A general problem with the book is it is hard to separate argument, conclusion, and secondary extrapolation. Too much hinges on a too brief analysis of Paul's letters. There is little in the book that could stand on its own if Doherty's conclusions on these were rejected. Key statements about the Gospels - the Mark was not written until 85-90 A.D., that the first chapters of Luke were a later addition - are argued to briefly.
Doherty's argument concerning Paul is that Paul gives no indication of equating Jesus with a historical man. The problem is that he does, as in Galatian's where he mentions "James, the Lord's brother." Doherty proposes that this was meant figuratively, and I suppose it may have been, but he does not give convincing argument that it definitely was. Then, however, the argument becomes that if Paul had known Jesus was a historical person, he would have talked about him that way more often. Nobody, however, is saying that Paul viewed Jesus in purely historical terms - Paul claims to have seen him post-mortem and never met him in life, so it is not surprising that he refers to him as being historical only occasionally. The more surprising claim is that Paul had no notion of a historical Jesus, but just happened to say things that implied such a figure.
A good point of comparison might be C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. As I recall, mentions of the life of Jesus are sparse in the book, but Lewis certainly believed that Jesus was a historical figure. [I don't plan on re-reading the book for the sake of this one post, but if people can provide even partial lists of HJ references in the book, I would be thankful.]
Without a surer argument from Paul, the rest collapses. For example, Doherty mentions that there seems to be some connection between the Q and the Gospel of Mark. It takes a great deal of confidence in the verdict on Paul to deny that this connection could be a historical Jesus. The argument from the Q is also troublesome. That such a doccument existed may be the most probable explanation for correspondences between Matthew and Luke, but the fact remains that we do not have the doccument, so to make lots of definite statements about it is a dubious undertaking.
One part that comes close to standing alone is his argument that the whole passion account was created based on Hebrew scripture, but the argument is very weak. In his frantic search for the vaguest parallels between the Old Testament and the passion story, he ends up looking rather like Christian apologists who claim that similar passages predicted Jesus' story. Indeed, I suspect Doherty borrowed some of his citations from such apologetic works.
Though Doherty did not hammer parallels with other gods as much as I had expected, these do not prove very much. Consider the following passage from a book on the Native American Ghost Dance movement:
All the delegates agreed that there was a man near the base of the Sierras who said that he was the son of God, who had once been killed by the whites, and who bore on his body the scars of the crucifixion. He had now returned to punish the whites for their wickedness, especially for their injustice toward the Indians.That the figure described, Wovoka, has been mythologically mixed up with Jesus is obvious, but Wovoka was in fact a real person. It is entirely possible that Paul identified the real figure of Jesus with other gods of his day.
There are two points in Doherty's argument, "smoking guns," he calls, them, where he does not merely argue from silence, but they do not smoke as hot as he thinks. He claims Heb 8:4 says "If he had been on earth" but as Richard Carrier points out in his generally positive review of the book, the correct reading is "if he were on earth" (See Appendix 1, 10x). The other is a passage where a 2nd century Christian apologist appears to reject the idea of a historical Christ, but this is not nearly as clear as Paul's mention of Jesus' brother.
In sum, I must concluded that this book does not merit the attention it has gotten in atheist circles.
9 comments:
Well, you give an honest review. :)
I am honestly surprised at your assessment of this book. Your credibility has just risen in my eyes.
Well said. I had been thinking of reading it, but now don't think it's worth the time...
Good post. I've haven't read this but having seen a couple of similar efforts I don't think atheists do themselves any favors trying to argue Jesus never existed. The well-founded argument that much or most of the material in the gospels was created or heavily edited by the early church can't be extrapolated into a strong conclusion that there was no such historical figure.
Regards, - Steve Esser
Actually, some of the distortions of the story seem to have been done against the backdrop of history - something I argued here. Another example is the empty tomb. Mark, the earliest account, says the women told no one, which sounds like he's trying to explain why no one had heard the story before. This, though, implies previous passion accounts had existed, and Mark is not the source of the Jesus story as Doherty claims.
The best site dealing with the non-existence of Jesus has to be
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com
I'll check it out. Thanks.
I see no reason not to accept that there was a real Joshua bar-Joseph (which would have been, more or less, his real name -- Jesus is just the translation into Greek of Joshua, and "Christ" is a title, not a name) who spent a few months preaching the imminent end of the world, and who did something, we don't know what, to piss off the Romans so they crucified him. I'll even accept that a couple of the sayings we have of his are probably authentic. This hardly makes me think he was, or claimed to be, divine in any way. But the idea he was mythical is handled quite well in Charles Guignebert's JESUS (get it at a big library or from alibris or Amazon). Admittedly, he wrote before the dead Sea Scrolls, but he is solid in this -- and he's a histroian of Religion, not a preacher and is skeptical enough for any of us.
As for Q, Morton Scott Enslin, in his LITERATURE OF THE CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT, makes a very good case that it didn't exist, and would date Mark even earlier, as well as, with Guignebert, tying the whole 'resurrection' story into Peter imagining he saw him on a dark morning at daybreak while he was fishing, and puts all the rest into an expansion of that one 'vision.' (And Enslin IS a believer.)
I should say, btw, that I am an atheist, but one that finds religion fascinating as a HUMAN activity, for its complex history, for its dangerous side when it attempts to coerce non-believers, and as an 'old-time SF fan' who is fascinated at world-building, the creation of an entire structure on a false-to-fact premise.
Two more recommends, btw. For those who are interested in all religions, the Sacred Text archive
http://www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm is worth knowing. It has texts and comments on every religion from African animism to Zoroastrianism, mostly stuff in the public domain -- though if you dig, you'll find a script of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL -- including an excellent history of Islam in the introduction to the Palmer translation of the Qur'an.
And for an interesting look at the world view of a fundamentalist, exaggerated but fun, Philip K. Dick's EYE IN THE SKY, the first section.
Prup (aka Jim Benton)
I loved the book. I think it deserves more attention because of the simple reason that most people ASSUME there was a historical Jesus. This book, along with others (such as Dr. Robert Price's 'The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man') go a long way to showing that there is much more of a controversy over the historical evidence for a Jesus than most people assume.
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