Did Jesus Exist? - The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth by Bart Ehrman (read book .TXT) 📕

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Marshall, I. Howard. I Believe in the Historical Jesus. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977.

Meier, John. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. 4 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1991, 1994, 2001, 2009.

Merz, Annette, and Gerd Theissen. The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998.

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Schweitzer, Albert. The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. First published in German in 1906.

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Smith, Jonathan Z. Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990.

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NOTES

Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Mythical View of Jesus

1. Earl Doherty, Jesus: Neither God nor Man: The Case for a Mythical Jesus (Ottawa, ON: Age of Reason Publications, 2009), vii–viii. This is a much-expanded and somewhat revised edition of Doherty’s earlier book, which is sometimes looked upon as a modern classic in the field of mythicism, The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? (Ottawa, ON: Age of Reason Publications, 1999).

2. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, ed. John Bowden (1906; repr., Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 478. Quoted with approbation by Tom Harpur, The Pagan Christ (New York: Walker & Co., 2004), 166. Harpur realizes that Schweitzer does not mean that Jesus never existed, even though the way he cites the passage may well leave the unwary reader with that impression.

3. For fuller summaries of these early works, see Schweitzer, Quest, chaps. 22 and 23 (he added these chapters on mythicists only after the success of his first edition) and the brief but helpful overview of Archibald Robertson, Jesus: Myth or History? (London: Watts & Co., 1946). See also Jonathan Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990), chap. 1.

4. See Schweitzer, Quest, chap. 11.

5. J. M. Robertson, Christianity and Mythology, 2nd ed. (London: Watts & Co., 1910).

6. See Schweitzer, Quest, 381–89.

7. Robert Price, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition? (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003); Price, The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems (Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2011).

8. Frank Zindler, Religions and Scriptures, vol. 1 of Through Atheist Eyes: Scenes from a World That Won’t Reason (Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2011).

9. Thomas L. Thompson, The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David (New York: Basic Books, 2005).

10. A. Robertson, Jesus: Myth or History?, 107.

11. George A. Wells, Did Jesus Exist?, 2nd ed. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1986). See also the following of his writings, most of which do not significantly alter or advance his argument (but see note 20): The Historical Evidence for Jesus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1988); The Jesus Legend (Peru, IL: Carus, 1996); Cutting Jesus Down to Size: What Higher Criticism Has Achieved and Where It Leaves Christianity (Chicago: Open Court, 2009); “Is There Independent Confirmation of What the Gospels Say of Jesus?” Free Inquiry 31 (2011): 19–25.

12. A. Robertson, Jesus: Myth or History?, x.

13. John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 1:87.

14. I. Howard Marshall does devote a longer footnote to the question, I Believe in the Historical Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977).

15. Mythicists are taken seriously by the two German New Testament scholars Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 122–23.

16. D. M. Murdock, The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold (Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited, 1999).

17. Murdock, Christ Conspiracy, 21.

18. Murdock, Christ Conspiracy, 154.

19. Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries: Was the “Original Jesus” a Pagan God? (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999), 2.

20. For a good, direct, and recent statement of the mythicist view, see George A. Wells, “Independent Confirmation.” As will be clear, in one important respect Wells differs from most other mythicists: rather than tracing the invention of the historical Jesus back to the myths about the pagan gods, Wells thinks that it derived from Jewish wisdom traditions, in which God’s wisdom was thought to have been a personalized being who was with him at the creation and then came to visit humans (see, for example, Proverbs 8).

Chapter 2: Non-Christian Sources for the Life of Jesus

1. Robert Price, The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems (Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2011), 15.

2. Price, Christ-Myth Theory, 25, emphasis his.

3. The only indication in the New Testament Gospels that Jesus could write is in the famous story of the woman taken in adultery in John 8, where he writes on the ground while dealing with the woman’s accusers (in the context of saying, “Let the one without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her”). Unfortunately, this passage was not originally in the Gospel of John but was added later. See my discussion in Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (San Francisco: Harper