Steven writes:

   I thought I would take this opportunity to thank you for your two fascinating books on the origins of Christianity. After I watched a rerun last year of the PBS documentary on the origins of Christianity I became interested in doing additional research. I read Crossan and Fredriksen's books. Clearly, Crossan is trying to construct a historical Jesus who could be a hero in the present day. Fredriksen, on the other hand, seemed much less anachronistic. Then I read Spong, who introduced me to a mythicist viewpoint, although in the end he felt compelled to dig a historical Jesus out of the mythical dust.
   Then I bought a copy of The Jesus Puzzle, and it blew my socks off. Your books quickly led me to conclude that even Fredriksen's scholarly work is outdated. Perhaps in academia there are financial incentives not to cross certain lines.

E.D.: It is not so much a question of financial incentives. Quite apart from any confessional interests that might be operating, someone who has worked in the field and made a career of studying and writing about an historical figure would find it extremely difficult to do an about-face of this magnitude, and the peer pressure to toe the basic party line would be considerable. Also, I believe that few mainstream scholars, even the most progressive ones, have allowed themselves to consider the possibility of non-existence for Jesus, and consequently have little depth of understanding of the mythicist position. Paula Fredriksen herself has demonstrated this, as my article responding to her comments on one of my site articles shows. (See ChallengingDoherty.htm)

   I'm a big fan of your work, and after finding your site a few months ago have been a regular reader. I was once a bible-belt fundamentalist Christian, but over the course of the last few years have become a staunch atheist. In my home town (though it is, thankfully, not my current place of residence) this causes quite a stir, especially when my family is involved. As a result of my decision, I've met much criticism--though that's a bit of an understatement.
   I've decided--in order to assist those that believe as I do, to counter those who question the rationality behind my decision, and to, perhaps, give Christians some food for thought (I'd even go so far to say I hope I can persuade a few people to my side of the fence)--to write a book on the subject.

E.D.:  Not only are more people abandoning their religious indoctrination, many of them feel a need to help others do the same, an encouraging development. Perhaps one reason for this is that the style of religious belief (especially Christian, within North American society) has moved much more toward the fundamentalist and evangelical expressions than in previous generations, when the older established churches had a more sedate, less aggressive, following and a style of belief that did less violence to modern scientific and social enlightenment. It was probably less damaging to the believer's intellect and his or her rational and psychological functioning, and it placed less impediments in the way of progress. Today, not only has the evangelical brand of faith come to place greater strains on personal integrity, it has become much more activist, seeking to impose its reactionary views on society as a whole, in the areas of education, human rights and much else. Consequently, those of us who recognize the perils involved feel motivated to try to do something about it. There is just too much at stake.

   Thank you for your fantastic book [The Jesus Puzzle]. The extent of your scholarship is unbelievable. I've been a religious skeptic all my life but really only recently renewed my interest, discovered the mythical Christ and your amazing book to boot.
   You speak hopefully about the reinterpreted scriptures entering the public consciousness but there is no way the fundamentalists can be reasoned with. Evangelical churches are strong and growing. Even if the liberal churches can finally tear down the crumbling structures and prepare to rebuild on firmer foundations, I fear the mindset of fundamentalists is fixed. Thus the divide between reason and irrationality will widen.
   Your ideas create as much as they demolish. They are liberating and present incredible hope for the world. Just imagine if the Pope recanted! Could Islam be rattled being so derivative of both Judaism and Christianity (although not as tortured in its scriptural basis)?
   I've started on your website. How can you possibly answer all those e-mails? When do you sleep? I hope you're reaping some financial benefits from all of this. Ironically, it may be said, your immortality is assured. This, to my mind is the most significant book of the 21st century.

E.D.:  Mary's praise may be a bit hyperbolic, but enthusiasm is a common reaction when entrenched ideas that have sat ill with the world in so many ways, and for so long, are demonstrated to be unfounded and no longer tenable. A sense of freedom and exhilaration is a response I encounter regularly (and I am by no means the only one responsible for making that possible, as there are others working effectively in this field as well). Unfortunately, her comments on the fundamentalist mentality are pretty well on the mark, and it is important that we do not allow this segment of society to impose its primitive views on everyone, and certainly not by default due to a reluctance (or fear) by society's more rational segments to speak out. As for the Pope recanting, well, regardless of whatever personal doubts he might come to feel (though I'm quite sure he doesn't peruse the Jesus Puzzle website by night), the Vatican establishment behind him would never allow such doubts to be expressed.

Roz writes:

   My Christian parents had opted out of their religions when I appeared on the scene. Consequently I skipped a Christian upbringing. I've lived in an agnostic fog for years, unable to swallow the literal biblical interpretations and unable to voice clearly why. [I was] led to your web page and am so relieved to find my intuition expressed so clearly. I can't wait to explore this topic more fully and I'm sure I will visit often. I will also be looking for your books.

Jesse writes:

   Thanks for making your website available. Prior to encountering your site I found biblical scholarship and criticism to be over my head. I could be swayed this way and that by experts who know more than me, experts with agendas. Your writing, especially your discussion of the silence of the New Testament (outside the Gospels) concerning the life, deeds and sayings of Jesus while he walked on this earth was truly a revelation to me. I was blind, but now I see. So obvious! Those statements that seemed to make oblique references to things like his crucifiction [sic] threw me off the trail.
   So many Jesus scholars say he was a mortal man first, and then later he became immortalized. It now appears that the Logos preceded the creation of the historical Jesus. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. This changed perspective is so much more useful than trying to follow the movements of a mystery man underestimated by his critics. Maybe the author of John was writing to an audience that would understand that these were fables with morals.
   Well, it will take time to sort this out. But the new perspective turns the whole world upside down.

Nellie writes:

   I see by the reviews that you have stepped on the toes of the deluded! Hmmmm!

Nikki writes:

   Just wanted to say, THANK-YOU for your site! It's amazing what happens when people stop and THINK for themselves! Your site is an eye-opener and also a light in a dark place. May Yahweh bless your work.

E.D.:  Hmmm....Obviously, Nikki is not giving us the whole picture.

Noel writes:

Jeff writes:

E.D.: What we need more of is "grieving for the mind".

Clay writes:

    I want to let you know that I am really enjoying reading your work. I am also very interested in the notion of putting together information that explores the true history of biblical religious thought over the eons. There is so much misinformation about Christianity pushed onto the general public, and virtually nothing that tells the story of its origins. I assume you are in contact with other critical explorers of the religious texts. Do you think it is possible there might be interest in trying to put together a television documentary about this?

E.D.:  I have no doubt there exists a lot of interest in doing such a thing. Unfortunately, two general impediments tend to stand in the way: the difficulty of raising money for such a production, and the unwillingness of major networks to air radical material that would offend their vast religious viewership. If you watch any of the standard documentaries aired by PBS or A&E on biblical studies, you will recognize how carefully they tread when allowing a voice even to the idea of doubt on the part of liberal scholarship about orthodox viewpoints. On the other hand, fraudulent specials about things like the discovery of Noah's Ark are regularly and shamelessly offered to a gullible public.

Willem writes:

     I agree with everything you say. But you offer no hope that our existence has a meaning. Against our better judgement we believe anything as long as it gives us a glimmer of hope. We don't want the truth, we want hope. Besides that, religion sometimes convinces us to do the right thing. Hitler was a man without religion and that led to terrible things.

E.D.: There is a wealth of potential for comment on this brief message, but I will keep it short. Of course, Willem has neatly summed up the reason why religion is so successful, and at the same time why it is so deleterious. It boils down to wishful thinking, and whether one chooses to live one's life according to fantasy or reality. If a belief in a supernatural divinity and a personal afterlife is a misguided fantasy, then the consequences of how we regard the present world can only be negative. The theist would like to claim otherwise, but history and even our present-day experience, proves the claim wrong. If religion "sometimes" convinces us to do the right thing, it has more often led us to do the wrong thing. How we have arrived at that distinction is by the exercise of our own intellects and moral wisdom. If we possess these latter faculties, we don't need divine directives to guide us, especially ones that are encased in petrified writings that are often primitive, contradictory, and counterproductive to social and intellectual progress.
     As for the timeworn accusations about Hitler (with Stalin usually included as well, as dual examples of the consequences of 20th century 'atheism'), it is by no means agreed that Hitler was an atheist, or that atheism was the cause of his or Stalin's reprehensible deeds. Communism and fascism were political ideologies, and their crimes were committed in the name of political and nationalist ideals, not in the name of atheism. Since history and present-day experience more than amply demonstrate that even religion is no impediment to criminal inhumanity, the standard argument using the likes of Hitler and Stalin is hardly compelling. Moreover, the crimes committed by religions (and Christianity's history is full of them) are done in the name of religion, which is an important distinction usually overlooked.
     But now on to more technical matters....

   Thank you for your great site and your fascinating books! I've always had a question concerning the New Testament usage of "Lord" (Greek "Kurios") and if the appellation for Jesus as Lord was meant by the writers to refer to the same Kurios/Yahweh in the Septuagint, meaning they thought Jesus was God? Am I right that the Septuagint refers to Jewish kings like David and Solomon as "kurios?" as well, and that it doesn't exclusively mean God?
   What would be the connection between James 5:4, referring to the "Lord of Sabaoth" and then following it James 5:7, "The coming of the Lord" which apparently (???) refers now to Jesus. Does this mean that whoever wrote this epistle believed that they were one and the same "Lord"?

Response to Doug:

   Thanks for your site. It's helpful to me as a believing follower of Jesus the Christ.
   In reading your Top 20 about the silence in the epistles, I was struck by the fact that Paul has a curious silence also about the misunderstanding that people of that time had about Jesus actually being a real living breathing person. Obviously people at that time thought that Jesus was a real person who did the things that mainstream Christianity believes today. Even non-christian sources mention certain reported facts about early believers and followers of a person named Jesus (Josephus, etc.). If this is true then why didn't Paul go out of his way to correct this misunderstanding. How do you explain his SILENCE about an interpretation that Jesus literally lived, died, resurrected, and that people claimed to see, touch and eat with him?

Response to Pat:

Pat has apparently been unable to cut through the fog of preconception to grasp the fundamentals of the mythicist position. It is anything but "obvious" that any people of his time held the "misunderstanding" that Jesus had been a real person. Had they done so, and had Paul held a contrary view as representing an opposite opinion within the Christian movement, Pat is certainly right that the question would likely have been raised in his letters. Ironically, that is precisely the situation we find at a later date, a couple of generations after Paul's passing. Both in 1 John (in chapter 4), and the letters of Ignatius (which, whether genuine or not would have been a product of the early 2nd century), we seem to find a fundamental dispute going on within their communities about whether in fact Jesus had "come in the flesh" or had "truly" been born of Mary and crucified by Pilate.

Pat's question (though from a facetious angle) is simply a variant on the common objection that belief in an historical Jesus when it first arose, supposedly toward the end of the 1st century when the first Gospel(s) began to be disseminated, would have given rise to denials on the part of Jews, pagans, or even of Christians who would have known better, who would have objected that no such figure or events had been true. This, too, is short-sighted. Few such people would still be around in centers distant from Palestine who could have so objected, and the documents mentioned above show that when they were and did, they went unheeded. Those caught up in the fervor of a new idea rarely respond to criticism or correction. Indeed, as Ignatius shows, their reaction is to condemn the objector and hold to their own position with increasing tenacity and attempts to justify it. Those living nearer in time to the alleged events would have had no reason to object, since such a view about an historical figure was not being put forward (which is why Paul, in Pat's scenario, never raised such a question).

"Thomas" was another who recently protested along these lines. He says: "If your timeline is correct and the author of the Gospel of Mark is writing in 85-90 CE then this is only 49-64 years after the fictional crucifixion. This is a short enough time that many people would be alive who could falsify the story." I can't help thinking that this objection is somewhat determined by the era we live in. How would those half a century after the falsely-alleged fact of Jesus' crucifixion have conducted this falsification? By radio, television, the internet? Would they have published debunking books available in every bookstore? Would those who heard their objections have visited libraries and other available public records to verify that the denials were accurate? Would lawsuits be launched against those claimed to be deceiving the public through falsely advertising certain advantages or products in relation to the new doctrines? Would politicians or those in authority get worked up about allegedly false history contained in some document resting in a house-church somewhere in their district, if it was even brought to their attention?

The point is, when one thinks about such objections more than superficially, one realizes that in the context of the actual situation, especially in conditions like those of the first century, the alleged problem simply evaporates. We know enough about the spread of religious ideas, even within our own time, to know that the prospect of opposition, denial or contrary evidence has little effect on the birth and growth of doctrines which are, to begin with, delusions of the mind and the product of irrational thinking.

     Your approach to the problem of the existence of Jesus seems very similar to that of G. A. Wells. Wells arranges early Christian texts in chronological order and demonstrates that early Christian writers know next to nothing of Jesus' life and teachings, while later Christian writers know more and more. There is, of course, a great deal more than that in your writings, but the chronological approach seems central, and its implications are most devastating to believers.
     Alas, a fly has landed on that pudding. Is Paul the first Christian writer? Did Paul even exist, and if he did, what did he write? What if the epistles of Paul are not products of the middle of the first century but the works of later Christians (or even Gnostics) such as Marcion, and date towards the middle of the second century? How would that affect the development of your point of view? If the date of the Pauline epistles must be moved that far forward, even later than the date of at least one Gospel, Mark, then your and Wells' development seems to be thrown into confusion: now Mark seems to know a lot more than "Paul." I think that eliminating the Pauline epistles must have some effect on your view of early Christianity and the question of the existence of Jesus.

Response to Raymond:

The main "effect" of an inauthentic and second century Paul would be the amount of material to work with in recognizing and presenting the mythicist case. Much of what I am able to conclude is dependent on making use of certain portions of the Pauline corpus as authentic to the first century. But that is no different from asking how such a case could be made if we happened to have no writings of "Paul" at all. The answer is simply that it would be much more difficult.

However, a second-century Pauline corpus would not per se be fatal to the mythicist case, not even given its dating of a generation or more after the first Gospel. The documentary evidence hardly shows a "lock-step" progression of presumed knowledge about an historical Jesus even through most of the second century. As my site and books have demonstrated, certain writings of early Christianity make no mention of an historical figure well after my own rather conservative dating (as radical scholarship goes) of the Gospels. A Mark at around 85-90 and a Matthew and Luke (and even John) by around 125 still precede several 2nd century apologists, such as Athenagoras, Tatian and Theophilus, who present no historical Jesus in their defences of the faith. The record of these and other writings (Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas) shows that even after the Gospels were presumably written, widespread areas of the Christian faith were simply not familiar with them or possessed no copies.

Keep in mind, as well, that the Gospels could have been in existence for decades without being known much beyond the confines of the communities which produced them. And that, in fact, is the situation we seem to find in the documentary record as a whole. Even within those communities, there is nothing to tell us that such accounts were regarded as historical when first produced.

It is not so much that one can draw up a precise chronology of Christian documents and find a steady, coordinated progression of reference to the presumed Gospel figure and events as one moves forward in time. But the overall pattern is clearly there. "Knowledge" about Jesus of Nazareth and his life as supposedly recorded in the Gospels moves from the non-existent, to the spotty to the widespread over the course of 150 years. Only in the last two decades of the second century are we on secure ground in finding a picture of Christianity as a movement founded on the contents of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John.

That being said, I regard the silence in the Pauline epistles in regard to an historical Jesus as being a strong argument against a dating in the mid-second century. Some have argued that even as late as that, the epistles could have been produced in circles that were lagging behind in knowledge of the newly developing traditions about an historical figure, and yet the second-century scenario does not fit such a claim. If they were the product of the Roman church, as many suggest, this is the very milieu which was one of the vanguards in promoting the Gospel story and its central character. Marcion, too, a favorite candidate for authorship of the Pauline corpus, eventually worked in Rome and even if he had composed the epistles in his earlier travels (one suggestion), he would almost certainly have revised them once he was operating in the Roman milieu and came to accept an historical Jesus, even if one rendered docetic. Besides, the mild gnostic features one can claim to find in Paul are nowhere near as developed or as specific as those Marcion seems to have promoted. The great gnostic-orthodox rivalry at the center of the empire which was a feature of the mid-second century is simply not present in Paul or even pseudo-Paul. Unless much stronger cases are made for the entire Pauline literature as second century products (not simply containing some later editing—though even this would be perplexing limited), I am convinced that the mythicist case is not in danger of being jeopardized through removal of most of the Pauline content from the first-century body of available evidence. The precise time and circumstances of that evidence (or even the question of their possible editing during the early period) is different matter, if one rejects Acts as providing any reliable picture of early Christianity in general or Paul's career in particular.

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