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 Who’s Who . . . What they say about Jesus

Atwill, Joe

A Roman imperial family, the Flavians, had created Christianity, and, placed a literary satire within the Gospels and War of the Jews to inform posterity of this fact. Author of Caesar’s Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus. Review by Robert M. Price

Brodie, Thomas

A highly respected New Testament scholar, at least until he publicly affirmed that much of his research led to the conclusion that the Gospels and epistles knew of no historical Jesus. (See the Wikipedia link from his name above.) The New Testament account of Jesus is essentially a rewriting of the Septuagint version of the Hebrew Bible, or, in some cases, of earlier New Testament texts. Author of Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery.Reviewed and covered in depth on Vridar

Carotta, Francesco

Julius Caesar was the historical Jesus, the Gospel is a rewriting of Roman historical sources, and Christianity developed from the cult of the deified Caesar. Author of Jesus was Caesar: On the Julian Origin of Christianity. Unable to find major reviews. I have not read it right through because unable to accept its methods of argument.

Carrier, Richard

“I believe this will be the first comprehensive pro-Jesus myth book ever published by a respected academic press and under formal peer review. . . .  I think this will be the first pro-Jesus myth book of any kind published by a university press in the last fifty years.” Source: http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/4090. Author of On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Contrasts the most credible reconstruction of a historical Jesus with the most credible theory of Christian origins if a historical Jesus did not exist. Reviews and Carrier’s replies listed on Carrier’s blog. My posts on Carrier’s preceding book discussing his method.

Detering, Herman

German pastor in the Dutch radical tradition. Runs Radikalkritik website. Identifies Paul with Simon Magus. Author of The Falsified Paul (or Fabricated Paul). Argues for a second century provenance of the epistles and gospels. His work on Paul implies the nonexistence of the historical Jesus.

Doherty, Earl

Christianity began with belief in a spiritual heavenly Son of God; the Gospels are essentially allegory and fiction; and no “historical Jesus” worthy of the name existed. Owner of The Jesus Puzzle website and author of The Jesus Puzzle, a work expanded in Jesus: Neither God Nor Man. Pioneered the current popular interest in the Christ Myth theory and influenced Robert M. Price and Richard Carrier. My review of The Jesus Puzzle.

Einhorn, Lena

See review by Robert M. Price of The Jesus Mystery: Astonishing Clues to the True Identities of Jesus and Paul, and her article presented at 2012 Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting,Jesus and the “Egyptian Prophet“.

Ellegård, Alvar

Swedish Professor of English. Influenced by G. A. Wells.Paul thought Jesus had been a real person though one who had lived in the remote past; Ellegard identifies Paul’s idea of Jesus (who had appeared to the apostles in ecstatic visions) with the Teacher of Righteousness in the Dead Sea Scrolls. So the Jesus of the Gospels is essentially a myth; the Gospels are largely fiction. Author of Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ. Review by Doherty.

Fitzgerald, David

Author of Nailed!, “possibly the best ‘capsule summary’ of the mythicist case I’ve ever encountered . .  with an interesting and accessible approach” — Doherty. I have defendedNailed! against certain criticisms on this blog.

Freke, Timothy and Gandy, Peter

Co-authors of The Jesus Mysteries and The Lost Goddess. Robert M. Price’s review of Lost Goddess. Peter Kirby’s outline of the argument in Jesus Mysteries. “Whilst our ideas clearly rewrite history, we do not see ourselves as undermining Christianity.  On the contrary we are suggesting that Christianity is in fact richer than we previously imagined.  According to the original Gnostic Christians, the Jesus story is a perennial myth with the power to impart the mystical experience of Gnosis, which can transform each one of us into a Christ . . .” Source: http://www.exminister.org/Freke-Jesus-mysteries.html

Harpur, Tom

Anglican priest. Christian doctrines — the coming messiah, virgin birth, madonna and child, incarnation of spirit in the flesh — were borrowed from ancient Egypt originally as allegories of spiritual truths. Author of The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light. Influenced by Alvin Boyd Kuhn. Review by Robert M. Price. 

Huller, Stephan

Marcus Agrippa believed himself to be the true Messiah with a divine mission and Jesus, until his crucifxion, proclaimed him as such. Marcus Agrippa was the author of the Gospel of Mark. Author of The Real Messiah: The Throne of St Mark and the True Origins of Christianity. Huller responds to a positive review.

Humphreys, Kenneth

Author of the website, Jesus Never Existed, a compendium of a wide variety of material supporting arguments that Jesus never existed. Author of the book Jesus Never Existed.

Lataster, Raphael

A PhD researcher (Studies in Religion) at the University of Sydney. The sources for the Biblical Jesus are so poor they cannot constitute good evidence for his existence and even give us reason to doubt he existed at all. Many methods used by Biblical scholars are spurious and Bayesian reasoning is used to justify scepticism. Author of There was no Jesus, there is no God: A Scholarly Examination of the Scientific, Historical, and Philosophical Evidence & Arguments for Monotheism.

Leidner, Harold

Patent lawyer. The gospels abound with anachronisms and geographical errors, because the gospel writers used the Septuagint as the basis for their historical fiction. New Testament scholarship “creates scenarios and takes over material from the social sciences to give the impression that Christianity has an authentic historical origin. The pose of objective research is used to prop up the gospel story but no hard evidence can be found to support that story” Author of The Fabrication of the Christ Myth.

Martin, Michael

Philosopher and Professor Emeritus at Boston University. Author of The Case Against Christianity. “Wells’s argument against the historicity of Jesus is sound, and recent criticisms against his argument can be met. So on the basis of Wells’s argument there is good reason to reject not only Orthodox Christianity but even those versions of Liberal Christianity that assume that although Jesus was not the Son of God he was an ethical teacher who lived in the first century.” (p. 67)

Martin, Sid

A Master of Theological Studies. Jesus is identified with a series of savior figures from Joshua to David to the Teacher of Righteousness—who founded the Essenes, the ancient Jewish sect who wrote the Dead Sea Scroll—to Rabbi Johanan Ben Zakkai, the founder of Rabbinic Judaism, and many others. The Gospel of Mark is ultimately an ingenious myth about the history of salvation in Israel. Author of Secret of the Savior.

Murdock, D. M. (Acharya S)

Author of Truth Be Known website and several books on the Christ Myth theory through Stellar Publishing. Argues that Christianity began as an encapsulation of the ancient wisdom of astrotheology mediated through Egyptian beliefs. Catholic priests subsequently suppressed this truth. My reviews of the early chapters of Christ Conspiracy.

Murphy, Derek

Completing a PhD in comparative literature. Author of Jesus Potter Harry Christ: The Surprising Parallels that Expose the Truth about the Historical Jesus, the Christ Myth, and the Secret Origins of Christianity. “Our question then is not whether Jesus Christ existed, but whether the literary character recorded in the New Testament was primarily inspired by a historical figure or previous literary traditions and characters.” My review and coverage of Jesus Potter Harry Christ.

Onfray, Michel

French philosopher. Author of Atheist Manifesto. “Jesus was thus a concept. His whole reality resides in that definition. Certainly he existed, but not as a historical figure — unless it was in such an improbable manner that whether he existed or not is of little importance.”

Parvus, Roger

Former Catholic priest. Vridar is serialising his series arguing that the original versions of Paul’s letters were penned by the one otherwise known as Simon Magus and that the Gospel of Mark is a reworked Simonian allegory.

Paulkovich, Michael B.

I placed Paulkovich in the “agnostic” group in the table but have since learned he has been more decisive with an earlier book, No Meek Messiah (reviewed here). He writes: “The “Jesus mythicist” position is regarded by Christians as a fringe group. But after my research I tend to side with Remsburg—and Frank Zindler, John M. Allegro, Thomas Paine, Godfrey Higgins, Robert M. Price, Charles Bradlaugh, Gerald Massey, Joseph McCabe, Abner Kneeland, Alvin Boyd Kuhn, Harold Leidner, Peter Jensen, Salomon Reinach, Samuel Lublinski, Charles-François Dupuis, Rudolf Steck, Arthur Drews, Prosper Alfaric, Georges Ory, Tom Harpur, Michael Martin, John Mackinnon Robertson, Alvar Ellegård, David Fitzgerald, Richard Carrier, René Salm, Timothy Freke, Peter Gandy, Barbara Walker, Thomas Brodie, Earl Doherty, Bruno Bauer and others—heretics and iconoclasts and freethinking dunces all, according to “mainstream” Bible scholars.” (See alsoOpen Letter)

Price, R. G.

Creator of rationalrevolution webpage and author of several books. In Jesus – A Very Jewish Myth he argues the case for the Jesus story having developed out of existing Jewish messianic and apocalyptic literature and beliefs, with no historical person at the core of the story. In The Gospel of Mark as Reaction and Allegory he takes an in-depth look at the symbolism and scriptural references in the Gospel of Mark in order to explain how and why it was written.

Price, Robert M.

See the Wikipedia article and his MindVendor webpage for his background and scholarly qualifications and affiliations. His earliest contributions to the Christ Myth debate were The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man and Deconstructing Jesus. He has since published The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul. He defends and applies the principles of higher criticism that were the basis of much radical scholarship in the nineteenth century.

Raskin, Jay

A PhD in philosophy, adapted his thesis for publication as The Evolution of Christs and Christianities, which analyzes the gospels through the lens of his background in film studies. He writes: “I am doing narratological archaeology…. I use the jumps, contradictions and unusual constructions in sections of the [gospel] narrative to reconstruct the earlier layers of that narrative.” My review on Amazon.

Salm, René

I posted an interview with René Salm on this blog and have regularly addressed his best known book, The Myth of Nazareth. Salm has studied the archaeological reports related to Nazareth in depth and had his own response published in the peer-reviewed Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society. Among his websites are Mythicist Papers: Resources for the Study of Christian Origins and The Myth of Nazareth. Other writings listed at Author website.

Tulip, Pier

Author of KRST: Jesus a Solar Myth. (English is not Pier’s first language and the work contains infelicities.) Concedes the lack of evidence prevents him from “completely proving” his case. “But one result seems to me certain: Christianity of the origins was a solar religion and thus pagan like all those that preceded it, including Judaism.” Lacks the dogmatism and New-Age ideology found in Murdock’s astrotheological case.

Vaneigem, Raoul

Belgian writer and philosopher. Author of Resistance to Christianity: A Chronological Encyclopedia of the Heresies from the Beginning to the Eighteenth Century. Influenced Michel Onfray.

Viklund, Roger

Swedish. Has some interesting articles linked at The Jesus Character Critically Examined. Published in Vigiliae Christianae an argument disputing Carlson’s claim that Secret Mark).  is a forgery. Also preceded Carrier’s and Doherty’s argument for the James passage in Josephus. Author of The Jesus That Never Was. See also Bibelkritikern Roger Viklund kritisk granskad.

Wells, George Albert

Emeritus Professor of German at University of London. Published the first of many books on mythicism in 1971 (The Jesus of the Early Christians). The most well-known Christ Myth advocate until Earl Doherty. In his most recent book, Cutting Jesus Down to Size (2009), Wells moved slightly away from his earlier position that Jesus had never existed and concluded that the person given the name Jesus was an obscure teacher whose sayings were recorded in the now-lost document (Q) that many scholars believe was a source for the Synoptic Gospels, but whose death had no redemptive significance for his followers.

Wison, Charles O.

Author of New Testament Origins: The Passover Slaughter of 4 BCE. Influenced by Joe Atwill’s argument that Christianity was an invention of the Flavian Roman emperors. Believes the Gospel of Mark is a coded rewriting of Josephus’s account of events surrounding Jannaeus.

Zindler, Frank R.

Prominent American atheist and professor of biology and geology. See the Wikipedia article for his many roles and publications. Sets out several witty arguments against the historicity of the gospel narratives and characters in the first volume of his Through Atheist Eyes series. Authored The Jesus the Jews Never Knew disputing that Jesus is referenced in the Talmud even through ciphers. With Robert M. Price was responsible for Bart Ehrman and the Quest of the Historical Jesus of Nazareth, a collection of responses by Carrier, Doherty, Fitzgerald, Murdock, Price, Salm, Zindler to Ehrman’s attempt to refute mythicism.

Other lists

Rene Salm has an annotated list of contemporary and past Christ Myth theorists: see Basic Mythicist Bibliography.

Kenneth Humphreys also has webpate listing many Christ Myth scholars with brief descriptions of each one – past and present.

For lists of historical Christ Myth theorists on this blog see

• 1950s Scholarship on the Historicity of Jesus – Vardis Fisher’s summary

and

• A Catalog of Early Mythicists and Their Critics)

The names of scholars covered in those lists (but see the posts linked here for some account of the particular views of many of them):

1. Bauer
2. Bohtlingk
3. Bolland
4. Bossi
5. Brandes
6. E. Carpenter
7. Couchoud
8. Dupuis
9. Drews
10. Dujardin
11. Frank
12. Hannay
13. Heulhard
14. Jensen
15. Kalthoff
16. Kulischer
17. Lindsay
18. Loman
19. Lublinski
20. Matthas
21. Mead
22. Naber
23. Niemojewski
24. Pierson
25. Robertson
26. Rylands
27. G. Smith
28. W. B. Smith
29. Stahl
30. Van Eysinga
31. Virolleaud
32. Volney
33. Whittacker

Comparable contemporaries

If we add from the list of contemporary names those scholars (from all branches of scholarship as in the above list) who have made clear claims for mythicism:

1. Brodie
2. Carotta
3. Carrier
4. Ellegård
5. Harpur
6. Lataster
7. Onfray
8. Price
9. Raskin
10. Vaneigem
11. Wells
12. Zindler

Do advise me of any errors or omissions.