Beginning Blogging Earl Doherty’s Book, Jesus: Neither God Nor Man

Last updated on: May 2, 2011 at 11:06 pm by James F. McGrath

Beginning Blogging Earl Doherty’s Book, Jesus: Neither God Nor Man 2011-05-02T23:06:00-04:00 James F. McGrath

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I have been looking forward to blogging through Earl Doherty’s book, Jesus: Neither God Nor Man – The Case for a Mythical Jesus, which is a significantly revised and expanded version of his earlier book, The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus. I have wanted to do this for a number of reasons, but most of all out of a desire to interact with a detailed and sustained attempt to make a case for mythicism, in a form that is generally regarded as among the superior ones. The author himself suggests in the preface that “The original The Jesus Puzzle book has had a substantial impact, and is generally regarded as the leading and most persuasive publication in recent years in support of the mythical Jesus theory” (p. viii).

As I set out to do so, I hoped that the book might exceed my (admittedly low) expectations, and offer a genuine challenge to prevailing thinking, and genuine insights. I hoped that it might be a worthy conversation partner which, even if I failed to be persuaded by it, might nevertheless have been worth reading in helping to think through issues and challenge my own assumptions. But having interacted with mythicists and even the book’s author before, I also suspected that, sooner or later, a moment might come when a claim would be made that seemed utterly indefensible, or something would be treated as obvious fact that is open to serious debate, or in some other way my hope would be disappointed, my hope that the book would surpass the level of discussion and treatment of evidence found in online attempts to make the case for mythicism. But at least I could read with anticipation, wondering how far I would get before that moment came.

It happened in the first sentence, on page 1.

But let me back up just a little. I read the preface with leniency, in particular the presentation of twelve “pieces of the Jesus puzzle” (pp.xi-xii). The metaphor of puzzle pieces might seem to imply that the “pieces” in question are bits of raw data, which simply need to be configured properly so that the image as a whole becomes clear. In fact, many of the “pieces” are open to serious doubt and debate, at the very least. But it is not uncommon to summarize one’s conclusions, indicating the direction one is headed, and then proceed to defend them in the book. And perhaps the metaphor was offered in the full knowledge that the human eye and brain can misinterpret puzzle pieces, so that what we think we see on that tiny bit of cardboard in fact turns out to be something rather different when attached to other pieces and placed within the context of the full puzzle. So I carried on.

I had been particularly pleased to find a description of the nature of historical study that reflects the mainstream approach: “No mathematical proof is available, no laboratory demonstration. All we can achieve is a judgment as to the balance of probability, although perhaps such a thing can be close to definitive. In the field of history, this is all we have. In the area of religion, a little more is required: the temporary relaxation of accepted belief, in order to give evidence and its rational interpretation a chance to commend itself” (p. ix).

In light of that, how does the first page of the introduction begin? With a sentence, a paragraph all to itself, which says the following: “Once upon a time, someone wrote a story about a man who was God” (p. 1).

I would have thought it needless to say that this sentence, referring to the Gospel traditionally referred to as the Gospel of Mark, fails spectacularly to relax accepted belief in order to leave room for a rational interpretation of the evidence that runs counter to established orthodoxy and historic theology. Any mainstream scholar will tell you that it simply cannot be assumed that the Gospel of Mark, or any of the Synoptic Gospels, presents a Jesus who pre-existed, much less who was divine.

What we are dealing with in the first sentence of Doherty’s book is the traditional Christian view of Jesus, read into the earliest of the Gospels. A great many scholars and commentators are persuaded that unless one brings such orthodoxy with them, they will not find it on the pages of Mark, or Matthew or Luke for that matter. This is not to say that there are not those who read classic orthodoxy or something like it into these texts. But inasmuch as Doherty explicitly said that historians ought to set aside religious beliefs because of their potential to interfere with or mislead historical inquiry, the failure to do just that in the very first sentence of the book does not bode well.

I won’t be giving up, but the book is not off to an impressive start. If the remainder does the same, asserting as fact or assuming things that are open to serious dispute, then I suspect that my blog review will not have a trend towards becoming increasingly favorable. But this may work to the book’s advantage: Having begun with low expectations, and having had even those low expectations disappointed in the first sentence on p.1, there is a not-insignificant chance that the remainder of the book may exceed the expectations that I bring to it. And having read a few more pages, I am relieved to say that it looks like not every sentence in the book will be so problematic as to require a critical blog post.

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