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‘More Ingenious than Learned’? Examining the Quest for the Non-Historical Jesus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 September 2019
Abstract
This paper seeks to scrutinise the debate about the historicity of Jesus and identify aspects that merit critical reflection by New Testament scholars. Although the question is regularly dismissed, it is a salient one that was formative in the development of the discipline, and has become increasingly visible since the turn of the century. However, the terminology employed by the protagonists is problematic, and the conventional historiography of the debate misleading. The characteristic tropes evident in the contributions are also indicative of substantive issues within the discipline of New Testament studies itself.
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References
1 It is not the case that none does, as is often claimed or implied. See, for example, Carlston, C. E., ‘Prologue’, Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research (ed. Chilton, B. and Evans, C. A.; Leiden: Brill, 1998) 1–8, at 3Google Scholar; Byrskog, S., ‘The Historicity of Jesus: How Do We Know That Jesus Existed?’, Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus (ed. Holmén, T. and Porter, S. E.; 4 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 2010) iii.2183–2212, at 2183Google Scholar.
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35 Some have also changed their thinking. There are, for example, considerable differences between subsequent editions of Drews, A., Die Christusmythe (Jena: E. Diederichs, 1909)Google Scholar. See also Wells, Cutting Jesus, 329.
36 What follows is indebted to the useful summary found in Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 30–4.
37 The key non-Christian witnesses to Jesus’ historicity that are the subject of debate are: Josephus, Ant. 18.63–4, 20.200–1; Suetonius, Claud. 25.4; Tacitus, Ann. 15.44.2–4; Pliny the Younger, Ep. 10.96; Lucian, Peregr. 11, 13. See R. E. Van Voorst, ‘Jesus Tradition in Classical and Jewish Writings’, Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, ed. Holmén and Porter, iii.2149–80.
38 Although this may not be strictly necessary. See Noll, K. L., ‘Investigating Earliest Christianity Without Jesus’, ‘Is This Not the Carpenter?’ The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus (ed. Thompson, T. L. and Verenna, T. S.; London: Equinox, 2012) 233–66Google Scholar.
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43 Edwin Johnson was a professor of Classical Literature at New College, London. His initial, relatively sober, critique of early Christianity, Antiqua Mater: A Study of Christian Origins (London: Trübner, 1887)Google Scholar, advocated the non-existence of Jesus, but was followed by other, more adventurous works, including The Pauline Epistles: Re-Studied and Explained (London: Watts & Co., 1896)Google Scholar, a book that dated the Pauline epistles and the gospels to the 1500s.
44 Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, 52–3.
45 It is important to note that this label is not one that is necessarily accepted by proponents of this position. Price, for example, has argued that he would prefer the position to be called ‘New Testament Minimalism’, stressing, as he sees it, the continuity with an approach found in the Hebrew Bible scholarship of Thomas L. Thompson, Philip L. Davies and others. See Price, R. M., ‘Introduction: Surprised by Myth’, Bart Ehrman and the Quest of the Historical Jesus of Nazareth (ed. Zindler, F. R. and Price, R. M.; Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2013) xvii–xxxv, at xviiGoogle Scholar.
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90 See, for example, Zindler, F. R. and Price, R. M., eds., Bart Ehrman and the Quest of the Historical Jesus of Nazareth (Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2013)Google Scholar.
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93 Indeed, some of the most significant contributions to the Christ-myth debate have, in the British context, been published by the Rationalist Press Association (through its publisher Watts & Co.), see e.g. n. 59. Interestingly, Conybeare's The Historical Christ, an attack on mythicism, was also published by that press. For Conybeare, an Oxford biblical scholar and rationalist, his work provided ‘a middle way between traditionalism on the one hand and absurdity on the other’ (ibid., vii). See Cooke, B., The Gathering of Infidels: A Hundred Years of the Rationalist Press Association (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004) 50–2Google Scholar.
94 See Byford, J., Conspiracy Theories: A Critical Introduction (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011) 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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98 E.g. Casey, Jesus: Evidence and Argument, 43–59.
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100 E.g. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 5–7, 338.
101 E.g. Lataster, R. and Carrier, R., Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate among Atheists (Scotts Valley, CA: Raphael C. Lataster, 2015)Google Scholar.
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103 Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 6–7.
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109 E.g. Byrskog, ‘The Historicity of Jesus', 2183 n. 1; Powell, Jesus as a Figure in History, 251.
110 Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, 21.
111 See Casey, Jesus: Evidence and Argument, 4–5.
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114 Earlier versions of this paper were delivered at seminars in the universities of Cambridge, Durham and Stockholm, as well as at the British New Testament Conference. I would like to thank participants for their constructive feedback and encouragement.
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