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Frequently asked questions

Historical existence vs historical portraits
Q 1a: How is this article different from Historical Jesus?

A: This article discusses the very basic issue of "existence of Jesus as a historical figure", not what he did and taught. On the other hand, the Historical Jesus article discusses the various aspects of what can be gathered about the activities of Jesus. In basic terms this article answers the question: "Did Jesus walk the streets of Jerusalem?" without addressing any details about what he said, did or taught as he walked the streets. The other article addresses broader questions such as "Was Jesus seen as an apocalyptic prophet by the people of his time?" which are beyond the scope of this article.

Q 1b: Why are there two articles?

A: The two separate aspects of historicity vs historical portraits require different lines of reasoning. Historicity is largely a yes/no question: "Did he exist and walk?" while historical portraits are far more involved and are based on "historically probable events" with different scholars having different levels of confidence in various aspects of what can be known about Jesus. Moreover WP:Length has specific length limits (as in WP:SIZERULE) and there is enough distinct material in each article that combining them would create too large an article that would be too hard to read and follow. And in any case the articles have different academic focuses and while there is widespread agreement on existence (discussed in this article), that does not extend to the portraits constructed in the other article and these issues are logically distinct.

Q 2: Is "virtually all scholars" a term that can be used in Wikipedia?

A: Yes:

Based on this Wikipedia search the term is widely used in Wikipedia.

The definition of the term is shown by the Merriam-Webster dictionary in clear terms.

The term is directly used by the source in the article, and is used per the WP:RS/AC guideline to reflect the academic consensus.

Q 3: What about books that claim Jesus never existed?

A: The internet includes some such lists, and they have been discussed on the talk page, the list in the box below is copied from the talk page discussion:

List of books on non-historicity of Jesus

This is a list of books typically presented on the internet as an overview of the authors who argue against the existence of Jesus, historicity of accounts, etc. Based on the analysis below, we can see how many "academics and scholars" there are here:

Harold Leidner, 2000, The Fabrication of the Christ Myth. Leidner was a patent attorney (NY University Law school 1939) and amateur scholar. He was an attorney, not a scholar and wrote as an amateur outside the field of law.

Robert M. Price: Deconstructing Jesus. 2003. Price is a biblical scholar, has training in the field and denies the existence of Jesus. However, he acknowledges (The Historical Jesus: Five Views ISBN 028106329X page 61) that hardly any scholars agree with his perspective on this issue.

Hal Childs, 2000, The Myth of the Historical Jesus and the Evolution of Consciousness Childs is a psychotherapist (not a scholar in the field) but does not deny the existence of Jesus. His perspective is shared by a number of scholars who support the existence of Jesus, e.g. John Dominic Crossan who also said: "those who write biographies of Jesus often do autobiography, but think they are doing biography". Child's perspective is unrelated to the existence question.

Dennis MacDonald, 2000, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark. MacDonald is a scholar, but does not deny the existence of Jesus as a person, he just argues that the Gospel of Mark was influenced by Homeric elements. He also thinks the Book of Acts includes Homeric trends, but that is unrelated to the existence question.

Burton L. Mack The Christian Myth: Origins, Logic, and Legacy. Social formation of myth making. Mack is a scholar who specifically supports the theory that Jesus existed as a traveling sage. Mack was a member of the Jesus seminar, believes that Jesus existed, but holds that his death was accidental and not due to his challenge to Jewish authority.

Luigi Cascioli, 2001, The Fable of Christ. Indicting the Papacy for profiteering from a fraud! Cascioli was a "land surveyor" who worked for the Italian army. His book was self-published. His claim to fame was that in 2002 he sued the Church for inventing Jesus, but in 2005 his case was rejected. He was no scholar.

Israel Finkelstein, Neil Silberman, 2002, The Bible Unearthed Finkelstein and a Silberman are archaeologists, but they do not deny the existence of Jesus. Their work is centered on archaeological themes and mostly addresses the Old Testament. Hardly anyone lists these two people as Jesus myth theorists.

Frank Zindler, 2003, The Jesus the Jews Never Knew. Zindler (who seems to have been a biologist at some point) does not seem to have had any scholarly training or taught at any university on this topic. What he writes on the topic is all self-taught, not scholarly.

Daniel Unterbrink, 2004, Judas the Galilean. Unterbrink is an accountant, and his book is self-published by iUniverse.

Tom Harpur, 2005, The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light. Harpur (who is a follower of Gerald Massey) argues that Egyptian myths influenced Judaism and Christianity, but he does not deny the existence of Jesus. Harpur's theory is that Jesus of Nazareth existed but mythical stories from Egypt were later added to the gospel narratives about him.

Francesco Carotta 2005, Jesus Was Caesar. Carotta does not deny the existence of Jesus, on the other hand he thinks Jesus existed but was Julius Caesar: a very unusual theory, but it does not deny the existence of Jesus.

Joseph Atwill, 2005, Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus It is not clear who Joseph Atwill is. He seems to have written one paper on the Dead Sea Scrolls with Eisenman, but he does not seem to have any scholarly background, apart from having studied Greek and Latin as a youth in Japan, according to a review website. No trace of his having been a scholar of any kind.

Michel Onfray Traité d'athéologie (2007 In Defence of Atheism): Onfray, has a PhD in philosophy and was a high school teacher. He is critical of all religions including Judaism and Islam and thinks Christian doctrine was invented by Paul. Rather than focusing on the existence of Jesus his work deals with how religious doctrines were created and how they impact western philosophy.

Kenneth Humphreys, 2005, Jesus Never Existed. I can find no evidence anywhere that Humphreys is a scholar of any type, and where he was educated. He just seems to run his own website, and his book is published by Historical Review Press, which is Anthony Hancock (publisher), whose specialty is Holocaust denial books. A really WP:Fringe item.

Jay Raskin, 2006, The Evolution of Christs and Christianities Raskin has a PhD in philosophy, and has taught some philosophy and film making courses at various colleges. His book is self-published by Xlibris - "nonselective" in accepting manuscripts according to their Wikipedia page. Raskin is better known as a film-maker than a historian or philosopher and his movies have titles such as I married a Vampire. He is no scholar.

Thomas L. Thompson, 2006, The Messiah Myth. Thompson is a scholar and a denier of the existence of Jesus. He is one of the very few scholars who still deny existence.

Jan Irvin, Andrew Rutajit, 2006, Astrotheology and Shamanism From what I can find neither of these people are scholars and they seem to have a theory that religions are based on the use of narcotics: a pure WP:Fringe idea that seems to have been advocated by John Allegro as well. This is not scholarship, and these are not scholars.

Roger Viklund, 2008. Den Jesus som aldrig funnits (The Jesus who never existed). Viklund is an amateur who self-published his book in Swedish and just has his own website. Not a scholar at all.

Richard Carrier Not the Impossible Faith and Sense and Goodness without God. He has a PhD in history, but has no academic position and his books are self published by LuLu and Authorhouse. He runs his own website and may seen as a scholar or not, depending on perspective. Not clear what he does for a living.

D. M. Murdock (Acharya S) The Gospel According to Acharya S is a self-published author and her web site says she has a B.A. degree. There is no claim or record of her ever having had an academic position and she is not a scholar by any measure.

Earl Doherty Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus is a self-published author. He has a B.A. but no advanced degrees and is not a scholar.

Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy The Jesus Mysteries . Freke has a B.A. degree and Gandy an M.A. Neither has a PhD or had an academic position. Freke teaches experiential seminars. Neither is a scholar.

So really there is one solid academic scholar here namely Thompson and then Price who can be called a non-academic scholar - given that he only teaches online courses on the subject (around $50 per course) at an online website with no campus. Note that G. A. Wells has softened his position of non-existence and now accepts the likely existence of a preacher mentioned in the Q source, although holding that the gospel narratives of his life/miracles are fiction. But just Thompson and Price do not make a long list. There are probably 1 or 2 more people with PhDs who deny existence (say Carrier, but who has no academic post) yet it is quite clear from this list that most of those mentioned are either amateurs or are scholars such as Mack who actually support existence. Most of these people are attorney/accountant/etc./etc. types and not scholars. The funniest one however was suggesting Raskin as a scholar. But anyway, the results speak for themselves.

As a side note, just for your clarification, given that you seem to think the existence debate is still raging in academia I did another search. It again confirmed that the debate is really over within academia and only the non-scholarly types are still discussing it. The funniest part was this challenge a year ago. I did another search and it seems that based on this ABC news item in Australia as of now no one has found an opposing professor of ancient history or classics. And there are plenty of professors out there; many of them non-Christian. The exact challenge seems to be to find "a full professor of Classics, Ancient History or New Testament in any accredited university in the world who thinks Jesus never lived". And no one seems to have found such a professor. So it is intuitively pretty clear that the debate is over within academia, just as the references indicate. What I just wrote does not affect the article, but from an intuitive point of view should tell you that the debate is over within academia. Else we can all call John Dickson and get him to eat a page after all.

There is yet one more scholar, namely Thomas L. Brodie, who in a recent 2012 book ("Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus" ISBN 978-1907534584) has argued that the coherence of 1 Kings 16:29 - 2 Kings 13:25 indicates that the Elijah and Elisha stories are a model for the gospels, and a mythical Jesus. Brodie is a scholar in the field, so now there is Price, Thompson and Brodie. His arguments are very different from the others, but this does not dramatically change the balance of scholarship yet, unless several other scholars follow him in the next few years, so only time will tell. As for Dickson eating a page, he does not have to yet, for just as the book came out Brodie either resigned or was fired from his position at the Dominican Biblical Institute, depending on which story in the press you believe.

The list came from a non-WP:RS website and once it was analyzed it became clear that: Most of the authors on the list were not scholars in the field, and included an attorney, an accountant, a land surveyor, a film-maker, as well as a number of amateurs whose actual profession was less than clear, whose books were self-published and failed the WP:RS requirements. Some of the books on the list did not even deny the existence of Jesus, e.g. Burton Mack (who is a scholar) holds that Jesus existed but his death was not due to his challenge to Jewish authority, etc. Finkelstein and Silberman's work is about the Old Testament and not really related to Jesus. The analysis of the list thus shed light on the scarcity of scholars who deny the existence of Jesus.

Q 4: What about contemporary sources and archaeological remnants?

A: The article Christ myth theory discusses that issue in much more detail because it is more relevant to the denial existence issues. As stated there, and briefly in this article:

In a global cultural context the existence and general life stories of historical figures such as Plato or Socrates are established by the analysis of references to them in later documents rather than by specific relics and remnants attributed to them.

Although the followers of Jesus made an impact on their societies a few centuries after his death, the impact of Jesus on the society of his time was "practically nil" and hence no major relics can be expected given that there is no such evidence of nearly anyone who lived in the first century.

There was a very low level of interest in and awareness of Christians within the general population of the Roman Empire at the turn of the first century and there is the lack of any discernible mention of them by Roman authors such as Martial and Juvenal, although Christians had been present in Rome since the reign of Claudius (41–54 AD) and both authors referred to Judaism.

Specific issues regarding this topic are discussed at more length in that article.

Q 5: But aren't these scholars who study Jesus all Christians anyway?

A: This has been discussed on the talk page of this article, as well as a number of other talk article pages. There are 2 aspects to this:

To begin with not all scholars involved in the historical Jesus research are Christians, and the article lede quotes Ehrman who is an agnostic and Price who is an atheist. Moreover note that G. A. Wells who was widely accepted as the leader of the non-existence movement in the 20th century, abandoned that position and now accepts that the Q source refers to "a preacher" on whom parts of the gospels were based - although he believes that the supernatural claims were just stories that were then attributed to that preacher. That is reflected in his 2004 book "Can we Trust the New Testament", pages 49-50.

Some of the most respected late 20th century scholars involved in the study of the historical Jesus, e.g. Amy-Jill Levine, Geza Vermes, Paula Fredriksen, etc. are Jewish. This trend is discussed in the 2012 book "Soundings in the Religion of Jesus: Perspectives and Methods in Jewish and Christian Scholarship by Bruce Chilton Anthony Le Donne and Jacob Neusner (ISBN 0800698010 page 132). While much of the older research in the 1950-1970 time frame may have involved Christian scholars (mostly in Europe) the 1980s saw an international effect and since then Jewish scholars have brought their knowledge of the field and made significant contributions. And one should note that the book is coauthored by the likes of Chilton and Neusner with quite different backgrounds. Similarly one of the main books in the field "The Historical Jesus in Context by Amy-Jill Levine, Dale C. Allison Jr., John Dominic Crossan 2006 ISBN 0691009929" is jointly edited by scholars with quite different backgrounds. In the late 20th and the 21st century Jewish, Christian and secular agnostic scholars have widely cooperated in research. They continue to debate the historicity of specific gospel narratives, but the agreement on the existence of Jesus is global.

Moreover, Wikipedia policies do not prohibit Jewish scholars as sources on the history of Judaism, Buddhist scholars as sources on Buddhism, or Muslim scholars as sources on the history of Islam provided they are respected scholars whose works meet the general WP:RS requirements in terms of publisher reputation, etc.

Q 6: How can we say most scholars without doing a formal survey ourselves?

A: In fact the formal Wikipedia guidelines require us not to do our own survey. The Wikipedia guideline WP:RS/AC specifically states: "The statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing that directly says that all or most scientists or scholars hold that view." Given that the guideline then states: "statement in Wikipedia that academic consensus exists on a topic must be sourced rather than being based on the opinion or assessment of editors." we should not rely on our own surveys but quote a scholar who states what the "academic consensus" may be. Moreover, in this case, after much discussion, no reliable source has yet been presented that presents a differing statement of the academic consensus, and opposing scholars such as Robert Price acknowledge that their views are not the mainstream.

Q 7: Why are other historical facts less certain than existence?

A: The difference is "historically certain" versus "historically probable" and "historically plausible". There are a number of subtle issues and this is a somewhat complicated topic, although it may seem simple at first:

Hardly any scholars dispute the existence of Jesus or his crucifixion.
A large majority of scholars agree that he debated the authorities and had "followers" - some scholars say there was a hierarchy among the followers, a few think it was a flat organization.
More scholars think he performed some healings (given that Rabbinic sources criticize him for that etc., among other reasons) than those who say he never did, but less agreement on than the debates with authorities, etc.

As the article states Amy-Jill Levine summarized the situation by stating: "Most scholars agree that Jesus was baptized by John, debated with fellow Jews on how best to live according to God's will, engaged in healings and exorcisms, taught in parables, gathered male and female followers in Galilee, went to Jerusalem, and was crucified by Roman soldiers during the governorship of Pontius Pilate." In that statement Levine chose her words very carefully. If she had said "disciples" instead of followers there would have been serious objections from other scholars, if she had said "called" instead of "gathered", there would have also been objections in that some scholars hold that Jesus preached equally to all, never imposed a hierarchy among his followers, etc. Scholars have very specific positions and the strength of the consensus among them can vary by changing just one word, e.g. follower to disciple or apostle, etc.

Quotes

Quotes on the historicity of Jesus

Christ myth theorists

[T]he view that there was no historical Jesus, that his earthly existence is a fiction of earliest Christianity—a fiction only later made concrete by setting his life in the first century—is today almost totally rejected.

G. A. Wells, The Historical Evidence for Jesus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1988) p. 218

It is customary today to dismiss with amused contempt the suggestion that Jesus never existed.

G. A. Wells, "The Historicity of Jesus," in Jesus and History and Myth, ed. R. Joseph Hoffman (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1986) p. 27

"New Testament criticism treated the Christ Myth Theory with universal disdain"

Robert M. Price, The Pre-Nicene New Testament: Fifty-Four Formative Texts (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2006) p. 1179

"Van Voorst is quite right in saying that 'mainstream scholarship today finds it unimportant' [to engage the Christ myth theory seriously]. Most of their comment (such as those quoted by Michael Grant) are limited to expressions of contempt."

Earl Doherty, "Responses to Critiques of the Mythicist Case: Alleged Scholarly Refutations of Jesus Mythicism, Part Three", The Jesus Puzzle: Was There No Historical Jesus?

Jesus existed

Today, nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed and that the gospels contain plenty of valuable evidence which has to be weighed and assessed critically. There is general agreement that, with the possible exception of Paul, we know far more about Jesus of Nazareth than about any first or second century Jewish or pagan religious teacher.

Graham Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus (2nd ed.), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) p. xxiii

It is certain, however, that Jesus was arrested while in Jerusalem for the Passover, probably in the year 30, and that he was executed...it cannot be doubted that Peter was a personal disciple of Jesus...

Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, 2 (2nd ed.) (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000) pp. 80 & 166

Even the most critical historian can confidently assert that a Jew named Jesus worked as a teacher and wonder-worker in Palestine during the reign of Tiberius, was executed by crucifixion under the prefect Pontius Pilate, and continued to have followers after his death.

Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus (San Francisco: Harper, 1996) p. 121

[T]here is substantial evidence that a person by the name of Jesus once existed.

Robert Funk, Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millenium (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997) p. 33

There are no substantial doubts about the general course of Jesus’ life: when and where he lived, approximately when and where he died, and the sort of thing that he did during his public activity.

E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Allen Lane, 1993) p. 10

Frankly, I know of no ancient historian or biblical historian who would have a twinge of doubt about the existence of a Jesus Christ - the documentary evidence is simply overwhelming.

Graeme Clarke, quoted by John Dickson in "Facts and friction of Easter", The Sydney Morning Herald, March 21, 2008

In the academic mind, there can be no more doubt whatsoever that Jesus existed than did Augustus and Tiberius, the emperors of his lifetime. Even if we assume for a moment that the accounts of non-biblical authors who mention him - Flavius Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger and others - had not survived, the outstanding quality of the Gospels, Paul's letters and other New Testament writings is more than good enough for the historian.

Carsten Peter Thiede, Jesus, Man or Myth? (Oxford: Lion, 2005) p. 23

Rejection of CMT - early 20th century (first wave of CMT)

The defectiveness of [the Christ myth theory's] treatment of the traditional evidence is perhaps not so patent in the case of the gospels as it is in the case of the Pauline epistles. Yet fundamentally it is the same. There is the same easy dismissal of all external testimony, the same disdain for the saner conclusions of modern criticism, the same inclination to attach most value to extremes of criticism, the same neglect of all the personal and natural features of the narrative, the same disposition to put skepticism forward in the garb of valid demonstration, and the same ever present predisposition against recognizing any evidence for Jesus' actual existence... The New Testament data are perfectly clear in their testimony to the reality of Jesus' earthly career and they come from a time when the possibility that the early framers of tradition should have been deceived upon this point is out of the question.

Shirley Jackson Case, The Historicity Of Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1912) pp. 76-77 & 269

I feel that I ought almost to apologize to my readers for investigating at such length the hypothesis of a pre-Christian Jesus, son of a mythical Mary, and for exhibiting over so many pages its fantastic, baseless, and absurd character... We must [, according to Christ myth advocates,] perforce suppose that the Gospels were a covert tribute to the worth and value of Pagan mythology and religious dramas, to pagan art and statuary. If we adopt the mythico-symbolical method, they can have been nothing else. Its sponsors might surely condescend to explain the alchemy by which the ascertained rites and beliefs of early Christians were distilled from these antecedents. The effect and the cause are so entirely disparate, so devoid of any organic connection, that we would fain see the evolution worked out a little more clearly. At one end of it we have a hurly-burly of pagan myths, at the other an army of Christian apologists inveighing against everything pagan and martyred for doing so, all within a space of sixty or seventy years. I only hope the orthodox will be gratified to learn that their Scriptures are a thousandfold more wonderful and unique than they appeared to be when they were merely inspired by the Holy Spirit. For verbal inspiration is not, as regards its miraculous quality, in the same field with mythico-symbolism. Verily we have discovered a new literary genus, unexampled in the history of mankind, you rake together a thousand irrelevant thrums of mythology, picked up at random from every age, race, and clime; you get a "Christist" to throw them into a sack and shake them up; you open it, and out come the Gospels. In all the annals of the Bacon-Shakespeareans we have seen nothing like it.

Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare,The Historical Christ, or an Investigation of the Views of J. M. Robertson, A. Drews and W. B. Smith (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Library, 2009/1914) pp. 42 & 95

The historical reality both of Buddha and of Christ has sometimes been doubted or denied. It would be just as reasonable to question the historical existence of Alexander the Great and Charlemagne on account of the legends which have gathered round them... The attempt to explain history without the influence of great men may flatter the vanity of the vulgar, but it will find no favour with the philosophic historian.

James Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 7 (3rd ed.) (London: Macmillan, 1919) p. 311

There is, lastly, a group of writers who endeavor to prove that Jesus never lived--that the story of his life is made up by mingling myths of heathen gods, Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, Greek, etc. No real scholar regards the work of these men seriously. They lack the most elementary knowledge of historical research. Some of them are eminent scholars in other subjects, such as Assyriology and mathematics, but their writings about the life of Jesus have no more claim to be regarded as historical than Alice in Wonderland or the Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

George Aaron Barton, Jesus of Nazareth: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1922) p. x

In the last analysis, the whole Christ-myth theorizing is a glaring example of obscurantism, if the sin of obscurantism consists in the acceptance of bare possibilities in place of actual probabilities, and of pure surmise in defiance of existing evidence. Those who have not entered far into the laborious inquiry may pretend that the historicity of Jesus is an open question. For me to adopt such a pretence would be sheer intellectual dishonesty. I know I must, as an honest man, reckon with Jesus as a factor in history... This dialectic process whereby the Christ-myth theory discredits itself rests on the simple fact that you cannot attempt to prove the theory without mishandling the evidence.

Herbert George Wood, Christianity and the Nature of History (London: Cambridge University Press, 1934) pp. xxxiii & 54

I.e. if we leave out of account the Christ-myth theories, which are hardly to be reckoned as within the range of serious criticism.

Alexander Roper Vidler, The Modernist Movement in the Roman Church (London: Cambridge University Press, 1934) p. 253

Of course the doubt as to whether Jesus really existed is unfounded and not worth refutation. No sane person can doubt that Jesus stands as founder behind the historical movement whose first distinct stage is represented by the oldest Palestinian community.

Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus and the Word (New York: Scribner, 1958) p. introduction

Such Christ-myth theories are not now advanced by serious opponents of Christianity—they have long been exploded ...

Gilbert Cope, Symbolism in the Bible and the Church (London: SCM, 1959) p. 14

By no means are we at the mercy of those who doubt or deny that Jesus ever lived.

Rudolf Bultmann, "The Study of the Synoptic Gospels", Form Criticism: Two Essays on New Testament Research, Rudolf Bultmann & Karl Kundsin; translated by Frederick C. Grant (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962) p. 62

In the 1910's a few scholars did argue that Jesus never existed and was simply the figment of speculative imagination. This denial of the historicity of Jesus does not commend itself to scholars, moderates or extremists, any more. ... The "Christ-myth" theories are not accepted or even discussed by scholars today.

Samuel Sandmel, A Jewish Understanding of the New Testament‎ (New York: Ktav, 1974) p. 196

In the early years of this century, various theses were propounded which all assert that Jesus never lived, and that the story of Jesus is a myth or legend. These claims have long since been exposed as historical nonsense. There can be no reasonable doubt that Jesus of Nazareth lived in Palestine in the first three decades of our era, probably from 6-7 BC to 30 AD. That is a fact.

Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1976) p. 65

Rejection of CMT - late 20th and early 21st century (revival of CMT)

If one were able to survey the members of the major learned societies dealing with antiquity, it would be difficult to find more than a handful who believe that Jesus of Nazareth did not walk the dusty roads of Palestine in the first three decades of the Common Era. Evidence for Jesus as a historical personage is incontrovertible.

W. Ward Gasque, "The Leading Religion Writer in Canada... Does He Know What He's Talking About?", George Mason University's History News Network, 2004

[The non-Christian references to Jesus from the first two centuries] render highly implausible any farfetched theories that even Jesus' very existence was a Christian invention. The fact that Jesus existed, that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate (for whatever reason) and that he had a band of followers who continued to support his cause, seems to be the part of the bedrock of historical tradition. If nothing else, the non-Christian evidence can provide us with certainty on that score.

Christopher M. Tuckett, "Sources and Methods" in The Cambridge Companion to Jesus (London: Cambridge University Press, 2001) p. 124

[A]n attempt to show that Jesus never existed has been made in recent years by G. A. Wells, a Professor of German who has ventured into New Testament study and presents a case that the origins of Christianity can be explained without assuming that Jesus really lived. Earlier presentations of similar views at the turn of the century failed to make any impression on scholarly opinion, and it is certain that this latest presentation of the case will not fare any better. For of course the evidence is not confined to Tacitus; there are the New Testament documents themselves, nearly all of which must be dated in the first century, and behind which there lies a period of transmission of the story of Jesus which can be traced backwards to a date not far from that when Jesus is supposed to have lived. To explain the rise of this tradition without the hypothesis of Jesus is impossible.

I. Howard Marshall, I Believe in the Historical Jesus (rev. ed.) (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2004) pp. 15–16

A phone call from the BBC’s flagship Today programme: would I go on air on Good Friday morning to debate with the authors of a new book, The Jesus Mysteries? The book claims (or so they told me) that everything in the Gospels reflects, because it was in fact borrowed from, much older pagan myths; that Jesus never existed; that the early church knew it was propagating a new version of an old myth, and that the developed church covered this up in the interests of its own power and control. The producer was friendly, and took my point when I said that this was like asking a professional astronomer to debate with the authors of a book claiming the moon was made of green cheese.

N. T. Wright, "Jesus' Self Understanding", in Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, Gerald O’Collins, The Incarnation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) p. 48

A school of thought popular with cranks on the Internet holds that Jesus didn’t actually exist.

Tom Breen, The Messiah Formerly Known as Jesus: Dispatches from the Intersection of Christianity and Pop Culture (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008) p. 138

Today only an eccentric would claim that Jesus never existed.

Leander Keck, Who Is Jesus?: History in Perfect Tense (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2000) p. 13

While The Christ Myth alarmed many who were innocent of learning, it evoked only Olympian scorn from the historical establishment, who were confident that Jesus had existed... The Christ-myth theory, then, won little support from the historical specialists. In their judgement, it sought to demonstrate a perverse thesis, and it preceded by drawing the most far-fetched, even bizarre connection between mythologies of very diverse origin. The importance of the theory lay, not in its persuasiveness to the historians (since it had none), but in the fact that it invited theologians to renewed reflection on the questions of faith and history.

Brian A. Gerrish, The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage (London: T. & T. Clark, 2004) pp. 231 & 233

We do not need to take seriously those writers who occasionally claim that Jesus never existed at all, for we have clear evidence to the contrary from a number of Jewish, Latin, and Islamic sources.

John Drane, "Introduction", in John Drane, The Great Sayings of Jesus: Proverbs, Parables and Prayers (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999) p. 23

It is the nature of historical work that we are always involved in probability judgments. Granted, some judgments are so probable as to be certain; for example, Jesus really existed and really was crucified, just as Julius Caesar really existed and was assassinated.

Marcus Borg, "A Vision of the Christian Life", The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, Marcus Borg & N. T. Wright (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2007) p. 236

To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars'. In recent years 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus'—or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.

Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels (New York: Scribner, 1995) p. 200

I think that there are hardly any historians today, in fact I don't know of any historians today, who doubt the existence of Jesus... So I think that question can be put to rest.

N. T. Wright, "The Self-Revelation of God in Human History: A Dialogue on Jesus with N. T. Wright", in Antony Flew & Roy Abraham Vargese, There is a God (New York: HarperOne, 2007) p. 188

We can be certain that Jesus really existed (despite a few highly motivated skeptics who refuse to be convinced), that he was a Jewish teacher in Galilee, and that he was crucified by the Roman government around 30 CE.

Robert J. Miller, The Jesus Seminar and Its Critics (Santa Rosa: Polebridge, 1999) p. 38

Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed—the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus' arrest, Peter's denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospel.

Will Durant, Christ and Caesar, The Story of Civilization, 3 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972) p. 557

There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more.

Richard A. Burridge, Jesus Now and Then (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004) p. 34

Although Wells has been probably the most able advocate of the nonhistoricity theory, he has not been persuasive and is now almost a lone voice for it. The theory of Jesus' nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question... The nonhistoricity thesis has always been controversial, and it has consistently failed to convince scholars of many disciplines and religious creeds... Biblical scholars and classical historians now regard it as effectively refuted.

Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000) pp. 14 & 16

No reputable scholar today questions that a Jew named Jesus son of Joseph lived; most readily admit that we now know a considerable amount about his actions and his basic teachings.

James H. Charlesworth, "Preface", in James H. Charlesworth, Jesus and Archaeology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006) pp. xxi–xxv

[Robert] Price thinks the evidence is so weak for the historical Jesus that we cannot know anything certain or meaningful about him. He is even willing to entertain the possibility that there never was a historical Jesus. Is the evidence of Jesus really that thin? Virtually no scholar trained in history will agree with Price's negative conclusions... In my view Price's work in the gospels is overpowered by a philosophical mindset that is at odds with historical research—of any kind... What we see in Price is what we have seen before: a flight from fundamentalism.

Craig A. Evans, Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2008) p. 25

The scholarly mainstream, in contrast to Bauer and company, never doubted the existence of Jesus or his relevance for the founding of the Church.

Craig A. Evans, "Life-of-Jesus Research and the Eclipse of Mythology", Theological Studies 54, 1993, p. 8

There's no serious question for historians that Jesus actually lived. There’s real issues about whether he is really the way the Bible described him. There’s real issues about particular incidents in his life. But no serious ancient historian doubts that Jesus was a real person, really living in Galilee in the first century.

Chris Forbes, interview with John Dickson, "Zeitgeist: Time to Discard the Christian Story?", Center for Public Christianity, 2009

I don't think there's any serious historian who doubts the existence of Jesus. There are a lot of people who want to write sensational books and make a lot of money who say Jesus didn't exist. But I don't know any serious scholar who doubts the existence of Jesus.

Bart Ehrman, interview with Reginald V. Finley Sr., "Who Changed The New Testament and Why", The Infidel Guy Show, 2008

What about those writers like Acharya S (The Christ Conspiracy) and Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy (The Jesus Mysteries), who say that Jesus never existed, and that Christianity was an invented religion, the Jewish equivalent of the Greek mystery religions? This is an old argument, even though it shows up every 10 years or so. This current craze that Christianity was a mystery religion like these other mystery religions-the people who are saying this are almost always people who know nothing about the mystery religions; they've read a few popular books, but they're not scholars of mystery religions. The reality is, we know very little about mystery religions-the whole point of mystery religions is that they're secret! So I think it's crazy to build on ignorance in order to make a claim like this. I think the evidence is just so overwhelming that Jesus existed, that it's silly to talk about him not existing. I don't know anyone who is a responsible historian, who is actually trained in the historical method, or anybody who is a biblical scholar who does this for a living, who gives any credence at all to any of this.

Bart Ehrman, interview with David V. Barrett, "The Gospel According to Bart", Fortean Times (221), 2007

Richard [Carrier] takes the extremist position that Jesus of Nazareth never even existed, that there was no such person in history. This is a position that is so extreme that to call it marginal would be an understatement; it doesn’t even appear on the map of contemporary New Testament scholarship.

William Lane Craig, "Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?", debate with Richard Carrier, 2009

The alternative thesis... that within thirty years there had evolved such a coherent and consistent complex of traditions about a non-existent figure such as we have in the sources of the Gospels is just too implausible. It involves too many complex and speculative hypotheses, in contrast to the much simpler explanation that there was a Jesus who said and did more or less what the first three Gospels attribute to him.

James D. G. Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985) p. 29

This is always the fatal flaw of the 'Jesus myth' thesis: the improbability of the total invention of a figure who had purportedly lived within the generation of the inventors, or the imposition of such an elaborate myth on some minor figure from Galilee. [Robert] Price is content with the explanation that it all began 'with a more or less vague savior myth.' Sad, really.

James D. G. Dunn, "Response to Robert M. Price", in James K. Beilby & Paul Rhodes Eddy, The Historical Jesus: Five Views (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009) p. 98

Since the Enlightenment, the Gospel stories about the life of Jesus have been in doubt. Intellectuals then as now asked: 'What makes the stories of the New Testament any more historically probable than Aesop's fables or Grimm's fairy tales?' The critics can be answered satisfactorily...For all the rigor of the standard it sets, the criterion [of embarrassment] demonstrates that Jesus existed.

Alan F. Segal, "Believe Only the Embarrassing", Slate, 2005

Some writers may toy with the fancy of a 'Christ-myth,' but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians who propagate the 'Christ-myth' theories.

F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (6th ed.) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003) p. 123

Jesus is in no danger of suffering Catherine [of Alexandria]'s fate as an unhistorical myth...

Dale Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009) p. 37

An examination of the claims for and against the historicity of Jesus thus reveals that the difficulties faced by those undertaking to prove that he is not historical, in the fields both of the history of religion and the history of doctrine, and not least in the interpretation of the earliest tradition are far more numerous and profound than those which face their opponents. Seen in their totality, they must be considered as having no possible solution. Added to this, all hypotheses which have so far been put forward to the effect that Jesus never lived are in the strangest opposition to each other, both in their method of working and their interpretation of the Gospel reports, and thus merely cancel each other out. Hence we must conclude that the supposition that Jesus did exist is exceedingly likely, whereas its converse is exceedingly unlikely. This does not mean that the latter will not be proposed again from time to time, just as the romantic view of the life of Jesus is also destined for immortality. It is even able to dress itself up with certain scholarly technique, and with a little skillful manipulation can have much influence on the mass of people. But as soon as it does more than engage in noisy polemics with 'theology' and hazards an attempt to produce real evidence, it immediately reveals itself to be an implausible hypothesis.

Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, translated by John Bowden et al. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001) pp. 435–436

In fact, there is more evidence that Jesus of Nazareth certainly lived than for most famous figures of the ancient past. This evidence is of two kinds: internal and external, or, if you will, sacred and secular. In both cases, the total evidence is so overpowering, so absolute that only the shallowest of intellects would dare to deny Jesus' existence. And yet this pathetic denial is still parroted by 'the village atheist,' bloggers on the internet, or such organizations as the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

Paul L. Maier, "Did Jesus Really Exist?", 4Truth.net, 2007

If I understand what Earl Doherty is arguing, Neil, it is that Jesus of Nazareth never existed as an historical person, or, at least that historians, like myself, presume that he did and act on that fatally flawed presumption. I am not sure, as I said earlier, that one can persuade people that Jesus did exist as long as they are ready to explain the entire phenomenon of historical Jesus and earliest Christianity either as an evil trick or a holy parable. I had a friend in Ireland who did not believe that Americans had landed on the moon but that they had created the entire thing to bolster their cold-war image against the communists. I got nowhere with him. So I am not at all certain that I can prove that the historical Jesus existed against such an hypothesis and probably, to be honest, I am not even interested in trying.

John Dominic Crossan, "Historical Jesus: Materials and Methodology", XTalk, 2000

When they say that Christian beliefs about Jesus are derived from pagan mythology, I think you should laugh. Then look at them wide-eyed and with a big grin, and exclaim, 'Do you really believe that?' Act as though you've just met a flat earther or Roswell conspirator.

William Lane Craig, "Question 90: Jesus and Pagan Mythology", Reasonable Faith, 2009

An extreme instance of pseudo-history of this kind is the “explanation” of the whole story of Jesus as a myth.

Emil Brunner, The Mediator: A Study of the Central Doctrine of the Christian Faith (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2002) p. 164

An extreme view along these lines is one which denies even the historical existence of Jesus Christ—a view which, one must admit, has not managed to establish itself among the educated, outside a little circle of amateurs and cranks, or to rise above the dignity of the Baconian theory of Shakespeare.

Edwyn Robert Bevan, Hellenism And Christianity (2nd ed.) (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1930) p. 256

When all the evidence brought against Jesus' historicity is surveyed it is not found to contain any elements of strength.

Shirley Jackson Case, "The Historicity of Jesus: An Estimate of the Negative Argument", The American Journal of Theology, 1911, 15 (1)

It would be easy to show how much there enters of the conjectural, of superficial resemblances, of debatable interpretation into the systems of the Drews, the Robertsons, the W. B. Smiths, the Couchouds, or the Stahls... The historical reality of the personality of Jesus alone enables us to understand the birth and development of Christianity, which otherwise would remain an enigma, and in the proper sense of the word, a miracle.

Maurice Goguel, Jesus the Nazarene: Myth or History? (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1926) pp. 30 & 244

Anyone who talks about "reasonable faith" must say what he thinks about Jesus. And that would still be so even if, with one or two cranks, he believed that He never existed.

John W. C. Wand, The Old Faith and the New Age‎ (London: Skeffington & Son, 1933) p. 31

That both in the case of the Christians, and in the case of those who worshipped Zagreus or Osiris or Attis, the Divine Being was believed to have died and returned to life, would be a depreciation of Christianity only if it could be shown that the Christian belief was derived from the pagan one. But that can be supposed only by cranks for whom historical evidence is nothing.

Edwyn R. Bevan, in Thomas Samuel Kepler, Contemporary Thinking about Paul: An Anthology (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1950) p. 44

The pseudoscholarship of the early twentieth century calling in question the historical reality of Jesus was an ingenuous attempt to argue a preconceived position.

Gerard Stephen Sloyan, The Crucifixion of Jesus: History, Myth, Faith (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995) p. 9

Whatever else Jesus may or may not have done, he unquestionably* started the process that became Christianity…

UNQUESTIONABLY: The proposition has been questioned, but the alternative explanations proposed—the theories of the “Christ myth school,” etc.—have been thoroughly discredited.

Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (New York: Harper & Row, 1978) pp. 5 & 166

One category of mythicists, like young-earth creationists, have no hesitation about offering their own explanation of who made up Christianity... Other mythicists, perhaps because they are aware that such a scenario makes little historical sense and yet have nothing better to offer in its place, resemble proponents of Intelligent Design who will say "the evidence points to this organism having been designed by an intelligence" and then insist that it would be inappropriate to discuss further who the designer might be or anything else other than the mere "fact" of design itself. They claim that the story of Jesus was invented, but do not ask the obvious historical questions of "when, where, and by whom" even though the stories are set in the authors' recent past and not in time immemorial, in which cases such questions obviously become meaningless... Thus far, I've only encountered two sorts of mythicism.

James F. McGrath, "Intelligently-Designed Narratives: Mythicism as History-Stopper", Exploring Our Matrix, 2010

To describe Jesus' non-existence as "not widely supported" is an understatement. It would be akin to me saying, "It is possible to mount a serious, though not widely supported, scientific case that the 1969 lunar landing never happened." There are fringe conspiracy theorists who believe such things - but no expert does. Likewise with the Jesus question: his non-existence is not regarded even as a possibility in historical scholarship. Dismissing him from the ancient record would amount to a wholesale abandonment of the historical method.

John Dickson, Jesus: A Short Life (Oxford: Lion, 2008) 22-23.

When Professor Wells advances such an explanation of the gospel stories [i.e. the Christ myth theory] he presents us with a piece of private mythology that I find incredible beyond anything in the gospels.

Morton Smith, in R. Joseph Hoffman, Jesus in History and Myth (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1986) p. 48

Of course, there can be no toleration whatever of the idea that Jesus never existed and is only a concoction from these pagan stories about a god who was slain and rose again.

Joseph Klausner, From Jesus to Paul (New York: Menorah, 1943) p. 107

Virtually all biblical scholars acknowledge that there is enough information from ancient non-Christian sources to give the lie to the myth (still, however, widely believed in popular circles and by some scholars in other fields--see esp. G. A. Wells) which claims that Jesus never existed.

Craig L. Blomberg, "Gospels (Historical Reliability)", in Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight & I. Howard Marshall, Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1992) p. 292

Dr. Wells was there [I.e. a symposium at the University of Michigan] and he presened his radical thesis that maybe Jesus never existed. Virtually nobody holds this position today. It was reported that Dr. Morton Smith of Columbia University, even though he is a skeptic himself, responded that Dr. Wells's view was "absurd".

Gary Habermas, in Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?: The Resurrection Debate (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1989) p. 45

The data we have are certainly adequate to confute the view that Jesus never lived, a view that no one holds in any case

Charles E. Carlston, in Bruce Chilton & Craig A. Evans (eds.) Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research (Leiden: Brill, 1998) p. 3

Although it is held by Marxist propaganda writers that Jesus never lived and that the Gospels are pure creations of the imagination, this is not the view of even the most radical Gospel critics.

Bernard L. Ramm, An Evangelical Christology: Ecumenic and Historic (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1999) p. 159

Comparison with Holocaust-deniers

The very logic that tells us there was no Jesus is the same logic that pleads that there was no Holocaust. On such logic, history is no longer possible. It is no surprise then that there is no New Testament scholar drawing pay from a post who doubts the existence of Jesus. I know not one. His birth, life, and death in first-century Palestine have never been subject to serious question and, in all likelihood, never will be among those who are experts in the field. The existence of Jesus is a given.

Nicholas Perrin, Lost in Transmission?: What We Can Know About the Words of Jesus (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007) p. 32

While we do not have the fullness of biographical detail and the wealth of firsthand accounts that are available for recent public figures, such as Winston Churchill or Mother Teresa, we nonetheless have much more data on Jesus than we do for such ancient figures as Alexander the Great... Along with the scholarly and popular works, there is a good deal of pseudoscholarship on Jesus that finds its way into print. During the last two centuries more than a hundred books and articles have denied the historical existence of Jesus. Today innumerable websites carry the same message... Most scholars regard the arguments for Jesus' non-existence as unworthy of any response—on a par with claims that the Jewish Holocaust never occurred or that the Apollo moon landing took place in a Hollywood studio.

Michael James McClymond, Familiar Stranger: An Introduction to Jesus of Nazareth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004) pp. 8 & 23–24

You know that you can try to minimize your biases, but you can't eliminate them. That's why you have to put certain checks and balances in place… Under this approach, we only consider facts that meet two criteria. First, there must be very strong historical evidence supporting them. And secondly, the evidence must be so strong that the vast majority of today's scholars on the subject—including skeptical ones—accept these as historical facts. You're never going to get everyone to agree. There are always people who deny the Holocaust or question whether Jesus ever existed, but they're on the fringe.

Michael R. Licona, in Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007) p. 112

A hundred and fifty years ago a fairly well respected scholar named Bruno Bauer maintained that the historical person Jesus never existed. Anyone who says that today—in the academic world at least—gets grouped with the skinheads who say there was no Holocaust and the scientific holdouts who want to believe the world is flat.

Mark Allan Powell, Jesus as a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man from Galilee (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998) p. 168

Finley: There are some people in the chat room disagreeing, of course, but they’re saying that there really isn’t any hardcore evidence, though, that… I mean… but there isn’t any… any evidence, really, that Jesus did exist except what people were saying about him. But… Ehrman: I think… I disagree with that. Finley: Really? Ehrman: I mean, what hardcore evidence is there that Julius Caesar existed? Finley: Well, this is… this is the same kind of argument that apologists use, by the way, for the existence of Jesus, by the way. They like to say the same thing you said just then about, well, what kind of evidence do you have for Jul… Ehrman: Well, I mean, it’s… but it’s just a typical… it’s just… It’s a historical point; I mean, how do you establish the historical existence of an individual from the past? Finley: I guess… I guess it depends on the claims… Right, it depends on the claims that people have made during that particular time about a particular person and their influence on society... Ehrman: It’s not just the claims. There are… One has to look at historical evidence. And if you… If you say that historical evidence doesn’t count, then I think you get into huge trouble. Because then, how do… I mean… then why not just deny the Holocaust?

Bart Ehrman, interview with Reginald V. Finley Sr., "Who Changed The New Testament and Why", The Infidel Guy Show, 2008

The denial that Christ was crucified is like the denial of the Holocaust. For some it's simply too horrific to affirm. For others it's an elaborate conspiracy to coerce religious sympathy. But the deniers live in a historical dreamworld.

John Piper, Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die (Wheaton: Crossway, 2006) pp. 14-15

I just finished reading, The Historical Jesus: Five Views. The first view was given by Robert Price, a leading Jesus myth proponent… The title of Price’s chapter is 'Jesus at the Vanishing Point.' I am convinced that if Price's total skepticism were applied fairly and consistently to other figures in ancient history (Alexander the Great, Ptolemy, Cleopatra, Nero, etc.), they would all be reduced to 'the vanishing point.' Price's chapter is a perfect example of how someone can always, always find excuses to not believe something they don't want to believe, whether that be the existence of Jesus or the existence of the holocaust.

Dennis Ingolfsland, "Five views of the historical Jesus", The Recliner Commentaries, 2009

The Jesus mythers will continue to advance their thesis and complain of being kept outside of the arena of serious academic discussion. They carry their signs, 'Jesus Never Existed!' 'They won’t listen to me!' and label those inside the arena as 'Anti-Intellectuals,' 'Fundamentalists,' 'Misguided Liberals,' and 'Flat-Earthers.' Doherty & Associates are baffled that all but a few naïve onlookers pass them by quickly, wagging their heads and rolling their eyes. They never see that they have a fellow picketer less than a hundred yards away, a distinguished looking man from Iran. He too is frustrated and carries a sign that says 'The Holocaust Never Happened!'

Michael R. Licona, "Licona Replies to Doherty's Rebuttal", Answering Infidels, 2005

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The contents of Talk:Historicity of Jesus/Merged content 2005 were merged into Historicity of Jesus in 2005. The page is now a redirect to here. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history.

The answer to your question may already be in the FAQ. Please read the FAQ first.

Fringe?

WP:FRINGELEVEL: “One important barometer for determining the notability and level of acceptance of fringe ideas related to science, history or other academic pursuits is the presence or absence of peer-reviewed research on the subject.”

Peer-reviewed monographs on HoJ:

-The Historicity of Jesus: A Criticism of the Contention that Jesus Never Lived by Shirley Jackson Case, 1912/1923; clearly outdated

-On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt by historian Richard Carrier (2014 Sheffield Phoenix Press)

-Questioning the Historicity of Jesus by religion scholar Raphael Lataster (2019 Brill Publishers)

If we check wp:rs and the wp:fringe guidelines, it seems like much more prominence should be given to the last two. If we'd like to consider scholarly criticism of these volumes (or the tendency to ignore them), we should of course do the same with the other sources (Ehrman's book for instance is heavily criticised in academic circles).

If some biblical scholars and theologians call the "christ myth theory" a "fringe theory" in some trade market publication or in some journal that specialises in Historical Jesus research, that says very little, given the very dubious status of the discipline. Quest for the historical Jesus#Criticism gives some idea of the poor state of affairs, but is just the tip of the iceberg. The many HJ scholars who identify as "historians" without proper credentials and without applying any sound historical methodology, are basically practising pseudoscience (WP:FRINGESUBJECTS). That's a big problem for most of the sources cited in our article.

wp:parity: “The prominence of fringe views needs to be put in perspective relative to the views of the entire encompassing field; limiting that relative perspective to a restricted subset of specialists or only among the proponents of that view is, necessarily, biased and unrepresentative.”

The assumption of HoJ is paradigmatic to NT studies (as Lataster points out), but is basically a fringe subject in the wider academic field of History. The few expert historians who have adressed it see good reason for doubt (Carrier) or emphasise that there is too little evidence to draw any reasonable conclusion (Dykstra). The latter seems to be the more common opinion among professional historians, but of course has not lead to many publications. Joortje1 (talk) 20:34, 17 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't like the Wikipedic consensus at the article abortion. But this does not mean I'm entitled to bother its editors with useless whines about it. tgeorgescu (talk) 23:17, 17 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:FRINGELEVEL:

ideas should not be portrayed as rejected or carry negative labels such as pseudoscience unless such claims can be documented in reliable sources.

Ideas that have been rejected, are widely considered to be absurd or pseudoscientific, only of historical interest, or primarily the realm of science fiction, should be documented as such, using reliable sources.

Ideas that are of borderline or minimal notability may be mentioned in Wikipedia, but should not be given undue weight. Wikipedia is not a forum for presenting new ideas, for countering any systemic bias in institutions such as academia, or for otherwise promoting ideas which have failed to merit attention elsewhere. Wikipedia is not a place to right great wrongs.

Quite clear. Selective reading of policies ('systematic bias', to paraphrase), as also demonstrated in the reference to criticism of the Historical Jesus research, which misunderstood the target of the criticisms, and obviously missed Donald Akenson's comment, as noted in the thread above. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 08:04, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly if only in the past 100 years, 2 sources are mythicism (which have been extensively criticized and rejected) vs tens of thousands of sources are historicist (never deny his existence), then there is clearly no competition. Mythicism clearly has an "absence of peer-reviewed research on the subject.” Plus fringe authors like Carrier has never held a professional position in academia or institution, most of his works on Jesus is self published or from non-academic presses. Fringe literature is still fringe no matter if published in some scholarly or non-scholarly manner. There are peer reviewed works on acupuncture (some even have their own peer reviewed journals [1], [2], [3]), but that does not mean that these views are accepted in the medical community just because some passed peer review. Peer review means little when the topic is fringe and even worse when it is heavily criticized by peers after publication like with Carrier and Lataster. Both also acknowledge fringe status so there goes the argument. Ramos1990 (talk) 08:39, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Mythicism clearly has an "absence of peer-reviewed research on the subject.”"

You were the one who pointed out to me that Lataster and Carrier had peer-reviewed volumes on the subject. Now you contest even that?

"past 100 years"..."no competition"

peer-reviewed monographs defending HoJ: 0, peer-reviewed monographs doubting HoJ: 2

I simply point towards guidelines that seem to support citing these sources. Is there any good reason to desire a "professional position in academia or institution" for any author?

"self published or from non-academic presses"

Let's ignore those. Please consider that the page's favorited Ehrman 2012 is clearly not an academic publication, and I have seen it much more "heavily criticised" by academics than Carrier and Lataster's monographs.

"acupuncture (some even have their own peer reviewed journals"

Exactly, just like Historical Jesus research! (see also WP:SCHOLARSHIP POV and peer review in journals, + my quote of wp:parity)

"Both also acknowledge fringe status"

Lataster 2019 actually explicitly states that this is "untrue" (p. 1)

Carrier 2014 opposes at least a fringe status for an important part of his argumentation: "The letters of Paul corroborate the hypothesis that Christianity began with visions (real or claimed) and novel interpretations of scripture, and this is not a fringe proposal but is actually a view shared by many experts" Joortje1 (talk) 19:54, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Joshua Jonathan Sure, there are some conflicting aspects to almost every guideline, but does your selected bit really cancel out the problem of using the views of a "restricted subset of specialists" and uncritically presenting these as "mainstream"? Are biblical scholars even considered a subset of historians?

"misunderstood the target"

For my edit of the article on this issue, I cited Meggitt (among others), who discusses the problem in the context of HoJ. It's probably even better to look at Lataster for this: he cites many sources discussing the acknowledged problems of HJ research, and he connects it to HoJ views.

I did notice Akenson's statement that "Yeshua the man certainly existed" (p. 540) (which didn't really seem to come from any historical research), but where does he exclude "the mere facts of his existence and crucifixion" from the problems?

In any case, the problems and especially the bankruptcy of the criteria directly relate to HoJ: the heavily contested "criterion of embareassment" is used as the basis for the mere 2 "facts" that "scholars" agree upon (according to our article). Joortje1 (talk) 18:05, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Joortje1: Are biblical scholars even considered a subset of historians? It depends on their specialization. As Bart Ehrman explains here, there are many biblical scholars who specialize mainly on exegesis, that is, the interpretation of biblical texts using different kinds of literary criticism and theological analyses. But as Ehrman also notes:

But there are yet other approaches to biblical studies that are more historically oriented, and there are indeed Biblical scholars who are historians. These scholars are not interested only in the interpretation and theological significance of the Bible, but also (or rather) in what the biblical texts can tell us about the history of the communities lying behind them.

[...]

There are a number of Hebrew Biblical scholars, for example, who are particularly trained in and expert on the history of ancient Israel. In order to determine what happened, historically (say in the eighth century BCE, or the sixth century BCE, etc.). These scholars utilize the biblical texts and all other relevant information – including archaeology, texts from surrounding civilizations (Egypt, Babylon, and so forth). They are more interested in the social history lying behind the biblical texts (and their authors) than in the meaning of the texts per se.

So too with the New Testament, there are social historians who utilize the Gospels and other sources to write about what happened in the life of the historical Jesus or who focus on the letters of Paul and other sources to reconstruct the social history of the Pauline communities.

I would count myself in this latter camp, of biblical scholars who are particularly interested in social history. But there are also some (very few) biblical scholars who are interested in broader historical topics of Christianity starting with Jesus and Paul and others at that time, and moving up well beyond that into the early centuries of Christianity. That is where I have focused the vast bulk of my research for, well I guess for twenty-five years.

So, yeah, many critical Bible scholars are as much historians of the Bible and its times as many Classicists are historians of Classical antiquity, or as many Egyptologists are historians of Ancient Egypt, or as many Assyrologists are historians of Ancient Mesopotamia. And the strong consensus among these critical Bible scholars is that a historical Jesus most certainly existed in 1st century Palestine. Potatín5 (talk) 14:12, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

IF they use proper methodologies, otherwise they are amateur historians at best.

As I said: there are exceptions. Ehrman tries to sell himself as such an exception on that blog post, after emphatically stating "most biblical scholars in fact are not historians".

Ehrman also conceded about the result of his trainging: “I was so uneducated, and so, basically, I’m self-taught in almost all the areas that I’m really interested in.” (2024?)

When it came to his own status as an historian, Ehrman basically suggested that having an interest in a subject is enough, which would make any author writing on any subject an expert. That in itself might not even be a problem. There's a good reason why peer review is usually done "blind": we'll judge the work, which involves looking at the proper use of sound methodologies. But how does this look after the fuss he made over the perceived lack of credentials of his opponents in his book about HoJ? And what about the methodologies of Ehrman and co?

For his 2012 book, Ehrman mostly used the heavily contested "criteria of authenticity", and in such a poor way that he for instance pumps up "multiple attestation" with a bunch of entirely hypothetical sources and dares to count these among sources that we "have". He also claims they are all independent, while for instance Q has been thought up as an alternative solution for how the synoptic gosepls are derived from each other. Et cetera, et cetera.

In his 2014 book, Casey explicitly rejects all the standard historical methods that he seems to know of (which turned out to be mostly those that an opponent suggested).

Most biblical scholars do not even give any (sustained) arguments for their belief in the historicity of Jesus, other than stating that they virtually all agree on it. Meggitt on that consensus: "unlike 'guilds' in professions such as law or medicine, other than the subject of study – the bible – and some assumptions about competency in a few requisite linguistic skills, it is not apparent what members of this 'guild' necessarily have in common and therefore what value an alleged consensus within it really has, especially on what is a historical rather than a linguistic matter". Joortje1 (talk) 16:00, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't even object to there being a consensus among biblical scholars (and theologians), but the article should identify the specific discipline.

That said, there are good reasons why Meggitt calls it an "alleged" consensus. For one: "whilst it is true that some members do have the academic freedom to arrive at any position they find convincing about the question of Jesus' historicity, this is clearly not the case for many who are also members of the 'guild' and carry out their scholarship in confessional contexts, as the apparent silencing of Brodie indicates". So, I'd love to see an anonymous poll rather than a bunch of outdated quotes from a very small portion of the thousands of biblical scholars saying that they all agree.

I also assume plenty of mythicist publications deserve the label "fringe theory". But that notion has here become an excuse to attack anything that smacks a bit of doubt about HoJ, and even the few peer-reviewed studies on the subject. Joortje1 (talk) 16:36, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"scholars who identify as "historians" without proper credentials and without applying any sound historical methodology, are basically practising pseudoscience" No, they are not making any scientific claims. Those tin foil hat-type of pseudo-scholars are simply pseudohistorians, misrepresenting the historical record to promote their wacky religious views. Dimadick (talk) 00:33, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, "pseudohistory" is the more precise word for it, but let's not use either term anymore, as long as we haven't found wp:rs using it in this context, just like I prefer to not see the pejorative "fringe theory" used for peer-reviewed publications from reputable publishers.

I think only a minority of the cited authors are really promoting wacky religious views. At least Ehrman's main agenda seems pupularising findings of Textual criticism of the New Testament, which actually helps people understand the dubious nature of the Bible (as long as he'd stick to books like "Forged"). But when he, Casey or similar authors pretend to give a historical account, it seems like biblical studies come with rather naïve ideas about what the discipline of History entails (and their overconfidence and tendency to overstate their ideas becomes clear).

There are great exceptions and peer review is a reasonable way to separate the wheat from the chaff. The same goes for "mythicist" publications, of course.

There's just very few useful studies on this subject, and the dominant editors of this article refuse those. Joortje1 (talk) 09:58, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"their overconfidence and tendency to overstate their ideas becomes clear" Two decades ago, I was fascinated by the topic of the historicity of the Bible and I had a collection of several books on the topic. After noticing that many scholars do not have archaeological evidence to support their ideas, I mostly lost interest in the topic. I find archaeology to be fascinating, and biblical studies to be rather stagnant and unreliable. Dimadick (talk) 16:17, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ramos1990 offered a very useful comparison in a previous discussion: “You can have thousands of doctors who believe in acupuncture, but the medical community still considers it a pseudoscience and is thus fringe.”

HoJ is a fringe research topic within the field of “historical Jesus” scholarship, which is often frowned upon within the wider community of biblical studies, which relatively often operates within the wider context of theology, but also within the field of study of religion. Only the latter can arguably be considered part of the wider community of historians (but not necessarily as “mainstream”).

Because of the general acknowledgement of extreme problems with bias and lack of sound methodology in historical Jesus scholarship, it seems fair to consider it pseudo-history (at least if authors lack relevant credentials or even training but nonetheless present their work as historical analysis). The topic of HoJ mostly getting ignored in mainstream disciplines makes it fringe.

You can have thousands of scholars who believe in a historical Jesus (or his resurrection for that matter), but… let’s follow the wp guidelines and see what we can do with the academic sources from a NPOV. Joortje1 (talk) 10:38, 5 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"You can have thousands of doctors who believe in acupuncture" This is not a useful comparison. The effectiveness of acupuncture and other alternative medicine methods (or its lack) can be established through systematic review and evidence-based practice. We can not use the same methods to determine whether millennia-old legends have a factual basis. The people who narrated and transmitted these legends are long gone, and the archaeological data can not provide definite answers to our questions. Dimadick (talk) 11:50, 5 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Millicent C. Feske: “The quest of the historical Jesus fell into disrepute because scholars recognized the impossibility of the objective historical task with respect to Jesus of Nazareth.” (Historicity, Hermeneutics and the Historical Jesus 1999)

Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity April DeConick: “the goal to prove Jesus' existence or not is methodologically a black hole from my perspective” (2009, on why she didn’t want to participate in the Jesus Project)

Theologian-historian [[R. Joseph Hoffmann]]: "Whether the New Testament runs from Christ to Jesus or Jesus to Christ is not a question we can answer" (2009, in his conclusion about the failed Jesus Project).

Professor Emeritus of biblical studies Philp R. Davies: “(...) a recognition that his existence is not entirely certain would nudge Jesus scholarship towards academic respectability” (Did Jesus Exist? 2012) Joortje1 (talk) 10:40, 5 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bias

Holy cow. This article is incredibly biased. Appeals to authority up the wazoo - I mean, the "fringe" section literally has a separate line saying "this one guy changed his mind," for crying out loud, and, rather than going at all into the arguments against a historical Jesus, it just keeps repeating the claim that it is supposedly discredited (and then even fails to provide anything to support the notion that the arguments have been debunked). How is this acceptable? ReDquinox (talk) 18:28, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ad infinitum. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 18:53, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ReDquinox Lots of wikipedians didn't find it acceptable and have addressed it (hence Joshua's "ad infinitum" remark), without much luck. Some heavily invested editors prefer to keep the bias. At least the bias and lack of logical/factual argumentation is so obvious that attentive readers will soon know what's up. Joortje1 (talk) 10:25, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah: fringe-adepts convinced that their beliefs reflect reality. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 10:33, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Joshua Jonathan Haha, nice projection. Do you really think it helps when people think you're into promoting a certain bias and you reply that everybody who complains about it must be a fringe-adept with misguided beliefs?

Not sure about @ReDquinox or the many others, but for me it was the poor argumentation and obvious bias on this page that raised some questions. I hadn't heard any "fringe" theories and was just looking for the historical evidence that I had always assumed would exist. I'm still looking. Most statements on this page have very little to do with sound historical research, and are disputed in more reliable academic sources. Joortje1 (talk) 15:49, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fringe IP complaining

Fringe IP complaining [4] they don't like it and POV pushing against sources is no reason to remove what exeperts have said. Plus it is already cited in the body. Ramos1990 (talk) 01:39, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What is a "fringe IP"? Where does it complain? Where is the POV pushing? What is "it" that "they don't like?

Please stop assuming that every editor who does something that you don't agree with is a "fringe" complainer pushing some POV (see also Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers). Joortje1 (talk) 19:57, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Mu. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 20:20, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I only see the comment "Lack of denial being proof is a logical fallacy" in the given link. The removed line indeed reeks like an Argument from ignorance, but could be a poorly stated Argument from silence. This argument seems very hypocritical when the same theologians are later cited to argue that silence in sources has no impact on historicity when a supposedly historical individual doesn't get mentioned.

A fallacy is still a fallacy it it comes from "exeperts". And where's the logic in considering theologians as experts on the historicity of one of their deities? I personally don't mind their background much if they come up with a useful argument, but this seems especially poor since Christians have destroyed, altered, or simply didn't save a lot of the sources that they didn't like (possibly even evidence for a historical Jesus that didn't suit their particular beliefs at that time).

There's of course 2nd century Justin quoting Trypho: "But Christ--if He has indeed been born, and exists anywhere--is unknown, and does not even know Himself, and has no power until Elias come to anoint Him, and make Him manifest to all. And you, having accepted a groundless report, invent a Christ for yourselves, and for his sake are inconsiderately perishing." Some theologians and biblical scholars have of course gone out of their way to reason away this expression of doubt. Joortje1 (talk) 20:23, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP:NOTESSAY and WP:NOTFORUM. We do not debate the topic here. Fringe editor POV, complaints, personal feelings, arguments, specualtions, concerns, etc like yours and the IP's carry no weight on this article. Plus mainstream expert views are more accurate either way. Trypho is not a mythcist and is actually a fictional literary character for the dialogue (common among philosophical dialogues like this), not a real person. Even Carrier and other mythcists agree. Seriously, it is time you stopped editing this talk page and article. You have been fringe POV pushing and treating this talk page as a forum to discuss the topic with personal synthesis for nearly 2 years. It is constantly being WP:DISRUPTIVE by constantly WP:BLUDGEONING. Ramos1990 (talk) 00:01, 1 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You should WP:AGF and casting dispersions because you don’t like the opinion of other editors has no place on Wikipedia. As stated above by the editor above, it is an argument from ignorance and certainly doesn’t belong in the lede. 2600:1700:1111:5940:208E:EC38:682F:9A6A (talk) 01:23, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Ramos1990 Please consider expressing yourself with a bit more wp:goodfaith, less wp:lawyering, and try to focus on improving the page. If people “complain” about for instance a lack of logic, that may be a good reason to check the argumentation and wording of the addressed lines, rather than a reason for insults and accusations like “fringe” and “pov pushing”.

We’re discussing the quality of a statement on the page. I nuanced that it’s not necessarily a fallacy, but also pointed out some well-known info that casts doubt on the veracity of the statement. On the talk page, this shouldn’t immediately require citing experts, especially if the argument is available in the refs for the statement under discussion. Joortje1 (talk) 06:04, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Personal disagreement by an anonymous wikieditor, who obsviously has a fringe POV, is not grounds for removing consensus expert views. WP:BRD-NOT "BRD is not a justification for imposing one's own view or for tendentious editing.". Will restore content. Good faith is established by not enaging in fringe POV pushing and not WP:BLUDGEONING. The odd removal of statments of evidence from expert sources based on saying it is a "logical fallacy" is indicative of a mythicist editor. We go off of what mainstream RS say, not fringe sources or personal views on the matter (e.g. this is not a forum or a blog to discuss how one feels about the topic). Ramos1990 (talk) 06:14, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My view is not fringe and I am not a mythicist. With your attitude you should not be allowed to edit. Absence of evidence is not proof, being an editor requires WP:Competence. I have no issue with it being discussed in the article, but it should not be in the lede as some sort of proof. 2600:1700:1111:5940:3937:B0FC:7A4E:B8EC (talk) 19:30, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Van Voorst ref (also cited in the Mykytiuk ref) acknowledges the Trypho “quote” (fictional or not) as a “possible attempt at this argument” but found it too “faint” and underdeveloped to consider more seriously.

Classicist [[Louis Feldman]] interpreted it as a “charge that Jesus had never lived and was a mere figment of Christian imagination” (this coincidentally directly follows an apology for the use of an argument of silence!). Joortje1 (talk) 06:49, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Of course the argument is also treated, with much more nuance than Feldman, in the peer-reviewed mainstream volumes on HoJ that you once pointed out when I asked for sources by historians who didn't take bibical study as a starting point for a quest for historical corroboration.

Carrier (2014, p. 349–352)

“we almost never have writings gainsaying mythical people when they are historicized”

“Celsus argues from the unproven assumption that they embellish a real story, while Justin’s Trypho takes it one step further and suggests they might have been wholly fabricated”

see also: Lataster (2019, p. 398) Joortje1 (talk) 06:59, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Carrier and Lataster are both fringe sources - WP:BLUDGEON to keep mentioning them. Van Voorst is mainstream and did a more thorough look at it and clears up "Trypho assumes the existence of Jesus" throughout the work in that same foot note and also makes the claim "[N]o pagans and Jews who opposed Christianity denied Jesus’ historicity or even questioned it." Ramos1990 (talk) 07:08, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Virtually all scholars" according to Ehrman

Ehrman: “The problem with saying that every historian agrees on something is problematic, because, of course there are people who deny that Jesus existed.” (The Big Conversation, 2023 6:39) Joortje1 (talk) 15:38, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And that's why we do not say "All scholars." Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 15:52, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Virtually the same, and neither did Justin Bass, but fair enough. Joortje1 (talk) 18:00, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]