Jesus-Mythos

The idea that elements of beliefs about Jesus, and the Jesus narrative in the New Testament, are actually syncretisms from myths of his era is a theory usually associated with a skeptical position on the historicity of Jesus. When taken to its extreme - the idea of Jesus as myth rather than having any genuine historic existence - its advocates often refer to beliefs about Jesus as the Jesus-Myth.

The theory is based on apparent similarities between early Christian accounts of Jesus and pre-existing mystery religions, and at the more extreme limit of the theory (that Jesus is 100% myth) is also based in part on the lack of extant evidence about his life outside the Gospels. The extreme limit of the theory has not found widespread acceptance among Bible scholars and historians and there is no formally peer-reviewed work advocating this extreme limit of the Jesus-Myth theory.

History of the theory

Some have suggested that the idea dates to New Testament times, citing Vorlage:Bibleverse's "many deceivers [who] are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." Scholars of the period believe that these early quotes refer to docetism, the belief that Jesus appeared to people but lacked a genuinely physical body, rather than a belief that Jesus was a completely fabricated figure.

The first proponent of this theory was probably nineteenth century historian Bruno Bauer, a Hegelian thinker who argued that the true founder of Christianity was the Alexandrian Jew Philo, who had adapted Judaic ideas to Hellenic philosophy. His arguments made little impact at the time. Other authors included Edwin Johnson, who argued that Christianity emerged from a combination of liberal trends in Judaism with Gnostic mysticism. Less speculative versions of the theory developed under writers such as A.D. Loman and G.I.P. Bolland. Loman argued that episodes in Jesus's life, such as the Sermon on the Mount, were in reality fictions to justify compilations of pre-existing liberal Jewish sayings. Bolland developed the theory that Christianity developed from Gnosticism and that "Jesus" was a symbolic figure representing Gnostic ideas about godhead.

Jesus-Myth theories often draw on nineteenth century scholarship on the formation of myth, in the work of writers such as Max Müller and James Frazer. Müller argued that religions originated in mythic stories of the birth, death and rebirth of the sun. Frazer further attempted to explain the origins of humanity's mythic beliefs in the idea of a "sacrificial king", associated with the sun, vegetation, or a "year-daemon" as a dying and reviving god. According to his major book on the subject, The Golden Bough, the king's death and rebirth was connected to the regeneration of the earth in springtime and was often required for the continuity of a ritual-based community. A critic of the religious beliefs of his contemporaries, Frazer wrote The Golden Bough partly to discredit Christianity by illustrating its similarity to the beliefs and rituals of other cultures.

By the early twentieth century a number of writers had published arguments in favour of the Jesus-Myth theory. These treatments were sufficiently influential to merit several book-length responses by traditional historians and New Testament scholars. The most influential of the books arguing for a mythic Jesus was Arthur Drews's The Christ-Myth (1909) which argued that Christianity had been a Jewish Gnostic cult that spread by appropriating aspects of Greek philosophy and Frazerian death-rebirth deities. This combination of arguments became the standard form of the mythic Christ theory.

While aspects of the theory were influential, mainstream scholars at the time rejected the notion. Since Frazerian theories about myth have been largely debunked, and the priority of Gnosticism seriously questioned, the Jesus-Myth theory has dwindled in importance.

In recent years, the Jesus-Myth has had few proponents in academia but has been advanced by William B. Smith, George Albert Wells (The Jesus Legend and The Jesus Myth), and John Marco Allegro (The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross and The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth), as well as by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy (co-authors of The Jesus Mysteries and Jesus and the Lost Goddess), and Earl Doherty (author of The Jesus Puzzle).

Principles of the theory

The question of whether Jesus derives to some extent from myth (including 100% from it) requires academic analysis of the available evidence from times near-contemporary with the dates for Jesus' life, and on analysis of how reliable such evidence is, and what their biases are. The relevant evidence concerning Jesus can be broken down into Christian and non-Christian texts; the only surviving Christian texts close enough to the era being the books within the New Testament itself. The earliest part of the New Testament, and thus the most important to answer the question, are the Pauline Epistles, though as these contain very little actual narrative concerning Jesus, the later accounts in the Gospels are also of significance.

Using this evidence, the theory is mainly concerned with asking the following:

• what did Christians believe about Jesus in the years after Jesus supposedly lived but before the canonical Gospels existed?
• how much of the narrative could just be a non-factual framing story as a literary device to deliver a series of wisdom teachings?
• what naturalistic explanations are there for Jesus appearing to fulfil several Jewish prophecies?
• could any of the narratives concerning Jesus actually be versions of earlier Biblical stories, artificially altered by the Gospel author(s) to place Jesus into them?
• could any of the narratives concerning Jesus actually be versions of prominent non-Jewish myths from the region and era, that have been adjusted to meet Jewish sensibilities?
• is there actually a historic individual named Jesus left once all the additional non-historic material is removed?

The evidence and approaches to its analysis

There are several issues, from a scientific point of view, with taking the evidence of the New Testament, and appropriate external sources, at face value. While assuming inerrancy is a perfectly valid axiom in theology, it is one of the least appropriate for a scientific approach to analysisl; to answer questions in the mould of is Jesus a myth, starting from a standpoint of no or yes results in a fatally flawed circular argument - logic dictates that to avoid prejudicing the outcome the starting point should be maybe.

When following purely critical thought a scholar may still come to conclude that their copy of the New Testament produces an answer in alignment with their theology, but it does not mean that the original version of the New Testament would have the same result; it is perfectly possible to forge a copy of the New Testament that fits the scholar's theology and then unsurprisingly discover that the answer is as desired. It is academically better to be aware of what the original text is most likely to have said, and use that as the basis of the argument - a first hand witness is better than using the statement of the 200th person in a chain of chinese whispers.

Sources outside the New Testament

Despite several significant events surrounding Jesus being described by the bible to have had large numbers of witnesses, such as the feeding of the multitude, and ascension, or to have been extremely notable, such as the resurrection, levitating on a lake, and prominent public conflicts with temple priests and Pilate, not one mention is made of them in surviving writings from the era outside the Bible. Judea was, at the time, a location with a good degree of communication infrastructure (compared with, for example, the Tocharians), and several Roman historians and commentators of the time could plausibly be argued to have been expected to have written about such significant and well witnessed events.

However, as far as is known at present, there are only about six or seven short passages that might reference Jesus, out of the entire non-Christian writing of the era, most of which say next to nothing about Jesus, and most of which are regarded as dubious at best by a majority of academics. This is despite the high degree of literacy in the Roman world, and despite the relatively large number of Roman and Jewish commentators and historians writing in the first century. This is taken by advocates of the non-historicity of Jesus as an argument from silence which counts in their support, while more mainstream scholars merely argue that it casts doubt on the historicity of the miraculous events themselves.

Consistency of Methodology

Although seldom remarked on by most New Testament scholars, some advocates of the Jesus-Myth theory argue that historians lack any reliable and widely accepted methodology for determining what is historical and what is not. As J. D. Crossan, a well respected scholar of early Christianity, comments, I do not think, after two hundred years of experimentation, that there is any way acceptable in public discourse or scholarly debate, by which you can go directly into the great mound of the Jesus tradition and separate out the historical Jesus layer from all later strata.

While this is not directly an argument that parts of Jesus are based on myth, or that he did not exist at all, any more than is an argument that Napoleon did not exist, advocates of the Jesus-Myth theory have argued that it calls into question the results of previous historical inquiry into Jesus of Nazareth. Opponents of the Jesus-Myth theory, on the other hand, including liberal commentators such as the Jesus Seminar, argue that some reliable information can be extracted from the New Testament if a consistent critical methodology is used.

Translation Issues

Although seemingly unchanging to the untrained eye, the New Testament has historically varied in often substantial ways. The oldest copies are written in Koine Greek, which in the case of most New Testament books appears to be the original language, and in a form of Syriac; consequently translation into other languages, such as english, has resulted in several variations.

Translating the text by trying to preserving the meaning has the flaw that it interprets the text before translating it, and thus relies on the interpretation being correct; although word-for-word translations are less susceptible to this flaw, when the translation for certain words are not completely unambiguous in the original text, an element of interpretation is also required. In consequence, relying on a particular translation relies on trusting the translator to capture the intended meaning; to avoid unduly trusting translations from their own theological viewpoint, many scholars serious about analysing the evidence of the New Testament learn Koine Greek, and rely more directly on the ancient manuscripts.

Reliability of copies

Before the printing press was invented, the New Testament survived by being hand copied, and imperfect copying, and sometimes deliberate fraud, allowed several errors to creep into various manuscript versions of the text, on which later copies were then based. Though apparent forgeries such as the Pericope Adulterae and Comma Johanneum have since been discovered, and are consequently left out of many modern translations, or marked as dubious, it is unknown how many forgeries and errors remain in the text. Sometimes such discoveries have little impact, while others have the potential to be substantial, such as the lack of the traditional ending for Mark 16 in most of the earliest manuscripts could be considered to form an argument from silence against the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus.

Reliability of the original

According to many critical scholars, the apparent narrative inconsistencies between different parts of the New Testament make the New Testament somewhat unreliable, and casts doubt on its ability to provide meaningful historical information about Jesus and the time he is alleged to have lived (although it still remains useful as a source of information about its authors). Many scholars with a strong skeptical view of Jesus' historicity take such issues of historiography further, with writers such as Price arguing that the inconsistencies between the Gospels, birth stories, genealogies, and chronologies, makes the New Testament worthless as a historical document[1].

Authorship and origin

The oldest part of the New Testament, and the earliest references to Jesus, are widely considered to be the epistles of Paul. When analysing these it is important to note that most scholars question the authorship of the Pauline epistles, only seven of the epistles being considered genuine by almost everyone (consequently being known as the undisputed epistles), while conversely the Pastoral Epistles are considered by over two thirds of scholars to be unlikely to be genuine. For some writers, including some significant and well respected scholars of early Christianity, it is almost as if the disputed group were written specifically to counter the group thought to be genuine.

The canonical Gospels present a more complicated picture. According to a majority of scholars, the synoptic problem--the strong similarities between three of the gospels--is most accurately resolved by the two-source hypothesis, according to which most of the content of Matthew and Luke were copied wholesale from the Gospel of Mark and a lost collection of quotations known as the Q document (the currently hypothetical Q document is very similar in nature and partly in content to the Gospel of Thomas). Consequently when analysing the Synoptic Gospels it is more appropriate, from an academic point of view, to analyse the Gospel of Mark and the sayings that hypothetically originate in Q, than it is to separately analyse each Gospel as a whole.

If the two-source picture is accurate, the parts of Luke and Matthew deriving from Q, and the elements of Mark that might, in retrospect, also derive from Q, should be discounted as informative historical witnesses to Jesus. This is due to their nature as pure quotations without context; there is no reason to assume that a collection of quotations would be more likely to be genuine quotes from a single individual, rather than being an accretion over time from several independent sources. Among the narratives affected by this are the Sermon on the Mount, Sermon on the Plain, the versions of the Temptation of Christ in Matthew and Luke, and several of the narratives introducing and explaining parables; under the two-source picture, these are all usually argued to be fairly thin framing storys for the quotations.

As for the other canonical Gospel, that of John, its authorship has been questioned by a large number of scholars. Not only do many scholars find the quality of language, theology, and use of Greek, unrealistic for someone supposedly a poor fisherman living close to the time of Jesus, but the Gospel also appears to contain several direct attacks on alternative forms of Christianity that only arose to prominence in the mid second century (including the opening words, which directly contradict Arianism), suggesting it was written to counter them, i.e. that it is mid second century in date.

A late date would make the Gospel no longer count as an early witness, and although P52 would seem to suggest that a small part of the Gospel is towards the early part of the second century (and a few scholars posit a date in the late first centuries), it is quite possible that the current Gospel was based on an earlier text more amienable to alternative beliefs about Jesus. When studying the Jesus as Myth theory, most advocates of the proposition, that Jesus is based at least partly on myth, completely discount the Gospel of John as propaganda, unreliable due to late dating, and/or unreliable due to several places where it appears to contradict with the Synoptic Gospels.

Gnostic Themes and the Earliest Christianity

Although there are occasional references in the disputed group of Pauline Epistles to a flesh-and-blood Jesus, the undisputed epistles contain only limited mention of Jesus as a historic figure. Even though Paul's letters are widely regarded as the earliest Christian documents, they contain very few references to Jesus' actual life and ministry, which only appear in detail in the later Gospels. Christian apologists claim that Paul's letters were written in response to specific problems unrelated to the details of the life of Jesus, and so the occasional and epistolary nature of Paul's correspondence are sufficient explanations for the lack of detail of Jesus' life. However, proponents of the theory that Jesus has a basis in myth counter that there are an abundance of missed rhetorical opportunities in his epistles to reinforce points by quoting statements that the Gospels later claim that Jesus said, or citing events in his life mentioned later by the Gospels that were directly relevant to the topics Paul was discussing, and presumably must have been known about in the period between the events happening and the Gospels being written.

Several commentators, from writers whose theories have not received widespread acceptance, such as Earl Doherty, to widely respected academics and experts in the field, such as Harvard professor Elaine Pagels, have argued that the Pauline epistles, or at least the genuine ones, should be interpreted as gnosticism. Christianity arose under a heavy Hellenic culture, Paul himself growing up in Tarsus, the centre of one of the major mystery religions of the time, and Pagels and Doherty (and others) believe that Paul's writing should be viewed in the context of the Hellenic culture which formed his background. One consequence of parts of the New Testament being written as Gnostic documents is that the narratives involved would not have been intended as descriptions of historic events but as non-historic allegory and metaphor.

Gnosticism, an umbrella term for a diverse set of groups within early Christianity (that were ultimately supressed), frequently used allegory and metaphor to guide its initiates towards an esoteric salvation, which Gnosticism viewed as a form of knowledge (gnosis), not unlike Buddhist enlightenment. Many Gnostic groups even regarded Jesus himself as an allegory, rather than historic, and docetism was rife in Gnostic groups. Thus whether or not parts of the New Testament were written as Gnostic documents, is a matter of substantial impact on the question of the historicity of Jesus, and on what elements can be considered to be based on a historic figure.

How much influence gnosticism had on Christianity, and how much Christianity originated in gnosticism, are thus questions which have historically been quite volatile. Advocates of a position arguing that many elements of Jesus are derived from myth hold[2] that those references in the undisputed epistles that appear to refer to events on earth, and a physical historic Jesus, should instead be regarded as allegorical metaphors [3]. Their opponents, often but not always conservative Christians, regard such interpretations, of for example Vorlage:Bibleverse, Vorlage:Bibleverse, Vorlage:Bibleverse, Vorlage:Bibleverse, Vorlage:Bibleverse, Vorlage:Bibleverse, and Vorlage:Bibleverse, Vorlage:Bibleverse, as based on forced and erroneous translations [4].

The influence of the Old Testament

In the small amount of material unique to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is presented in a way that has strong parallels with significant Old Testament figures, most noticeably Moses, whose birth narrative and sojourn in the wilderness Matthew appears to have used as the basis of that of Jesus.

It is widely accepted that the Gospel accounts were influenced by the Old Testament. In particular, many quotations attributed to the Q document, which the Gospels attribute to Jesus, find parallels in several places of the Old Testament. Advocates of the Jesus Myth believe that the gospels are not history but a type of midrash: creative narratives based on the stories, prophecies, and quotes in the Hebrew Bible. In particular, there is no reason to assume that the sayings attributed to Q, a document theoretically devoid of narrative, originated with Jesus, rather than just being a collection of wisdom from several independent sources, such as the Old Testament. As such, advocates of the Jesus Myth theory claim that when the midrashic elements are removed, little to no content remains that could be used to demonstrate the existence of an historical Jesus [5].

Though conceding that the gospels may contain some creativity and midrash, opponents of the Jesus Myth theory argue that the gospels are more akin to ancient Graeco-Roman biographies. Although scholars do not agree on the exact nature of this genre, associated works attempted to impart historical information about historical figures, but were not comprehensive and could include legendary developments. Nevertheless, as ancient biographies, proponents of Jesus' existence believe they contain sufficient historical information to establish his historicity.

Although there are many types of midrash, the Toledot Yeshu jumps out as being the most similar to the proposal that characters and situations were invented wholesale according to religious dogma and Old Testament prophecy. However, opponents of the Jesus Myth theory have argued that the closest parallels to potential Moses-based embellishment of the Jesus narrative, are inapplicable. Moreover, there are many examples of ancient Jewish and Christian literature that shaped their stories and accounts according to Old Testament influence, but nevertheless provided some historical accounts [6]; for example, in 1 Maccabees, Judas and his battles are described in terms which parallel those of Saul's and David's battles against the Philistines in 1 and 2 Samuel, but nevertheless 1 Maccabees has a degree of respect amongst historians as having a reasonable degree of historical reliability (John R. Bartlett, The First and Second Books of Maccabees, p. 15-17).

Parallels with Mediterranean mystery religions and other pagan sources

Some advocates of the Jesus Myth theory have argued that many aspects of the Gospel stories of Jesus have remarkable parallels with life-death-rebirth gods in the widespread mystery religions prevalent in the hellenic culture amongst which Christianty was born. The central figure of one of the most widespread, Osiris-Dionysus, was consistently localised and deliberately merged with local deities in each area, since it was the mysteries which were imparted that were regarded as important, not the method by which they were taught. In the view of some advocates of the Jesus Myth theory, most prominently Freke and Gandy in The Jesus Mysteries, Jewish mystics adapted their form of Osiris-Dionysus to match prior Jewish heroes like Moses and Joshua, hence creating Jesus.

The mystery religions, which were in close contact and perhaps even competition with early Christian, have been the main souce for parallels. Some advocates have searched for parallels in religions worldwide, finding Jesus-like figures in legendary and mythological figures throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The similarites may be a case of parallel evolution or the result of a shared prehistoric origin between cultures. An early example of this approach is Kersey Graves's The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors (1875), which has significant methodological problems.[7]

Several parallels are frequently cited by these advocates, and often appear, somewhat less carefully mixed with more dubious parallels, on internet sites. The most prominently cited and plausible parallels are with Horus and Mithras. Horus was one of the life-death-rebirth deities, and was connected and involved in the resurrection of Osiris, whose Egyptian name (Asar) is very similar to the root of Lazarus. Some versions of the Book of the dead report that Horus fed 5000 with just a few loaves of bread, since he was born and lived at the house of bread (it was an historic capital of Egypt, and grain store), which translated into Hebrew is bethlehem, and was named Annu in Egyptian, which translated into Hebrew is bethany (house of Any/Anu).

In Egyptian myth, Horus gained his authority by being anointed by Anubis, who had his own cult, and was regarded as the main anointer; the anointing made Horus into Horus karast (a religious epithet written in Egyptian documents as HR KRST) - embalmed/anointed Horus - in parallel to Jesus becoming Christ by being baptised by John, who had his own followers, and was especially regarded as a baptiser. Worship of Isis, Horus' mother, was a prominent cult, and the proposal that this is the basis of veneration of Mary, and more particularly Marian Iconography, has some merit.

The suggestion of parallels with such myths, however, has frequently gained little traction in the academic community. It is certainly the case that advocates of the Jesus Myth theory citing the parallels are frequently let down by citing dubious sources, choosing to include even ridiculous or implausible parallels, advocating particular theologies to replace Christianity, and using non standard terms (e.g. anup the baptiser rather than Anubis the anointer/embalmer) which others fail to recognise.

Opponents of the Jesus Myth theory regularly accuse those who advocate the existence of such parallels of confusing the issue of who was borrowing from whom [8], a charge which was also made in ancient times by prominent early Christians. However, it is notable that, unlike modern opponents, several prominent early Christians, like Irenaeus, actually acknowledged the existence of many parallels, complaining that the earlier religions had copied Christian religion and practices, before Jesus was even born, as some form of diabolically inspired pre-cognitive mockery. For their part, the historic opponents of early Christians wrote that Christians had the same religion and practice as they, but were too stupid to understand it.

Mithraism is one of the mystery religions frequently mentioned for its alleged parallels to Christianity. 19th century French philosopher and historian of Antiquity Ernest Renan wrote that the world would have become Mithraic in the absence of Christianity. Advocates of the Jesus-myth theory argue that in later years, Mithras worship became the most prominent rival to Christianity. The idea that many Christian practices, including 25th December being Jesus' birth-date, and Sunday being the dedicated day of worship, derived originally from Mithraism is regarded as likely by many mainstream historians. Mithras was a solar deity, and so was seen as being born just after the winter solstice, and the day each week officially dedicated to him by the Roman empire was later renamed the day of the invincible sun, in turn being renamed Sunday; the references in Luke and Matthew, though, point to Jesus being more likely to have been born in April or September, and Saturday was the original day of Christian worship before Constantine I moved it. Parallels between Mithras and the birth-narrative of Luke are also proposed by some advocates of the Jesus myth, since Mithras, as a sun god, was born under the zodiac sign that at that time was known as the stable of Augeas, though these latter parallels are not so supported in the academic community.

When Christianity became the official and only religion in the Roman Empire, many temples of Mithras became Christian churches. Proponents of the Jesus Myth theory regard this as significant since the lack of dissent appears to them to indicate that the religions were so similar that the prior Mithras-worshippers felt that hardly anything significant had occurred.

Supporters of Jesus' historicity point out that even Christian sources acknowledge that the public celebration of Jesus' birth was adopted from the date of the festival of Sol Invictus, and that this has no bearing on the reliability of the Gospels, since they make no claims about the date. Neither do any Christian churches claim that the date for the celebration is anything other than symbolic. Some apologists, however, such as the Society of St. Pius X, state that the birthday of Christ was actually taken from a tradition, which stated that John the Baptist was conceived on September 24th. The Bible said Christ was conceived 6 months later, which would be March 25th. Nine months, later than, would arrive at December 25th. Another problem with the Sol Invictus theory is that Sol Invictus did not become a popular cult until roughly 70-80 AD, with the festival dating from 274 AD, long after the date was used by Christians.

See also

• Historicity of Jesus
• The God Who Wasn't There
• John of Gamala
• Jus Asaf

References

• Allegro, John M.. 1970. The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. Hodder and Stoughton. ISBN 0340128755
• Allegro, John M. 1992. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth. Prometheus Books; 2nd revised edition. ISBN 0879757574
• Atwill, Joseph. 2005. The Roman Origins of Christianity.
• Atwill, Joseph. 2005. Caesar's Messiah.
• Brodie, Thomas L. 2000. The Crucial Bridge: the Elijah-Elisha Narrative as an interpretive synthesis of Genesis-Kings and a literary model for the Gospels. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press.
• Doherty, E.,The Jesus Puzzle (1999; revised edition 2000) ISBN 0968601405
• Ellegard, Alvar. 1999. Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ. London: Century.
• France, R. T. The Evidence for Jesus.
• Freke, T. and Gandy, P. The Jesus Mysteries, by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, ISBN 0609807986
• McDowell, Josh & Wilson, Bill. He Walked Among Us, Evidence for the Historical Jesus. San Bernardino, CA, Here’s Life Publishers, Inc. 1988, ISBN 0898402301
• Meier, John. 1987. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. Volume One: The Roots of the Problem and the Person. Anchor Bible Reference Library. New York: Doubleday.
• Price, Robert. 2004. New Testament Narrative as Old Testament Midrash. In Neusner, J., Avery-Peck, A., eds. The Encyclopedia of Midrash: Biblical Interpretation of Formative Judaism.
• Price, Robert. 2003. The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.
• Price, Robert. 2000. Deconstructing Jesus. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.
• Sanders, E. P. 1995. The Historical Figure of Jesus. Penguin.
• Sherwin-White, A. N. 1963. Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament. Oxford.
• Theissen, G., and Merz, A. 1998. The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide. Minneapolis: Fortress
• Thompson, Thomas L. 2005. The Messiah Myth. New York: Basic Books.
• Van Voorst, Robert E. 2000. Jesus Outside the New Testament. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
• Wells, G. A. 1999. The Jesus Myth. Peru, IL: Open Court (Carus Publishing)
• Wells, G. A. The Historical Evidence for Jesus.
• Whealey, Alice. 2003. Josephus on Jesus: The Testimonium Flavianum Controversy from Late Antiquity to Modern Times. Peter Lang Publishing.
• G.L. Borchert, "Docetism" in Elwell Evangelical Dictionary; Catholic Encyclopedia, 1909/2003; D.C. Duling & N. Perrin, The New Testament: Proclamation and Parenesis, Myth and History, 1993; "Docetism", Encyclopædia Britannica, 2006; J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines. "Book 24 - John's Second Letter". J.B.Phillips, "The New Testament in Modern English", 1962 edition.

External links

Supporting a Jesus-Myth theory

• Earl Doherty's Website
• "The Origins of Christianity and Search for the Historical Jesus Christ" by Acharya S
• "Earliest Christianity" by G.A. Wells
• "Did Jesus Exist? Earl Doherty and the Argument to Ahistoricity" by Richard Carrier
• Jesus never existed
• Jesus (was) is a Fictional character (not "historical") Rt. Rev. Lino Sanchez
• The Non-Historicity of Jesus Michael Hoffman
• Hermann Detering's RadikalKritik (partially in German)
• Debunking the Historical Jesus by Dan Barker
• Did Jesus Really Rise From The Dead? by Dan Barker - Why the Jesus Myth is respectful of the first Christians.
• "The Jesus Mysteries" by Freke/Gandy
• Debunking the "Da Vinci Code" Debunkers and the Jesus Myth Overview of the case against a historical Jesus, including many pictures

Supporting a historical Jesus

• Historical Jesus A logical reconstruction Argues that Jesus was a Guerilla chieftain oppossed to Rome.
• Critique of Two Minor Points of The Jesus Puzzle by Bernard D. Muller
• "A History of Scholarly Refutations of the Jesus Myth" by Christopher Price
• "Shattering the Jesus Myth" by J.P. Holding
• "Answering Acharya S" by Mike Licona
  • Acharya rebuttal to Licona
• "Did Jesus Exist" a page devoted to the issues raised by the Jesus Myth