Customer Reviews

The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus

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I've read three shelves worth of books on Christian apologetics and the quest for the historical Jesus. I can save you a lot of time. All you really need is this one. The other books raise more questions than they answer, and go off on a lot of wild goose chases. But Doherty's book makes full use of the available evidence, and his thesis actually makes sense.

If you want to read the Christian side (and you should) I recommend "The Case for Christ" by Lee Strobel. Strobel is very selective in his use of evidence, but the book is a good read, and probably the best that can be done for the Christian faith. Read it first if you like, and then read Doherty. There's no comparison.

Doherty also has a web site. I recommend you first read his book and then visit the site. Spend the time to go through everything he presents there - it's well worth it. The site also contains a novel (also titled "The Jesus Puzzle") I thought it was excellent. It deserves to be published. Doherty also provides a lengthy and devastating critique of the Strobel book on his site.

As I read "The Jesus Puzzle" I was surprised at how resistant I was to the thesis that there had been no historical Jesus (I'm not a Christian), but I was impressed at how thoroughly Doherty overwhelmed my resistance. This book deserves the whole world as its audience. Buy it, read it, buy more copies and give them away, spread the word. Nineteen hundred years of misconception has finally been clarified.

Here's your chance for glory: Produce a good, sound argument that the Jesus Christ featured in the New Testament gospels is the same individual as the Jesus Christ whom the NT epistle authors have in mind. Do this and you will be the first person in history to accomplish this task.

In his book "The Jesus Puzzle", Earl Doherty demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus Christ is a fictional character. No such person ever existed. The notion may be shocking to the general populace, but it is not a new idea, and has been endorsed by a minority of scholars for over a century.

The best evidence comes from the Christian writers themselves. The New Testament epistles and most of the non-canonical literature until the mid-2nd century show a resounding silence on the earthly life of Jesus. No teachings or miracles. No references to Mary, Joseph, the disciples or the holy places, such as Bethlehem, Nazareth and Calvary. No trial or details of the passion story. And so on.

Scholars try their best to explain this phenomenon, but this degree of silence from so many writers over so many years has one and only one adequate explanation: the writers ignore Jesus's life on earth because they don't KNOW of a life on earth. Jesus Christ started out as an entirely divine being, just like all the other gods in all the other religions of the day. The idea that he lived a full, human life was a later development in Christian mythology which gradually caught on, proved to be popular and eventually became standard orthodox belief.

Another problem with the traditional view of Christian origins is the wide diversity of expressions shown in the early Christian record. These are unlikely to have stemmed from the life of a highly-revered human founder. "Rather, Christianity was born in a thousand places, in a host of different forms, growing out of the broad, fertile religious soil of the time." (Page 139).

Doherty considers (and refutes) the various attempts people make to prove a historical Jesus, including the infamous forgery in the writings of historian Josephus and the handful of vaguely-phrased epistle passages which, on the surface, have a "human" sound to them, but in fact can apply equally to divine beings.

The author has a website, and I have put him to the test by discussing his work on the Web with people who are far more knowledgeable on the subject than I. Most disagree with Doherty's views (sometimes throwing tantrums in the process!), but when they try to present a convincing argument to the contrary, they can't do it. They don't even come close. At best, they will nail him on an insignificant technicality. Too often people read the epistles with gospel-tinted glasses.

The Great Silence is carefully examined, but the book offers much more. There is a lot of general education material which is great for the average reader. We get an introduction to the philosophies of the time, such as Platonism and Cynicism. Doherty closely examines the lost document of Q and considers the similarities between Jesus and the competing savior gods, such as Attis, Osiris, Dionysos and Mithras. He describes the universe as perceived in those days and the spiritual realm where Jesus and the other gods operate. And we are treated to several passages which managed to escape Christian censorship and show without question that the authors do not have in mind a human Jesus executed under Pilate.

There's very little in the way of weak points. At times Doherty may exaggerate the significance of a particular silence. And I'm a bit uneasy with some of the assumptions and speculations in Parts 5 and 6 concerning the Q document and Christian origins. But none of this is harmful to the overall case. Doherty is a fine writer, is very well-read and does not depend on sources of dubious reliability.

Now, there IS one significant hurdle which the author may never overcome. It's not deficient arguments, but rather human nature. For scholars to admit that Doherty is right means to admit they've been under a monumental misconception for their entire careers. Time will tell whether they have the courage and dignity to do this.

Read, learn and spread the Good News to your friends! If justice is served, this book will change the world.

Robert Price has very ably and empirically deconstructed the Christ myth to the point that the only item still seriously in question is whether the first layer of Q can be attributed to a Nazerite named Jesus. Price's successful deconstruction thus begs the question: What is the history of how a diverse group of followers came to worship a character who eventually attained the status of the one true God? Enter Earl Doherty and his book, "the Jesus Puzzle".

Doherty presents a new theory that relies mostly on rationalism. Not because he ignores the empirical evidence we now possess to develop theories on the development of Christianity, but instead because while its relatively easy to deconstruct many New Testament claims; positive evidence to create the historical Jesus and historical Jesus Christ are virtually non-existent, making Doherty's constructive efforts exponentially more difficult than Price's deconstruction attempts.

This is not to say Doherty presents little empirical evidence on the development of his Christ, but instead takes what little empirical evidence we have and puts forth a rational theory heavy on common sense. For example, Doherty spends significant amounts of time reviewing the conflicts discussed in the early epistles and analyzing the approach Paul and the other authors use to make a case for their position in the debate. Many of these debates were repeated later in the gospels, with Jesus providing an example addressing the conflict. The epistles consistently ignore the examples in the gospels of Jesus' position, and instead create their own argument, which of course wouldn't carry the weight if one had an argument by the God they worshipped.

While we know the Pauline epistles were written prior to the gospels, Doherty uses this empirical data to show that Paul was almost certainly not aware of any stories of Jesus to better argue his position, making Paul's approach of relying on himself his only practical option. See Romans 14:14 for an argument from Paul and compare to Jesus' example in Mark 7. Why wouldn't Paul use Jesus' example, which would carry much more weight than his? This sort of evidence is used over and over again by Doherty, but is only one small piece of the puzzle Doherty builds for his case.

Doherty does an excellent job of taking our current theories of development of the Canons from a chronological perspective and creating a theory that correlates that time continuum to the development of the character of Jesus Christ. Starting with Paul's early epistles Doherty shows the development of the Christ and eventually, with the distribution of the Gospel of Mark, the development of Jesus Christ.

Doherty's theory contradicts previous theories of a cynic teacher named Jesus whose followers eventually developed his character into the divine son of God, Jesus Christ. Doherty's challenge to this theory has not just the chronological development of the Canons on his side, but also makes it easier to reconcile 2nd century ignorance of the gospel narratives regarding a supposedly self-described "son of man" in the writings we possess from that period. Doherty's chapter comparing what was written during that time to support his theory sets a standard of excellence in logic I wish more religious historians used rather than the mere speculation we are often expected to swallow.

Whether Doherty's theory will become a peer-accepted theory remains to be seen. However his theory deserves careful consideration due to its common sense approach to the evidence we own. I look forward to reading critiques of Doherty's theory to see whether it stands the tests of scrutiny, I wouldn't bet against Doherty.

A simple enumeration of the contradictions, inconsistencies and errors in the New Testament is not enough to prove that Jesus was as mythical as Dionysus. The author of this book knows this very well so he spends the pages of his treatise to build from the ground up his case with extreme attention to detail. His style is scholarly (states his assumptions, separates facts from conjecture even if this appears to weaken his case, attributes the ideas he explains), consistent and impartial.

The issue of "impartiality" is, for obvious reasons, very important in this case. The author does not try to buttress an inconclusive argument with methods not grounded to reason, but shifts the focus to issues for which conclusive arguments can be developed and constructive inferences can be extracted. He avoids to be combative, insulting or polarized. He does not miss an opportunity to heap praise to Apostle Paul (indeed a remarkable personality) but tries to use the mildest words to describe Mark's unskilled use of language.

The main argument is developed in several stages. The author gives an excellent review of the philosophical movements of the first and second century and builds a virtual map the coordinates of which are the various philosophical ideas. He then helps the reader place the various thinkers of the time on this map. This works amazingly well for Paul whose complex thinking suddenly becomes tractable. Works OK for the other epistle writers. But does not work very well for Mark. So, the very solid exposition of the Jerusalem group (Paul etc) is followed by speculative conjectures regarding the events that took place around the end of the first century (the time Mark was composed). It would be great if one could reconstruct these events, but it is not really necessary and might not even be possible. This book tried to narrow down the possibilities by assuming that Mark was initially meant to be fiction (I know of no internal or external argument for this other than that the opposite would imply a dishonest church father; a very weak argument). If no such assumption is introduced, any attempt to reconstruct Mark's state of mind becomes too speculative to be of much value.

The argument against the historicity of Jesus reaches a crescendo near the end of the book where the writings of the apologists are examined, a careful reading of which makes it obvious that they either did not know anything about the biography of Jesus or (one of them) considered the idea of a human Jesus abominable. As an added bonus, this chapter contains a superb account of the church politics that led to the canonization of the New Testament (more or less) as we know it today. This superb account offers, other than the enjoyment of a scholarly exposition of the most divinely inspired sequence of backstabbings, the final piece of the puzzle. It explains how all these different sects with so radical differences in their dogma (some ready to kill and die for a human Jesus and some arguing fervently for a non human Jesus), coalesced into a single religion.

The book includes some very interesting appendices about various heresies, about the dates of various gospels etc. And within the text the author devotes several paragraphs to explain the trickier parts of ancient Greek.

My only complain about the ancient Greek (I understand the ancient Greek of the NT reasonably well) is his translation of the "kata sarka". The author translates it as "according to flesh", which leaves a lot to be desired. There seem to be endless discussions on the exact translation of it and I do not think there will ever be an agreement. The problem is that the word "kata" can have many meanings. It can mean "according", it can mean "against" (not here), can mean "by", "towards", "per" etc. Moreover, these guys had developed their own jargon, apostle-speak, so "kata sarka" might be one of their novelties, in which case we have no hope. My own speculation is that Paul was trying to reconcile his views with a set of "prophetic" sentences in the Old Testament, but failed. But in any case, no reasonable interpretation of "kata sarka" is inconsistent with the main thesis of the book in my opinion.

Overall the book is excellent, all the essential arguments are solid, the historical, philosophical and theological reviews are magnificent and the closing argument is as enjoyable as it is convincing. Nowhere does the book beg the reader's good will or the reader's faith to a common cause to convince for an argument. The amount of hard work that went into this book is clearly evident.

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

I found this book to be fascinating, well researched and documented. I've read many related books by John Shelby Spong (Sins of the Scriptures, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, A New Christianity for a New World) and they make much sense, but after reading Doherty, a wider view emerges. Spong tries to salvage some of the foundations of the "traditional" (orthodox) religion and recast these into modern terms, by interpreting biblical writings with a perspective of the writers and their times. A very noble and articulate attempt. Doherty goes much farther and proceeds where documentary research actually leads, since he is apparently not constrained by the need to preserve received notions or to bias toward a specific outcome. What Doherty writes provides the best explanation I have ever read accounting for how Christianity most plausibly developed. I'd encourage anyone interested in the period 100 BCE to 300 CE to acquire and read this book, it's a stepping stone to a rational understanding of a most significant influence on the development of Western civilization.

On page 125 of his book Doherty writes: "When any set of assumptions is firmly in place, the evidence is usually interpreted in accord with those assumptions. Yet it is clear that the New Testament epistles present the Christian reader and scholar with difficulties and anomalies at every turn. These have traditionally been ignored, glossed over, or subjected to unnatural interpretations and questionable reasoning in order to force them into the mold determined by the Gospels.

"What is needed is a new paradigm, a new set of assumptions by which to judge the epistles (as well as the other non-canonical documents ...), one capable of resolving all those contradictions and uncertainties. That paradigm should be determined by what we can see in the epistles themselves and how we can relate their content to what we know of the spirit and conditions of the time."

This is how Doherty approaches not only the epistles but the gospels and noncanonical writings as well.

Why do the earliest New Testament documents (the epistles) show no knowledge of the life and teachings of the historical Jesus (apart from a few passages that are said to be revealed via scripture or vision) yet speak of this Jesus, without any justifying reference to his human life, as God and sustainer of the universe? Doherty shows that the traditional scholarly explanations for this puzzle are with less than adequate documentary and logical support. But by looking at the philosophical and theological milieu of the authors of the epistles (who wrote before the gospels were known to them) we see that their ideas of Jesus Christ are a part of the broader literature about an increasingly personified divine Messiah, Logos, Wisdom figure. Paul also appears to demonstrate closer affinities with some aspects of the mystery cults than with any knowledge of an historical Jesus. Doherty shows that many of the ideas expressed in the theologically divergent epistles of Paul, James, John and that to the Hebrews are more satisfactorily explained as a part of broader Son of God literature emerging in some circles of Hellenistic Judaism, and to whom this figure was exclusively a spiritual revelation of scripture or personal vision - not an historical person.

Part 2 of Doherty's book essentially explains why modern Christian scholarship finds so elusive the nature of the historical Jesus assumed to lie hidden beneath the earliest Q sayings and the gospel of Thomas. Doherty asks the questions that both conservative and liberal Christian scholars fail to address seriously - Do these earliest sayings point to a single Jewish historical figure at all? Or is the evidence more satisfactorily explained as the product of a more general counter-culture, cynic-like movement arising from economic oppression in Galilee and to which a Jesus figure was later added and gradually fleshed out? Much of this section is a response to modern Christian scholars (especially John Dominic Crossan ("The Birth of Christianity" et al.) whose theological assumptions seem not to allow them to ask such a fundamental question. Doherty would say that such a question should be obvious when the earliest evidence shows no knowledge of any of Jesus' works or life-experiences (but only a collection of sayings that have little to commend themselves as unique) and especially when the evidence rather points to a gradual elaboration of biographical details of a Jesus character over time?

Doherty then looks at the tendentious nature of Christian scholarship's interpretation of Jewish and pagan sources such as Josephus and Tacitus and finds it logically flawed.

He points to the Gospel of Mark as the first attempt to unite the Galilean tradition (the evolved Q sayings) of Jesus with the completely separate Jerusalem tradition (of a dying and rising Messiah who becomes God). Historians such as Crossan see links between these two traditions in the Didache or even the Cross Gospel in the Gospel of Peter, but Doherty deconstructs such arguments with a rigorous but lay-reader-friendly analysis of the textual evidence. He takes us through a survey of Mark showing how these two traditions have been united through midrashic re-writings of many old testament passages and tales designed to meet the needs of the Markan community. The result was the first gospel of Jesus. This literary work was possibly the real beginnings of Christianity as we know it.

Finally Doherty examines the earliest post-gospel writings of Christians beginning with Ignatius and through to Papias. The relationship between Marcion, the writings of Paul and the Book of Acts is discussed. The second century apologists' writings are shown to draw more heavily from Middle Platonism than any gospel Jesus, and at least in one case appear to deny the very idea of such a figure being associated with their Christian faith.

The footnoting and appendices in the book are set out in such a way as to make this book one of the easiest introductions to the documents of early Christianity and also as one of the most accessible and easy return-reference tools I have read.

The book's strength is that it accepts modern scholarship's foundational evidence for the origins of Christianity (canonical and non-canonical writings along with their generally accepted dates) and shows that traditional interpretations raise unsolvable problems of logic and consistency. It shows how these problems are largely removed if we interpret the same evidence as pointing to Jesus being a creation of the broader philosophical, theological and religious world of the time. This Jesus then only gradually evolved into an historical founder after the original midrashic nature of the gospels was later confused with biographical reality.

I notice the reader from Nagasaki, Japan (review Feb 19, 2002) sure makes it sound like Doherty is off in left field. But I don't think so and here's why.

In a nutshell, Doherty believes that the Jesus Christ that Paul believed in is not the same Jesus Christ as portrayed in the Gospels. In Doherty's view, Paul saw Jesus Christ as a purely spiritual being in heaven with God, not a human. The Gospels hadn't been written yet. And when they were written, they were initally only intended to be allegorical.

As an atheist, even I at first thought that Doherty's theory was a "crackpot" theory. "Everybody knows" there was at least some historical figure of Jesus Christ, right? That's what I thought at first, but Doherty makes a credible case for his theory.

Part of Doherty's evidence is the absence of reference to an earthly Jesus Christ in the epistles. I will grant that perhaps evidence of silence isn't by itself completely compelling. But on the other hand, you also have to admit that Paul was teaching about a new religion. Don't people teaching Christianity talk about, well, Christ? Yeah, I think they do.

People say that Paul didn't need to reference the events in the Gospels because "everybody" knew of those events. Did they really? This was a new relgion. Paul cavalierly assumed that everybody knew Jesus had been crucified and rose from the dead?

Also, the reviewer from Japan says that Doherty ignores the vast evidence in favor of Jesus' being the true Messiah. I'm wondering what exactly that vast evidence he is referring to. He seems to say that just reading the Gospels reveals a genuine historical Messiah. To counter that argument, perhaps Doherty's other book, _Challenging the Verdict_, a critique of Lee Strobel's _Case For Christ_, is a better choice. In _Challenging the Verdict_, Doherty shows that even if there was a real Jesus Christ, there is little evidence that he actually was a prophesized Messiah that rose from the dead.

Finally, note that the evidence of silence is not the only evidence Doherty provides. Read the book for yourself and then decide on your own.

Excellent book. Doherty makes clear sense for anyone out there willing to give an honest look at the New Testament. This book argues that Jesus is a mythical figure. The book gives an indepth look at the complete lack of knowledge the Epistle writers had concerning a life ministry of Jesus. This book also gives somewhat a look at the hellenistic era culture and reveals the most-likely reasoning behind the early Christian writers, namely Mark and Paul. Also, it was quite interesting to learn about "midrash" and how it was obviously used to help fabricate the gospels and the epistles. There is much more in the book than can be summed up in this review, such as topics like; Josephus, Gospel of Thomas, and much more. Get the book. Also type the name Earl Doherty in a search engine and you should be able to locate his website to get a better idea of what his book is about.

-- I won't go into too much about what's good about this book other than to say I think it provides a lot of valid points backed up with sound historical research (at least as far as I can see, not being an expert on the subject). Anyone who has read and moderately studied the Bible and Apocrypha can clearly see how much of the incidents in Jesus's life recall events and lyrical passages from the Old Testament(some word-for-word as in Psalms) and therefore anyone not prone to a 'Magical' view of reality might clearly see Jesus as a mythical figure.

Still, I find some of Doherty's points troublesome to accept and would therefore focus criticism on certain gaps I think need to be addressed in 'The Puzzle', gaps which left me confused and not yet completely convinced. Mainly I have some issues with trying to see how two supposedly distinct traditions, one related to Paul, the other to the Gospels, come together to form a cohesive story like we see in the New Testamant without being directly related.

Briefly, Doherty believes that the historical Jesus was a myth. His theory is largely based on the premise of reversing the precedence of the New Testament texts, making Paul's Epistles come before the Gospels. Instead, the latter 'Q" inspired texts were actually later contrived documents designed to validate a movement Paul was instrumental in spreading.

Questions:

1. Doherty believes that the Jesus of the Gospels was made up, a myth. If so, then what about Paul, Peter and the other disciples? Were they real or not? And if they were real -- according to Doherty at least Paul and Peter are -- than why not Jesus? In Doeherty's view Peter appears to be a valid historical figure only because the only credible documents in the New Testament of historical relevance, according to Doherty, are Paul's Epistles or at least some of them. If Peter is real, is Judas? Mary? Joseph? Who is and who isn't real? If these other figures are not real, then those who invented the Gospels must have made them up. What are their provenance or literary pre-cursors? Are some, but not all real? Which ones are and which ones are not real or if they are all real, why not Jesus? Or are we simply looking at the first example of pure fiction, something we shouldn't see until Cervantes or Chaucer. Perhaps only the central characters in the Bible (Jesus, Moses, Abraham) were made up.

2. He doesn't quite explain the provenance of the Gospel of John, which appears to be, at least from original text discovered in an archaological context, the 'oldest' of the Gospels discovered and outside the Q line. I feel Doeherty should have discussed and related the archeological contexts of the oldest known scriptures, but he seems to ignore this angle for the most part and focuses strictly on content.

3. Outside of the Q material, Doherty theorizes, but doesn't really provide evidence for, that Mark, being the oldest of the Q Gospels (or at least the parts referencing the events of the historic Jesus figure) was a contrived document authored by 'someone' wanting to validate an existing Messianic movement independent of the Gospels and Historic Jesus. This nebulous 'someone' obviously had to know about Peter and, if as Doehrty claims it was written after Paul's letters, and Paul reference's Peter in those letters, the author should have known about Paul as well. So why did he not include Paul (and associated Pauline Dogma and events) as a reference in Mark? Was there no backward-compatability? To use Doherty's own arguments against Paul why there was no reference by him to an Historic Christ, I ask why is there no reference to an Historic Paul from documents supposedly drawn up well after Paul's death and fame designed to support Paul's theology.

4. Doeherty believes that both 'The Acts' and references to Jesus in 'Josephus were forged redactions. And yet, he gives no in-depth analysis or proof of these very important assertions that are crucial to his theory.

There are many non-fundamentalist, even non-religious Biblical scholars probably more expert than Doherty is on the Bible who might be able to shred apart the author's logic and evidence and while this book might not be the place for such debates, before I would accept Doherty's theories I would want to hear those opposing views. I felt this book was generally lacking in examination and critique of years of sound Biblical scholarship that assumes Christ as a Historical figure.

Still, I think the author has made a good start and needs to continue with his research to make the Puzzle less Puzzling.