Earl Doherty, currently living in Canada, is the author of The Jesus Puzzle, a work published in 2000 by the Canadian Humanist Association arguing that Jesus never lived. Doherty argues that Paul and other writers of the earliest existing Christian documents did not believe in Jesus as a person that lived on Earth in a historical setting. Rather, they believed in Jesus as a mythical hero who suffered his sacrificial death in the lower spheres of heaven in the hands of the demon spirits, and was subsequently resurrected by God. This Christ myth was not based on a tradition reaching back to a historical Jesus, but on the Old Testament exegesis in the context of Jewish-Hellenistic religious syncretism heavily influenced by Platonism, and what the authors believed to be mystical visions of a risen Jesus. The Jesus Puzzle is a book written by Earl Doherty, a historical scholar. ... This article is about the year 2000. ... This article is about Jesus of Nazareth; for other uses, see Jesus (disambiguation). ... An early portrait of the Apostle Paul. ... Sir Galahad, a hero of Arthurian legend From the Greek cognate ηρως, in mythology and folklore, a hero (male) or heroine (female) is an eminent character archetype that quintessentially embodies key traits valued by its originating culture. ... Michelangelos depiction of God in the painting Creation of the Sun and Moon in the Sistine Chapel) This article discusses the term God in the context of monotheism and derived henotheistic forms. ... Note: Judaism commonly uses the term Tanakh, but not Old Testament, because it does not recognize the concept of a New Testament. ... This article discusses textual hermeneutics. ... The word Jew ( Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or someone of Jewish descent with a connection to Jewish culture or ethnicity and often a combination of these attributes. ... The term Hellenistic (established by the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen) in the history of the ancient world is used to refer to the shift from a culture dominated by ethnic Greeks, however scattered geographically, to a culture dominated by Greek-speakers of whatever ethnicity, and from the political dominance... Syncretism is the attempt to reconcile disparate, even opposing, beliefs and to meld practices of various schools of thought. ... Platonic idealism is the theory that the substantive reality around us is only a reflection of a higher truth. ...

According to Doherty, the Jesus myth was given a historical setting only by the second generation of Christians, somewhere between the first and second century. Doherty claims that even the author of the Gospel of Mark, which he dates, later than most New Testament scholars, after 90 AD, probably did not consider his gospel to be a literal work of history, but an allegorical Midrashic composition based on the Old Testament prophecies. In the widely supported two-source hypothesis, the story of Mark was later fused with a separate tradition of anonymous sayings embodied in the Q document into the other gospels; according to Doherty these became interpreted as the literal history of the life of Jesus. Doherty denies any historical value of the Acts of the Apostles, dismissing it as a late work based on legend. The Jesus-myth is a concept associated with a sceptical position on the historicity of Jesus, which claims that Jesus did not exist as a historical character, but functioned instead as an abstract, symbolic, and metaphorical allusion to a higher knowledge. ... The Gospel of Mark is traditionally the second of the New Testament Gospels. ... For other uses, see number 90. ... Midrash (pl. ... Note: Judaism commonly uses the term Tanakh, but not Old Testament, because it does not recognize the concept of a New Testament. ... Roughly one third of the Bible is widely regarded to contain passages which claim to foretell events and mandate conditions on future activities, focused primarily on the people and nations of the Middle East, and on the Messiah. ... The Two-Source Hypothesis is the most commonly accepted solution to the synoptic problem among biblical scholars, which posits that there are two sources to Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke: the Gospel of Mark and a lost, hypothetical sayings collection called Q. The Two-Source Hypothesis was first... The Q document or Q (Q for German Quelle, source) is a postulated lost textual source for the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke. ... The Acts of the Apostles (Greek Praxeis Apostolon) is a book of the Bible, which now stands fifth in the New Testament. ...

Doherty has a degree in Ancient History and Classical Languages, and he was introduced to the idea of a mythical origin of Jesus by the work of G.A. Wells (1926—), who has authored a number of books arguing a more moderate form of the "Christ myth" theory. Doherty claims to have used his language skills to have studied the original-language versions of the New Testament, and to have come to his views through a critical analysis of these texts. George Albert Wells (born 1926) is an Emeritus Professor of German at Birkbeck College, but he is more widely known as a New Testament scholar. ... 1926 (MCMXXVI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... An author is the person who creates a written work, such as a book, story, article or the like. ... See New Covenant for the concept translated as New Testament in the KJV. The New Testament, sometimes called the Greek Testament or Greek Scriptures, and, in recent times, also New Covenant, is the name given to the part of the Christian Bible that was written after the birth of Jesus. ...

Doherty's belief that there was no historical Jesus contrasts with the view of Rationalists, who thought of Jesus as a real person whose story has only survived in oral traditions told in the language of myth. This article is about Jesus of Nazareth; for other uses, see Jesus (disambiguation). ... This article is not about continental rationalism. ... In the academic fields of mythology, mythography, and folkloristics a myth is a sacred story concerning the origins of the world or how the world and the creatures in it came to have their present form. ...

Currently, the position that Jesus never existed is a minority position among scholars and Doherty's arguments have not made a very strong impression on the consensus [1].

Nethertheless, Doherty's position stands in the tradition of historical revisionism, and his theory has raised some interest among the scholars in the field. Most recently, he appears (along with fellow historians Richard Carrier, Robert M. Price, and others) in Brian Flemming's documentary film The God Who Wasn't There. In Parson Weems Fable (1939) Grant Wood takes a sly poke at a traditional hagiographical account of George Washington Historical revisionism is the reexamination of historical facts, with an eye towards updating histories with newly discovered, more accurate, or less biased information. ... Brian Flemming is a film director and playwright. ... The God Who Wasnt There is an independent documentary that explores and questions the historicity of Jesus Christ. ...

External links and references

• Doherty's Web Site
• Review of The Jesus Puzzle by Canadian Humanists
• More articles by Earl Doherty
• Review by Richard Carrier, at infidels.org
• Review by James Still, at infidels.org
• Earl Doherty, the Jesus Myth and Second Century Christian Writings by GakuseiDon
• Dohertys articles in Swedish