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Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case For A Mythical Jesus
Mainstream biblical scholarship is far from achieving consensus in its ongoing attempt to separate the glorified Jesus of faith from the ever elusive Jesus of history. It remains to be seen how soon traditional academia will overcome its reluctance to take the plunge into the New Testament s final, uncharted the theory that Christianity began with belief in a spiritual heavenly Son of God, that the Gospels are essentially allegory and fiction, and that no historical Jesus worthy of the name existed... The Gospels and Acts of the Apostles form one small portion of the early Christian documentary record. They reflect but one category of thought and witness to what that broad movement came to believe in. Modern scholars and believers alike view the world of early Christianity through the prism of this narrow handful of inbred writings, a chain of literary dependency and enlargement on the first one written, and it has distorted all that they see. The Gospels and Acts need to be put in their proper perspective, so that they no longer obscure a more clear-eyed view of what early Christianity constituted. That view can be found in everything from the New Testament epistles to the non-canonical documents, to the writings of the Gnostics and second century apologists. Until we allow ourselves to recognize what broader factors of the era brought the idea of a Jesus into being, and how he evolved over the first 150 years, the Western world will continue to live and perpetuate a fantasy... Earl Doherty, through his website and first book, The Jesus Puzzle, is regarded by many as having given Jesus Mythicism its most legitimate and convincing expression in over a generation. Neither God Nor Man is a new and revised expansion of that work. The product of almost three decades of study, it presents a case of unprecedented depth and lucidity for the non-existence of an historical Jesus. (The original The Jesus Puzzle will continue to be available as a condensed version of that case.) In this age of the Internet and the increased dissemination of knowledge and ideas across a wide public constituency, the true beginnings of one of the world s major religions may finally be ready to emerge.
814 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 26, 2014
Anyone who reads this gigantic effort by Mr Doherty cant come back to the historicity theory of origins of Christianity. A superbly written book. Logically and well documented. Nothing was left to chance. If you are a believer of the long told story of Christianity arising from the Crucifixion of an earthly Jesus you are in for a big surprise and if you don't come out as at least an skeptic after reading it you are denying yourself the freedom to choose the humanist/atheistic alternative.
May 15, 2021
This book should have sealed the deal on whether or not there is a historical Jesus. It's a big claim to make for one book. I mean, take any subject and to claim that this here one book on this here one subject is the one that changes the field is usually the thing of crack pot stuff. I'm thinking of crack pot revolutions in thought like Erich Von Daniken's "Chariots of the Gods?" which for some, put the world of archaeology and anthropology and just about every related discipline in a spin. Readers without a solid background in the subject were easily convinced whereas experts in said fields are still whipping at this weed in their garden. Von Daniken's hypothesis was an assumption trying to overturn the data. What Doherty's book does is start with the data and find our assumption about Jesus has been very, very wrong.
The assumption is that there was a historical man that gave rise to the new religion of Christianity. After assuming that, everything else about him has been up for debate: Did he perform miracles? Rise from the dead? Raise others from the dead? Have a last supper? Born of a virgin? Etc. But what if there never was this historical Jesus? What if the whole thing is up for debate?
If you open up your copy of the New Testament you'll find it begins with the Gospel According to Matthew. Then Mark, Luke and John. Then it's the Acts of the Apostles then Paul's letters and other epistles. But this is the wrong order. It is the Paul and the epistles that should be first as they represent the oldest Christian writings we have. And that's where it gets very interesting.
The earliest Christian writings demonstrate that Paul (and the other anonymous epistle writers) know nothing of a Jesus living on Earth, having a ministry, having large crowds gathering and being crucified and rising from the dead. The earliest writings considered Jesus to be akin to the Greek idea of Logos, or, an angelic-like being that God always had with him who acts as a conduit for men to know god. And, this being descended through the various planes of Heaven until reaching the final plane where Satan and the demons lived. He did this, taking on lesser and lesser forms so that those in the lower planes did not know who he really was. Then once in the lowest level, he was killed by Satan and his minions only to rise, reveal his true self and ascend back to the highest plane of Heaven, triumphant. This was said to have taken place before the beginning of time so that man would be saved from sins and live forever upon his death.
This is not speculation on Doherty's part. This is what the earliest writings say. We have been reading into them an assumption that a historical Jesus came before. And yet, the writings of Paul and the epistles make no sense if there was a historical Jesus. Doherty does an exhaustive examination of these texts to prove the point.
The earliest Christian thinkers and writers knew Jesus through his words from scripture. That is to say, they didn’t hear oral or written stories from anyone who claimed to know an earthly Jesus. They knew him by combing the Old Testament and finding passages in the Psalms and Isaiah and Genesis and everywhere else and splicing them together.
It was also through revelation that they claimed to know of this angelic being that descended through the planes of Heaven to commit the saving sacrifice. As an example Paul says it directly in Galatians 1:11-12, "I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ." Paul is telling us outright that he heard Jesus in his own head. Doherty examines numerous examples of this.
It is amazing to find that well into the second century, the earliest church fathers too, only knew of a heavenly Christ, not one that ever lived on Earth. And again, we've been assuming there was a historical Jesus behind their writings. When we remove the assumption, there's no more room left for historicity.
The only place at all we have writings of Jesus being on Earth is in the four gospels. That's it. And since we know Mark came first and the rest used his gospel as a template, what we're really dealing with is ONE source saying Jesus was on Earth. The rest is fan-fiction. If there were no gospels, we wouldn't be having this discussion. We'd have relegated Jesus to his rightful place, formed out of the imaginations of men who were dreaming up all the other gods and spiritual beings once thought to have roamed the universe.
The Gospels, that of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are not historical. They are, in fact, midrash of Old Testament stories. Midrash was the practice of taking old stories and creating new ones using those themes. And the Gospels are full of midrash of Moses and Elijah and more. They also sampled from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Doherty asks if there was a historical Jesus, why tell of him using someone else's history? (This is not to say Doherty accepts the Old Testament prophets as historical either). What the four Gospels are are not history, but exactly what they claim to be: Gospels, or, Good News. They are allegorical stories that assisted members of the different budding sects of Christianity on how to behavior using a Jesus as a focal point.
This book decimates the long held assumption that there ever was a historical Jesus. I consider it on par with Richard Carriers, On The Historicity of Jesus in it’s scholarship. So I’ll repeat what I said above: This book should have sealed the deal on whether or not there is a historical Jesus. There never was one.
The assumption is that there was a historical man that gave rise to the new religion of Christianity. After assuming that, everything else about him has been up for debate: Did he perform miracles? Rise from the dead? Raise others from the dead? Have a last supper? Born of a virgin? Etc. But what if there never was this historical Jesus? What if the whole thing is up for debate?
If you open up your copy of the New Testament you'll find it begins with the Gospel According to Matthew. Then Mark, Luke and John. Then it's the Acts of the Apostles then Paul's letters and other epistles. But this is the wrong order. It is the Paul and the epistles that should be first as they represent the oldest Christian writings we have. And that's where it gets very interesting.
The earliest Christian writings demonstrate that Paul (and the other anonymous epistle writers) know nothing of a Jesus living on Earth, having a ministry, having large crowds gathering and being crucified and rising from the dead. The earliest writings considered Jesus to be akin to the Greek idea of Logos, or, an angelic-like being that God always had with him who acts as a conduit for men to know god. And, this being descended through the various planes of Heaven until reaching the final plane where Satan and the demons lived. He did this, taking on lesser and lesser forms so that those in the lower planes did not know who he really was. Then once in the lowest level, he was killed by Satan and his minions only to rise, reveal his true self and ascend back to the highest plane of Heaven, triumphant. This was said to have taken place before the beginning of time so that man would be saved from sins and live forever upon his death.
This is not speculation on Doherty's part. This is what the earliest writings say. We have been reading into them an assumption that a historical Jesus came before. And yet, the writings of Paul and the epistles make no sense if there was a historical Jesus. Doherty does an exhaustive examination of these texts to prove the point.
The earliest Christian thinkers and writers knew Jesus through his words from scripture. That is to say, they didn’t hear oral or written stories from anyone who claimed to know an earthly Jesus. They knew him by combing the Old Testament and finding passages in the Psalms and Isaiah and Genesis and everywhere else and splicing them together.
It was also through revelation that they claimed to know of this angelic being that descended through the planes of Heaven to commit the saving sacrifice. As an example Paul says it directly in Galatians 1:11-12, "I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ." Paul is telling us outright that he heard Jesus in his own head. Doherty examines numerous examples of this.
It is amazing to find that well into the second century, the earliest church fathers too, only knew of a heavenly Christ, not one that ever lived on Earth. And again, we've been assuming there was a historical Jesus behind their writings. When we remove the assumption, there's no more room left for historicity.
The only place at all we have writings of Jesus being on Earth is in the four gospels. That's it. And since we know Mark came first and the rest used his gospel as a template, what we're really dealing with is ONE source saying Jesus was on Earth. The rest is fan-fiction. If there were no gospels, we wouldn't be having this discussion. We'd have relegated Jesus to his rightful place, formed out of the imaginations of men who were dreaming up all the other gods and spiritual beings once thought to have roamed the universe.
The Gospels, that of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are not historical. They are, in fact, midrash of Old Testament stories. Midrash was the practice of taking old stories and creating new ones using those themes. And the Gospels are full of midrash of Moses and Elijah and more. They also sampled from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Doherty asks if there was a historical Jesus, why tell of him using someone else's history? (This is not to say Doherty accepts the Old Testament prophets as historical either). What the four Gospels are are not history, but exactly what they claim to be: Gospels, or, Good News. They are allegorical stories that assisted members of the different budding sects of Christianity on how to behavior using a Jesus as a focal point.
This book decimates the long held assumption that there ever was a historical Jesus. I consider it on par with Richard Carriers, On The Historicity of Jesus in it’s scholarship. So I’ll repeat what I said above: This book should have sealed the deal on whether or not there is a historical Jesus. There never was one.
September 24, 2013
excellent Christ myth defense
February 19, 2019
Fascinating!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews