WHO’s WHO: Mythicists, Mythicist Agnostics & Historicists Who Call for Scholarly Debate (Updated 6th August 2020)

151 thoughts on “WHO’s WHO: Mythicists, Mythicist Agnostics & Historicists Who Call for Scholarly Debate (Updated 6th August 2020)”

1. I’m not sure what my name is doing there, as there is no way I can be considered a scholar or have an opinion which is worth noticing.

   I’m just an observer.

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   1. Only those in bold type are scholars in a directly related field. You are well-known in the web as a contributor to related discussions and Maurice Casey included you in his book of mythicist targets. I have since added you in a pink shaded area because, like me, you have not published an argument for Jesus being a myth.

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2. Armstrongism is definitely a form of fundamentalism, so I think Neil Godfrey should be in the “fundamentalist background” category.

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   1. My name is in both. My introduction explains why I have included some names more than once. My life has involved more years in a liberal Christian background than in the cult — a minor detail Maurice Casey curiously chose to suppress in his book even though it was made very clear in his main source of information.

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      1. When I looked at it, “Neil Godfrey” wasn’t (I think) in both places, (certainly) wasn’t with a hyperlink, and (probably) didn’t have an asterisk. So this explains my original comment here.

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      2. Of course, if your name was already in the first column (which I don’t think it was), I apologize for my first comment.

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         1. It certainly was in both and you can check web archives of the original posts (also linked here) to confirm this. I do happen to know my own life experience and have been very open about it from the beginning — as everyone has always been able to see in my profile that has been here for everyone to read for several years now. I have even posted many times about my negative religious experience.

            Yes, I did add the hyperlink and asterisk since your and Steve’s comments. Both yours and Steves original comments reminded me that many readers don’t read and I do need to remember to add additional formatting to catch the attention of those who skim.

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3. I used to be a frequent reader of Huller’s blog; I recall that he publicized his ancestral
   connection to “Frankish Judaism”, which I assume is part of the larger Ashkenazi division.

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   1. Thanks, I’ll try to follow up.

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4. Hi Neil, I’m curious.

   I know more or less all the cited people, sufficitently to form an idea. But I don’t know Markus Vinzent. Where he shows to be open to mythicism, or says to be Jesus agnostic? In a published book?

   Thanks for the info.

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   1. I can no longer recall — and that’s the reason for my question mark. Perhaps I should remove his name if I cannot support it.

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      1. I have read about the Markus Vinzent’s view. He is historicist, but his view about the creation of Gospels is very similar to that held from old mythicist Louis Couchoud.

         This serious scholar shows that Paul’s viewpoint of the resurrection of Christ was rediscovered. He claims that it was as a result of Marcion that the resurrection came back into interest within Christianity. According to Vinzent, Paul’s view of Christianity with the resurrection of Christ had faded over time. Many of the fathers, he claims, “remained reluctant” toward Christ’s resurrection and even remained silent about it. The resurrection of Christ became much more prominent in the second half of the second century, thanks to Marcion of Sinope.

         P. L. Couchoud thought that Paul was the first to introduce the idea of a crucified Christ, and of a risen Christ. But the Pillars before him had only the faith in a victorious Christ, coming soon.

         In his treatment of Revelation Markus Vinzent does acknowledge that the resurrection of Christ is present, but he minimizes its importance, stating that other issues about Christ as well as ethics were more important. However, the appearance of the resurrected Jesus who proclaims himself to be alive and resurrected appears at a key point within Revelation in 1:18. The declaration of Christ being raised is a critical basis point, then, for the remainder of Revelation.

         I start to suspect personally a very crucial point:

         that the Pillars had a Risen Christ, but only because that Christ was sacrificed by will of God as a new Isaac, on a celestial altar. Who killed Christ was God himself (and not Satan), as a novel Abraham that sacrificed his firstson Isaac. This can explain why these Judeo-Christians minimized the resurrection and emphasized the sacrifice of Christ: even if the killer of Christ was God, the same God of Jews, that killing was a necessary, metaphysical act. To emphasize excessively the resurrection could risk to mean a revenge, a rebellion against the will of the same God of Jews, as if His will of killing Jesus was wrong an unjustified.

         I think that Chouchoud was right when he wrote that Paul was an innovator about the early christian theology, but not because Paul was the first to talk of a Risen Christ.

         Paul was an innovator because he was the first that talked about a Christ that was crucified by demoniac archons (and not killed from God, by will of God). Maybe that, according the true Paul, the same God of Jews was one of the archons killers of Jesus?

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         1. Thanks for this.

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   2. A new book by Prof. Markus Vinzent is about to appear at the end of the impending winter:
      Christi Thora. Die Entstehung des Neuen Testaments im 2. Jahrhundert

      Vinzent announces to work on an English version as well.
      The title can be understood as something like “The thora of the Christ. The formation of the New Testament in the second century”.

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5. Neil,

   In my book “Matthew, Mark, Luke and Paul” on page 19 I express agreement with Earl Doherty that Jesus was a heavenly being and not a flesh and blood human.

   I am but an amateur scholar, and would be pleased to be included in your list, if you deem it appropriate. My education is not in theology but law.

   I was raised Episcopalian and my father was an Episcopal clergyman. I left the church in the early eighties.

   David Oliver Smith
   La Quinta, CA

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   1. Done. Your book is still in my “to read” queue on my shelf. Have only dipped into serendipitously till now. Look forward to doing it full justice.

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   2. Smith, David Oliver (2011). Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul: The Influence of the Epistles on the Synoptic Gospels. Wipf and Stock Publishers. p. 19. ISBN 978-1-61097-319-9.

      In my opinion Doherty has successfully shown that it is more likely that Paul considered Christ to be a heavenly spiritual being and not a flesh and blood human that walked on earth. The evidence Doherty brings to bear on the issue of Jesus’ historicity from Paul to the gospels to the second century Christian Apologists to the writings from secular sources all demonstrates that an earthly man, Jesus of Nazareth, is the invention of the church fathers of the third and fourth centuries.

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6. Hi David,

   I like your book (only now I’m aware of it), and I will read it surely.

   But I am very curious to ask you a question (feel free to reply). You write:

   My conclusion is either ”the Lord’s brother” is an interpolation unknown to Mark or it was a title for James, son of Zebedee, and Mark knew that.
   (Matthew, Mark, Luke and Paul, p.74)

   I would disagree with you about the identity ”brother of Lord”=title for only James, since Carrier , in his OHJ, has made a strong case that proves the identity ”brother of Lord”= christian not-apostle.

   But I disagree with Carrier when he doesn’t examine the possibility (and its possible effects) that Mark deliberately cloned the same and unique James (of Galatians) in two Jameses in his Gospel: the ”son of Zebedee” and the ”brother of Jesus” (Mark 6:3). Even if it is only a possibility, it’s equally probable like the other alternative possibility (on which Carrier builds his case): that the two Jameses in Gospel are not literary clones of the same James the Pillar.

   If you are interested, you can read what I think would missing in your book (and in OHJ) about the Mark’s use of pauline costruct ”the Lord’s brother” in his Gospel.

   cordially,

   Giuseppe

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7. Neil, it should be noted that Onfray came to know of (Jesus) mythism from Raoul Vaneigem’s Resistance to Christianity. Last I’ve heard, he hasn’t renounced mythism and is alive and well. That’s another name for your list

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   1. Thank Buddha his name starts with V. So fiddly trying to insert anyone starting with the early letters.

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8. What about John Allegro. Wikipedia claims “Mark Hall writes that Allegro suggested the Dead Sea Scrolls all but proved that a historical Jesus never existed”.

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   1. I’ve left him out because he did not fit my definition of “contemporary” mythicists — those still with us this century. Rene Salm and Kenneth Humphreys include Allegro in their chronologically broader lists.

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9. HI Neil

   I’ve noticed your uncertain reference to Robert Eisenman.
   I’ve seen Robert’s recorded lectures on various subjects, from perhaps around 2005 which he posted onto his youtube channel.
   I vaguely remember someone asking him in one of his ‘Historical Jesus’ lectures about Jesus’s existence, he seemed pretty confident he did exist.

   If I get the time, I’ll look back through these and get a specific video and timecode.

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   1. Thanks. I’ll remove his name pending further info. For some reason — perhaps the fact he once participated as a guest in the JesusMysteries forum — I had a vague idea he was at least open to the question of mythicism.

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10. You should add Michael Martin. He’s a philosopher and treats the subject of Jesus mythicism in his book “The Case Against Christianity.” He also wrote a positive blurb for Earl Doherty’s “Neither God Nor Man.”

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    1. Wonderful. I would not be at all surprised if there are quite a few more such names out there. It is important to add them to the list here and help bring their stance to a wider awareness. This should make it harder for the McGraths and Hurtados to brand anyone who doubts a fool akin to Young Earth Creationists.

       I have downloaded “Case Against Christianity” from Scrbd.

       I don’t suppose you happen to know Martin’s religious background (past, presumably), do you?

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11. Oh geez Neil, could your biases against Acharya S/DM Murdock be any more obvious? You share links to everybody’s website and book links except hers and you even misspell her name. The only two links you provide, Wikipedia and your so-called “reviews,” are both severely biased against her. We can always count on you to drop the ball anytime she is mentioned. If you have such a problem with her work then allow it to be debunked based on objective arguments not biases.

    You will most likely refuse to allow my post to go through but, here are the links you refuse to share or just can’t seem to find.

    http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com

    http://www.truthbeknown.com

    http://freethoughtnation.com

    Acharya’s latest book is fantastic but, I’m sure you’ll refuse to read it like everything else of hers.

    Did Moses Exist? The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver
    http://www.amazon.com/Moses-Exist-Myth-Israelite-Lawgiver/dp/0979963184/

    Scholars and others who’ve actually read her work are supportive of it:

    “I find it undeniable that many of the epic heroes and ancient patriarchs and matriarchs of the Old Testament were personified stars, planets, and constellations … I find myself in full agreement with Acharya S/D.M. Murdock”
    – Dr. Robert Price, Biblical Scholar with two Ph.D’s

    “Your scholarship is relentless! The research conducted by D.M. Murdock concerning the myth of Jesus Christ is certainly both valuable and worthy of consideration.”
    – Dr. Kenneth L. Feder, Professor of Archaeology
    Review of Acharya’s book “Christ in Egypt”

    “I can recommend your work whole-heartedly!”
    – Dr. Robert Eisenman

    “I’ve known people with triple Ph.D’s who haven’t come close to the scholarship in Who Was Jesus?”
    – Pastor David Bruce, M.Div, North Park Seminary

    I especially love how in the video below you guys trash talk Acharya S while refusing to ever allow her any opportunity to respond. Wow, just wow. I don’t see you do that with anybody else but Acharya S.

    Nuskeptix “Christ Myth Theory” Video Chat
    http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4640

    What are you guys so afraid of?

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    1. Thanks for responding to my request to be notified of needed corrections. I have corrected the misspelling (only once of the 5 times I mentioned her name in the post). I did indeed link to her website but unfortunately the hyperlink did not show up as a distinct colour and I have fixed that, too.

       I have corrected several other glitches related to other names in the post as well.

       Martin, I have not refused to read Murdock’s work and have in fact prepared a defence of her against Maurice Casey’s attacks. (Casey’s death has naturally put a delay on any motivation to post criticisms of his last work for a little while.) But each time I do begin to express my honest criticisms of her work you guys and Murdock herself viciously attack me with all sorts of outrageous insults and falsehoods. Presumably the purpose is to pressure me enough to shut up.

       Nice try with the promotional blurbs but as you know they do not always tell the whole story or specify the particular book or reason for the positive remark.

       What am I afraid of? I’ll tell you. I am afraid that some people will too easily assume mythicism can be confused with the unscholarly methods and agendas of those who advance something akin to a New Age type spiritualism or religious (and pseudo-scientific) belief in astrotheology. But that fear did not prevent me from linking to her website or spelling her name correctly for the most part.

       Yes, Murdock has been successful in hiding her agenda from some of her recent books — a tactic used widely among religious cultists who want to promote a public image of neutrality with one set of publications but opening up to “deeper truths” among the converted.

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       1. Thanks for making the corrections, Neil, and I get it that your “defence of her against Maurice Casey’s attacks” are on delay for obvious reasons (tho now is probably long enough) and I look forward to that. But then, you turn around and maliciously smear her as you did once again here in your comment referring to her as:

          “unscholarly methods and agendas of those who advance something akin to a New Age type spiritualism or religious (and pseudo-scientific) belief in astrotheology” and “hiding her agenda from some of her recent books — a tactic used widely among religious cultists”

          I don’t know a single person in the world who appreciates such malicious lies told about them, Neil, so, from where I stand Acharya and her supporters have every right to get upset and point out the obvious and when they do you attack them for that too. You treat her and her supporters as if they have no right to point out such patently false lies. It’s despicable. You can’t refute her case based on the merits so, you smear her instead. I’m just so disappointed because you do such a good job in your other blogs.

          You are still using complaints from her first book from 15 years ago to bludgeon her to death with and she has come a long way since then. Her current methodology is as good if not better than anything else out there, including Carrier’s Bayes Theorem from the 18th century but, you wouldn’t know anything about that because it’s more convenient for you to just repeat the trash from 15 years ago rather than study her later books.

          “But each time I do begin to express my honest criticisms of her work you guys and Murdock herself viciously attack me with all sorts of outrageous insults and falsehoods. Presumably the purpose is to pressure me enough to shut up. ”

          “Honest criticism”??? Oh Pleeeze, who are you trying to fool? Nobody is trying to shut you up, Neil, it’s the falsehoods, constant derogatory comments and malicious smears that they’re all sick and tired of and I don’t blame them. One thing Acharya S/Murdock does not get from you is objective and fair treatment like most of your other blogs and it’s transparent as glass for all to see. You have different standards when it comes to Acharya S and her work and everybody knows it. They have exposed the sloppy and egregious errors Richard Carrier has been spreading about her work … it’s infuriating and Carrier needs to be held accountable for once: http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=4771#p4771

          I would like to see an objective discussion of Acharya’s mythicist position video youtube.com/watch?v=63BNKhGAVRQ and her book, “Did Moses Exist?” based on the merits not biases. There is good reason she gets support from Dr. Price, Dr. Feder. Dr. Zindler, Dr. Eisenman, Earl Doherty and many other scholars.

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          1. I demonstrated Murdock’s “spiritual” agenda — that she is just as faith-agenda driven as many Christian scholars — The Confessional Epilogue: Christians and Acharya and how this affects the arguments made at Astrotheology, A Religious Belief System (as per D.M. Murdock/Acharya S).

             I would not bother with Christ Conspiracy if Murdock demonstrated the view that supporters like you want me to take on board, the view that it was deeply flawed and has since been replaced by more truly representative work, IF Murdock herself stopped promoting that book on her website. She still advertises it as “the most important book of our time“.

             It is not smear to call someone’s methods unscholarly when one has repeatedly demonstrated that they fail to apply the four steps of the hypothetico-deductive model and to show that they in fact fall into every fallacious trap raised by Samuel Sandmel in his article Parallelomania.

             If I have lied at all then I won’t ask you to provide evidence I have done so “maliciously” (though you can if you believe you have it) but I would ask you to demonstrate that I have in fact lied or not otherwise presented the truth about Murdock’s methods.

             I have little more to add to my earlier account of the falling out between Murdock, her supporters and me in Falling Out.

             After your comment I was thinking of resuming my reviews of CC or even perhaps doing one on Christ in Egypt but after re-reading my Falling Out post I was turned off the idea of ever touching another one of her books. But then I think, hey, that means all their insults and lies will have succeeded – they will have shut me up.

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             1. Yes, Neil, I’ve read all of those links, sadly, I was hoping for a non-biased, non-hateful review of her work from you, which I’ve completely given up on at this point. Did you fail to notice that the “The Most Important Book of Our Time” was in QUOTES? The fact is that that book has become a cultural classic and is still one of the best selling books out of all the other mythicist books combined, even though it’s 15 years old. It’s one of AUP’s best selling books.

                All that you have “demonstrated” in those links is that you are not a reliable source of information regarding the work by Acharya S/Murdock due to your biases against her. There’s a complete lack of confidence of ever getting a non-biased discussion of her work here.

                I also can’t help but notice that all the people you like in your “Who’s Who of Mythicists” list get extra links to their websites and book links but, those you are biased against get trash links. Acharya’s latest Moses book should be linked there. Asking you to give her fair treatment is like pulling teeth isn’t it, Neil.

                One can get an idea of what to expect from her 2nd edition of “Christ Conspiracy” by reading her latest book, “Did Moses Exist?” It serves as a type of prequel just prior to the 2nd edition – a brilliant idea.

                Again, there is good reason she gets support from Dr. Price, Dr. Feder, Dr. Zindler, Dr. Eisenman, Earl Doherty and many other scholars who’ve actually read her work.

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                1. Biased, yes. I believe I can and have justified my biases. I have created an annotated list. I express my views on many of the entries. I don’t believe I would be doing anybody a favour by presenting a list that gave no indication as to what each entry was about. People like yourself who disagree with my perspective will no doubt take my treatment of Murdock’s name as reason to look into her works with more interest.

                   Hateful? You guys are at least consistent: you seem convinced that any criticism of Murdock must be the result of hate.

                   I’m glad you have confirmed here good reasons for me to have addressed the CC after all.

                   Yes, I am biased. I have explained why and what the core of my criticisms are. Not one of you has addressed those core criticisms. Not one — except Robert Tulip who attempted to prove her (and his) methods are indeed “scientific”. Can you actually give a constructive, evidence based response to the criticisms in my reviews? I don’t believe so or you would have done so by now instead of accusing me of hatred.

                   Why should I bother with Did Moses Exist? I don’t believe Moses did exist and I have read much in the scholarly literature that leaves no room for doubt in my mind.

                   Who is Dr Feder? (There are several things I strongly disagree with Price and Doherty on. And I don’t believe they have “good reasons” for supporting her work. — but I don’t hate them any more than I hate Murdock, by the way, and when it comes to our disagreements on arguments relating to Christian origins I disagree with them without them complaining I hate them.)

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                   1. Dr Feder seems to be Dr Kenneth L. Feder, Professor of Archaeology, Central Connecticut State University. There’s an excerpt from a review on one of DM’s pages.

                   2. Thanks for admitting your biases against Acharya S and her work, of course, it’s so obvious that there’s no way to deny it. Now, you’re just pretending that you’re not as malicious as you really are.

                      “Yes, I am biased. I have explained why and what the core of my criticisms are. Not one of you has addressed those core criticisms.”

                      Your criticisms have repeatedly been demonstrated to be mendacious to say the least and when others point it out you’re well-known for banning them and deleting their comments for exposing it. Hardly any type of reasonable approach as your criticisms are the equivalent of just calling her a racist, as in your false accusations of calling her a cult leader. It’s a lie plain and simple as she has helped people get out of cults for 20 years and they thank her for it:

                      http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1959

                      “Why should I bother with Did Moses Exist? I don’t believe Moses did exist”

                      It’s not about you, Neil, a link to her Moses book should be there for other readers interested in mythicism to be aware of … same as you provided links to websites and books for those you obviously like. You’re just way over-the-top biased against Acharya S and have no intention of ever giving her fair treatment. You are simply not a trustworthy source on her work.

                      http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4316

                   3. Anyone can still read the criticisms of Murdock’s supporters on this blog where I have posted my views of her work. The only ones I have banned are those who resort to foul language or are needlessly repetitive. In fact I encourage anyone to read my reviews of Murdock’s work, the comments that follow and my own comments explaining why I banned those I have.

                      The record is clear on what I have said versus what Murdock and people such as you even here accuse me of having said. You would do better to link to my own comments directly instead of Murdock’s site where her supporters complain about me.

                2. My own biased view – from reading Neil extensively and only looking at freethoughtnation from time to time – is firmly behind Neil on this count. I’ve read Neil’s posts about Murdock’s work including all the comments back and forth, clicking and reading links where helpful. What Neil has presented is fair and well argued. He has also shown a commendable eagerness to correct his mistakes. It is almost special pleading to try to argue in this one case he is being pig-headed.

                   Did you fail to notice that the “The Most Important Book of Our Time” was in QUOTES? The fact is that that book has become a cultural classic and is still one of the best selling books out of all the other homeopathy books combined, even though it’s 15 years old. It’s one of Narayana Verlag’s best selling books.

                   That’s not an argument.

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                   1. Mark Erickson “What Neil has presented is fair and well argued. He has also shown a commendable eagerness to correct his mistakes. It is almost special pleading to try to argue in this one case he is being pig-headed.”

                      LOL, what have you been smoking?

                      http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4316

                      http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=4771#p4771

                      Nuskeptix “Christ Myth Theory” Video Chat
                      http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4640

                   2. Here is Dr. Ken Feder’s review of Acharya’s book “Christ in Egypt”

                      “My name is Ken Feder. I am an archaeologist and I play one on TV, as a talking head in various documentaries on the National Geographic Channel, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, ScFi, BBC Horizon, and, as it turns out, even the Weather Channel. I have written several books on archaeology, including Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience In Archaeology (about to go into its 7th edition). Frauds is revered by some and hated by others, which is an indication I must have done something right in that work. I will freely admit that I am not an Egyptologist and that ancient Greek is, well, Greek to me. But, having conducted research and written extensively over the course of the last thirty years, I think I have developed a good eye for recognizing valuable research that is worthy of serious consideration when I see it. And the relentless research conducted by D.M. Murdock into the myth of Jesus Christ is certainly both valuable and worthy of consideration.

                      Everyone who reads Murdock’s Christ in Egypt should understand that the sources she cites are anything but marginal or questionable. In fact, her sources are, at least as far as I can tell, entirely within the Egyptology mainstream and many are, in fact, revered, and deservedly so, within the community of Egyptologists. The fact that these sources are mainstream, highly respected, or even seminal does not, of course, make them right about the origins of the Christ story. However, it does make them, and Murdock’s thesis in which she incorporates their work, impossible to dismiss out of hand. Read her book. Criticize it if you believe it deserves criticism. Give it five stars. Give it zero stars. Okay, you can’t do that; give it one star, but only grudgingly. Whatever. But to dismiss it or get apoplectic about her thesis simply because it shocks you is pointless.”

                      – Dr. Ken Feder

                      http://www.amazon.com/review/RZO3UWCQT79XT/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0979963117

                      Dr. Feder has included some work by Acharya S/Murdock in his latest edition of “Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience In Archaeology,” which is used in archaeology courses btw.

                      Dr. Feder was also her professor of archaeology. So, her work is far better than anybody would ever learn from this blog, that’s for sure.

                   3. Thanks for the explanation. Anyone can see, now, that I have indeed followed Dr Feder’s advice in my reviews.

                      I do not dismiss her work out of hand but take the time to address my concerns and grounds for them.

                      I criticize it where I believe it deserves criticism.

                      My objections have nothing whatever to do with her thesis having any particular “shock” value of any kind.

                      Interesting that you also point out that there was a personal relationship of some kind between Dr Feder and Murdock. I recall Dr Price writing a scathing review of Murdock’s CC but back-peddling after, we were told, he had met with her.

12. I’m afraid people will skim table 1, think “ah, we’re talking about people like Atwill,” and fail to take mythicism as seriously as they might have.

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    1. Point taken. Have swapped them around.

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13. Neil,

    The link to Ben Goren’s article under the Jerry Coyne heading leads to Coyne’s Wikipedia page. That was the first link I clicked.

    I’m not sure whether you wanted to point to

    http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/09/05/guest-post-on-the-historicity-of-jesus/

    or

    http://vridar.org/2014/09/05/the-jesus-challenge/

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    1. Thank you. Fixed now.

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14. It is not correct that Tom Harpur came from a fundamentalist background. He was always a liberal. Although he taught at Wycliffe in Toronto, where The Fundamentals were hatched, he states in The Pagan Christ (page 1) that he “was far from following any form of fundamentalism.”

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    1. No, Tom Harpur’s statement on page 1 in The Pagan Christ is not an account of his former life but of his approach to fundamentalism at the time he was teaching at Toronto’s School of Theology’s Wycliffe College.

       A few years after Tom wrote that book his autobiography, Born Again: My Journey from Fundamentalism to Freedom, was published. The title says it all, but just to be sure on page 23 he writes:

       In retrospect, I see that my childhood, though enviable in so many ways, was a thorough-going indoctrination into the basic tenets of Christian fundamentalism.

       (I am continually amazed at the regular indications of careless reading comprehension among Murdock’s supporters. So many of you jump to the first conclusion you find suits your interests. This is done in your reading of Josephus, Philo, the Bible, even Ptolemy, and in my own criticisms. Yes, I had read Pagan Christ but did not jump to conclusions about Tom’s background until I could get something less ambiguous than the line you quote so confidently.)

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15. Hi Neil,
    I would disagree when you ascribe to Daniel Unterbrink a mythicist view. His views (Jesus=Judas the Galilean or his son) are better qualified as historicist (and Eric Laupot is historicist) and in his book he polemizes clearly against mythicists. Because his use of criterium of Embarassment on Gospels is the same of historicists and his case is based on Testimonium Taciteum (à la Laupot).

    The same Carrier recognizes this subtle difference.

    Thanks,
    Giuseppe

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    1. It’s a grey area. G.R.S. Mead and Alvar Ellegard both placed the one we came to know as “Jesus” historically around 100 BCE yet have often been considered “mythicists” of a sort. Wells places the Jesus in some vague past but this historical Jesus was never crucified (or at least there was no significance attached to his death by his followers). Then we have others saying Jesus is basically a cipher for Titus or Julius Caesar and so forth.

       So one can say that all of these are “historicists”.

       Perhaps it comes down to what we mean by myth.

       I would think many critical scholars of the New Testament consider the Gospels to be virtually entirely myth. Certainly Spong and Ludemann do. Crossan has called the gospels parables. The main reason for believing in a historical Jesus is the argument that Jesus must have been so very great and marvellous to have inspired others to write about him so fabulously and in no other way.

       I think one could say that such scholars are themselves mythicists. We know nothing about Jesus apart from myths.

       Probably most, certainly many, mythical persons in literature or folklore have been believed to have been real persons. To be a myth a person does not have to have a celestial existence or origin.

       I think so long as I make it clear that certain authors believe the Jesus we read about in the Gospels originated as some other historical person (Titus, Judas the Galilean, whoever) then I can leave it up to each to do his or her own classification and see where names like Carotta and Wells fit in the scheme of things.

       The important thing is clarity in communication. Each conversation will have its own parameters and so long as the participants agree on terminology and meanings at the outset of any particular discussion I see no problem.

       Reply

16. Okay, Thanks Neil, and sorry for relying just on Harpur’s most well-known book, where he gives no indication whatsoever of a fundamentalist background except for that one brief mention that he had taught at Wycliffe, which he implies had a liberal ethos.

    I don’t accept that this is careless on my part, since Harpur never alludes to any such childhood beliefs in The Pagan Christ. The conversion he describes in this book is from liberal belief in a historical Jesus to non-belief, based on reading AB Kuhn.

    For Harpur to state on the first page that he “was far from following any form of fundamentalism” while in his early years at Wycliffe in the 1960s, considered together with the strident anti-fundamentalism of The Pagan Christ, (see pp 179-180 for example) gives a definite impression of an early commitment to higher criticism. Taking that impression at face value is reasonable, even if he discussed his childhood culture seven years later.

    I would be interested to know if the fact that his childhood was spent in a fundamentalist community produced any more commitment than that of a child believing in the tooth fairy or Santa. He comments (p1-2) that his background was the belief that “there was a profoundly historical core to it all”, a wording far from fundamentalist commitments to inerrancy or creationism. Your quote does not show to what extent he accepted any fundamentalist dogma he was subjected to. Many people grow up in church communities without taking the dogma seriously.

    To say a mythicist scholar has a ‘fundamentalist background’ would normally mean they converted from active support of fundamentalism as a scholar, not just that they grew up in a religious community.

    Reply

    1. You can justify your extrapolation of a conclusion about Harpur’s religious background from taking a phrase out of its context (the paragraph’s opening sentence clearly contextualized his statement) and argue a series of assumptions from what is not said and from what is said about another theme entirely that bears no relationship to his early biographical years (except through groundless assumption), — but when you go down that line of reasoning there is no telling what sorts of insights you will read into all sorts of texts. You could even find the gospel narratives were coded messages for astrotheology and that even Josephus and Philo support your interpretation!

       As for the “normal meaning” of “fundamentalist background” I have explained the context clearly and often enough. I am responding to the presumptions of Casey, “NT Wrong”, West, Hoffmann, Hurtado and others that a mythicist is the product of a fundamentalist type of religious background. It is the understanding and innuendo of such critics of mythicists that I am addressing. I don’t see any point in arguing about precise meanings of what “converted from” might imply in reality.

       Reply

17. I find this other academic article (with peer-review) that seems mythicist in conclusion (I haven’t read it, sorry):

    There is not a shred of evidence that a historical character Jesus lived…

    Reply

18. Very interesting. Fortunately for me Roland Fischer died in 1997 so I am not compelled to pay Wiley publishers to read his article — given that my cut off limit for this page is the turn of the century.

    Reply

19. Roland Fischer’s article can be downloaded gratis from http://phdtree.org/pdf/31565986-on-the-story-telling-imperative-that-we-have-in-mind/

    His Wikipedia article says of him: “Fischer was formerly professor of experimental psychiatry and associate professor of pharmacology at Ohio State University (1958-1971), and also held academic posts at George Washington University, Georgetown and Johns Hopkins University.” So we can assume he’s not a complete idiot, and his article was published in a peer-reviewed journal.

    It’s an interesting article. Some excerpts:

    The bridge between the two Testaments may be traced back to Luke 24:27 where it is said (in Neoplatonic transliteration) that the Old Testament is the ectype, the image of the idea, while the New Testament is the archetype, the Platonic ideal. — referencing Eco (1984) and Origines the Church Father.

    [T]here is not a shred of evidence that a historical character Jesus lived. The only one passage in the so called Testimonium Flavianum, a brief description of Jesus in book 18 of The Antiquities of the Jews, is a forgery according to Hubert van Gtfifen (Giphanius), a Protestant scholar (born 1534).

    One of the most important publications was in 1655 by Tanaquil Faber (Tannegui Lefebvre), a paper entitled “Flavit Josephi de Jesu Dom. testtmonium suppositum esse T. Fabrt diatriba.” In this, he suggests that Eusebtus, a Christian historian of the fourth century, forged the T. F. to suit his purposes. The debate was maintained between 1600 and 1655 by letters which are reprinted as an anthology by Chrtstoph Arnold in 1661 (Nowell 1991).

    Emil Schiirer’s monumental classic, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (1890)—in three volumes—was recently translated by Geza Vermes, University of Oxford. In the following, we are going to refer to the original German edition in which Schiirer has compiled the pros and the cons of the dispute that surrounds the authenticity of the so-called Testimony of Josephus Flavius of Christ. There are seven authors opting for authenticity. Eleven believe that it is an interpolation, and eight bring forth convincing scholarly evidence against the authenticity. . . . . Of course, no absolute certainty can be reached, but the evidence that the passage claiming the existence of Jesus is a fraud is overwhelming.

    Not only is there not a shred of evidence that a historical character Jesus lived, there is none that Paul ever referred to such a character. Everything fits with the view that Paul was trying to put across fundamental mystical teachings concerning the “sonship,” i.e., the mystical transformation, utilizing accepted ideas from ancient India, stoicism, etc. (perhaps being cultivated in the cosmopolitan Stoic university of Tarsus). The gospel story may be wholly explained as the writing down—about 50 years after Paul’s death—of a “mystery play” reflecting the mystical function of “the Son”: God being born in us—as in the Minoan mysteries. This view related directly with the mysteries of Asia Minor in which God died and then rose again, and the Saviour was also called Ieso, one of the Minoan dactyls. Through adoption of the divine titles, along with “Lord,” of “Messiah” (ho chnstos) and Jes(h)u(s) = Joshua = Ieso, all meaning Saviour, Paul’s teaching made immediate contact not only with Asia Minor and Greece but also with Hebrews who had partly adopted Hellenistic mystical ideas (“Jesuists”).1 The teaching itself, in regard to release from the “error” of “the world” is basically Buddhist, though non-Buddhist terms are favored in other regions of mystical thought. There is no authentic reference to a historical Jesus or crucifixion as a historical event in Paul’s letters.

    To a large extent a mammalian species that is to some extent human, we are subject to biologically and socially programmed imperatives that collide head-on with the morality of secular and religious traditions. Hence, guilt of sin is something that takes place in human life, and in this sense, “Christianity is not a doctrine about what has happened or will happen to the human soul but a description of something that actually takes place in human life. For consciousness of sin is a real event and so are despair and salvation through faith. Those who speak of such things are simply describing what happened to them, whatever gloss anyone may want to put on it” (Wittgenstein s apropos of Bunyan, quoted by Cioffi 1993).

    To illustrate that last point a case history is described:

    At one point Madeleine conveys to her Doctor that she has given birth to Christ, whereupon Janet asks her: “Which year do we have at present7” Madeleine: “1897”. Janet: “Then, the genuine Christ was born 2000 years ago; hence, the one who was just born must be another Christ.” Madeleine: “What are you talking about? The birth of Christ takes place each and every year, and it is always the same birth in the same sense as His becoming flesh also happens whenever the holy Communion is taking place.”

    It sounds to me we have precursors here to the concepts addressed by Doherty (had Fischer read Couchoud?) and Freke & Gandy.

    Thank you for alerting us to the article.

    Reply

20. There’s also Truthsurge (don’t know what his real name is) creator of the popular pro-Jesus mythicism Youtube series “Jesus: Hebrew Human or Mythical Messiah?”
    He promotes the “Jesus Originated as a heavenly Christ” thesis.

    Reply

    1. There are several problems with my list. One of them is that I have included every publication I know of that argues in some sense for a mythicist case. Is that a particularly valid or useful exercise insofar as anyone can now publish a book online but it is much harder to measure the impact or simply the sales of all such books. I need to find some sort of measure that could be usefully applied to give readers a more usefully informed impression. Till then I have tried to make up for this lack with my annotations on each author.

       Meanwhile I’ll check out “Truthsurge”. Thanks.

       Reply

21. On wikipedia page (in English) there is the name of a mythicist, Alexander Jacob, but he does not deserve, with his book, to be included in your table because he is openly anti-Semit. I suspect that to edit wiki and insert his name among other mythicists is some Christian apologist with the intention of defaming the mythicists by the name of a disgusting anti-Semitic.

    Reply

    1. I will excuse myself from entering his name here for the time being at least after having followed up a few links, including a survey of his publications and an online interview of his with Rodney Stark (it’s hard to tell if he’s anti-semitic or just got a lot of screwball ideas about how the world works), and also because of the following excerpt of a scholarly review of one of his books that apparently addresses the Christ Myth question:

       That being said, it is not possible to conclude that Jacob’s study is of comparable quality to scholars such as [Walter] Burkert and [Martin] West, and for the most part Brahman reads as a confusing, over-detailed attempt to identify solar rituals in Vedic texts and read outwards from them to locate related cultural and religious practices in ancient cultures belonging to other language families.

       Jacob employs the biblical Semitic, Hamitic and Japhetic (named for Shem, Ham, and Japhet, the three sons of Noah) and in many cases appears to claim that ancient scriptures (such as the Vedas, the Bible, and the Gathas of Iranian Zoroastrians) are straightforwardly historical and can be accepted on face value.

       Further, strange and erroneous assertions, such as “A branch of the proto-Dravidian stock that seems to have spread through Celtic Europe as its priestly sect is the Druids” (p. 134), “The Iranians may be recognised by their later hieratic name, Magi, in the ‘Magog’ of the Biblical record” (p. 136), and the Scythians are “called Shakas in the Indic literature” (p. 136), abound throughout the text.

       The author’s technique seems to be to line up text upon text from a variety of dissimilar cultures (both in terms of linguistics and historical periods) and expound upon so-called parallels or similarities, and on this weak foundation build precarious superstructures.

       It is not likely that this work will obtain a high degree of scholarly acceptance, and it is also difficult to read, to an extent likely to deter even the best-disposed reader.

       That’s by Carole M. Cusack of the University of Sydney, published in June 2014, Journal of Religion – DOI: 10.1111/1467-9809.12169

       It may not be qualitatively different from Murdock’s or others’ mythicist publications so I need to find a way to create a list of the more solid work.

       Thanks for bringing the name to our notice. I’ll have to continue to think of the best way to address these. Perhaps what’s really needed is a serious discussion of each one the way Albert Schweitzer seriously addressed the mythicists in his day.

       Reply

22. My website promotes the idea that Jesus Christ was created as the personification of universal reason and explains how Mark’s Passion narrative demonstrates an ethical model in a story format.

    It may be of interest to some

    Regards

    Dominick.

    Reply

23. I noticed that this list is missing an author dear to me because she propose a possible stand-in for the historical Jesus that also I suppose, but by another way.
    She is Lena Einhorn
    I hope she will be included in the list
    Thanks

    Reply

    1. Thanks for the notice. I see Robert Price has a review of her book, too. I’ll add her name.

       Reply

       1. I do not know her book. I’ve only read the PDF linked in the previous post.
          I wish take this opportunity to say that while of Catholic education, I am an atheist from more than forty years.
          I consider the Egyptian as a good candidate for a historic Jesus as a primitive Grand Master of a mystery religion.
          The clues found by me are: EHEUS II,17,11-12, Acts 21,37-38, Toledoth Jeschu, AJ XX,169-170, Mk 14,58 and Mt 26,61, Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia sect. II, page 538
          Thanks

          Reply

          1. So I should place you in both the Catholic and No Church Background columns?

             Reply

             1. Liberal or No Church Background is fine

                Reply

24. Atwill’s work is of a very different quality. His analysis is just the sequence of events in the ‘Gospel According to Luke’ compared to similar events in the same sequence in ‘The War of The Jews’. Draw whatever conclusions you want but the similar events in the same order prevail.

    Reply

25. I cannot see how a Roman battle at the Lake of Gennesaret in which over 6000 Jews were killed, many of them in the lake itself (it pays to read the original texts that Joe Atwill is describing in his own words if we want to see how similar certain points really are) has any connection with a story of Jesus calling disciples by the sea of Galilee to become fishers of men and with another story of 2000 pigs drowning in the same lake.

    Ditto for all of the other supposed “similar events” and “in sequence” that Atwill declares to exist.

    Reply

26. R. G. Price has written extensively about his Fictional Jesus Theory. Very interesting and persuasive.

    Reply

    1. Yes, I’m currently reading his article and when finished I’ll post something.

       Reply

       1. Mini-Review from a quick reading: the author makes a grievous logical error in that he seems to think that by demonstrating that Mark is highly constructed, contains rewritten Hebrew Bible, contains self-evidently ahistorical content, has an allegorical reading, and so on that he has demonstrated that there is no historical figure behind it at all. This is false reasoning — one can write a highly constructed allegory composed from rewritten Hebrew Bible with plainly untrue material about a historical person, too. At best, he can claim the same thing Carrier does about Mark, that it supports a historical or mythical reading about equally. Given that the author’s stated aim is a proof of ahistoricity, I think it is safe to say he has failed.

          Now, getting historicity of Jesus down to 50-50 is not nothing, but I don’t really see anything original here — it is a similar reading of the evidence as Carrier along with a expanded Markan Priority such that all Christian writings that are “historicist” on their face ultimately derive from Mark or are just late, unreliable storytelling. But that last point isn’t original or even exclusively mythicist — its more or less what is (decisively) defended by Mark Goodacre (and is pretty much what Carrier believes, too).

          Reply

          1. Bertie, read more carefully. Your point is already the same point that makes the author:

             But the analysis of Mark merely proves that the Gospel of Mark is not historically true, it doesn’t prove that Jesus never existed.

             And after he writes:

             What proves that Jesus never existed is the fact that every other account of a real life Jesus is shown to be dependent on the Markan story. … The only reason that a fictional story would be the only source of information about someone’s life is if there was no other information about that person because they never actually existed.

             In other terms: if the desire of Christians was to bear witness to the existence of Jesus, Christians would be based on all available sources multiple & independent of his biography. Instead it is a FACT that they are only based on a single story, and moreover fictitious. So Jesus did not exist to the extent that the Christians wanted to talk to him but always and only they repeated the same usual fable.

             if I love a person to the point of writing a lot of stories about him, I’m not going to base myself on a fictional story about that person – and only on that.

             Reply

             1. in other words: it is useless to look for historical Jesus because Christians had already done the research for us. Finding only Mark.

                Reply

          2. Hi Bertie,

             Thanks for the feedback on my piece. First I have to make a comment about Richard Carrier. I think Richard is great (though he got my position somewhat wrong in his book), and he helped me with my works when I was doing a lot of my original research. What I’m putting forward here is basically an extension the the work in my self-published book Jesus – A Very Jewish Myth, which I published in 2008. http://www.lulu.com/shop/rg-price/jesus-a-very-jewish-myth/ebook/product-17510469.html

             I dedicated that book Richard Carrier, because he worked with me for almost a year off and on helping me with translations and getting up to speed on the state of current scholarship and making my arguments. I put a lot of original arguments in front of him for him to review and help me refine. So yeah, there are some similarities between my positions and what you find in his most recent book. Check my other publications on this subject and see when mine were published…

             Anyway.

             I do think the case I make is more decisive than you give it credit, but, you do have to read all of the details. I will grant that I didn’t necessarily provide the best opening summary of my position in this piece, and that in order to really understand the case I’m making you have to read all the details. In fact, in order to really get it you have to not only read all of this piece, but you also have to read my other pieces to, this is sort of built on a foundation of other cases made in prior writings.

             I’m now trying to figure out how to re-write all of this material and put it into a “real” book to to get published, and when I do that I want to make the case as concisely and up front as possible, so this type of feedback is very helpful to me.

             What Giuseppe says is basically correct. The case stands on several legs.

             #1) Mark is fiction – but this doesn’t prove that Jesus never existed
             #2) Key scenes in Mark can be shown to be literary allusions, which proves that their inclusion in other Gospels must have originated from Mark, not some other external source.
             #3) This shows that every narrative about Jesus ultimately is based on Mark.
             #4) The fact that every narrative about Jesus is based on Mark, must mean that there was no other information about Jesus to be had. It was the only source of “information” about a human Jesus.

             #4 is what proves that Jesus didn’t exist, and it is proven on two counts: #1) All of the narratives about Jesus are based on Mark #2) There were significant doubts about the early existence of Jesus among several so-called Christian sects, which 2nd-4th century apologists had to combat. The ONLY evidence that they ever mustered was theological reading based on the Gospels, THAT’S IT.

             The issue is not that we can’t go back today and find evidence because it was too long ago, the issue is that within 100-200 years of this person’s supposed lifetime there was a compelling need to provide evidence for his existence, and we know that early Christians did in fact search for many of the physical pieces of evidence of Jesus’s existence, like his tomb, like the place where he was crucified, etc., but the fact is that THEY NEVER FOUND ANY, within 100 years of his supposed life.

             And the issue is that these guys were trying very hard. The 2nd-4th century apologists had a lot of opposition and they were trying desperately to PROVE that Jesus had in fact been incarnate “in the flesh”, but the ONLY evidence they EVER mustered was the Gospels. The entire case for Jesus having existed “in the flesh”, made by apologists within 100-300 years of his supposed existence, rested entirely on the Gospels. And their case for the “reliability” of the Gospels rested entirely on the belief that what they had was four separate independent eyewitness or second hand accounts that corroborated each other.

             So without the Gospels, the 2nd-4th century case for the “humanity of Jesus” utterly falls apart, and basically the Docetists and Marcionites win.

             And for good measure I throw in an explanation for why Jesus must have been a heavenly messiah to begin with. The failure of Doherty and others, IMO, is that they focused to much on trying to show that Paul’s crucifixion took place in heaven, which I agree with, but its not compelling.

             What I explain is that it only makes sense that Jesus was originally understood to be a heavenly messiah because what sets Jesus apart is the fact that unlike all the other messiahs, who were supposed to create a perfect Jewish kingdom on earth, Jesus was a messiah who was going to create a perfect kingdom IN HEAVEN. This is key undisputable piece of evidence. The reason Jesus was going to create the kingdom of God in heaven, and not on earth is because the material world was hopelessly corrupt. If the material world is hopelessly corrupt, then the last thing you would believe is that a human messiah would be the one to create your perfect kingdom in heaven. Thus, it only makes sense that the perfect kingdom of God in heaven would be create by a heavenly messiah.

             And we see this conflict between the role of the heavenly messiah Jesus and the human Jesus all throughout Christian theology to this day. And this also explains why Marcionites and Docetists existed in the first place.

             I really do think that I’ve taken the position that Jesus didn’t exist from a place of conflusion and loose ends, to a place where it actually makes more sense than the idea that Jesus had existed.

             For me personally, the idea that Jesus never existed was always problematic, and always had a bad taste to it. It always seemed to be reaching and not quite explaining. For me personally, I’m now at a place, which I hope I was able to explain sufficiently and convey through my writing, where I feel like the idea that Jesus never existed makes MORE SENSE than the the idea that he had existed.

             And for me, that position is only arrived at through the arguments I’ve made in my writings. I don’t think that the cases made by others on this topic ever quite get there (Though of course many have made very important contributions to the topic). I feel like I have gotten there. To me, all of the dots never got fully connected. I feel like I’ve connected the dots.

             Reply

27. I was disappointed that Joseph Wheless (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Wheless) isn’t on this list. Is this because there’s something wrong with his books? He was very influential in my development as a skeptic, particularly his book Forgery in Christianity from about 1928, which is available in its entirety online (see Wikipedia entry).

    Reply

    1. The reason Joseph Wheless is not included is because I had to limit my list somehow and I arbitrarily chose the dividing line at persons alive in the 21st century.

       To prepare a comprehensive list is way beyond what my time and resources can permit. (The “Who’s Who” in the title is to some extent meant to indicate that it serves as a guide to “who IS who” today.)

       Reply

28. a 2013 mythicist book, of John Pickard. From initial reading, I find it very concise and useful (very similar to my personal views about the matter). Only, the only error I would see in is no casting doubt on authenticity of pauline ‘epistles’ and Paul’s figure.

    Reply

29. Hello Neil Godfrey
    from a google search I see that there is still present this sentence on the first English version of KRST: (English is not Pier’s first language and the work contains infelicities.)
    A few months ago I published the new edition corrected with the help of Robert Tulip.
    I would be grateful if you update your description
    thanks

    Reply

    1. Thanks Pier. Done.

       Reply

       1. Thanks Neil Godfrey

          I would also point out that the link on my name, in the first table, is interrupted

          Reply

          1. (sigh) … fixed again, I hope.

             Reply

30. Hi Neil,
    I think you should add Chris Albert Wells to the list of mythicists.

    He is the author of Jesus: God, Man or Party Label? the Dead Sea Scrolls’ Messiah Code (2010) and Sorting Out Paul: Caught Between Man and Legend (2015).

    He is not among the mythicists who accept the model Doherty/Carrier (with Paul’s letters before the first Gospel).
    He is better understood as a supporter of the ”theory of a fictional Jesus” as already proposed by RG Price (in the sense that everything, including Paul, must be traced back to the first gospel) even if RG Price placed still himself on Doherty/Carrier model. In a certain sense, he is more in right to claim the theory of a fictional Jesus (i.e. the idea that all sources about Jesus are explained by the introduction of the first Gospel) since Paul is later than first gospels.

    A short synthesis of his view is found here.

    Here you can find a comparison between Earl Doherty and Chris Albert Wells.

    I agree with his principal thesis that the first gospel was written in Antioch by renegade Essenes after 70 CE as particular Jewish reaction against traditionalist Essenes (symbolized by John the Baptist).

    I disagree when he still retains the idea of a historical Paul (existed after 70 CE) that divulges the gospel just written, after its reduction to a minimum dying-and-rising god news, to the Greek-Roman world. I think that Price, Detering (and in next future Stuart Waugh) have made a good case against the historicity of ‘Paul’. But I think that Chris is still right when describes the Christian origins even if he is still a ”Paul-post-70” historicist. Chris thinks that ”Paul the Jew” is genuine in his letters, but not ”Paul the dualist” that is a marcionite interpolation in his original letters (as ”Paul the proto-catholic”, also). In this he is doing the precise reversal of Price’s view about Paul: according to Price, ”Paul the dualist”, aka Simon Magus, was historical, but not ”Paul the Jew” neither ”Paul the proto-catholic”. I think that both Chris Albert Wells and Bob Price elude each other by demonstrating indirectly the extreme facility with which one can imagine at the table a historical Paul at the origin of those who wrote and/or drafted the epistles under his name.

    I disagree when he retains still the Markan priority but I think that his case is still valid, even more so, under the hypothesis of Mcn priority (not written by Marcion but used by him).

    Thanks,
    Giuseppe

    Reply

    1. Still catching up with many other real-life distractions at the moment. Will do.

       Reply

31. By the by: Tom Dykstra, author of “Mark: Canonizer of Paul” can be counted as a sympathizer with mythicism, possibly an agnostic (though I would ask him to be sure, because he hasn’t been explicit about this, though some of what he writes could be taken that way) He’s written a positive review of Brodie’s ‘Quest’ on amazon:
    http://www.amazon.com/review/R37U9PHOFFQLBF/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=190753458X&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283155&store=books

    Reply

    1. Dykstra may be ready to have Price’s article “New Testament Narrative as Old Testament Midrash” shared with him: http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/art_midrash1.htm

       Reply

    2. Thanks — I have some catching up to do to update this page.

       Reply

32. It might be interesting if the table showed somehow which individuals have or had higher education teaching positions, as this is the solidest credential in a lot of people’s estimations. It might also be interesting if it marked active ordained persons. Is Detering still a pastor?

    Reply

33. How about mentioning the Mythicist organizations? http://www.mythicistmilwaukee.com

    Reply

34. Per John Bartram and Edwin Johnson, Christianity didn’t exist in the first centuries. Eusebius, Paul, Jesus, and church fathers are fiction.

    My mother raised me Jewish in an occult context like the recent Rock book Season of the Witch. My father was away getting a degree and then taught me newage transpersonal psychology including Eastern spirituality. His parents raised me primitive Christianity restorationist Church of Christ. My other families raised me Protestant. I didn’t have Catholic influence.

    I am highly favorable to esoteric Christianity. I dislike the glorification of Buddhist meditation, especially when used to diminish entheogens.

    — Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com, the Eternalism-Cybernetics Theory of Ego Transcendence, the Maximal Entheogen Theory of Religion and Culture, Metaphorical Entheogenic Eternalism, the Maximal Ahistoricity Theory of Ancient Religious Founder Figures

    Reply

35. You have labelled Lena Einhorn’s religious background as unknown. The family is Jewish, of course. They were not Christians (although her father got elected to parliament for the Christ Democratic party – but he did call the rabbi and ask “can I really do this”). If religion was really important for prof. Einhorn, I think he should have mentioned at least something about religion in his autobiography. He doesn’t. Jewishness for him seems to have been largely about ethnic identity. So my guess on the background is “pretty secular Jewish”, possibly even atheist or agnostic. But still there’s a Jewish background, of course.

    Reply

36. The best explanation for the origins of Christianity is that it was the creation of the Flavian emperors with the help of Josephus and other Jews in order to control the rebellious Jews. Cliff Carrington seem to have written about this in 1998 before Josheph Atwill published his book. See links to his website below.

    Cliff Carrington 7-1998
    Joseph Atwill
    http://carrington-arts.com/cliff/FlavianT.htm
    As history the gospels fail miserably. But, as literature they work superbly. Every episode in the ‘Lives’ of Jesus can be traced back to a source available in the early second century. Josephus is used for the history. The common Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures, known as the Septuagint, was used for the prophetic proof-texts of the Messiahship of Jesus. The sayings of Jesus can be traced to first and second century Rabbinical teachings. The eschatology is a combination of early Jewish apocalyptic literature and Greek mysticism. There is nothing original in the Jesus story. But it is well presented. The way the gospels seemingly reinforce each other adds to the feeling, but not the substance, of a true story. This is good literature.

    http://carrington-arts.com/cliff/FlavBibliog.htm
    Grant, M., Roman Myths, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1973
    Just two quotations to make Dr. Grant’s point about Roman Religion and mythology. “Roman religion was in the employment of the state. The historian Polybius, in the second century B.C., makes no bones about this. In Roman public and private life, he says, religion is dramatized and exploited to the highest possible degree; and he expresses the belief that the ruling class arranges matters in such a way on account of the masses, who need to be impressed and ‘restrained’” [p.249] “One thing that is quite certain is that the Roman stories, unlike, apparently, the mythologies of certain other parts of the world, did not just well up from the masses of the population as collective expressions of its will. On the contrary, these sagas, even if they made use of a certain amount of folklore, were on the whole invented or adapted or adjusted at the top, and steps were then taken to ensure that they flowed downwards.” [p. 250]

    Reply

    1. Romans had much more efficient ways of bringing the Judaeans under control, and after Hadrian they had no more troubles from that quarter without any need to concoct clever myths. Romans were not the only people to adapt myths “from the top” for ideological and propaganda purposes, and those who did so did not produce anything like the sort of literature we have in Christianity. The theories you mention I find to be very problematic in the way they treat and interpret our source material. We have more justification to follow the methods of historians — as distinct from theologians who claim to be historians — in arriving at plausible explanations for the origins of Christianity.

       Reply

    2. Hi Tertius,

       Yes, Cliff developed his theory completely independently of me. We were amazed once we became aware of each other in 1999 after he learned about my book and contacted me.

       Cliff did not uncover the overall typology but had made many significant connections. For example, he had recognized the Josephus bar Matthias/Joseph of Arimathea parallel and I always give he co-discoverer status when asked about it. I found it because I was following the parallel sequences between the Gospels and Wars of the Jews and knew exactly where to look for Josephus’ version of the Gospels crucifixion story. Cliff was a great reader and found it simply through his close reading of the text. Below is the passage – the ‘Gold Seal’ of proof that the Gospels are typologically linked to Josephus – which until the publication of CM had never been shown to the public.

       Moreover, when the city Jerusalem was taken by force . . .
       I was sent by Titus Caesar . . . to a certain village called Thecoa, in order to know whether it were a place fit for a camp; as I came back, I saw many captives crucified, and remembered three of them as my former acquaintance. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them;
       so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician’s hands, while the third recovered.
       Life of Flavius Josephus, 75, 417, 420-421

       Neal’s statement about the Romans having more “efficient ways to control Judea” misunderstands my theory. The Flavians developed Christianity to slow down the missionary activity by the Zealots to Jews outside of Judea. They created the Gospels/Josephus typology simply for vanity. The typology identifies the ‘son of Man’ Jesus predicts will come during the 66-73 CE war as the Flavian Caesar.

       Joe

       Reply

37. You can add Vincent Czyz, author of The Christos Mosaic.

    “A brilliant, deftly crafted, inherently absorbing novel from beginning to end, The Christos Mosaic by Vincent Czyz is one of those truly extraordinary stories that will linger in the mind and memory long after the book itself has been finished and set back upon the shelf. Very highly recommended and certain to be an enduringly popular addition to General Fiction collections.”
    —Midwest Book Review

    “I can’t come up with enough superlatives to express how thoroughly ―completely ―hugely―
    immensely―I enjoyed reading this novel. It’s everything I could have wished for and much more. It must be read by as many people worldwide as possible. I have a gut feeling that it could effect a sea-change in the common understanding of Christianity. It’s a masterful synthesis of solid scholarship and adventure.”
    —the late Paul Palmer, former assistant editor, American Atheist magazine

    “The Christos Mosaic is part Orhan Pamuk, part Elaine Pagels, and part Dan Brown. But it is mostly Vincent Czyz, an irrepressible fiction writer who has the good sense to realize that scholarship is the friend of great stories–and the talent to put that friendship to good use. I must confess that I turned to the novel for fun, and it is fun from first page to last. What surprised me was how very much I learned about the past. A wonderful novel.”
    —James Goodman, Pulitzer Prize finalist & author of But Where is the Lamb?

    Reply

38. There’s another historian following Carotta’s theory (Julius Caesar), Arne Eickenberg, author of “Die sechste Stunde”. (Also co-author on a couple of articles with Carotta.) My German isn’t that great, but he seems to speak very positively about Christianity as well. He’s not a scholar in this field, but an engineer according to the publisher’s information.

    Publisher’s webpage: http://www.verlag-ludwig.de/product_info.php?pName=die-sechste-stunde-synopsen-zum-historischen-ursprung-der-wunder-und-naturkatastrophen-in-der-passion-christi-p-1024
    Excerpt: https://www.academia.edu/2552398 (only bibliography etc.)

    Can’t say anything about his religious background, but judging from some things in the book, it’s Roman Catholicism too.
    (Couldn’t find any reviews online.)

    Reply

39. Chris Hedges, an ordained Presbyterian minister, has flatly declared: “There is no evidence that Jesus existed.” https://www.truthdig.com/articles/what-christmas-means/ That one was definitely a surprise.

    Reply

    1. Christmas is not about the virgin birth. It is not about angels. It is not even about a historical Jesus. There is no evidence that Jesus existed. To debate these topics is to engage in a theological Trivial Pursuit. The Christmas story is about learning how to be human, about kneeling before a newborn infant who is helpless, vulnerable, despised and poor. It is about inverting the world’s values. It is about understanding that the religious life—and this life can be lived with or without a religious creed—calls on us to protect and nurture the least among us, those demonized and rejected.

       My God! Is that the same Chris Hedges who wrote “American Fascists” and “I Don’t Believe in Atheists”??????

       Reply

       1. Hedges clarifies his view of “New Atheism” verse “Irreligion”.

          Five minute video clip: C-SPAN (April 3, 2008), Chris Hedges talks about his book I Don’t Believe in Atheists @ https://www.c-span.org/video/?c2136021/clip-i-atheists

          Reply

40. Missing from this list is the name of Daniel T. Unterbrink, author of several books and articles, e.g. “Judas of Nazareth: How the Greatest Teacher of First-Century Israel Was Replaced by a Literary Creation”
    (Ref.: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/religionprof/2014/10/mythicisms-methodological-mess.html)
    Unterbrink provides a persuasive (to me) analysis of how the rebel leader Judas the Galilean could have been transformed into the gospel’s Jesus myth.

    Reply

41. Surveys of early 20th century scholars:

    • Robertson, J. M. (1932). “VIII. The Making of Christianity”. Courses of study (3 ed.). London: Watts & Co. pp. 77ff.

    • Dujardin, É. (1938). “L’évolution des théories mythiques sur l’origine du christianisme: à propos d’un livre récent”. Revue De L’histoire Des Religions, 117, 90-104.

    • Price, R. M. (2011). “The ‘Pre-Christian Jesus’ Revisited”. The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems. American Atheist Press. ISBN 978-1-5788-4017-5. 387ff.

    Reply

    1. Trocmé, Étienne (July 1978). “Exégèse Scientifique et idéologie: de l’école de Tubingue aux Historiens Français des origines chrétiennes”. New Testament Studies (in French). 24 (04): 447–462. doi:10.1017/S0028688500014478.

       Reply

       1. As mentioned at the start of the post I have not attempted to list all modern mythicists or mythicist tolerators, but only those alive/active in the 21st century. Just too big a task to take it any further.

          Reply

42. Hey Neil. James Lynn Page, “The Christ Enigma: Did Jesus Really Exist?”.

    Reply

    1. Thank you. Another one I will add. Pity he is an astrologer and tarot reader, though: http://www.astro.nu/

       Reply

43. Nanine Charbonnel (2017) [now formatted]. “Les Évangiles comme midrash”. “n°172 – Les promesses du commencement”. APPROCHES (in French).

    As a specialist in hermeneutics, Dr Charbonnel published various books among which are:

    • Philosophie de Rousseau (Rousseau’s philosophy), 3 vols., Aréopage, 2006; • Comme un seul homme. Corps politique et Corps mystique (Together as one. Body Politic and Mystical Body), Aréopage, 2010; • Critique des métaphysiques du propre. La ressemblance et le Verbe (Critique of the literal sense in metaphysics. Similitude and Logos), Hildesheim / Zürich / New York: Olms Verlag, 2014, and

    • Jésus-Christ, sublime figure de papier (Jesus Christ as a sublime paper persona), Berg International, 2017.


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    Nanine Charbonnel (2017) [now formatted]. “Les Évangiles comme midrash”. “n°172 – Les promesses du commencement”. APPROCHES (in French).

    As a specialist in hermeneutics, Dr Charbonnel published various books among which are:
    • Philosophie de Rousseau (Rousseau’s philosophy), 3 vols., Aréopage, 2006;
    • Comme un seul homme. Corps politique et Corps mystique (Together as one. Body Politic and Mystical Body), Aréopage, 2010;
    • Critique des métaphysiques du propre. La ressemblance et le Verbe (Critique of the literal sense in metaphysics. Similitude and Logos), Hildesheim / Zürich / New York: Olms Verlag, 2014,
    and
    • Jésus-Christ, sublime figure de papier (Jesus Christ as a sublime paper persona), Berg International, 2017.

    Reply

44. Another name to add to the above list … https://vridar.org/2007/12/07/nt-professor-loader-addresses-a-jesus-mythicist-argument/

    Reply

45. • “Contre-histoire de la philosophie”. Wikipédia (in French). [NOW TRANSLATED by Google Translate]

    The Counter-History of Philosophy is a work by Michel Onfray which takes the form of a series of books edited by Grasset publishing , putting together a series of lectures given at the “Université populaire de Caen” from 2002 to 2015, then on the France Culture channel and finally in the form of boxes each containing 11 to 13 audio compact discs, edited by Frémeaux & Associés.
    […]
    The Resistance to Christianity [25 courses, from November 4, 2003 to May 11, 2004]
    ◦ Coffret 3 : La Résistance au christianisme — L’invention de Jésus (4 novembre 2003)

    Onfray, Michel. “CONTRE-HISTOIRE DE LA PHILOSOPHIE VOL. 3 – L’INVENTION DE JESUS”. fremeaux.com. [CD:1, TRACK:2 – Jesus a conceptual person]

    • “Michel Onfray prisonnier de sa mythologie ?”. La Croix (in French). 26 July 2018. [NOW TRANSLATED by Google Translate]

    [Per Michel Onfray’s summer lectures] Repeating the theses of his latest book “Decadence”, Michel Onfray explains that Jesus did not exist. For Jean-Marie Salamito, historian of ancient Christianity, the lecturer proceeds in a strange way: he comments on purely mythological texts and neglects historically useful documents.

    Cf. Onfray, Michel (2017). Décadence (in French). Flammarion. ISBN 9782081399204.

    Reply

46. An interesting list: thanks for assembling it. I have read, and rebutted, many of the authors on it, and debated quite a few in person or on-line as well.

    You don’t seem to have found any genuine heavy-weight scholar in a relevant field who ascribes to mythicism. In some ways, that’s disappointing to me as a Christian scholar: John Gresham Machen predicted many years ago that mythicism would increase out of sheer cognitive dissonance among NT scholars who could not find a plausible way to extract a harmlessly rationalist and liberal Jesus from gospels that present him as both historical and divine. I would kind of like him to be proven correct.

    If you do come across any such heavy-weight, please do add him or her to your list. Someone asked me about mythicists just now, and this was the best answer I could find.

    Reply

    1. I read your interview with Sean McDowell and also read your book Jesus is no myth and am quite sure you have absolute faith that by the power and wisdom of God you have won every debate with a mythicist! 🙂 No wonder you are now looking for a “real Goliath” to slay.

       Scholar in a “relevant field”? I presume you mean one in biblical studies who employs the sort of “criteriology” that no genuine scholar or ancient history would ever do. For me, the “most relevant field” would be ancient history, and there have been few greater heavyweights in that field than Moses I. Finley. I follow the same methods he did, and have the same criticisms of “historical Jesus scholarship” he had. I am not particularly interested in arguing “against/for the historicity of Jesus” because there is simply no prima facie evidence that would justify either pursuit as far as I can see. But I do prefer to examine the nature and origins of our earliest Christian writings. Whether there was a historical Jesus behind any of them is a question that I don’t believe our evidence will ever allow us to answer in a way that is going to finally settle the question for all, but we can certainly see how our earliest Christian sources arose almost entirely out of a creative engagement with earlier Jewish writings. I may discuss aspects of your book here some time.

       Reply

    2. MARSHALL: “We should set our sights on positively proving the Christian Gospel.” [“Is Jesus Merely a Myth? Interview with Author David Marshall”. Josh.org. 21 January 2018.]

       IMO Raphael Lataster would the best debate opponent on this issue. Richard Carrier does not appeal to gMark, gMat., gLuke, gJohn per his argument for the ahistoricity of Jesus.

       Reply

47. Another addition.

    • Cain, Benjamin (21 June 2020). “Clarifying and Debating the Christ Myth Theory”. Medium.

    I’ll just close by reemphasizing that I’m not saying anyone can prove Jesus didn’t exist. I’m saying the available evidence is too ambiguous or otherwise problematic to establish any particular model of an historical Jesus beyond reasonable doubt. If all such models not just can but must be doubted, there’s no way of knowing, from our standpoint now with the evidence we have, whether anything like the familiar Jesus actually lived. Given that extreme uncertainty, a mythicist scenario becomes at least as plausible and as likely as any of the historicist ones.

    Reply

    1. Hoo boy! The list has grown like Topsy and is too much for me to keep on top of. I will add the update.

       Reply

48. Justin Meggitt should not be on this list. His 2017 article “Was the Historical Jesus an Anarchist?” actively argues that mythicism is not convincing, and his 2019 article “More Ingenious Than Learned” finds mythicism epistemologically unwarranted (especially when comparing Jesus to other low class figures, with the comment we mine as well say no lower class individuals ever existed, by mythicist standards).

    Kurt Noll also confirmed to me personally in email that he thought Jesus most likely existed and that there are elements historical about him in Paul. Philip Davies also stated outright he was more in favor of Jesus’ existence.

    I think that you may want to include a different color scheme if you are going to include these figures, that clearly denotes them as historicists.

    You are also missing Emanuel Pfoh and Norman Simms. Also surprised Tom Dykstra is not on here.

    Chris Hansen published a list of academic mythicists who are in relevant fields, and also responses to them: https://www.academia.edu/43005350/LIST_OF_QUALIFIED_ACADEMIC_MYTHICISTS_AND_AGNOSTICS_SINCE_1970

    Reply

    1. Thank you for the updates. And yes, I am aware of Justin Meggitt’s past comment about mythicism, in particular the 2017 chapter that you mention. I had raised this with someone on Facebook; and further, I advised that I would do a post on his claims, repeated in his most recent article, relating to historical methodology and the existence of ancient persons. On reflection, I wonder if I have come to blur the difference between agnostics and those who are at least willing to discuss the question in a professional manner.

       But do note that I said those in the list include names who are either agnostic “or open-minded” towards the mythicist theory. One can disagree with a theory yet still be professionally open-minded towards it.

       Yes, Davies did say he was “more in favour” of historicity, but he definitely said we should be open to the non-existence hypothesis as a possibility. I myself say that I am “more in favour” of mythicism but at the same time I do not like to be labelled a mythicist. I am open to the possibility of Jesus being historical. Davies was arguing for scholarly scepticism — which is the responsible position to hold.

       Perhaps “agnostic” is too strong a term for what I think needs to be conveyed. It implies a totally neutral position. One can think it “more likely” Jesus existed than not and still be fundamentally sceptical to the question, open to other arguments. That is the important point I want to note and stated was a criterion for the list.

       The function of the table has subtly changed since I started it in response to the charge that mythicists were mostly embittered ex-fundamentalists. A person can clearly post arguments against a theory and still be academically open to it. My opening statement does not include that position and something needs to change, as you point out.

       Reply

       1. Yeah I dislike using Agnostic because epistemologically it would be a position entirely separate from that of a historicist or a mythicist. Logically we can demonstrate this (P = proposition; B = Jesus most likely existed; ~ = not)

          Historicist: PB (propose Jesus most likely existed)
          Agnostic: ~P~B ^ ~BP (does not propose Jesus did or did not exist, assigns no truth value)
          Mythicist: ~P~B (propose Jesus most likely did not exist)

          To conflate a historicist who is “open” to an agnostic (who assign no truth value) would be a logical category error and therefore fallacious.

          This is a major problem in this debate, because the terminology is exceedingly abused on both sides, such as when Van Voorst tried to place W. C. van Manen and A. D. Loman in the mythicist camps (despite the fact that Loman switched to historicity and van Manen never doubted it), or when Ehrman put Volney in the mythicist camp (despite Volney arguing explicitly in favor of a historical figure).

          We need to keep our terminology more concrete and avoid conflation, because it gets really problematic and confusing otherwise, and leads to scholars being misrepresented (like Lataster in his latest book claiming that Noll and Davies can be considered agnostic, which is in every way just a dishonest attempt to artificially inflate the number of skeptics).

          Reply

          1. I modified my comment in some ways before you posted your rejoinder. The confusion of online conversations! 🙂

             Reply

    2. Per a 2019 request to Dr. Justin Meggitt, “Please consider posting a comment on your position (historicity; agnosticism; mythicism)…”

       • Response by Meggitt:

       …my position is that the historical Jesus did exist, so historicity (although minimal – in the sense that there is little that can be said about his life with reasonable confidence). My position is stated at the end of:

       “Popular Mythology in the Early Empire and the Multiplicity of Jesus Traditions.” Sources of the Jesus Tradition: An Inquiry. Ed. R. Joseph Hoffmann. Buffalo: Prometheus, 2010, pp. 55-80, 269-275.

       Reply

49. I am jumping ahead of my post on Meggitt’s published arguments re the Christ Myth Debate but want to draw attention to the article I linked with Meggitt’s name in the above table. Readers should read whatever links are posted against names to understand why they are included. Meggitt’s conclusion to the linked article (it is open source):

    The question of the historicity of Jesus is unlikely to go away in the near future, however much some scholars of the New Testament may wish otherwise, and nor should it. The question does not belong to the past and nor is it irrational to raise it. It should not be dismissed with problematic appeals to expertise and authority and nor should it be viewed as unwelcome, as a ‘lurking monster present wherever critical studies are recognized and proceed’. Just as Schweitzer took it seriously in the early twentieth century, so should those working on the historical Jesus today. The limited number of specialists who have engaged in the debate in recent years should be thanked for what has often been a somewhat thankless and fraught undertaking, though clearly, as with any question in the study of the New Testament and the origins of Christianity, there is considerably more to do. Indeed, if we decide, pace Voltaire, that at least some contemporary advocates of the non-historicity of Jesus are indeed, ‘more ingenious than learned’, taking this question seriously may, at the very least, prove beneficial in raising the standard of debate and the wider understanding — indeed, even self-understanding — of what New Testament scholars do and how they do it.

    Reply

50. Just so you are aware, Detering’s work on Paul did not imply that Jesus never exist, as your entry states. In his “The Fabricated Paul: Early Christianity in the Twilight”, Detering states quite emphatically that he thought Jesus existed (215-217), and likewise in his academic work on the Pauline epistles (“Paulusbriefe ohne Paulus”, updated as “Inszenierte Fälschungen: Die Paulusbriefe in der holländischen Radikalkritik”) in his dissertation, he makes a large point of this as well (going out of his way to demonstrate that Loman switched to historicity and Van Manen was never a mythicist, thus to eliminate the false inherent tie of mythicism and Dutch Radicalism).

    As you have it that his Dutch Radicalism implies mythicism is just wrong and largely perpetuates a myth that was associated with the Dutch Radical school as a method of completely disregarding their work uncritically. When Detering first adopted radicalism, he was not a mythicist.

    His work against the historicity of Jesus includes the following:

    Falsche Zeugen: Außerchristliche Jesuszeugnisse auf dem Prüfstand (Alibri Verlag, 2011)

    CHRISTI BRÜDER: Wie heidnische Mythen das Christusbild prägten (Self Published, 2017)

    Buddha, Josua, Jesus und der Weg Zum Anderen Ufer: Die Gnostische Interpretation des Exodus und die Anfänge des Josua-Jesus-Kultes (Self Published, 2018), translated as Jesus on the Other Shore, by Stuart Waugh (Independently Published, 2018)

    Reply

    1. Yes, at the time Hermann Detering did not deny the historicity of Jesus. But at the same time he conceded that Falsified Paul did lead a reader towards doubt. And hence he explained that on other grounds, grounds that were independent from the case he made in Falsified Paul, that he favoured the case for the historicity of Jesus.

       As you have it that his Dutch Radicalism implies mythicism is just wrong and largely perpetuates a myth that was associated with the Dutch Radical school as a method of completely disregarding their work uncritically. When Detering first adopted radicalism, he was not a mythicist.

       Whoah, there, Chris! It was never my intention to suggest or imply that Dutch radicalism must somehow imply Jesus mythicism. I was never aware (and still am unaware) that Dutch radicalism per se was/is associated with Jesus mythicism. (HD’s link with Dutch radicalism was not the only detail I mentioned about him! Being a pastor does not necessarily associate one with mythicism per se, either.)

       It’s many years since I read “Falsified Paul” (hard copy sent to me by HD personally) and also a good number of years since I posted the HD entry in the Who’s Who page. Where does this “myth” of Dutch radicalism exist? Presumably somewhere on the internet but it has never been part of my own reading list. But in the light of your comment being based on a reality that some people do believe, wrongly, that Dutch radicalism and mythicism should be identified in some way (though if they do they obviously know very little indeed of the works of the Dutch radicals) I will add a note to the HD entry in the post. I was in ongoing correspondence with HD and in all that time I have understood him to be in favour of mythicism but thanks to your comment I have made the time to go back and check what HD wrote in Falsified Paul. In my edition the pages are 176 to 178.

       Paul and Jesus

       In our deliberations thus far, one figure, from whom all occupation with early Christian history originates, and to whom we return again and again, has still not been considered: namely, Jesus of Nazareth.

       Until now, we have met him only now and then, in the story of the anointing of Jesus at Bethany, for example, where we thought we could see for a brief moment the face of the ever-present Samaritan magician flare up behind his name and person.

       In order to forestall misunderstanding, I would expressly emphasize that I in no way make the claim here that the Jesus of the New Testament received his life breath from that Samaritan magician whose all-powerful and over-towering person stands at the very beginning of Christianity. Even if there are indications that the figure of Jesus does in fact bear some marks of the Samaritan Simon, which can be well explained from a tradition-historical perspective, and even if it can be seen here and there how the builder of both persons sometimes allowed the two figures to curiously flow together, we have to do nevertheless with two entirely different persons. Without doubt, the Gnostic Simon from Samaria, and the apocalyptic Jesus, stemming from the house of Judah, have entirely different origins.

       But — did a historical figure named Jesus exist at all?

       In itself, the thesis that the letters of Paul are inauthentic, and that the letters of Paul are thus excluded as a witness to the existence of a historical Jesus, could very well lead to the supposition that there had never been an historical Jesus. With the exclusion of the Pauline letters as the supposedly most important witnesses for the historicity of Jesus, many things do in fact look very different, and many things are possible which until now did not seem possible. In itself, in view of the complete absence of non-Christian sources, doubt in the factual existence of the man Jesus of Nazareth lies close at hand. No person with a sound mind would suppress such doubt, if he or she were not hindered by church tradition and socialization and by a theological consensus that declares every doubter in the past and present to be a “fantasizer.” What then should we think about a man who surfaces nowhere except in the writings of his followers and even concerning whose origin and years of birth and death there is no agreement? Obviously, we must doubt his existence.

       And nevertheless the theories put forward until now radically disputing the historicity of Jesus seem insufficient to me. As A. Schweitzer rightly recognized, one of the greatest problems for a consistent-symbolic interpretation of the Gospels is, above all, the apocalyptic Jesus with his (disappointed) expectation of a soon end of the world, who can be adapted as the hero of a temporally-transcendent Gnostic salvation story only with difficulty.206 It is obvious that involved here is not only literary design but also tradition-historical memory, the river of tradition here flowing through time, which on its slow current drags along what in the meantime has long since become out of date and unusable.207

       So the solution of the entire problem obviously cannot be to fully delete a man named Jesus from history. Rather, one must investigate from a tradition-historical perspective the individual components and building blocks from which the New Testament picture of Jesus was constructed — which, like corpuscles and waves, floats back and forth between historical and kerygmatic existence. Rudolf Augstein already correctly perceived that the solution to the entire Jesus problem obviously lay in the recognition that we have to do here not with one, but with “several figures and currents flowing synthetically into one appearance.”208

       Without doubt, we are confronted here with an exciting task, that we can only solve, to be sure, if we do not imagine that from the beginning we already fully possess, as Beati possidentes, the only beatific historical knowledge regarding early Christianity. Instead, we should rather recognize — as shameful as this might be after more than two centuries of historical-critical research — that basically, with regard to the most important things, we still know nothing at all, or much too little to be able to accept the historically grounded claims of the Christian religion (we would be glad to discuss the other claims).

       Instead, we should happily admit our own curiosity and in addition admit — as unpleasant as it might be — that for us the naked historical truth is sadly a most beautiful illusion.

       Footnotes:

       206: A. Schweitzer. Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung, 553ff.

       207: R. Augstein, Jesus Menschensohn, 26: “From where would the first collectors and transmitters create their faith in the imminent return of the Messiah if not from the shaking of what was experienced or what was only imagined, and from what experiences came their power to invent and propagate the passion and resurrection of only an imaginary figure?”

       208 Cited by J. Kaiser, Spiegel Spezial (Rudolph Augstein, 70), 1993, p. 86.

       209 Cited by K. Berger, Qumran und Jesus, 57.

       So thanks to your comment I have re-read those pages and added a comment in the Who’s Who entry for HD as far as I believe is justified.

       (As an afterthought, I seem to recall some critics of mythicism claiming that “mythicists” associate their view with the Dutch radicals but I never took much interest in the accusation because I have not seen mythicists say anything like that (I confess I don’t read every mythicist work out there) and several other things the critics said appeared to be misguided anyway.)

       Reply

       1. Is there a significant difference between the following positions?

          • Per Detering:

          Rudolf Augstein already correctly perceived that the solution to the entire Jesus problem obviously lay in the recognition that we have to do here not with one, but with

          “several figures and currents flowing synthetically into one appearance.” [Cited by J. Kaiser, Spiegel Spezial (Rudolph Augstein, 70), 1993, p. 86.]

          • Per R. M. Price:

          There may have been a Jesus on earth in the past, but the state of the evidence is so ambiguous that we can never be sure what this figure was like or, indeed, whether there was such a person. […] I am not trying to say that there was a single origin of the Christian savior Jesus Christ, and that origin is pure myth; rather, I am saying that there may indeed have been such a myth, and that if so, it eventually flowed together with other Jesus images, some one of which may actually have been based on a historical Jesus the Nazorean. [Price (2000) Deconstructing Jesus, pp. 17, 85.]

          Reply

       2. I specifically point out the correlation, as the Dutch Radicals were actually lumped under mythicist crowds during the debates in the early 1900’s, primarily because Van Manen’s articles and books were taken by those such as Whittaker, Robertson, Drews, and then the English and German work of Van den Bergh van Eysinga (who was a mythicist), and basically it that entire school of thought was subsumed under mythicist reaction as a result. Thus, F. C. Conybeare treats them in his same volume and with the same disdain he does for Drews, Robertson, and Smith, as did others such as Shirley Jackson Case (who brushes them off mostly), and more. This has likewise not been helped since the school is now primarily associated with Price (though they recently were analyzed somewhat in Patrick Hart’s “A Prolegomenon to the Study of Paul” Brill, 2020).

          It does not help also that in recent writings, Price (the only academic representative of the school left to my knowledge) has been arguing that mythicists should adopt Dutch Radical schools wholesale, and in fact criticized Carrier’s recent book on that matter (which Carrier rebutted to), and his own article in the 2011 “Is This Not the Carpenter?” by Thompson and Verenna (eds), also made a point of this.

          As such, we do have a problem that if Dutch Radicalism wants to stand on its own grounds, the connections to the already troubled and often vilified debate of mythicism does nothing but stigmatize it further. Hence my strong reaction to the association.

          Reply

    2. I recall that the reason I thought the mention of Dutch radicals in connection with Hermann Detering was worthy of note was that I was fascinated by the idea of a contemporary scholar in the “Dutch radical” tradition — the DR’s were “not dead, then”. I never associated DRs with mythicism except as a notion raised only here and there, perhaps (if that, even), but nothing more. I still do not know who among mythicists have ignited or fanned such a myth that you infer exists somewhere “out there”.

       Reply

       1. Yeah, it has actually gained more popularity recently, though not by much. I know Rene Salm, Chris Albert Wells, and Soviet Mythicists (such as Kryvelev especially) largely had adopted Dutch Radical positions. The latest academic exemplars of it were Darrell Doughty, Robert M. Price, and Hermann Detering, and I know in the 90’s there were some students of G. A. van den Bergh van Eysinga’s still floating around (according to Detering: J. H. Ritzema Bos, E. Frater Smid, and Rev. Mrs. M. J. Beukema-Faber). However, they had no academic presence to my knowledge, and Detering’s work in particular has only just gotten some enough recognition to be discussed.

          That being said, Marxist academics have since largely abandoned mythicism altogether (with only two exceptions Marxists [non-academics] I know of since the 1980’s, those being C. Dennis McKinsey and John Pickard).

          Reply

    3. Chris, while you’re here, can you respond to my query about your statement on page one of your book The Quest of the Mythical Jesus: You write,

       In this regard, some have taken the [Christ Myth Theory] to be nothing but that of radicals who have been polarized by religious upbringing and disillusionment from their former faith.1

       Your citation on this point:

       1 This was a prominent theme throughout Maurice Casey, Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths? (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).

       Yet you had access to this Who’s Who page at the time you wrote that (you cite it in the same book), so I am wondering why information in the table above did not appear to give you any misgivings about citing Casey as the basis for your assertion about the psychological motivation for embracing mythicism. What examples in Casey’s book actually support his claim? I was one who figured somewhat prominently in Casey’s book yet Casey curiously overlooked the simple fact that I “reacted against” my fundamentalism by embracing the normative Jesus of mainstream churches. My overall reaction to my cult background was to return to the mainstream Christianity of my upbringing. The table above began as a larger exercise to test the evidence for Casey’s denigrating accusations.

       Reply

       1. If you read not just a few lines later, I go on to contradict Casey that this is not always the case, and in my section on demographics, I make the case that there are numerous sociological, ideological, and academic reasons as to why mythicism gets adopted, that rejects Casey’s reductive appeals to just an anti-Christian bias. I specifically state two sentences after that quote you pulled:

          “However, it is apparent that there are also academics who have taken it based on their own findings, not out of a desire to disprove their previously held religion, though they are still usually functioning under an atheist position and, often, publishing in atheist/secularist presses.”

          Casey’s accusation has some merit (i.e. there are numerous ex-fundamentalist mythicists, which your own list points out just a handful of), but as any sociological intro could tell anyone, there is seldom a single cause or root. As such, Casey notes only one of many correlations for why mythicism may be adopted, and thus, I do not actually agree with his conclusion or his poisoning of the well either. As I have also noted in my book, there are racial, ideological, antireligious, racist, and then also academic reasons why mythicism has been adopted in various places.

          In the Soviet Union, it was adopted purely as a reaction to religion, as Vladimir Lenin’s “On the Significance of Militant Materialism” (1922, see Lenin’s Collected Works vol. 33) outright makes a case for. Now, I would make the case (as would those like Price) that many atheists in secularist movements today likewise have adopted mythicism as a very shiny and flashy way to eliminate Christianity, as has been a basic tradition for several centuries now.

          Arthur Drews and other Monists, on the other hand, found Christianity to be an inferior and, in fact, regressive religion. In particular, (as Gerrish has noted in his paper on Troeltsch’s involvement in the Christ Myth debate) Arthur Drews’ idealist monism was basically incompatible with the concept of a Christ who had materially manifested. Other religious movements that systematically were rejecting Jesus’ historicity were those such as theosophists after the death of Blavatsky, and then other spiritualists ca. 1870-1920. Harriette Curtiss and her husband were such examples, adopted Arthur Drews’ work for a time (though later it appears they may have abandoned mythicism). Other mythicist Christians and ministers exist, which you have listed (Edward van der Kaaij, G. A. van den Bergh van Eysinga, Hermann Detering, William Montgomery Brown, Ernesto Martinez [according to a report given in 1985], etc.).

          Meanwhile, a number of racist movements have also adopted mythicism, basically in white supremacist reaction to Judaism (Ben Klassen, the founder of the Church of the Creator, made the case in their “dogma” books that Jesus was a myth invented by Jewish people to usurp the [white] Roman empire). On the other hand, the Voelksch (Nzi) movement adopted various positions on Jesus, one of which was to argue he was a myth entirely and that a superior “Volk” religion should replace Christianity (hence, writers of the Nzi party, like Hanns Obermeister). Likewise, ties between actual Holocaust Deniers (Christian Lindtner, up till recently), N*zi presses (Historical Review Press, which Kenneth Humphreys uses), and more still continue to this day.

          And then there are the more academic brands of mythicism, which, while often tied back to these figures, have tended to sway away. A notable example, mostly because he is a case of mythicist polygenesis (having no prior knowledge of the movement), is Thomas L. Brodie of course, as your list notes. Others I would argue in this category are Thomas Thompson, Yin Changyou (Chinese mythicist academic in the 80’s), G. A. Wells (rest in peace, IMO the greatest mythicist/later compositivist of our lifetimes), Hermann Detering, and more.

          Thus, in context, I do specifically state there are reasons Casey is wrong to have any all encompassing view like he did, and I have an entire chapter devoted to the various reasons why mythicism may be adopted. I personally do not think Casey is correct in this generalization, and the entire goal of my book (as my epilogue notes) is to try and frame the mythicist debate as something that academics should take seriously, hence why I am giving it a fuller historical treatment than any other author in English that I know of (currently, I think the next most comprehensive are G. Williamson, W. Weaver, and J. Thrower).

          Reply

51. Speaking of the historical Jesus, will there be a review of “Jesus From Outer Space” by Richard Carrier?

    Reply

    1. I just posted the following comment on the Early Writings Forum discussion of the book:

       I skimmed through the first 15 pages of this thread looking for some discussion of the contents of the book. Yes, the title is an appallingly misguided choice, shall we say, but the contents of the book was actually quite good. Carrier responds to several criticisms of his OHJ with some cogent responses that deserve serious attention.

       I know, some people call me a Carrier devotee, but I do try to be fair. Yes, Carrier makes himself an easy target for many reasons, but if we can set aside all “ad homina” and try to focus on the arguments then I would find discussions worth reading, not just skimming. I often disagree with Carrier and I do disagree with some of his arguments in this new book — and have blogged about those disagreements in detail — but for god’s sake as decent secular atheists, let’s resist the easy temptation to mock Carrier’s personality, to mock the title of the book, and take some time to examine actual substance.

       Reply

       1. • The first 100 posts occur prior to the JFOS release date of 20OCT2020 and are in general pure conjecture/gossip/mean-girling (up to 11 pages of 25).

          • Prior to Neils post #246—no post displays any knowledge of JFOS. Did they even purchase it yet?

          Reply

52. I would like to know the opinion of historians on Jesus historicity: what is the current state of the field? Is there any recent review in a History journal written by historians? I don’t care about theologians or bible experts, just historians with a Ph.D. in ancient history (or related).
    Thanks

    Reply

    1. Historians in the sense you mean do not study Jesus and church origins; they leave that to those who traditionally write about those, the theologians and bible scholars. One exception is Michael Grant, a scholar of ancient history, who wrote a book about Jesus, but guess how he went about his work: he relied entirely on what the theologians had written. See https://vridar.org/tag/grant-jesus-historians-view/

       I have written about two historians who have expressed some dismay at methods used by biblical scholars, though: https://vridar.org/2017/10/31/an-ancient-historian-on-historical-jesus-studies-and-on-ancient-sources-generally/ and https://vridar.org/2019/04/29/ouch-a-professional-historian-has-something-to-say-about-the-methods-of-biblical-scholars/ (also https://vridar.org/2019/01/21/ancient-history-a-funny-kind-of-history/)

       There is a historian in the list above and that’s Richard Carrier. His PhD was in ancient history.

       There are other overlapping fields, such as studies of religion and philosophy. Again, we have posted here about some of these scholars who have discussed some of the works of biblical scholars.

       Your question reminds me of a time I once asked: Was there a PhD in psychology who believed in the resurrection of Jesus? Surely, I was thinking, a psychologist understood why people would believe in such a thing. If a psychologist believed in the resurrection then it followed, so I thought, that there must be something that was reliable evidence or grounds to believe in the gospel narratives. But a psychologist set me straight when she said, If I found the such a believing psychologist, what would that prove about the resurrection? The answer, of course, was “nothing”.

       Reply

       1. That is very unfortunate. I guess they don’t want to get involved with this “sensitive issue”; this is why the state of this field is so embarrassing. Other scholars (such as biblical experts, linguists, anthropologists, archeologists, geologists, astronomers, psychologists, librarians, theologians, physicians, experts in radiocarbon dating, etc.) can have their opinion on the evidences concerning their field of expertise. But antiquity historians are the only ones qualified to gather all these data and scholar research and have the last word on Jesus’ historicity.

          Reply

          1. History is not rocket science. People without degrees in history can and do write very creditable historical works. A specialist body of learning is not a requirement for knowing something about the past. Twelve jurors of peers are chosen to assess the strength of evidence that is presented to condemn or acquit someone on trial.

             When it comes to figures who have had a significant historical impact historians can rattle off the evidence for their historical existence as well as any interested lay people who have learned the basics. Or anyone who has dug into the museums, libraries and archives to trace sources of information can tell you that the evidence for the historicity of Ned Ludd, William Tell, Robin Hood is, at the very best, “inconclusive”. Not so for Julius Caesar, George Washinton, Adolph Hitler.

             It is the fact that the evidence for Jesus is at best, inconclusive, or debatable, that leads to the controversy.

             The training historians undertake generally involves different ways of viewing and interpreting past events and their significance for this or that. They do not undertake courses in deciding how they know Julius Caesar existed, for example, because the evidence for such questions is generally clearly evident for all to see.

             I expect soon to be writing about one historian’s scoffing derision of Jesus mythicists and hopefully demonstrating why his treatment of the question is unscholarly and ignorant. The historian is a well known name world-wide (English speaking world) but not “trained in history” — but I don’t think he would have had a different approach even if he had a doctorate in history. Recall Michael Grant who wrote a “biography” of Jesus by trusting entirely in the writings of theologians.

             Reply

53. Jean Magne (Roman Catholic education) is still thoroughly missing in the table.

    Reply

    1. I’ll have to get around to adding his name and many more from Europe. I fear maintaining the list as thoroughly and usefully as I had hoped has become a task that is simply beyond me. I will try to add more here and there even though such additions will be ad hoc and will still no doubt omit many names that should be included.

       Reply

       1. New article, feel free to add a quote. For those not comfortable with page editing, post the quote on the associated “Talk Page”.

          • “Critics of the historicity of Jesus – RationalWiki”. Rationalwiki.

          Reply

          1. Neil and Tim, can you give a quote for the new generation?

             I added a new sub-section: “Critics of the historicity of the Christ” if you want to quote on that topic. 🙂

             FYI: Neil and Tim are quoted in the “Jesus myth theory” article.

             Reply

             1. Neil is also quoted on RationalWiki::Christ myth theory

                Reply

    2. Isn’t he already dead from long time? The list ìs supposed to collect only names of living people.

       Reply

       1. Quite right! The living are hard enough to keep up with!

          Reply

54. This page taught me that there are much more mythicist etc. scholars than I thought. I always read that Ehrman c.s. had the saying and that they do not want others to even write about it and do not accept them. And that only Doherty, Carrier and Price were on the other side. I see now that I am mistaken and therefore I apologize for how I spoke about biblical scholars. I meant only Ehrman c.s.
    I do not think it can never be solved: it has been solved and it can all be found back in the texts until 200. Gospels from 70 – 100 is a lie. Christianity is a scam by the church of Rome, written 160 – 185. Jesus Christ did not exist. The name Jesus was invented by Justin Martyr. The Jesus Christ in Paul is a forgery. It was done to get rid of the gnostic god (the father) of Marcion and Paul in favour of their own god: Jahweh. Paul was taken in and forged, his gospel (called the gospel of Marcion) was made to disappear forever. Marcion was called a heretic and accused of everything they themselves did. The resurrection is invented and fake. The catholic church started in 200. Constantine did the rest. I cannot say it more briefly. If you would look for this you will find the same. The story Paul used for his gnostic son of god was a written story from Judea, written after 70. I can talk for hours about it, telling exactly who was who in what years, and how it was done. It is all in the writings until 200. Not in the NT, because that is fake.

    Reply

55. This might be a new position?

    Per John W. Loftus: “Any real Jesus . . . an unnecessary figure we can do without. That’s good enough when it comes to god and science. It’s good enough here. . . . But what if it’s worse than that? What if there was no actual person behind the Jesus found in the Gospels, at all? What can account for Gospel origins?” @ https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2021/07/my-talk-at-gcrr-e-conference-on.html

    Reply

56. Per Godfrey, Neil. “BRUNO BAUER: Criticism of the Gospels and History of their Origin – in English”. Vridar.

    I cite Bauer as follows:

    Bauer, Bruno (1841) (in de). Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker. Leipzig: Otto Wigand. 2 vols.; 3rd vol. under the title (in de) Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker und des Johannes. Braunschweig: Friedrich Otto. 1842.

    Bauer, Bruno (1850–1851) (in de). Kritik der Evangelien und Geschichte ihres Ursprungs. Berlin: Gustav Hempel. 3 vols.; 4th vol. under the title (in de) Die Theologische Erklärung der Evangelien. Berlin: Gustav Hempel. 1852.

    I think Schweitzer regarded Bauer’s 1850+ work as a second edition?

    • Bauer refuted the historical Christ in 1842.

    Bauer 1842, p. 3:308. “Die Frage, mit der sich unsere Zeit so viel beschäftigt hat ob nämlich Dieser, ob Jesus der historische Christus sey, haben wir damit beantwortet dass wir zeigten, dass Alles, was der historische Christus ist, was von ihm gesagt wird, was wir von ihm wissen, der Welt der Vorstellung und zwar der christlichen Vorstellung angehört, also auch mit einem Menschen, der der wirklichen Welt angehört Nichts zu thun hat. Die Frage ist damit beantwortet, dass sie für alle Zukunft gestrichen ist.”

    [The question with which our time has dealt so much, namely, whether this is, whether Jesus is the historical Christ, we have answered by showing that everything that the historical Christ is, what is said of him, what we of him is know, belongs to the world of the imagination and indeed to the Christian imagination, thus also with a person who belongs to the real world has nothing to do with. The answer to the question is that it has been deleted for all future.] (translate.google.com)

    • Bauer’s 1850+ work refuted the historical Jesus. I would like to get that quote when you come across it 🙂

    Reply

57. René Salm classifies the historicity/ahistoricity viewpoints as:

    • “A MYTHICISM TIMELINE | Mythicist Papers”.

    (Trad) = Traditionalist. Endorses the existence of Jesus of Nazareth.
    (Gen) = Generalist whose work influenced the wider culture in a skeptical direction.
    (Skep) = Skeptical of the orthodox position regarding Jesus of Nazareth but not avowedly mythicist nor semi-mythicist.
    (Semi-Myth) = Semi-mythicist. Endorses the existence of a prophet at the origin of Christianity, but maintains that prophet had little or no resemblance to Jesus of Nazareth.
    (Myth) = Mythicist. Endorses the non-existence of any founding prophet at the origin of Christianity.

    Rationalwiki classifies the historicity/ahistoricity viewpoints by color code as:

    • “Critics of the historicity of Jesus”. Rationalwiki.

    [green|black] Despite many other flaws, the gospels support a rounded figure and a historical Jesus certainly existed.
    [red|blue] The gospels do not support a rounded figure but a historical Jesus of some sort probably existed.
    [red|yellow] The gospels do not support a Jesus figure and a position of agnosticism[7] is held on the historicity of Jesus.
    [red|red] Jesus is probably ahistorical.

    Reply

    1. “Critics of the historicity of Jesus”, Rationalwiki. NOW @ https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Essay:Critics_of_the_historicity_of_Jesus

       Reply

58. Lockwood, Michael (2019). “Miscellaneous Concluding Remarks”. The Unknown Buddha of Christianity. Indie Author Books. pp. 390–419. @ https://www.academia.edu/38828438

    From many angles of research covered in the three books of my trilogy, the books of the New Testament are shown to be historical fiction. Though these books are profound works of literature, they are still works of fiction. And since the New Testament narratives are replete with allusions to Buddhist stories, as well as to stories in the Septuagint, and to Homer’s epics, and to the narratives of Euripides, Sophocles, and Plato, among others, and in the Book of Revelation, to ancient Egyptian narratives, and, finally, to historical accounts of Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus, it becomes incumbent on researchers to examine carefully and extensively the well-documented studies of Buddhist influence on Christianity. —(p. 400)

    Reply

    1. “About the Contributors to the Book, Varieties of Jesus Mythicism“

       Michael Lockwood
       was born in British India. He earned degrees from Oberlin College, B.A.
       (English), Boston University, M.A. (philosophy), and Madras University, Ph.D.
       (philosophy) and taught philosophy for thirty-two years (1966-1998), in South
       India at Madras Christian College, Tambaram. He has published the books, Buddhism’s Relation to Christianity (Madras 2010); Mythicism (Madras 2013); and The Unknown Buddha of
       Christianity (Tambaram 2019), and was an editor contributor for Indology.

       Reply

59. db and Klaus Schilling — thanks for updates. Making corrections to this chart is always a massive undertaking (it is not really designed for updates) so I will have to make the updates at a suitable moment I can set aside.

    Meanwhile, if you are interested in leaving observations of errors in posts, even the small ones, or updates that should be added, let me know by email and I will send you a google file link that I have set up for that purpose. neilgodfrey1 [AT] gmail [DOT] com

    Reply

60. I know you’re aware, but it’s not reflected in the page:

    Lataster is no longer a PHD candidate, he was awarded his doctorate for his dissertation “Questioning the Historicity of Jesus”.
    https://brill.com/view/title/54738

    Reply

    1. Of course. Have updated his details. Much more to do on this page. It has become a beast to me.

       Reply

61. Chris Palmero, Born in the Second Century @ https://www.amazon.com/Born-in-the-Second-Century/dp/B08JJT4PTH/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Chris+Palmero&qid=1645730273&sr=8-1

    • Palmero, Chris (9 December 2020). “Radical Christianity Critic Starter Pack”. Facebook.

    A few months ago I was asked about good secular histories of Christianity. I’ve never actually found a good one, at least in the sense they meant, so I recommended Loisy’s books. But I thought I would share some of the tools essential to me in radical criticism for those interested in this subject. Now most of my research materials are online (including the many indispensable materials from Jewish perspectives, such as the J.A.B.) but I needed to have a bunch of physical books for whenever I do online dating – I need sharable visual evidence of why I haven’t seemed to have left my home in fifteen years. “I mean, I do a lot of reading, so…”
    To be a radical critic along the lines of Rylands (d. 1942), Detering (d. 2018), or Palmero (d. 2052), you will have to quickly get used to the accusation that you’ve never read X, Y, or Z. Remember: (1) no one can ever read all of the material written on this subject, (2) most of the existing material conflicts with most other material and (3) there is no silver bullet that can defeat radical criticism, except a truly breakthrough archaeological discovery.

    [Image and caption of a laid out book collection]
    1. A well-vacuumed carpet – essential, as you will be spending most of your time indoors

    2. Row 1
    A. Eusebius – this is the translation from Paul “Eusebius Said Nothing Wrong” Maier, but it’s pictured here to indicate that you’re gonna need a Eusebius in some form
    B. Kelber / Mark’s Story of Jesus – he demonstrates via literary criticism that Mark is a completely literary creation, but for some reason backs off of the full implications of this. You can easily fill in the blanks yourself, but don’t do it in public because you might risk a “You Know Nothing of My Work” moment with Herr Kelber in the role of the “You Know Nothing” man
    C. Trobisch / First Edition of NT – The New Testament was arranged consciously by an editor and all subsequent manuscripts were based on this collated edition. A powerful weapon, considering how mainstream the author is
    D. Schweitzer / Quest of Historical Jesus – My ex-girlfriend told me that no woman moves into a house without purchasing a toilet brush. I am simply relating what she said to me verbatim; that is not my own opinion. But just so, no radical critic moves into a house without a Quest of the Historical Jesus
    D. Mack / Myth of Innocence – He demonstrates that Mark was a literary creation almost in its entirety. He, too, backs off the implications of this but in his case I expect a deathbed confession of mythicism
    E. Koester / Ancient Christian Gospels – useful for its record of the earliest gospel citations, but it’s also example of a relatively conservative scholar challenging readings that are even more conservative. Therefore our opponents are found to be fighting one another, like when Sapphire Weapon fought against Shinra in Final Fantasy 7, allowing the heroes to escape
    F. Tried Money Changers Apocrypha – a weird book that slaps together Jewish and Christian apocrypha. Useful if you like 1000 page books with no table of contents

    3. Row 2
    A. BeDuhn / First New Testament – Thankfully you will not need another resource on Marcion’s gospel because this book presents it in Dwarf Fortress levels of detail
    B. Price / Amazing Colossal Apostle – In the first half of the book he builds a case that Paul is either Simon Magus or a Simonian. The second half is invaluable because it’s a line by line analysis of what he sees as the composite layers of Paul’s text. He deprecates this book often, calling it a “brick.” It’s a BRICK OF TRUTH imo
    C. Your ass is gonna need a Septuagint
    D. Dead Sea Scrolls – I honestly never saw the significance of these, but 90% of your audience will ask about them, so I got a book called “The Dead Sea Scrolls” with no subtitle. If you’re not going the Eisenman route, then the signficance of the DSS toward early Christianity can be summed up in three paragraphs probably
    E. Schneemelcher Apocrypha – about as important as the NT itself
    F. Companion to Second Century Heretics – Essays by mostly Finnish scholars with some cutting-edge stuff about heretics. I mean to say that most of the scholars are Finnish, not that each individual scholar is mostly Finnish

    4. Row 3
    A. Antiqua Mater – the Mao’s Red Book of radicalism
    B. Schurer / Jewish People in the Time of Jesus / Jewish Literature in the Time of Jesus – One can go either way on this, but I prefer to have more resources in my collection than less. Just treat it like an extraction mission: go in, get what you need, and get out
    C. Thompson / Mythic Past – For me it was either spend 50 years studying the entire Old Testament, or just read this book which gives a good enough explanation of its provenance
    D. Maccoby / Paul and Hellenism – Pretty much a comfort book because he hardly likes to cite anything, but it shows just how breezily the conservative paradigms can be dispensed with. If anyone says that Maccoby’s analysis is too simplistic, just pretend that someone’s texting you and say “Sorry, I have to take this”
    E. Strauss / Life of Jesus Critically Examined – translated by George Eliot. I would say its indispensible, but stylistically, I think that 19th century prose authors could use to tone it quite down a bit
    F. Sanders / Studying the Synoptic Gospels – Read this book by this kick-ass husband and wife team so that no one can accuse of you of not reading conventional scholarship about the NT. It’s basically a college textbook that sums up the conventional paradigm
    G. Loisy – This two-in-one book is my go-to recommendation for people interested in early Christianity. I think his most important contribution was to show the evolution of the concept of the “Lord’s Supper” throughout the texts. Also, he is one of the few people who truly cares about the actual timeline of Jesus’ crucifixion, whether it happened on the Day of Preparation or on the Passover itself, which to me is the main indicator of whether someone is truly invested in these books

    5. Row 4
    A. The blue book is Supernatural Religion by Walter Cassels, necessary for its discussion of NT attestations in early Christian documents. He was kind of the New Atheist of his day so you have to slog through a LOT of 19th century-style trolling of the damnable theists
    B. Zindler / Jesus the Jews Never Knew – if you can mentally tune out all the New Atheist rhetoric, it’s a useful guide to Jesus references in Jewish literature. I think Zindler’s best contribution was (in my opinion correctly) arguing that all the John the Baptist material was interpolated into Mark
    C. Streeter / Four Gospels – this is another sham shield so that no one can accuse you of reading scholars that only support your position. You get a 2-for-1 by reading this because at least in my opinion, NT scholars have not really substantially moved away from Streeter’s position, even though for some reason they claim otherwise
    D. Maccoby / Mythmaker – Paul was not a Pharisee, cf. Row 3D
    E. Layton / Gnostic Scriptures – you will probably need at least three Nag Hammadi books, but this Layton character is a knowledgable fellow when it comes to these texts
    F. Rudolph / Gnosis – If people try arguing that Christianity preceded gnosticism you can either read this book and refute them therefrom; otherwise it’s big enough to throw in their direction to ward them off
    G. Price / Pre-Nicene New Testament – I would say that people could even get this in lieu of an actual New Testament. He includes about 70% of the early Christian texts and makes hardly any OJ Simpson references in this one. Generally speaking, in a book about Christianity you want no more than 1.75 OJ Simpsons references per chapter

    Reply

62. Per Bart Willruth (“From faith to reason, my journey”)
    • “Reassessing Paul’s Timeline, Part 1”. Debunking Christianity. 10 March 2022

    I am writing from the perspective of a Christ mythicist; that is, there was no historical Jesus of Nazareth, and Christianity developed on different grounds.
    […]
    Paul’s traditional timeline, that he was in some way converted to a form of Christianity in the 30’s CE, that he began traveling throughout Greece and Asia Minor in the 40’s CE to spread the word to the gentiles, and wrote letters to the believers in various cities during the 50’s CE. . . . reassessing Paul’s timeline is a direct and necessary consequence of deeming the Gospels and Acts as non-historical. Re-dating Paul would likely impact our understanding of his thoughts and purpose.

    Reply

63. The blog Mythicist Papers, per René Salm, “is returning to ‘sleep mode.’”

    • [Yeshu ha-Notsri as the founder of Christianity]

    Salm, René (05/06/2020) Yeshu ha-Notsri as the actual founder of Christianity–Pt. 1: Introduction. Mythicist Papers.
    [. . .]
    (07/13/2020) Pt. 15: Dositheus = John = Jesus = Simon Magus

    • [The Prophet Yeshu]

    Salm, René (07/19/2020). “The prophet Yeshu—Pt. 1: General considerations”. Mythicist Papers.
    [. . .]
    (10/24/2020) Pt.12—Family ties (and a correction)

    • [A New Account of Christian Origins]

    Salm, René (12/09/2021) John the Baptist in Josephus—Pt. 1. Mythicist Papers.
    [. . .]
    (06/30/2022) The infancy narratives–conclusion

    Reply

64. A person who believes that Biblical Jesus is based upon a historical figure, is not a mythist. They believe Jesus is LEGEND, not MYTH. The supernatural claims would be the MYTH.

    Reply

65. Thanks, I’ve recently been looking for information approximately this subject for ages and yours is the greatest I’ve found out till now. But, what about the conclusion? Are you certain in regards to the source?

    Reply

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