The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ?

by Earl Doherty

Book Overview

Provides a presentation of the argument that no historical Jesus existed. This title presents an account of how Christianity began without an historical Jesus of Nazareth, who came to life only on the pages of the Gospels.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 096892591X
• ISBN13: 9780968925911
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Age of Reason Publications,
• Length: 380 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Enlightening

I was raised as a strict Methodist, but rebelled at a young age. Since I have retired, I have read numerous books trying to find out some sort of truth about the origins of Christianity. I had reached stage where I thought that Jesus of Nazareth was a Galilean, Cynic-influenced teacher, and that his story had somehow got mixed up with a Christ-cult which Paul adopted. I knew about the relative dating of the books of the New Testament, but I was enormously impressed by the comprehensive scholarship of Doherty's book. He makes an excellent case that there never was a historical Jesus. In the Epistles, which predate the gospels, there is NO evidence of the Jesus of the Gospels. What we have there is Paul's metaphysical idea where the sacrifice of the Son of God occurred at the level of demons, not on the earth. The source of Paul's ideas is scripture, not historical testimony. I used to think that Paul was responsible for turning Christianity into what it became. But I think Doherty is correct in emphasising "Mark", whoever he was, as turning the mythical level of Paul's thought into a historical basis. But this was a literary creation, on a parallel with the many myths circulating at the time about divine or semi-divine beings. Thanks,Earl, for finally letting me see the truth. John

An in-depth research of historical Jesus

A simple enumeration of the contradictions, inconsistencies and errors in the New Testament is not enough to prove that Jesus was as mythical as Dionysus. The author of this book knows this very well so he spends the pages of his treatise to build from the ground up his case with extreme attention to detail. His style is scholarly (states his assumptions, separates facts from conjecture even if this appears to weaken his case, attributes the ideas he explains), consistent and impartial. The issue of "impartiality" is, for obvious reasons, very important in this case. The author does not try to buttress an inconclusive argument with methods not grounded to reason, but shifts the focus to issues for which conclusive arguments can be developed and constructive inferences can be extracted. He avoids to be combative, insulting or polarized. He does not miss an opportunity to heap praise to Apostle Paul (indeed a remarkable personality) but tries to use the mildest words to describe Mark's unskilled use of language. The main argument is developed in several stages. The author gives an excellent review of the philosophical movements of the first and second century and builds a virtual map the coordinates of which are the various philosophical ideas. He then helps the reader place the various thinkers of the time on this map. This works amazingly well for Paul whose complex thinking suddenly becomes tractable. Works OK for the other epistle writers. But does not work very well for Mark. So, the very solid exposition of the Jerusalem group (Paul etc) is followed by speculative conjectures regarding the events that took place around the end of the first century (the time Mark was composed). It would be great if one could reconstruct these events, but it is not really necessary and might not even be possible. This book tried to narrow down the possibilities by assuming that Mark was initially meant to be fiction (I know of no internal or external argument for this other than that the opposite would imply a dishonest church father; a very weak argument). If no such assumption is introduced, any attempt to reconstruct Mark's state of mind becomes too speculative to be of much value. The argument against the historicity of Jesus reaches a crescendo near the end of the book where the writings of the apologists are examined, a careful reading of which makes it obvious that they either did not know anything about the biography of Jesus or (one of them) considered the idea of a human Jesus abominable. As an added bonus, this chapter contains a superb account of the church politics that led to the canonization of the New Testament (more or less) as we know it today. This superb account offers, other than the enjoyment of a scholarly exposition of the most divinely inspired sequence of backstabbings, the final piece of the puzzle. It explains how all these different sects with so radical differences in their dogma (some ready to kill and die for a human Jesus and

Most Rational Theory Yet

Robert Price has very ably and empirically deconstructed the Christ myth to the point that the only item still seriously in question is whether the first layer of Q can be attributed to a Nazerite named Jesus. Price's successful deconstruction thus begs the question: What is the history of how a diverse group of followers came to worship a character who eventually attained the status of the one true God? Enter Earl Doherty and his book, "the Jesus Puzzle". Doherty presents a new theory that relies mostly on rationalism. Not because he ignores the empirical evidence we now possess to develop theories on the development of Christianity, but instead because while its relatively easy to deconstruct many New Testament claims; positive evidence to create the historical Jesus and historical Jesus Christ are virtually non-existent, making Doherty's constructive efforts exponentially more difficult than Price's deconstruction attempts. This is not to say Doherty presents little empirical evidence on the development of his Christ, but instead takes what little empirical evidence we have and puts forth a rational theory heavy on common sense. For example, Doherty spends significant amounts of time reviewing the conflicts discussed in the early epistles and analyzing the approach Paul and the other authors use to make a case for their position in the debate. Many of these debates were repeated later in the gospels, with Jesus providing an example addressing the conflict. The epistles consistently ignore the examples in the gospels of Jesus' position, and instead create their own argument, which of course wouldn't carry the weight if one had an argument by the God they worshipped. While we know the Pauline epistles were written prior to the gospels, Doherty uses this empirical data to show that Paul was almost certainly not aware of any stories of Jesus to better argue his position, making Paul's approach of relying on himself his only practical option. See Romans 14:14 for an argument from Paul and compare to Jesus' example in Mark 7. Why wouldn't Paul use Jesus' example, which would carry much more weight than his? This sort of evidence is used over and over again by Doherty, but is only one small piece of the puzzle Doherty builds for his case. Doherty does an excellent job of taking our current theories of development of the Canons from a chronological perspective and creating a theory that correlates that time continuum to the development of the character of Jesus Christ. Starting with Paul's early epistles Doherty shows the development of the Christ and eventually, with the distribution of the Gospel of Mark, the development of Jesus Christ. Doherty's theory contradicts previous theories of a cynic teacher named Jesus whose followers eventually developed his character into the divine son of God, Jesus Christ. Doherty's challenge to this theory has not just the chronological development of the Canons on his side, but also makes it eas

By far the best "historical" Jesus book

I've read three shelves worth of books on Christian apologetics and the quest for the historical Jesus. I can save you a lot of time. All you really need is this one. The other books raise more questions than they answer, and go off on a lot of wild goose chases. But Doherty's book makes full use of the available evidence, and his thesis actually makes sense.If you want to read the Christian side (and you should) I recommend "The Case for Christ" by Lee Strobel. Strobel is very selective in his use of evidence, but the book is a good read, and probably the best that can be done for the Christian faith. Read it first if you like, and then read Doherty. There's no comparison.Doherty also has a web site. I recommend you first read his book and then visit the site. Spend the time to go through everything he presents there - it's well worth it. The site also contains a novel (also titled "The Jesus Puzzle") I thought it was excellent. It deserves to be published. Doherty also provides a lengthy and devastating critique of the Strobel book on his site.As I read "The Jesus Puzzle" I was surprised at how resistant I was to the thesis that there had been no historical Jesus (I'm not a Christian), but I was impressed at how thoroughly Doherty overwhelmed my resistance. This book deserves the whole world as its audience. Buy it, read it, buy more copies and give them away, spread the word. Nineteen hundred years of misconception has finally been clarified.

For Open Minds Only

Here's your chance for glory: Produce a good, sound argument that the Jesus Christ featured in the New Testament gospels is the same individual as the Jesus Christ whom the NT epistle authors have in mind. Do this and you will be the first person in history to accomplish this task.In his book "The Jesus Puzzle", Earl Doherty demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus Christ is a fictional character. No such person ever existed. The notion may be shocking to the general populace, but it is not a new idea, and has been endorsed by a minority of scholars for over a century.The best evidence comes from the Christian writers themselves. The New Testament epistles and most of the non-canonical literature until the mid-2nd century show a resounding silence on the earthly life of Jesus. No teachings or miracles. No references to Mary, Joseph, the disciples or the holy places, such as Bethlehem, Nazareth and Calvary. No trial or details of the passion story. And so on.Scholars try their best to explain this phenomenon, but this degree of silence from so many writers over so many years has one and only one adequate explanation: the writers ignore Jesus's life on earth because they don't KNOW of a life on earth. Jesus Christ started out as an entirely divine being, just like all the other gods in all the other religions of the day. The idea that he lived a full, human life was a later development in Christian mythology which gradually caught on, proved to be popular and eventually became standard orthodox belief.Another problem with the traditional view of Christian origins is the wide diversity of expressions shown in the early Christian record. These are unlikely to have stemmed from the life of a highly-revered human founder. "Rather, Christianity was born in a thousand places, in a host of different forms, growing out of the broad, fertile religious soil of the time." (Page 139).Doherty considers (and refutes) the various attempts people make to prove a historical Jesus, including the infamous forgery in the writings of historian Josephus and the handful of vaguely-phrased epistle passages which, on the surface, have a "human" sound to them, but in fact can apply equally to divine beings.The author has a website, and I have put him to the test by discussing his work on the Web with people who are far more knowledgeable on the subject than I. Most disagree with Doherty's views (sometimes throwing tantrums in the process!), but when they try to present a convincing argument to the contrary, they can't do it. They don't even come close. At best, they will nail him on an insignificant technicality. Too often people read the epistles with gospel-tinted glasses.The Great Silence is carefully examined, but the book offers much more. There is a lot of general education material which is great for the average reader. We get an introduction to the philosophies of the time, such as Platonism and Cynicism. Doherty clos