The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus
by Earl Doherty
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Book Summary Information
Author: Earl DohertyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-01-01
ISBN: 096892591X
Number of pages: 390
Publisher: Age of Reason Publications
Book Reviews of The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus
Book Review: An in-depth research of historical Jesus
Summary: 5 Stars
A simple enumeration of the contradictions, inconsistencies and errors in the New Testament is not enough to prove that Jesus was as mythical as Dionysus. The author of this book knows this very well so he spends the pages of his treatise to build from the ground up his case with extreme attention to detail. His style is scholarly (states his assumptions, separates facts from conjecture even if this appears to weaken his case, attributes the ideas he explains), consistent and impartial.
The issue of "impartiality" is, for obvious reasons, very important in this case. The author does not try to buttress an inconclusive argument with methods not grounded to reason, but shifts the focus to issues for which conclusive arguments can be developed and constructive inferences can be extracted. He avoids to be combative, insulting or polarized. He does not miss an opportunity to heap praise to Apostle Paul (indeed a remarkable personality) but tries to use the mildest words to describe Mark's unskilled use of language.
The main argument is developed in several stages. The author gives an excellent review of the philosophical movements of the first and second century and builds a virtual map the coordinates of which are the various philosophical ideas. He then helps the reader place the various thinkers of the time on this map. This works amazingly well for Paul whose complex thinking suddenly becomes tractable. Works OK for the other epistle writers. But does not work very well for Mark. So, the very solid exposition of the Jerusalem group (Paul etc) is followed by speculative conjectures regarding the events that took place around the end of the first century (the time Mark was composed). It would be great if one could reconstruct these events, but it is not really necessary and might not even be possible. This book tried to narrow down the possibilities by assuming that Mark was initially meant to be fiction (I know of no internal or external argument for this other than that the opposite would imply a dishonest church father; a very weak argument). If no such assumption is introduced, any attempt to reconstruct Mark's state of mind becomes too speculative to be of much value.
The argument against the historicity of Jesus reaches a crescendo near the end of the book where the writings of the apologists are examined, a careful reading of which makes it obvious that they either did not know anything about the biography of Jesus or (one of them) considered the idea of a human Jesus abominable. As an added bonus, this chapter contains a superb account of the church politics that led to the canonization of the New Testament (more or less) as we know it today. This superb account offers, other than the enjoyment of a scholarly exposition of the most divinely inspired sequence of backstabbings, the final piece of the puzzle. It explains how all these different sects with so radical differences in their dogma (some ready to kill and die for a human Jesus and some arguing fervently for a non human Jesus), coalesced into a single religion.
The book includes some very interesting appendices about various heresies, about the dates of various gospels etc. And within the text the author devotes several paragraphs to explain the trickier parts of ancient Greek.
My only complain about the ancient Greek (I understand the ancient Greek of the NT reasonably well) is his translation of the "kata sarka". The author translates it as "according to flesh", which leaves a lot to be desired. There seem to be endless discussions on the exact translation of it and I do not think there will ever be an agreement. The problem is that the word "kata" can have many meanings. It can mean "according", it can mean "against" (not here), can mean "by", "towards", "per" etc. Moreover, these guys had developed their own jargon, apostle-speak, so "kata sarka" might be one of their novelties, in which case we have no hope. My own speculation is that Paul was trying to reconcile his views with a set of "prophetic" sentences in the Old Testament, but failed. But in any case, no reasonable interpretation of "kata sarka" is inconsistent with the main thesis of the book in my opinion.
Overall the book is excellent, all the essential arguments are solid, the historical, philosophical and theological reviews are magnificent and the closing argument is as enjoyable as it is convincing. Nowhere does the book beg the reader's good will or the reader's faith to a common cause to convince for an argument. The amount of hard work that went into this book is clearly evident.
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