really existed is unfounded and not worth refutation. No sane person can doubt that Jesus stands as founder behind the historical movement whose first distinct stage is represented by the oldest Palestinian community." Bultmann 1958, p. introduction
  35. ^ "It is the nature of historical work that we are always involved in probability judgments. Granted, some judgments are so probable as to be certain; for example, Jesus really existed and really was crucified, just as Julius Caeser really existed and was assassinated." Borg 2007, p. 236
  36. ^ a b "If one were able to survey the members of the major learned societies dealing with antiquity, it would be difficult to find more than a handful who believe that Jesus of Nazareth did not walk the dusty roads of Palestine in the first three decades of the Common Era. Evidence for Jesus as a historical personage is incontrovertible." Gasque 2004
  37. ^ a b c d e "A hundred and fifty years ago a fairly well respected scholar named Bruno Bauer maintained that the historical person Jesus never existed. Anyone who says that today—in the academic world at least—gets grouped with the skinheads who say there was no Holocaust and the scientific holdouts who want to believe the world is flat." Powell 1998, p. 168
  38. ^ a b "An examination of the claims for and against the historicity of Jesus thus reveals that the difficulties faced by those undertaking to prove that he is not historical, in the fields both of the history of religion and the history of doctrine, and not least in the interpretation of the earliest tradition are far more numerous and profound than those which face their opponents. Seen in their totality, they must be considered as having no possible solution. Added to this, all hypotheses which have so far been put forward to the effect that Jesus never lived are in the strangest opposition to each other, both in their method of working and their interpretation of the Gospel reports, and thus merely cancel each other out. Hence we must conclude that the supposition that Jesus did exist is exceedingly likely, whereas its converse is exceedingly unlikely. This does not mean that the latter will not be proposed again from time to time, just as the romantic view of the life of Jesus is also destined for immortality. It is even able to dress itself up with certain scholarly technique, and with a little skillful manipulation can have much influence on the mass of people. But as soon as it does more than engage in noisy polemics with 'theology' and hazards an attempt to produce real evidence, it immediately reveals itself to be an implausible hypothesis." Schweitzer 2001, pp. 435–436
  39. ^ a b c d "The very logic that tells us there was no Jesus is the same logic that pleads that there was no Holocaust. On such logic, history is no longer possible. It is no surprise then that there is no New Testament scholar drawing pay from a post who doubts the existence of Jesus. I know not one. His birth, life, and death in first-century Palestine have never been subject to serious question and, in all likelihood, never will be among those who are experts in the field. The existence of Jesus is a given." (emphasis original) Perrin 2007, p. 32
  40. ^ "In fact, there is more evidence that Jesus of Nazareth certainly lived than for most famous figures of the ancient past. This evidence is of two kinds: internal and external, or, if you will, sacred and secular. In both cases, the total evidence is so overpowering, so absolute that only the shallowest of intellects would dare to deny Jesus' existence. And yet this pathetic denial is still parroted by 'the village atheist,' bloggers on the internet, or such organizations as the Freedom from Religion Foundation." Maier 2007
  41. ^ a b c d "If I understand what Earl Doherty is arguing, Neil, it is that Jesus of Nazareth never existed as an historical person, or, at least that historians, like myself, presume that he did and act on that fatally flawed presumption. I am not sure, as I said earlier, that one can persuade people that Jesus did exist as long as they are ready to explain the entire phenomenon of historical Jesus and earliest Christianity either as an evil trick or a holy parable. I had a friend in Ireland who did not believe that Americans had landed on the moon but that they had created the entire thing to bolster their cold-war image against the communists. I got nowhere with him. So I am not at all certain that I can prove that the historical Jesus existed against such an hypothesis and probably, to be honest, I am not even interested in trying." Crossan 2000
  42. ^ a b c d e f g "While we do not have the fullness of biographical detail and the wealth of firsthand accounts that are available for recent public figures, such as Winston Churchill or Mother Teresa, we nonetheless have much more data on Jesus than we do for such ancient figures as Alexander the Great." and "Along with the scholarly and popular works, there is a good deal of pseudoscholarship on Jesus that finds its way into print. During the last two centuries more than a hundred books and articles have denied the historical existence of Jesus. Today innumerable websites carry the same message... Most scholars regard the arguments for Jesus' non-existence as unworthy of any response—on a par with claims that the Jewish Holocaust never occurred or that the Apollo moon landing took place in a Hollywood studio." McClymond 2004, pp. 8 & 23-24
  43. ^ a b c "The denial that Christ was crucified is like the denial of the Holocaust. For some it's simply too horrific to affirm. For others it's an elaborate conspiracy to coerce religious sympathy. But the deniers live in a historical dreamworld." Piper 2006, pp. 14–15
  44. ^ a b c d "I just finished reading, The Historical Jesus: Five Views. The first view was given by Robert Price, a leading Jesus myth proponent… The title of Price’s chapter is 'Jesus at the Vanishing Point.' I am convinced that if Price's total skepticism were applied fairly and consistently to other figures in ancient history (Alexander the Great, Ptolemy, Cleopatra, Nero, etc.), they would all be reduced to 'the vanishing point.' Price's chapter is a perfect example of how someone can always, always find excuses to not believe something they don't want to believe, whether that be the existence of Jesus or the existence of the holocaust." (emphasis original) Ingolfsland 2009
  45. ^ a b c d "The Jesus mythers will continue to advance their thesis and complain of being kept outside of the arena of serious academic discussion. They carry their signs, 'Jesus Never Existed!' 'They won’t listen to me!' and label those inside the arena as 'Anti-Intellectuals,' 'Fundamentalists,' 'Misguided Liberals,' and 'Flat-Earthers.' 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!'" Licona & 2005?
  46. ^ a b c d "You know that you can try to minimize your biases, but you can't eliminate them. That's why you have to put certain checks and balances in place… Under this approach, we only consider facts that meet two criteria. First, there must be very strong historical evidence supporting them. And secondly, the evidence must be so strong that the vast majority of today's scholars on the subject—including skeptical ones—accept these as historical facts. You're never going to get everyone to agree. There are always people who deny the Holocaust or question whether Jesus ever existed, but they're on the fringe." Licona 2007, p. 112
  47. ^ a b "We can be certain that Jesus really existed (despite a few highly motivated skeptics who refuse to be convinced), that he was a Jewish teacher in Galilee, and that he was crucified by the Roman government around 30 CE." Miller 1999, p. 38
  48. ^ a b "Richard [Carrier] takes the extremist position that Jesus of Nazareth never even existed, that there was no such person in history. This is a position that is so extreme that to call it marginal would be an understatement; it doesn’t even appear on the map of contemporary New Testament scholarship." Craig 2009b
  49. ^ "[T]here is substantial evidence that a person by the name of Jesus once existed." Funk 1997, p. 33
  50. ^ a b "[T]he view that there was no historical Jesus, that his earthly existence is a fiction of earliest Christianity—a fiction only later made concrete by setting his life in the first century—is today almost totally rejected." Wells 1988, p. 218
  51. ^ See comments by Richard A. Burridge,[12] Robert E. Van Voorst,[13] James H. Charlesworth,[14] Graham Stanton,[15] Michael Grant,[16] N. T. Wright,[17] Brian A. Gerrish,[18] Will Durant,[19] James D. G. Dunn,[20][21] I. Howard Marshall,[22] Craig A. Evans,[23][24], Chris Forbes,[25] E. P. Sanders,[26] Alan F. Segal,[27] F. F. Bruce,[28] Luke Timothy Johnson,[29] Helmut Koester,[30] Dale C. Allison,[31] Bart Ehrman,[32][33] Rudolf Bultmann,[34] Marcus Borg,[35] W. Ward Gasque,[36] Mark Allan Powell,[37] Albert Schweitzer,[38] Nicholas Perrin,[39] Paul L. Maier,[40] John Dominic Crossan,[41] Michael James McClymond,[42] John Piper,[43] Dennis Ingolfsland,[44] Michael R. Licona,[45][46] Robert J. Miller,[47] William Lane Craig,[48] Robert Funk,[49] and even G. A. Wells.[50]
  52. ^ a b "When they say that Christian beliefs about Jesus are derived from pagan mythology, I think you should laugh. Then look at them wide-eyed and with a big grin, and exclaim, 'Do you really believe that?' Act as though you've just met a flat earther or Roswell conspirator." Craig 2009a
  53. ^ a b "Finley: There are some people in the chat room disagreeing, of course, but they’re saying that there really isn’t any hardcore evidence, though, that… I mean… but there isn’t any… any evidence, really, that Jesus did exist except what people were saying about him. But… Ehrman: I think… I disagree with that. Finley: Really? Ehrman: I mean, what hardcore evidence is there that Julius Caesar existed? Finley: Well, this is… this is the same kind of argument that apologists use, by the way, for the existence of Jesus, by the way. They like to say the same thing you said just then about, well, what kind of evidence do you have for Jul… Ehrman: Well, I mean, it’s… but it’s just a typical… it’s just… It’s a historical point; I mean, how do you establish the historical existence of an individual from the past? Finley: I guess… I guess it depends on the claims… Right, it depends on the claims that people have made during that particular time about a particular person and their influence on society... Ehrman: It’s not just the claims. There are… One has to look at historical evidence. And if you… If you say that historical evidence doesn’t count, then I think you get into huge trouble. Because then, how do… I mean… then why not just deny the Holocaust?" Ehrman 2008
  54. ^ a b In a chapter entitled "Faith and the Historical Jesus," Dunn includes a subsection named "What Can History Deliver?" Under the sub-heading "Probability Not Certainty" Dunn illustrates the manner in which people can exploit the lack of absolute certainty involved in historiography with reference to Holocaust denial. Dunn 2003, p. 103 Robert J. Miller makes a similar point in a similar way, only in his case mentioning the theoretical possibility of doubting President Kennedy's assassination and the moon landing before discussing the near certainty of Jesus' historical existence and dismissing the advocates of the Christ myth theory. Miller 1999, pp. 37–38
  55. ^ Crossan and McClymond have compared advocates of the Christ myth theory with those who believe the Apollo moon landing was a hoax.[41][42] Powell and Craig have classed advocates with flat-earthers.[37][52] And comparisons of varying explicitness between the Christ myth theory and Holocaust denial have been made by Perrin,[39] Powell,[37] McClymond,[42] Ehrman,[53] Piper,[43] Ingolfsland,[44] Licona,[45][46] and Dunn.[54]
  56. ^ Goguel 1926a, p. 11
  57. ^ Goguel 1926a, p. 14; Van Voorst 2000, p. 8
  58. ^ Schweitzer 2001, p. 355; similarly Weaver 1999, p. 45
  59. ^ Wells 1969; more briefly Schweitzer 2001, p. 527 n. 1; Volney 1791; Dupuis 1984
  60. ^ Wells 1969, pp. 153–156
  61. ^ Wells 1969, pp. 159–160
  62. ^ Wells 1969, p. 151
  63. ^ Wells 1969, p. 155
  64. ^ Wells 1969, p. 157
  65. ^ a b Goguel 1926b, p. 117
  66. ^ Schweitzer 2001, p. 356
  67. ^ Solmsen 1970, pp. 277–279
  68. ^ a b Schweitzer 2001, pp. 124–128
  69. ^ Schweitzer 2001, pp. 128–136
  70. ^ Schweitzer 2001, pp. 124, 139–140
  71. ^ Engels 1882; Pfleiderer 1893; Moggach 2003, p. 184
  72. ^ Pfleiderer 1893
  73. ^ Schweitzer 2001, pp. 140–141
  74. ^ Van Voorst 2000, p. 9
  75. ^ Schweitzer 2001, pp. 356, 527 n. 4; Van Voorst 2000, p. 10
  76. ^ Johnson 1887 and "The Abolition of History," The New York Times, May 14, 1904, Page BR328.
  77. ^ Weaver 1999, pp. 46–47; cf. Schweitzer 2001, pp. 359–361
  78. ^ Weaver 1999, p. 47
  79. ^ Schweitzer 2001, pp. 356–359
  80. ^ Weaver 1999, p. 58
  81. ^ Robertson 1902, pp. 6–12
  82. ^ Robertson 1902, pp. 14–15
  83. ^ Robertson 1902, pp. 2–3
  84. ^ Robertson 1903
  85. ^ Robertson 1902, pp. 21, 32–33
  86. ^ Robertson 1902, pp. 87–89
  87. ^ Robertson 1902, pp. 22–25
  88. ^ Case 1911, p. 627
  89. ^ Hippolytus Philosophumena 5.10.
  90. ^ Schweitzer 2001, p. 375
  91. ^ Schweitzer 2001, p. 378
  92. ^ a b Van Voorst 2000, p. 12
  93. ^ Drews 1998.
  94. ^ Weaver 1999, p. 50
  95. ^ Gerrish 1975, pp. 3–4
  96. ^ Case 2009 and Conybeare 2009
  97. ^ Case 1911, p. 2 n. 1 and "JESUS NEVER LIVED, ASSERTS PROF. DREWS; Stirs Germany Deeply by Publicly Attacking Basis of the Christian Religion.", New York Times, February 6, 1910{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  98. ^ Bolland 1907
  99. ^ Goguel 1926a, pp. 22–23; Schweitzer 2001, pp. 279–283
  100. ^ Goguel 1926a, p. 23; Schweitzer 2001, pp. 369–372
  101. ^ Wheless 1930
  102. ^ "Historically it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all..." Russell 1967, p. 16
  103. ^ "The belief that Jesus never existed was picked up by Marx and Engels and came to be the 'official' view of Marxism." Evans 1993, p. 7 n. 22
  104. ^ "The Christ Myth came out in multiple editions in the Soviet Union beginning in the early 1920s and served as one of the cornerstones of the new state's anti-religious campaign… Drew's work was nevertheless widely disseminated because, as Lenin concluded, it was imperative to form 'a "union" with the likes of Drew [s Drevsami]… in the struggle against the prevailing religious obscurantists'." Haber 1999, p. 347
  105. ^ "In 1922, however, all religious books, from the Bible to 'idealist' philosophy, had been removed from public libraries and bookshops. Atheism became part of the state ideology. One if its most important components was the theory of Arthur Drews (1865-1936). According to him, the Jesus of the Gospels was a fiction, the product of a long tradition related to the ancient cult of a dying and rising Oriental deity. The Soviet propaganda machine elevated this theory to the rank of objective scientific truth, including it in textbooks for schools and universities." Nikiforov 2003, p. 749
  106. ^ "There were chronic difficulties with one popular form of propaganda that was particularly dependent on cadres—public debates between regime activists and representatives of the Church. These meetings featured clergy and activists facing each other on questions such as 'Did Christ live?' In the mid-1920s, the Commissar of Enlightenment, Anatolii Lunacharskii, and the Renovationist leader, Aleksandr Vvedenskii, debated several times in highly publicized meetings. These debates and the locally arranged clashes were popular throughout the 1920s." Peris 1998, p. 178
  107. ^ Thrower 1983, pp. 425 ff.
  108. ^ Allegro 1970; Allegro 1992
  109. ^ Wells 1999b
  110. ^ "A final argument against the nonexistence hypothesis comes from Wells himself. In his most recent book, The Jesus Myth, Wells has moved away from this hypothesis. He now accepts that there is some historical basis for the existence of Jesus, derived from the lost early 'gospel' 'Q' (the hypothetical source used by Matthew and Luke). Wells believes that it is early and reliable enough to show that Jesus probably did exist, although this Jesus was not the Christ that the later canonical gospels portray. It remains to be seen what impact Wells's about-face will have on debate over the nonexistence hypothesis in popular circles." Van Voorst 2003, p. 660
  111. ^ A blurb by Robert M. Price appears on the back cover of The Jesus Myth stating, "Wells has now abandoned the pure Christ Myth theory for which he is famous..." Wells 1999a
  112. ^ "Here I represent the viewpoint of the Christ-Myth theory, the hypothesis that the Gospel Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, represents a subsequent historicization of a mythic deity, much as the Samson of the book of Judges is a literary incarnation of the Hebrew sun-god myth." Price 2009a, p. 230
  113. ^ "I find myself in full agreement with Acharya S/D.M. Murdock: 'we assert that Christianity constitutes Gnosticism historicized and Judaized, likewise representing a synthesis of Egyptian, Jewish and Greek religion and mythology, among others [including Buddhism, via King Asoka’s missionaries] from around the "known world"' (p. 278). 'Christianity is largely the product of Egyptian religion being Judaized and historicized’ (p. 482)." (interpolation original to Price), Price 2009b
  114. ^ "... their own criteria and critical tools, which we have sought to apply here with ruthless consistency, ought to have left them with complete agnosticism ..." Price 2003, p. 351
  115. ^ "Is it, after all this, possible that beneath and behind the stained-glass curtain of Christian legend stands the dim figure of a historical founder of Christianity? Yes, it is possible, perhaps just a tad more likely than that there was a historical Moses, about as likely as there having been a historical Apollonius of Tyana. But it becomes almost arbitrary to think so." Price 1999
  116. ^ "Perhaps the Q sect at its beginnings adopted a Greek source, with some recasting, one they saw as a suitable ethic for the kingdom they were preaching. In any case, there is no need to impute such sayings to a Jesus; they seem more the product of a school or lifestyle, formulated over time and hardly the sudden invention of a single mind." Doherty & 2000?
  117. ^ Doherty 1997
  118. ^ "Most astonishingly, all the major apologists before the year 180, with the sole exception of Justin (and a minor apologist from Syria, Aristides), fail to include an historical Jesus in their defences of Christianity to the pagans. This includes Tatian in his pre-Diatessaron days. Instead, the apologists bear witness to a Christian movement which is grounded in Platonic philosophy and Hellenistic Judaism, preaching the worship of the monotheistic Jewish God and a Logos-type Son; the latter is a force active in the world who serves as revealer and intermediary between God and humanity. Theophilus of Antioch, Athenagoras of Athens, Tatian in his Apology, Minucius Felix in Rome (or North Africa) offer no beliefs in an historical figure crucified as an atoning act, nor in a resurrection. (Nor do they have anything in common with Paul.) In not one of them does the name Jesus appear, and none speak of an incarnation of their Logos." Doherty 1997
  119. ^ Freke & Gandy 2006, p. 71
  120. ^ Freke & Gandy 1999, p. 10
  121. ^ "So it appears that Paul, even thouh he speaks of 'the gospel,' has never heard of the canonical gospels or even an orally transmitted life of Christ. The few 'historical' references to an actual life of Jesus cited in the epistles are demonstrably interpolations and forgeries, as are the epistles themselves," and, "It is clear that the canonical gospels are of a late date, forged long after the alleged time of their purported authors." Murdock 1999, pp. 33 & 40
  122. ^ Murdock 1999, pp. 36–40
  123. ^ Murdock 1999, pp. 146 ff.
  124. ^ "It is even possible to mount a serious, though not widely supported, historical case that Jesus never lived at all, as has been done by, among others, Professor G. A. Wells of the University of London in a number of books, including Did Jesus Exist?." Dawkins 2006, p. 97
  125. ^ For an example of the graffiti see this train defacement. On the merchandizing end, the Louisville Atheists and Freethinkers offer a line of clothing and gifts through Cafepress bearing the slogan. Accessed January 13, 2010.
  126. ^ Doherty & 2001?
  127. ^ "I suspect that another major tool of Roman propaganda was the Epistles of Ignatius, which, like the earlier Tübingen School but unlike Walter Bauer, I regard as spurious." Price 2000, p. 27
  128. ^ Wells 1971, p. 2
  129. ^ Murdock 2007, pp. 114–122; Freke & Gandy 1999, pp. 4–6
  130. ^ Robertson 1903, pp. 338–340
  131. ^ Murdock 2009, pp. 261–284
  132. ^ Murdock 1999, pp. 107
  133. ^ Freke & Gandy 1999, p. 56,
  134. ^ Drews 1998, pp. 66–67, et al.; this despite the fact that Frazer himself was quite dismissive of the theory: "The historical reality both of Buddha and of Christ has sometimes been doubted or denied. It would be just as reasonable to question the historical existence of Alexander the Great and Charlemagne on account of the legends which have gathered round them… The attempt to explain history without the influence of great men may flatter the vanity of the vulgar, but it will find no favour with the philosophic historian." Frazer 1919, p. 311
  135. ^ "Acharya S. ventures that 'the creators of the Christ myth did not simply take an already formed story, scratch out the name Osiris or Horus, and replace it with Jesus' (p. 25). But I am pretty much ready to go the whole way and suggest that Jesus is simply Osiris going under a new name, Jesus, 'Savior,' hitherto an epithet, but made into a name on Jewish soil." Price 2009b
  136. ^ "Every detail [of Jesus' biography] corresponds to the interests of mythology and epic." Price 2009a
  137. ^ Whately 1874.
  138. ^ Pérès 1905.
  139. ^ Evans 1905, pp. 5 ff.
  140. ^ See the list provided in Evans 1993, p. 8 n. 24
  141. ^ Conybeare 2009.
  142. ^ Goguel 1926a.
  143. ^ Hoffmann 2006, p. 34
  144. ^ Goguel 1926a
  145. ^ France 1986.
  146. ^ Van Voorst 2000.
  147. ^ Eddy & Boyd 2007. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFEddyBoyd2007 (help)
  148. ^ Upon the publication of Allegro's relevant work, his "thesis was dismissed by fifteen experts in Semetic languages and related fields who lodged their protest in a letter that was published in the May 26, 1970 issue of The Times... They judged that Allegro's views were 'not based on any philological or other evidence that they can regard as scholarly.'" Further, John A. T. Robinson stated that if Allegro's style of reasoning appeared in other academic disciplines it "would be laughed out of court." Habermas 1996, p. 46
  149. ^ "The writing is not a serious discussion of the issues among one’s scholarly peers but rather comes across as an extremely bitter rant," Costa 2009
  150. ^ See the remarks by Ingolfsland,[44] Dunn,[21] Evans,[23] and Costa.[149]
  151. ^ Bromiley 1982, p. 1034
  152. ^ Henry 1999, p. 162
  153. ^ "The theory that Matthew and Luke used both Mark and Q as sources is called the Two Document Hypothesis. In addition to these two written documents, two oral (or written) sources have been postulated to explain the presence of distinctive Matthean and Lukan material. “M” refers to the material found only in Matthew, such as the coming of the Magi, the slaughter of children by Herod, and the flight an return of Jesus and his family from Egypt. “L” refers to the material only found in Luke, such as the birth of John the Baptist, Mary’s magnificat, the visit of the shepherds, and the presentation of the infant Jesus in the temple. This expanded version of the theory, postulating that M and L included additional written sources, is sometimes called the Four Document Hypothesis… Unlike Mark and Q, however, it is difficult to determine if M and L are (1) oral or written sources or (2) the literary creations of the authors. The documentary hypothesis outlined here has been followed by a majority of biblical scholars since the beginning of the twentieth century." Puskas & Crump 2008, pp. 53–54
  154. ^ Bauckham 2006, pp. 358 ff.
  155. ^ Barnett 2001, pp. 57–58 Barnett indicates that, among other details, the episltes state Jesus 1) descended from Abraham, 2) descended from David, 3) was 'born of a woman', 4) lived in poverty, 5) was born and lived under the law, 6) had a brother named James, 7) led a humble lifestyle, and 8) ministered primarily to Jews.
  156. ^ Feldman 1992, pp. 990–991
  157. ^ "In Josephus and Modern Scholarship: 1937-1980 (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1984), [Louis] Feldman surveys more than one hundred scholarly writings on Josephus… Asked to make a rough assessment of where contemporary scholarship stands on the authenticity of the Testimonium as a whole, he responded, 'My guess is that the ratio of those who in some manner accept the Testimoium would be at least 3 to 1. I would not be surprised if it would be as much as 5 to 1.'" Habermas & Licona 2004, pp. 268–269
  158. ^ "Myth is a term of at best doubtful relevance to the study of Jesus and the Gospels." Dunn 1992, p. 566
  159. ^ "[T]he Gospels, indeed the whole NT have a profound indebtedness to early Judaism and Jewish ideas about salvation, this life, resurrection, heaven and hell, clean and unclean, the sabbath, circumcision, the nature of God etc. They are also suffused with the Jewish concern for history, for their God was a God who intervenes in history, and they were not looking for a mythical messiah, but rather a flesh and blood one who would rescue them from their oppressors. The universe of discourse is again and again Jewish, not Greco-Roman at its core. Thankfully the vast majority of scholars, Jewish, Christian, or of no faith at all have long since realized that the NT and its ideas, and Jesus himself cannot be explained or explained away using the tired old arguments of the Religionsgeschichte Schule. The discussion has moved on..." Witherington 2009
  160. ^ "Third, the miracles of Jesus are interpreted more carefully and more realistically in context, with the result that they are now viewed primarily as part of charismatic Judaism, either in terms of piety or in terms of restoration theology (or both). The older notion that the miracle tradition is relatively late and of Hellenistic origin, perhaps the product of theios anèr ideas, has been largely abandoned." Evans 1993, pp. 17–18
  161. ^ "[I]t is presently impossible to accept a general category of a 'dying and rising god' in the ancient Mediterranean and Levantine world." Smith 1994, p. 70 and "There is now what amounts to a scholarly consensus against the appropriateness of the concept. Those who still think differently are looked upon as residual members of an almost extinct species." Mettinger 2001, p. 7
  162. ^ "There is, as far as I am aware, no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct, drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world." Mettinger 2001, p. 221
  163. ^ "[P]ast studies of phenomenological comparisons have inexcusably disregarded the dates and the provenience of their sources when they have attempted to provide prototypes for Christianity." Yamauchi 1974
  164. ^ "Of course if one writes an imaginary description of the Orphic mysteries... filling in the large gaps in the picture left by our data from the Christian eucharist, one produces something very impressive. On this plan, you first put in the Christian elements, and then are staggered to find them there." Bevan 1929, p. 105 and John Dickson: "The claims about this particular sky God then, Horus, are that he was born on December the 25th, he was adored by three kings, he grew up, he had twelve disciples, he was crucified, and then he was resurrected. Well, that sounds like the Jesus story." Chris Forbes: "It does—because that’s what it is. But it’s not the Horus story." Forbes 2009
  165. ^ Brandon 1959, p. 128
  166. ^ "Judaism was a milieu to which doctrines of the deaths and rebirths, of mythical gods seemed so entirely foreign that the emergence of such a fabrication from its midst is very hard to credit." Grant 1995, p. 199
  167. ^ "[T]he early Palestinian Church was composed of Christians from a Jewish background, whose generally strict monotheism and traditional intolerance of syncretism must have militated against wholesale borrowing from pagan cults. Psychologically it is quite inconceivable that the Judaizers, who attacked Paul with unmeasured ferocity for what they considered his liberalism concerning the relation of Gentile converts to the Mosaic law, should nevertheless have acquiesced in what some have described as Paul’s thoroughgoing contamination of the central doctrines and sacraments of the Christian religion." Metzger 1968, p. 7
  168. ^ John E. Remsburg's list of historians from the period who did not mention Jesus, published in his book The Christ, has been influential in this regard.
  169. ^ France 1986, pp. 19 ff.
  170. ^ "Few people dispute that Jesus is a historical figure. And those who do do so arguably out of ignorance or in disregard of powerful evidence," Köstenberger 1999, p. 216; "[T]he people you're talking to [(i.e. Christ myth advocates)] are impervious to scholarship," Craig 2009a; "[A] 'real' archeological or textual discovery of indubitable quality... would not persuade die-hard mythers," Hoffmann 2009
  171. ^ DeConick 2009
  172. ^ Crossan and McClymond have compared advocates of the Christ myth theory with those who believe the Apollo moon landing was a hoax.[41][42] Powell and Craig have classed advocates with flat-earthers.[37][52] And comparisons of varying explicitness between the Christ myth theory and Holocaust denial have been made by Perrin,[39] Powell,[37] McClymond,[42] Ehrman,[53] Piper,[43] Ingolfsland,[44] Licona,[45][46] and Dunn.[54]
  173. ^ See comments on the scholarly consensus by Richard A. Burridge,[12] Robert E. Van Voorst,[13] James H. Charlesworth,[14] Graham Stanton,[15] Michael Grant,[16] N. T. Wright,[17] Craig A. Evans,[23] Chris Forbes,[25] Bart Ehrman,[32][33] W. Ward Gasque,[36] Nicholas Perrin,[39] Michael James McClymond,[42] Michael R. Licona,[46] William Lane Craig,[48] and even G. A. Wells.[50]
  174. ^ Wright 2007, pp. 187–188


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