Rating: 
Summary: Jesus: The Nobody Who Did Nothing
Review: No competent biblical historian believes that the virgin-born god Jesus who emulated fifty other savior gods by rising from the dead on the third day ever existed. Anyone who thinks otherwise started from predetermined conclusions and distorted the evidence to make it fit. That is not scholarship.
On the question of whether myths that were already 3000 years old were posthumously grafted onto the biography of an anti-Roman rebel so insignificant that contemporary historians did not deem him important enough to mention, scholars are evenly divided. My book, Mythology's Last Gods, takes the position that Jesus was indeed a person from history. So do Michael Arnheim and Martin Larson. Robert Price and G. A. Wells do not, and Earl Doherty does not.
The main argument for Jesus' nonexistence is the absence of his name from non-Christian writings. Extant passages in Josephus are, as Doherty correctly observes, Christian interpolations. But Josephus's "Halosis," quoted by Robert Eisler, described Jesus as a man of simple appearance, mature age, small stature, three cubits high, hunchbacked, with a long face, long nose, and meeting eyebrows, so that they who see him might be affrighted, with scanty hair ... with a parting in the middle of his head, after the manner of the Nazirites, and with an undeveloped beard.
While it is possible that the Josephus passage is a forgery, it is a matter of record that the earliest generations of Christian apologists accepted its accuracy.
That description of an ugly Jesus is one of the proofs that such a man existed. Origen, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Cyril of Alexandria and Andrew of Crete would not have accepted such a description without dispute if their Khristos had been a literary invention whom they could have repainted in any image they wished.
Further evidence lies in the first gospel's acknowledgement that Jesus' family saved him from a lynching by arguing that "He's gone mad," (Mark 3:21) and Luke's acknowledgement that Jesus' first remark to a synagogue audience was, "You're sure to recite this proverb to me: Doctor, heal yourself." (Luke 4:23) Why would Jesus have said such a thing, if he was not as malformed as Josephus described? The gospel authors were attempting to portray Jesus as their ultimate hero, and assuredly would not have included such negative anecdates if they were not stuck with the reality that they actually happened.
In contrast, Robert Price wrote that the gospel story of Jesus matches the pattern of the Mythic Hero Archetype in every detail, with nothing left over. Doherty agrees with that. I do not.
So why four stars for a book whose main thesis I strongly dispute? The answer is that Doherty presents a logical, coherent argument for a purely mythical hero, that I am not prepared to state categorically is wrong. As a historian, I am more impressed by the negative anecdotes that no creator of a totally-heroic mythical Jesus would ever have invented. Doherty likewise gives paramountcy to negative evidence, meaning the absence of any mention of Jesus by writers who logically should have mentioned him if he existed. I can only suggest that the reader reach his own conclusion after reading both my book and Doherty's
Rating: 
Summary: A milestone
Review: One can tell how effective this lucid, well-argued book is by the spasms of vitriol and misrepresentation from the Christian apologists who review it. When Doherty's non-belief in the God of Abraham is used as evidence of "bias," you know the critic is desperate. Since Doherty doesn't believe in fairy tales, apparently, he must be wrong about the facts.
Jesus Christ is entirely a figure of legend. It's obvious once you examine the evidence and judge whether the story development is more consistent with folklore or history. If the name of the central figure of this folk tale were Paul Bunyon instead of Jesus, no breath would be wasted on arguing the case for historicity. It will take some time before mainstream scholars will admit the obvious (instead of skirting the issue out of fear), but in the future, people will look back at us and wonder why anyone with access to the facts ever thought Jesus was a real person.
Until then, of course, the sun revolves around the Earth. Oops. I mean Jesus existed. Kudos to Earl Doherty, who, just as Galileo worked outside the inbred university establishment of his day, does his excellent scholarship and writing free of Christian or academic establishment bias.
If you are a Christian, read this book only if you are ready to be convinced that the Son of Man never walked the Earth.
Rating:
Summary: The Truth Be Told!
Review: Only if you have an open, logical mind and have not been indoctrinated in Christianity do you need to read Doherty's book. With all that is known by scholars studying scriptures and history, a person can see that Christianity grew from multiple inputs. Paul's Jesus, The Christ, existed in "Heaven" (in his visions in his head), "Mark's" Jesus was an allegorical figure, a blend of ideas many years after the "crucifiction" by a person who didn't know the protagonist when the story supposedly happened. Paul's idea was much more an extention of Judiaism, a single God Head with a Son/Wisdom-like representative, not a living man; "Mark" wrote a short story about a time at least 40 years in the past. "Matthew" and "Luke" copied "Mark" separately and exerpted from another author, "Q". We inherited a mishmash (midrash) of the blend, spiced by the current politics and local ideas of each addition.The Jewish Revolt in 70 CE killed off three fourths of the people who were alive during the years in question making an unopposed fertile field for fiction. There were NO records, religious, scientific or secular of the most important events, virgin birth, crucifiction, resurrection, that supposedly occurred in the religion. The records don't just conflict, THERE ARE NO RECORDS TO CONFLICT. Once "Mark" wrote down his bare bones story, like the story of Santa Claus, it took on a life of its own. "Mark's" story started the Christianity known today. We have the additions to the basic story from "Matthew" and "Luke" which wildly digress when each one adds his own vignette. This is analogous to the "Night Before Christmas" poem that became so popular in the late 19th century and was blended with earlier stories in many countries of their mythical Father Christmas figures. Later came the additions to the basic story of Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer, elves, North Pole, comforting but hardly true. Just because large numbers of people believe something is true DOES NOT MAKE IT TRUE. Millions once believed the Earth was the center of the universe or that mummifying a pharaoh and saying the right words over the body would give him eternal life. Sorry to say, in two thousand years we have had millions more believe the Jesus story just as children believe in Santa. Kids eventually grow up and realize Santa is an allegory; two thousand years from now will people believe Santa was "real"? Gullible people will believe anything that makes them feel good and gives them hope. I have read everything I can find, the Bible, Old and New, treastises of scholars, pro and con. I must agree with Doherty, Jesus is a lovely myth, as are all religions. We need to face the fact, there is no help coming through ANY religion from On High, boys and girls. Jesus is like Santa; praying is like making a list of what you want for Christmas. God is not The Father in the Sky. Grow up! The world is a conficted mess of vested interests, The author wants us to face facts so we can work out a solution for mutual survival REALIZING WE ARE ON OUR OWN. Doherty does a masterful job of stating the facts, presenting the translations, explaining the gentile and Jewish histories then allowing the individual to mull over the evidence, or lack there of. Only one logical conclusion can be drawn; he is correct .
Rating:
Summary: Sets the Standard for All Other Books on Jesus
Review: The scholarly and fascinating book "The Jesus Puzzle" by Earl Doherty sets the standard by which all other Jesus books must be measured (and books on Paul for that matter!). For too long biblical scholars have taken it for granted (even as they flush out a picture of a mortal and more human Jesus) that a real Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth and it was about this historical person that the ancient scribes wrote. Now, thanks to Earl Doherty, we at last have a work that clears the air and shows how the "Jesus story" was put together by the early Christians. Suddenly, all the contradictions within the Bible and the conflicting depictions of Jesus make sense when one sees them from this perspective, i.e., they came from various traditions and from authors who had different aims.
Doherty's evidence reveals that the earliest writers (as Paul and the other writers of various epistles) nowhere mention a real live person called Jesus. Paul believed "in" the Son of God and not that anyone "was" the Son of God. Paul never gives us a single saying attributed to a historical Jesus. Doherty is steeped in Greek philosophy and metaphysics as well and shows how Paul was not only very much a Jew, but a Jew heavily influenced by Greek mythology and metaphysics. His discussion of the Hellenistic/Jewish conception of the universe is brilliant. Without understanding this, you can never hope to understand what Paul and the Son of God movement centered in Jerusalem believed in. Doherty goes on to show how an earthly kingdom movement, a counter-culture set in Palestine developed and he follows it through changes in the Q community. Eventually, of course, it was Mark who sought to merge the various strands of belief into a gospel of the living Christ. But this took time to catch on and one is amazed when Doherty shows that as late as 90-120 C.E. many people, then referring to themselves as Christians, still knew nothing of a Jesus who lived and walked the earth. This is must reading for anyone interested in the Jesus movement and the Bible. Your view of early Christianity will be forever changed. You will have a standard by which to measure all other scholarship.
Rating:
Summary: Basic to the 21st Century View of Christianity
Review: There have beeen a lot of excellent books published on Early Christian History in the last few years. The whole field is undergoing a period of intensifying debate greater than anything seen for a century, probably thanks to the internet.
I would say that "The Fifth Gospel" and "The Jesus Puzzle" are the two basic books that anyone interested in the field needs to read to understand the changes going on. "The Fifth Gospel" successfully made its case that The Gospel of Thomas was an earlier Gospel than the canonicals. This was a minority opinion before that book and it is now a majority opinion. "The Jesus Puzzle" successfully makes its case that the letters of Paul do not show a writer or writers familiar with the Gospels or anything about a human being named Jesus. Since the letters of Paul has been used by orthodox scholars as the earliest historical references to Jesus, this book is devastating to the traditional view of the gospels as presenting some kind of history of a human being.
While one can question Doherty's style (funny), scholarship (very good, but not perfect) and motives (probably pure enjoyment), in the long run what counts is that a star witness for the semi-official, orthodox version of Christianity has been heavily discredited. This allows room for alternative understandings of that history to be brought forth and discussed seriously.
Those who have a special interest in defending the semi-official orthodox history will be dismayed, but I think neutral folk will be fascinated by the new possibilities it opens up.
Rating: 
Summary: Clever, Expansive, and Unconvincing (& check those endnotes)
Review: Though dead among scholarly circles - even among moderate and liberal ones - the idea that Jesus never existed has visceral appeal to many with negative attitudes towards Christianity. This book is not a serious academic work (it's published by the "Canadian Humanist Publications", whose bias is obvious and shared by the author), but it distinguishes itself from similar efforts by laypersons in its expansive scope. Rather than skirt the Pauline references to Jesus' human life, it embraces them and claims they support the notion that Jesus never existed. Rather than accept the consensus among historians and New Testament scholars that Josephus referred to Jesus on two occasions in Antiquities, the book rejects the idea that either reference is valid. The book's use of purported Middle Platonism to undercut seeming references to Jesus' human life in Paul's letters and Hebrews is especially clever (not the least because so few readers will have any understanding of what Middle Platonism is).
On style, the writing is uneven and at points amateurish and simplistic. The chapter titles and subheadings are often of no help in understanding what any particular chapter or section is about. There is no scripture or ancient writings index, though some of these are in the general index. The use of endnotes instead of footnotes (or even endnotes at the end of each chapter rather than lumped together at the end of the book) is particularly unhelpful because so much of the argument rest on the supporting references or discussion. And as I learned, checking Doherty's endnotes is vital given how unsupported many of his key arguments turn out to be.
But, what about the substance? Space constraints obviously limit, but I will comment on some of Doherty's central points.
Doherty's attempt to explain away references to Jesus' human life in Paul's letters (and Hebrews) is ambitious but unconvincing. As the book goes through these passages, it becomes clear that time and again he resorts to unsupported translations, far fetched interpretations, misrepresentations of Middle Platonism, and creative - to say the least - use of secondary sources in order to support his theory. This foundation is shaky and gets weaker the more closely it is examined. One example which taught me to check the endnotes closely was the book's assertion that the phrase "according to the scriptures" in 1 Cor. 15 when referring to Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection had nothing to do with fulfilled prophecy but meant instead that Paul had learned about these things from the Old Testament - not James and Peter and the other Christians. The support for this interpretation? It is not in the text and the reader is referred to an endnote. To my surprise, the endnote does not refer to Paul's use of the phrase elsewhere. Nor does he refer to another NT writer's use of the phrase. Or to any Greek Lexicon. Or to any other Greek writer using the term as Doherty claims Paul uses it. All that Doherty refers to is an extraordinarily anachronistic modern day example of reading a newspaper. I was genuinely surprised at how weak and anachronistic the support was for such a crucial point.
The rest of the book's explanations for the troubling Pauline and Hebrew references to a human Jesus are no more convincing and are ad hoc. Rarely does Doherty conduct any sort of meaninful textual discussion of how Paul uses these phrases elsewhere in his writings. This is especially true of his attempt to dismiss Paul's statement that Jesus was "born of a descendant of David according to the flesh" in Romans.
Another problem throughout Doherty's book is his use of secondary sources. Often they are quoted so selectively that they are offered to support points that the source's author would denounce in the strongest terms - as is the case with his use of C.K. Barrett's fine commentary on Romans (while trying to dismiss Rom. 1:1-4 as a reference to Jesus' becoming human).
Regarding other issues, Doherty relies on theories that have already been debunked, such as his attempt to dismiss Acts as a source for early Christian history by referring to V. Robbins' oft-refuted theory about the we passages, or his insistence that neither of the references to Jesus in Josephus are authentic (despite overwhelming contrary opinion and evidence). A continuing flaw in Doherty's argument is his rush to explain things in terms of Middle Platonism, while ignoring obvious Jewish influence, parallels, and beliefs. Finally, the dismissive classification of the Gospels as midrash is so brief and so uninformed that it is of almost no worth (and his radically late dating of them unsupported by the evidence)
This may be the best presentation of the Jesus Myth argument in print. Nevertheless, any informed and rational investigation into it will lead the reasonable person to conclude that if this is the best that the Jesus Myth has to offer, there is little to commend the theory.
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