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==Work on early Christianity== |
==Work on early Christianity== |
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=== The importance of exposure to the German scholarship of the 19th and early 20th centuries === |
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G.A. Wells, a graduate student in German literature and culture, was first exposed to the ideas of David Strauss and other German scholars at age 20, while doing academic studies in Switzerland in 1946. As a student in Bern, Wells roomed with the family of a Swiss Protestant clergyman, who was a pupil of Albert Schweitzer, and introduced Wells to the major German thinkers and the subject of the historicity of Jesus. |
G.A. Wells, a graduate student in German literature and culture, was first exposed to the ideas of David Strauss and other German scholars at age 20, while doing academic studies in Switzerland in 1946. As a student in Bern, Wells roomed with the family of a Swiss Protestant clergyman, who was a pupil of Albert Schweitzer, and introduced Wells to the major German thinkers and the subject of the historicity of Jesus. <br/> |
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That introduction, at 20, was the start of |
That introduction, at 20, was the start of six decades of Wells’s original research on the historicity of Jesus. |
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He learned Greek in order to read firsthand the 27 books of the New Testament ("NT"), and all the source material and the noncanonical apocrypha.
Wells noted that his knowledge of German has been “in many ways more important” than his knowledge of Greek in studying the historicity of the NT. “The best scholarship has been done by the Germans,”. |
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He learned Greek in order to read firsthand the 27 books of the New Testament ("NT"), and all the source material and the noncanonical apocrypha.
Wells noted that his knowledge of German has been “in many ways more important” than his knowledge of Greek in studying the historicity of the NT. “The best scholarship has been done by the Germans.” <ref name="Today"> ''Freethought Today'', April/May 1985
: An Interview With Professor Wells - Jesus: "There Was No Such Person"</ref> <br/>Like the American scholar [[William B. Smith]] before him (who was able to write in German as well), Wells was able to connect in the original with the writings of key authors such as [[Hermann Samuel Reimarus|Hermann S. Reimarus]], [[Gotthold Ephraim Lessing|Gotthold E. Lessing]], [[Ferdinand Christian Baur|F.C. Bauer]] (founder of the [[Tübingen School]]), [[Ludwig Feuerbach]], [[David Strauss]], [[Bruno Bauer]], [[William Wrede]], [[Julius Wellhausen]], the members of the [[Radical Criticism|Dutch Radical School]] (when translated into German), [[Albert Kalthoff]], [[Albert Schweitzer]], [[Arthur Drews]], [[Rudolf Bultmann]]. A few key books have been translated into English, but a large area of German scholarship remains inaccessible to most English-language scholars. Many of them have relied on Wells's presentations in his books. |
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=== ''The Jesus of the Early Christians'', the fundament of Wells's thesis === |
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Wells made his entrance in the field of Christian origins with ''The Jesus of the Early Christians'' (1971), at age 45, focusing on the pre-Gospel Christians, when they still were a Jewish sect, struggling for a loosening of the harsh dictates of the Torah's "Law", and not yet known by their future name. </br>Wells “spent the best part of ten years off and on” researching this first book.
He spent 3 years searching for a publisher. Finally Pemberton, the publishing arm of the British Rationalist Press Ass. accepted the book for publication. Later on Wells became the president of the organization.
''The Jesus of the Early Christians'' sold out very quickly, a 3,000 run, now out of print. It is the fundamental text of Wells's study on the formation of the Jesus figure. </br>It was complemented by two additional studies, ''Did Jesus exist?'' (1975), at age 49, and
''Historical Evidence for Jesus'' (1982), concluding, at age 56, his basic review of the original figure of Jesus. Those three books constitute the core of Wells's scholarship on Jesus and the origins of Christianity. |
Wells made his entrance in the field of Christian origins with ''The Jesus of the Early Christians'' (1971), at age 45, focusing on the pre-Gospel Christians, when they still were a Jewish sect, struggling for a loosening of the harsh dictates of the Torah's "Law", and not yet known by their future name. </br>Wells “spent the best part of ten years off and on” researching this first book.
He spent 3 years searching for a publisher. Finally Pemberton, the publishing arm of the British Rationalist Press Ass. accepted the book for publication. Later on Wells became the president of the organization.
''The Jesus of the Early Christians'' sold out very quickly, a 3,000 run, now out of print. It is the fundamental text of Wells's study on the formation of the Jesus figure. </br>It was complemented by two additional studies, ''Did Jesus exist?'' (1975), at age 49, and
''Historical Evidence for Jesus'' (1982), concluding, at age 56, his basic review of the original figure of Jesus. Those three books constitute the core of Wells's scholarship on Jesus and the origins of Christianity. |
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=== The silence on the details of Jesus's life in 17 earliest Christian documents === |
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Wells suggested that the earliest extant Christian documents from the first century, most notably the New Testament epistles by Paul and some other writers, show no familiarity with the Gospel figure of Jesus as a preacher and miracle-worker who lived and died in the recent decades. Rather, they present him "as a basically supernatural personage only obscurely on Earth as a man at some unspecified period in the past". <ref name=earliest/> This earliest Christian literature includes 17 documents from 9 independent authors. <ref> The total of the nine different pre-Gospel authors, invoked by Wells in his fundamental argument, assumes that each of the three post-Pauline epistles came from a different writer, and the three John epistles do come from the same pen.</ref> |
Wells suggested that the earliest extant Christian documents from the first century, most notably the New Testament epistles by Paul and some other writers, show no familiarity with the Gospel figure of Jesus as a preacher and miracle-worker who lived and died in the recent decades. Rather, they present him "as a basically supernatural personage only obscurely on Earth as a man at some unspecified period in the past". <ref name=earliest/> This earliest Christian literature includes 17 documents from 9 independent authors. <ref> The total of the nine different pre-Gospel authors, invoked by Wells in his fundamental argument, assumes that each of the three post-Pauline epistles came from a different writer, and the three John epistles do come from the same pen.</ref> |
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<blockquote> [A]dditionally to the [7] genuine Paulines [ [[Romans]], [[1 Corinthians]], [[2 Corinthians]], [[Galatians]], [[Philippians]], [[1 Thessalonians]], and [[Philemon]]] three post-Paulines ascribed to Paul ([[2 Thessalonians]], [[Colossians]] and [[Ephesians]]) and also the [[epistle to the Hebrews]], the [[epistle of James]], the [[1 Peter]], [[1 John]], [[2 John]], [[3 John]] and the [[book of Revelation]].
If Paul alone had written as he did of Jesus, one might just possibly be able to attribute this to some personal idiosyncracy; but a consistent silence by numerous independent authors [a total of 9] about matters which, had they known of them, they could not but have regarded as relevant to their purposes, cannot be so explained. It is perverse when critics ascribe to me the view that my whole reconstruction of Christian origins depends on the silence of one writer -- Paul.
<ref name=earliest/></blockquote> Wells believed that the [[Jesus]] of these earliest Christians was not based on a historical character, but a pure [[mythology|myth]].<blockquote> Moreover, it is not just that the early documents are silent about so much of Jesus that came to be recorded in the gospels, but that they view him in a substantially different way -- as a basically supernatural personage only obscurely on Earth as a man at some unspecified period in the past, 'emptied' then of all his supernatural attributes (Phil. 2:7), and certainly not a worker of prodigious miracles which made him famous throughout 'all Syria' (Mt. 4:24). <ref name=earliest/></blockquote> This mythical figure of Jesus derived from mystical speculations based on the Hebrew Wisdom figure. According to Wells, the Gospels composition was a later stage of the development of the Jesus myth, which was given a historical setting and a figure subsequently embellished with ever increasing details. |
<blockquote> [A]dditionally to the [7] genuine Paulines [ [[Epistle to the Romans|Romans]], [[1 Corinthians]], [[2 Corinthians]], [[Epistle to the Galatians|Galatians]], [[Philippians]], [[1 Thessalonians]], and [[Epistle to Philemon|Philemon]] ] three post-Paulines ascribed to Paul ([[2 Thessalonians]], [[Colossians]] and [[Ephesians]]) and also the [[epistle to the Hebrews]], the [[epistle of James]], the [[1 Peter]], [[1 John]], [[2 John]], [[3 John]] and the [[book of Revelation]].
<br/>If Paul alone had written as he did of Jesus, one might just possibly be able to attribute this to some personal idiosyncracy; but a consistent silence by numerous independent authors [a total of 9] about matters which, had they known of them, they could not but have regarded as relevant to their purposes, cannot be so explained. It is perverse when critics ascribe to me the view that my whole reconstruction of Christian origins depends on the silence of one writer -- Paul.
<ref name=earliest/></blockquote> |
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=== The Jesus of the Early Christians is mythical === |
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Wells believed that the [[Jesus]] of these earliest Christians was not based on a historical character, but a pure [[mythology|myth]].<blockquote> Moreover, it is not just that the early documents are silent about so much of Jesus that came to be recorded in the gospels, but that they view him in a substantially different way -- as a basically supernatural personage only obscurely on Earth as a man at some unspecified period in the past, 'emptied' then of all his supernatural attributes (Phil. 2:7), and certainly not a worker of prodigious miracles which made him famous throughout 'all Syria' (Mt. 4:24). <ref name=earliest/></blockquote> This mythical figure of Jesus derived from mystical speculations based on the Hebrew Wisdom figure. According to Wells, the Gospels composition was a later stage of the development of the Jesus myth, which was given a historical setting and a figure subsequently embellished with ever increasing details. </br> |
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=== The cleavage between early and late Christian documents === |
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Wells contrasts the silence of early Christian documents with later, 2d-century documents which show familiarity with details of Jesus's life similar to those of the Gospels. Wells cites a large group of 21 later documents from about 13 authors, of the first half of the 2d century (ca. 100-150 AD). <ref name=earliest/> They include: |
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* Within the canon, the [[Pastoral epistles]] ([[1 Timothy]] and [[2 Timothy]], and [[Epistle to Titus|Titus]]), dated ca. 110 AD; [[2 Peter]], dated 120 AD; |
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* Outside the canon, the [[Didache]] (or ''The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles''), a short manual on morals and church practice; the 7 [[epistles of Ignatius]]; the [[epistle of Barnabas]]; the [[epistle of Polycarp]] (to the Philippians); [[1 Clement]] and [[2 Clement|2 Clement of Rome]]; the apocryphal [[Epistle of the Apostles]]; the [[Apology of Aristides]]; the surviving fragment of [[Quadratus of Athens|Quadratus' Apology]]; and the [[First Apology of Justin Martyr|First Apology]] and [[Second Apology of Justin Martyr]].<br/> |
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In the late canonical epistles, Wells does not include in his list the [[Epistle of Jude]]. Deemed dependent on [[2 Peter]], this very short epistle (only 25 verses) contributes little for purposes of demonstrating distinct authorship. Although dated ca. 110-120, it contains very little material related to the biography of the Gospels, and devotes more space on references to the [[archangel Michael]] and the [[book of Enoch]]. |
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Similarly, a late 2d-century document such as the [[epistle to Diognetus]] continues to ignore the biography of Jesus, showing "a residual persistence of older Christological thinking". <ref name=earliest/> |
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The 21 2d-century documents cited by Wells "refer to Jesus in a way quite unknown in the earlier documents" and point to a "cleavage between the earliest Christian documents and the gospels". This is Wells's basic argument. "[U]ntil this distinction is accepted as fundamental, there will be no adequate understanding of Christian origins." <ref name=earliest/> |
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Although the discordance between Paul's Christ and the Gospels' Jesus was recognized early in the 20th century, theologians have not yet made room in their scholarship to "face up to the implications of this fundamental cleavage", and remain fixated on the priority of the Gospels with their "medley of incompatibles doctrines". (''The Jesus Myth'', 1999). |
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=== The illusion of the priority of the Gospels' story === |
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“The first point I make is to say it would be quite wrong to start by looking at the Gospel portraits of Jesus, because they are not the earliest documents. Paul is the earliest extant Christian writer, but there is a substantial body of earlier writers, not only Paul, included in the NT canon. This fact is not generally appreciated.
Only in the last hundred years or so, have scholars deduced that the Gospels were written at a later date than a good many of the epistles...The picture we have of Jesus in the Gospels as a preacher of ethical ideas and as a worker of miracles is not in any way confirmed by the earliest literature. The earliest Christians did not think of Jesus this way at all.” <ref name="Today"/> |
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Wells developed this argument in ''Did Jesus Exist?'' (1975) and even more fully in his third book, ''The Historical Evidence for Jesus'' (1982), where he analyzes what historical evidence can be derived from the contents of the NT. |
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He stresses that Christian believers find the Gospels printed first in their Bibles, and the epistles printed after the gospels. Hence readers proceed from the "supposition that their authors were acquainted with what is said of Jesus in the Gospels" (''The Jesus Myth'', 1999), when in fact these gospels did not exist when the earliest epistles were composed. |
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This inversion in the Bible of the factual chronological order has contributed to the ''nearly universal, Church-induced, conviction'' that the figure of Jesus is primarily defined by the Gospels' story, and that its historicity is an unquestionable axiom of Christian dogma. |
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=== Reviving the old thesis of non-historicity of Jesus === |
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⚫ | In 1985, Wells felt he had covered the subject and didn’t plan to publish a fourth book.
His conclusion in 1985: "Jesus: ‘There Was No Such Person’". He was thus described by Freethought Today: <blockquote> "At 58, dignified and professorial, Wells epitomizes objectivity and rationality... What continually amazes him, he says, is that the Christian community, as well as the average clergyperson, tend to be about a century behind the times of serious Christian scholarship. For instance, the legendary character of the “Virgin Birth” was exposed as early as the 1830s by German theologian D.F. Strauss, whose views were widely accepted by his peers and subsequent generations of Christian scholars. Yet, even in 1946, people were talking as if this were history, not legend.” <ref |
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This historicity of Jesus has never been seriously questioned by the immense majority of theologians, except for the small group of "Jesus deniers" who made ''Die Frage der Historizität Jesu'' (the question of Jesus's historicity) a favorite topic for scholarly discussion, with hundreds of books and articles published in German, English and French in the 1850-1940 period. <ref>Albert Schweitzer, ''The Quest of the Historical Jesus'', (1906), in 20 chapters (Transl. W. Montgomery, 1910, London. A new translation is based on the 9th German edition (1984) in 25 chapters, (2001, Fortress Press). Ch. XI, "The First Skeptical Life of Jesus", is on Bruno Bauer.
To respond to Drews's thesis in the Christ Myth I (1909) and Christ Myth II (1912, transl. ''The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus''), Schweitzer added two new chapters in the 2d edition of 1913. <br/>
Ch. 22, "The New Denial of the Historicity of Jesus" (''Die Neueste Bestreitung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu'') analyzes Drews's thesis, plus eight supporting authors: J. M. Robertson, Peter Jensen, Andrew Niemojewski, Christian Paul Fuhrmann, W.B. Smith, Thomas Whittaker, G.J.P.J. Bolland, Samuel Lublinski.
<br/>Ch. 23, "The Debate About the Historicity of Jesus" (''Die Diskussion über die Geschichtlichkeit Jesu''), reviews the publications, mostly critical and negative, of 40 theologians/scholars in response to the theories of Drews and his support team in the Feb. 1910 public debate in Berlin, all labeled as ''Bestreiter'' ("challengers') and ''Verneiner'' ("deniers") — a group including the Dutch Radicals, J. M. Robertson, W. B. Smith and Drews.</ref> |
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<ref> Arthur Drews, ''The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus in Past and Present'' — Klaus Schilling's summary in English. Full German original ''Die Leugnung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart'', Karlsruhe (1926), published as a pendant and counter response to Albert Schweitzer's ''Quest'' of 1906/1913, in the style of a ''Quest of the non-Historicity of Jesus'', presenting a historical review of some 35 major deniers of Jesus historicity (radicals, Jesus deniers) in the 1780 - 1926 period</ref> This was the golden age of the debate of "historicists" versus "non-historicists", or "deniers of Jesus's historicity". None of those scholars ever used the term "mythicists", popularized in the early 1940s by journalists/historians A.D. [Arthur Denner] Howell Smith and Archibald Robertson. <ref> The journalistic moniker "mythicism" is convenient, but not as precise as "historicity denial" or the scholarly "non-historicity thesis", emphasizing that this position is in fact a negative Hegelian "antithesis" which can emerge only as a response, by opposition to the positive "thesis", "advocacy of historicity", which comes first. Other coinages have been used, "non-historicists", "ahistoricists", "existence deniers", etc. Although Drews was intellectually on the other side of the controversy from Albert Schweitzer, Hoffers notes that Drews "was temporarily a friend of Albert Schweitzer, the famous theologian and physician".</ref> |
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Even when the real order is acknowledged — early epistles predating the Gospels by one or two generations — the counterclaim is that Paul and the other writers must have known the stories later incorporated in the Gospels (circulating in what are supposed to be ''traditions'').<br/> But that is what Wells disputes: “When you find all these writers, independent of each other, fail to confirm the later layer of tradition in the gospels, then one must be very suspicious.” <ref name="Today"/> |
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=== Evaluating the so-called Christian "evidences". === |
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Wells's purpose is "to increase the pool of knowledge and understanding about the so-called Christian 'evidences' " <ref name="Today"/>. |
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⚫ | In 1985, Wells felt he had covered the subject and didn’t plan to publish a fourth book.
His conclusion in 1985: "Jesus: ‘There Was No Such Person’". He was thus described by Freethought Today: <blockquote> "At 58, dignified and professorial, Wells epitomizes objectivity and rationality... What continually amazes him, he says, is that the Christian community, as well as the average clergyperson, tend to be about a century behind the times of serious Christian scholarship. For instance, the legendary character of the “Virgin Birth” was exposed as early as the 1830s by German theologian D.F. Strauss, whose views were widely accepted by his peers and subsequent generations of Christian scholars. Yet, even in 1946, people were talking as if this were history, not legend.” <ref name="Today"/></blockquote>The following books were refinements, discussion of points raised by critics, and the peculiar plight of modern apologists, including ''Religious Postures'' (1988), ''Who Was Jesus?'' (1989), and ''Belief and Make-Believe'' (1991). |
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=== Allowance for a Galilean miracle worker/cynic-sage type preacher === |
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In the 90s, Wells has made an important addition, presented in his books ''The Jesus Legend'' (1996) and ''The Jesus Myth'' (1999). Wells now allows for the possibility that the central figure of the Gospel stories may be based on a historical character from first-century [[Galilee]]: <blockquote>"[T]he Galilean and the Cynic elements ... may contain a core of reminiscences of an itinerant Cynic-type Galilean preacher (who, however, is certainly not to be identified with the Jesus of the earliest Christian documents)."<ref name=earliest/> </blockquote>The "words" and memories of this preacher may have been preserved in the [[Q source]] that is hypothesized as the source of many [[Jesus#Teachings and preachings|"Sayings"]] of Jesus found in both gospels of [[Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] and [[Gospel of Luke|Luke]]. However, Wells concludes that the reconstruction of this historical figure from the extant literature would be a hopeless task. |
In the 90s, Wells has made an important addition, presented in his books ''The Jesus Legend'' (1996) and ''The Jesus Myth'' (1999). Wells now allows for the possibility that the central figure of the Gospel stories may be based on a historical character from first-century [[Galilee]]: <blockquote>"[T]he Galilean and the Cynic elements ... may contain a core of reminiscences of an itinerant Cynic-type Galilean preacher (who, however, is certainly not to be identified with the Jesus of the earliest Christian documents)."<ref name=earliest/> </blockquote>The "words" and memories of this preacher may have been preserved in the [[Q source]] that is hypothesized as the source of many [[Jesus#Teachings and preachings|"Sayings"]] of Jesus found in both gospels of [[Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] and [[Gospel of Luke|Luke]]. However, Wells concludes that the reconstruction of this historical figure from the extant literature would be a hopeless task. |
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=== No real turnaround: Fusion of two sources of the Jesus figure in Mark === |
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⚫ | The updated position taken by Wells has been interpreted by other scholars as an "about-face", abandoning his initial thesis in favor of accepting the existence of a historical Jesus.<ref name=vanvoorstencyc/> However, Wells insists that this figure of late first-century Gospel stories is distinct from the sacrificial Christ myth of [[Pauline epistles|Paul's epistles]] and other early Christian documents, and that these two figures have different sources before being fused in Mark. Following the scholarship of Arthur Drews in ''The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus'' (1912), Wells argues that<blockquote>[T]he Jesus of Paul was constructed largely from musing and reflecting on a supernatural 'Wisdom' figure, amply documented in the earlier Jewish literature, who sought an abode on Earth, but was there rejected, rather than from information concerning a recently deceased historical individual. <ref name=earliest/> </blockquote> |
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=== Paul's Jesus did visit earth, preached, and was rejected, in some indistinct past === |
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Wells clearly specifies that Paul's Jesus has at some point, made a visit to earth before his rejection. <blockquote>I am certainly not among those who suppose that Paul says nothing at all about a human Jesus, or that he viewed him as a "mythic diety" who "performed his saving works ... in the heavenly realm" (p. 201). On the contrary, I have repeatedly stated that, for Paul, this pre-existent supernatural personage was incarnated as a descendent of David (Romans 1:3), was born of a woman under Jewish law (Gal. 4:4) and ministered to the Jews (Rom. 15:8) prior to his crucifixion on Earth. (''Cutting Jesus Down to Size'', 2009, p. 328)</blockquote> |
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⚫ | The updated position taken by Wells has been interpreted by other scholars as an "about-face", abandoning his initial thesis in favor of accepting the existence of a historical Jesus.<ref name=vanvoorstencyc/> However, Wells insists that this figure of late first-century Gospel stories is distinct from the sacrificial Christ myth of [[Pauline epistles|Paul's epistles]] and other early Christian documents, and that these two figures have different sources before being fused in Mark. |
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⚫ | Co-author [[R. Joseph Hoffmann]] has called Wells "the most articulate contemporary defender of the non-historicity thesis...Wells argues a 'persistent,' even a nagging, thesis, marked by unusual clarity and consistency."<ref>[[R. Joseph Hoffmann]]'s foreword in ''The Jesus Legend,'' xii, 1996</ref> In his Introduction to the re-edition of Maurice Goguel's ''Jesus the Nazarene: Myth or History?'' (2006, 1st ed. 1925), Hoffmann mentions the three fundamental texts of Wells's scholarship: <blockquote> In addition to the following books by the most visible contemporary champion of the myth theory, the British scholar G. A. Wells, a number of older studies can be recommended. Of Wells’s many titles ''The Jesus of the Early Christians'' (1971) is the most tightly argued; ''Did Jesus Exist?'' (1986) [1st ed. 1975] is also worth reading, as is ''The Historical Evidence for Jesus'' (1988) [1st ed.1982]. A “disciple” of Wells, Earl Doherty, has rehashed many of the former’s views in ''The Jesus Puzzle'' (Age of Reason Publications, 2005) which is qualitatively and academically far inferior to anything so far written on the subject. </blockquote> Wells' claim of a mythical Jesus has received support from [[Earl Doherty]] <ref>Earl Doherty (1999): "Book and Article Reviews, The Case of the Jesus Myth: Jesus — One Hundred Years Before Christ by Alvar Ellegard" (1999), retrieved Jan 15, 2009</ref>, [[Robert M. Price]] <ref name="price">{{cite journal |url=http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=price_20_1 |title="Of Myth and Men A closer look at the originators of the major religions-what did they really say and do?"|work=[[Free Inquiry]] |year=1999/2000 |month=Winter |first=Robert |last=Price |volume=20 |issue=1 |accessdate=2007-11-17}}</ref>, and others. <ref>{{cite journal |url=http://newhumanist.org.uk/901 |title="No god in the details" |publisher=''[[The New Humanist]]'' |volume=120 |issue=4 |month=July/August |year=2005 |first=Brain |last=Flemming |accessdate =2007-11-17}}</ref> The classical historian R. E. Witt, reviewing ''The Jesus of the Early Christians'' in the ''Journal of Hellenic Studies'', offered some criticisms but concluded that "Hellenists should welcome the appearance of this challenging book."<ref>R. E. Witt, "Reviewed Work: ''The Jesus of the Early Christians'' by G. A. Wells" ''The Journal of Hellenic Studies'', Vol. 92 (1972), pp. 223-225.</ref> While Wells's conclusions have been criticized by biblical scholars and ecclesiastical historians such as [[William Hugh Clifford Frend|W. H. C. Frend]], <ref>{{cite journal |first=W. H. C. |last=Frend |title=Review of ''The Jesus of the Early Christians.'' by G. A. Wells |work=The English Historical Review |volume=87 |issue=343 |month=April |year=1972 |pages=345–348 |quote=Though Professor Wells has written a shrewd, challenging and entertaining book, his case fails.}}</ref> and [[Robert E. Van Voorst]]. <ref>{{cite book |first=Robert E. |last=Van Voorst |authorlink=Robert E. Van Voorst |title=''Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence'' |publisher=Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing |year=2000 |isbn=0-8028-4368-9 |page=14}}</ref> After reviewing criticisms from several authors, atheist philosopher [[Michael Martin (philosopher)|Michael Martin]] said that although "Wells's thesis is controversial and not widely accepted," his "argument against the historicity of Jesus is sound".<ref>{{cite book |first=Michael |last=Martin |authorlink=Michael Martin (philosopher) |title=''The Case Against Christianity'' |publisher=Temple University Press |location=Philadelphia |year=1991 |isbn=0-87722-767-5 |page=67}}</ref> |
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⚫ | Co-author [[R. Joseph Hoffmann]] has called Wells "the most articulate contemporary defender of the non-historicity thesis."<ref>[[R. Joseph Hoffmann]]'s foreword in |
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== Books == |
== Books == |
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* Ronald (F.R.H.) Englefield, ''Language, Its origins & Relation to Thought'', (Pemberton, 1977) |
* Ronald (F.R.H.) Englefield, ''Language, Its origins & Relation to Thought'', (Pemberton, 1977) |
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* Ronald (F.R.H.) Englefield, ''The Mind at Work & Play'', (Prometheus, 1985) |
* Ronald (F.R.H.) Englefield, ''The Mind at Work & Play'', (Prometheus, 1985) |
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* G.A. Wells Editor, ''J.M. Robertson, Liberal, Rationalist & Scholar'', (Pemberton, 1987) |
* G.A. Wells Editor, ''[[J.M. Robertson]], Liberal, Rationalist & Scholar'', (Pemberton, 1987) |
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* Ronald (F.R.H.) Englefield, ''Critique of Pure Verbiage, Essays on Abuses of Language in Literary, Religious, & Philosophical Writings'', (Open Court, 1990) |
* Ronald (F.R.H.) Englefield, ''Critique of Pure Verbiage, Essays on Abuses of Language in Literary, Religious, & Philosophical Writings'', (Open Court, 1990) |
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* David Friedrich Strauss, ''The Old Faith & the New'', (Prometheus, 1997) [1st ed. 1872] |
* [[David Friedrich Strauss]], ''The Old Faith & the New'', (Prometheus, 1997) [1st ed. 1872] |
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==See also== |
==See also== |
Revision as of 18:25, 17 December 2012
George Albert Wells | |
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Black and white portrait of G.A. Wells | |
Born | May 22, 1926 |
Academic background | |
Influences | Ludwig Feuerbach, David F. Strauss, Bruno Bauer, Albert Kalthoff, Albert Schweitzer, William B. Smith, Arthur Drews, William Wrede, Paul-Louis Couchoud |
Academic work | |
School or tradition | Historical Criticism |
Main interests | Non-Historicity of Jesus, Origins of Christianity |
Notable works | The Jesus of the Early Christians Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Evidence for Jesus Who Was Jesus? Belief & Make-Believe The Jesus Legend The Jesus Myth Can We Trust the New Testament? Cutting Jesus Down to Size |
Notable ideas | Jesus is a composite from two sources: Hebrew Wisdom & Galilean miracle-worker/cynic-sage preacher |
Influenced | Earl Doherty, Alvar Ellegård, R. Joseph Hoffmann, Michael Martin |
George Albert Wells (born May 22, 1926), usually known as G. A. Wells, is an Emeritus Professor of German at Birkbeck, University of London. After writing books about famous European intellectuals, such as Johann Gottfried Herder and Franz Grillparzer, he turned to the study of the historicity of Jesus, starting with his book The Jesus of the Early Christians in 1971. He is best known as an advocate of the thesis that Jesus is essentially a mythical rather than a historical figure, a theory that was pioneered by German biblical scholars such as theologian/historian Bruno Bauer and philosopher Arthur Drews.
Since the late 1990s, Wells has accepted that the hypothetical Q document, which is proposed as a source used in two of the synoptic gospels, may "contain a core of reminiscences" of an itinerant Galilean miracle-worker/Cynic-sage type preacher.[1] This new stance has been interpreted as Wells changing his position to accept the existence of a historical Jesus.[2] However, Wells has clarified that this Q preacher "is certainly not to be identified with the Jesus of the earliest Christian documents". In his view, the figure of Jesus thus becomes a composite of elements from two different sources.
Wells is a former Chairman of the Rationalist Press Association. He is married and lives in St. Albans, near London. He studied at the University of London and Bern, and holds degrees in German, philosophy, and natural science. He has taught German at London University since 1949, and has been Professor of German at Birkbeck College since 1968.
Work on early Christianity
The importance of exposure to the German scholarship of the 19th and early 20th centuries
G.A. Wells, a graduate student in German literature and culture, was first exposed to the ideas of David Strauss and other German scholars at age 20, while doing academic studies in Switzerland in 1946. As a student in Bern, Wells roomed with the family of a Swiss Protestant clergyman, who was a pupil of Albert Schweitzer, and introduced Wells to the major German thinkers and the subject of the historicity of Jesus.
That introduction, at 20, was the start of six decades of Wells’s original research on the historicity of Jesus.
He learned Greek in order to read firsthand the 27 books of the New Testament ("NT"), and all the source material and the noncanonical apocrypha.
Wells noted that his knowledge of German has been “in many ways more important” than his knowledge of Greek in studying the historicity of the NT. “The best scholarship has been done by the Germans.” [3]
Like the American scholar William B. Smith before him (who was able to write in German as well), Wells was able to connect in the original with the writings of key authors such as Hermann S. Reimarus, Gotthold E. Lessing, F.C. Bauer (founder of the Tübingen School), Ludwig Feuerbach, David Strauss, Bruno Bauer, William Wrede, Julius Wellhausen, the members of the Dutch Radical School (when translated into German), Albert Kalthoff, Albert Schweitzer, Arthur Drews, Rudolf Bultmann. A few key books have been translated into English, but a large area of German scholarship remains inaccessible to most English-language scholars. Many of them have relied on Wells's presentations in his books.
The Jesus of the Early Christians, the fundament of Wells's thesis
Wells made his entrance in the field of Christian origins with The Jesus of the Early Christians (1971), at age 45, focusing on the pre-Gospel Christians, when they still were a Jewish sect, struggling for a loosening of the harsh dictates of the Torah's "Law", and not yet known by their future name.
Wells “spent the best part of ten years off and on” researching this first book.
He spent 3 years searching for a publisher. Finally Pemberton, the publishing arm of the British Rationalist Press Ass. accepted the book for publication. Later on Wells became the president of the organization.
The Jesus of the Early Christians sold out very quickly, a 3,000 run, now out of print. It is the fundamental text of Wells's study on the formation of the Jesus figure.
It was complemented by two additional studies, Did Jesus exist? (1975), at age 49, and
Historical Evidence for Jesus (1982), concluding, at age 56, his basic review of the original figure of Jesus. Those three books constitute the core of Wells's scholarship on Jesus and the origins of Christianity.
The silence on the details of Jesus's life in 17 earliest Christian documents
Wells suggested that the earliest extant Christian documents from the first century, most notably the New Testament epistles by Paul and some other writers, show no familiarity with the Gospel figure of Jesus as a preacher and miracle-worker who lived and died in the recent decades. Rather, they present him "as a basically supernatural personage only obscurely on Earth as a man at some unspecified period in the past". [1] This earliest Christian literature includes 17 documents from 9 independent authors. [4]
[A]dditionally to the [7] genuine Paulines [ Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon ] three post-Paulines ascribed to Paul (2 Thessalonians, Colossians and Ephesians) and also the epistle to the Hebrews, the epistle of James, the 1 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John and the book of Revelation.
If Paul alone had written as he did of Jesus, one might just possibly be able to attribute this to some personal idiosyncracy; but a consistent silence by numerous independent authors [a total of 9] about matters which, had they known of them, they could not but have regarded as relevant to their purposes, cannot be so explained. It is perverse when critics ascribe to me the view that my whole reconstruction of Christian origins depends on the silence of one writer -- Paul. [1]
The Jesus of the Early Christians is mythical
Wells believed that the Jesus of these earliest Christians was not based on a historical character, but a pure myth.
Moreover, it is not just that the early documents are silent about so much of Jesus that came to be recorded in the gospels, but that they view him in a substantially different way -- as a basically supernatural personage only obscurely on Earth as a man at some unspecified period in the past, 'emptied' then of all his supernatural attributes (Phil. 2:7), and certainly not a worker of prodigious miracles which made him famous throughout 'all Syria' (Mt. 4:24). [1]
This mythical figure of Jesus derived from mystical speculations based on the Hebrew Wisdom figure. According to Wells, the Gospels composition was a later stage of the development of the Jesus myth, which was given a historical setting and a figure subsequently embellished with ever increasing details.
The cleavage between early and late Christian documents
Wells contrasts the silence of early Christian documents with later, 2d-century documents which show familiarity with details of Jesus's life similar to those of the Gospels. Wells cites a large group of 21 later documents from about 13 authors, of the first half of the 2d century (ca. 100-150 AD). [1] They include:
- Within the canon, the Pastoral epistles (1 Timothy and 2 Timothy, and Titus), dated ca. 110 AD; 2 Peter, dated 120 AD;
- Outside the canon, the Didache (or The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles), a short manual on morals and church practice; the 7 epistles of Ignatius; the epistle of Barnabas; the epistle of Polycarp (to the Philippians); 1 Clement and 2 Clement of Rome; the apocryphal Epistle of the Apostles; the Apology of Aristides; the surviving fragment of Quadratus' Apology; and the First Apology and Second Apology of Justin Martyr.
In the late canonical epistles, Wells does not include in his list the Epistle of Jude. Deemed dependent on 2 Peter, this very short epistle (only 25 verses) contributes little for purposes of demonstrating distinct authorship. Although dated ca. 110-120, it contains very little material related to the biography of the Gospels, and devotes more space on references to the archangel Michael and the book of Enoch. Similarly, a late 2d-century document such as the epistle to Diognetus continues to ignore the biography of Jesus, showing "a residual persistence of older Christological thinking". [1]
The 21 2d-century documents cited by Wells "refer to Jesus in a way quite unknown in the earlier documents" and point to a "cleavage between the earliest Christian documents and the gospels". This is Wells's basic argument. "[U]ntil this distinction is accepted as fundamental, there will be no adequate understanding of Christian origins." [1] Although the discordance between Paul's Christ and the Gospels' Jesus was recognized early in the 20th century, theologians have not yet made room in their scholarship to "face up to the implications of this fundamental cleavage", and remain fixated on the priority of the Gospels with their "medley of incompatibles doctrines". (The Jesus Myth, 1999).
The illusion of the priority of the Gospels' story
“The first point I make is to say it would be quite wrong to start by looking at the Gospel portraits of Jesus, because they are not the earliest documents. Paul is the earliest extant Christian writer, but there is a substantial body of earlier writers, not only Paul, included in the NT canon. This fact is not generally appreciated. Only in the last hundred years or so, have scholars deduced that the Gospels were written at a later date than a good many of the epistles...The picture we have of Jesus in the Gospels as a preacher of ethical ideas and as a worker of miracles is not in any way confirmed by the earliest literature. The earliest Christians did not think of Jesus this way at all.” [3]
Wells developed this argument in Did Jesus Exist? (1975) and even more fully in his third book, The Historical Evidence for Jesus (1982), where he analyzes what historical evidence can be derived from the contents of the NT. He stresses that Christian believers find the Gospels printed first in their Bibles, and the epistles printed after the gospels. Hence readers proceed from the "supposition that their authors were acquainted with what is said of Jesus in the Gospels" (The Jesus Myth, 1999), when in fact these gospels did not exist when the earliest epistles were composed. This inversion in the Bible of the factual chronological order has contributed to the nearly universal, Church-induced, conviction that the figure of Jesus is primarily defined by the Gospels' story, and that its historicity is an unquestionable axiom of Christian dogma.
Reviving the old thesis of non-historicity of Jesus
This historicity of Jesus has never been seriously questioned by the immense majority of theologians, except for the small group of "Jesus deniers" who made Die Frage der Historizität Jesu (the question of Jesus's historicity) a favorite topic for scholarly discussion, with hundreds of books and articles published in German, English and French in the 1850-1940 period. [5]
[6] This was the golden age of the debate of "historicists" versus "non-historicists", or "deniers of Jesus's historicity". None of those scholars ever used the term "mythicists", popularized in the early 1940s by journalists/historians A.D. [Arthur Denner] Howell Smith and Archibald Robertson. [7]
Even when the real order is acknowledged — early epistles predating the Gospels by one or two generations — the counterclaim is that Paul and the other writers must have known the stories later incorporated in the Gospels (circulating in what are supposed to be traditions).
But that is what Wells disputes: “When you find all these writers, independent of each other, fail to confirm the later layer of tradition in the gospels, then one must be very suspicious.” [3]
Evaluating the so-called Christian "evidences".
Wells's purpose is "to increase the pool of knowledge and understanding about the so-called Christian 'evidences' " [3].
In 1985, Wells felt he had covered the subject and didn’t plan to publish a fourth book. His conclusion in 1985: "Jesus: ‘There Was No Such Person’". He was thus described by Freethought Today:
"At 58, dignified and professorial, Wells epitomizes objectivity and rationality... What continually amazes him, he says, is that the Christian community, as well as the average clergyperson, tend to be about a century behind the times of serious Christian scholarship. For instance, the legendary character of the “Virgin Birth” was exposed as early as the 1830s by German theologian D.F. Strauss, whose views were widely accepted by his peers and subsequent generations of Christian scholars. Yet, even in 1946, people were talking as if this were history, not legend.” [3]
The following books were refinements, discussion of points raised by critics, and the peculiar plight of modern apologists, including Religious Postures (1988), Who Was Jesus? (1989), and Belief and Make-Believe (1991).
Allowance for a Galilean miracle worker/cynic-sage type preacher
In the 90s, Wells has made an important addition, presented in his books The Jesus Legend (1996) and The Jesus Myth (1999). Wells now allows for the possibility that the central figure of the Gospel stories may be based on a historical character from first-century Galilee:
"[T]he Galilean and the Cynic elements ... may contain a core of reminiscences of an itinerant Cynic-type Galilean preacher (who, however, is certainly not to be identified with the Jesus of the earliest Christian documents)."[1]
The "words" and memories of this preacher may have been preserved in the Q source that is hypothesized as the source of many "Sayings" of Jesus found in both gospels of Matthew and Luke. However, Wells concludes that the reconstruction of this historical figure from the extant literature would be a hopeless task.
No real turnaround: Fusion of two sources of the Jesus figure in Mark
The updated position taken by Wells has been interpreted by other scholars as an "about-face", abandoning his initial thesis in favor of accepting the existence of a historical Jesus.[2] However, Wells insists that this figure of late first-century Gospel stories is distinct from the sacrificial Christ myth of Paul's epistles and other early Christian documents, and that these two figures have different sources before being fused in Mark. Following the scholarship of Arthur Drews in The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus (1912), Wells argues that
[T]he Jesus of Paul was constructed largely from musing and reflecting on a supernatural 'Wisdom' figure, amply documented in the earlier Jewish literature, who sought an abode on Earth, but was there rejected, rather than from information concerning a recently deceased historical individual. [1]
Paul's Jesus did visit earth, preached, and was rejected, in some indistinct past
Wells clearly specifies that Paul's Jesus has at some point, made a visit to earth before his rejection.
I am certainly not among those who suppose that Paul says nothing at all about a human Jesus, or that he viewed him as a "mythic diety" who "performed his saving works ... in the heavenly realm" (p. 201). On the contrary, I have repeatedly stated that, for Paul, this pre-existent supernatural personage was incarnated as a descendent of David (Romans 1:3), was born of a woman under Jewish law (Gal. 4:4) and ministered to the Jews (Rom. 15:8) prior to his crucifixion on Earth. (Cutting Jesus Down to Size, 2009, p. 328)
Reception
Co-author R. Joseph Hoffmann has called Wells "the most articulate contemporary defender of the non-historicity thesis...Wells argues a 'persistent,' even a nagging, thesis, marked by unusual clarity and consistency."[8] In his Introduction to the re-edition of Maurice Goguel's Jesus the Nazarene: Myth or History? (2006, 1st ed. 1925), Hoffmann mentions the three fundamental texts of Wells's scholarship:
In addition to the following books by the most visible contemporary champion of the myth theory, the British scholar G. A. Wells, a number of older studies can be recommended. Of Wells’s many titles The Jesus of the Early Christians (1971) is the most tightly argued; Did Jesus Exist? (1986) [1st ed. 1975] is also worth reading, as is The Historical Evidence for Jesus (1988) [1st ed.1982]. A “disciple” of Wells, Earl Doherty, has rehashed many of the former’s views in The Jesus Puzzle (Age of Reason Publications, 2005) which is qualitatively and academically far inferior to anything so far written on the subject.
Wells' claim of a mythical Jesus has received support from Earl Doherty [9], Robert M. Price [10], and others. [11] The classical historian R. E. Witt, reviewing The Jesus of the Early Christians in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, offered some criticisms but concluded that "Hellenists should welcome the appearance of this challenging book."[12] While Wells's conclusions have been criticized by biblical scholars and ecclesiastical historians such as W. H. C. Frend, [13] and Robert E. Van Voorst. [14] After reviewing criticisms from several authors, atheist philosopher Michael Martin said that although "Wells's thesis is controversial and not widely accepted," his "argument against the historicity of Jesus is sound".[15]
Books
German intellectual history
His major works in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German language thought and letters are
- Herder and After: A Study in the Development of Sociology (Gravenhage, Mouton, 1959)
- The Plays of Grillparzer (Pergamon Press, 1969) ISBN 0-08-012950-1
- Goethe and the Development of Science, 1750-1900 (Sijthoff & Noordhoff, 1978) ISBN 90-286-0538-X
- The Origin of Language: Aspects of the Discussion from Condillac to Wundt. (Open Court Publishing Company, 1987) ISBN 0-8126-9029-X
Early Christianity
- The Jesus of the Early Christians, (Pemberton, 1971) ISBN 0-301-71014-7
- Did Jesus Exist? (Prometheus Books, 1975; second edition 1986) ISBN 0-87975-086-3 (first edition), ISBN 0-87975-395-1 (second edition)
- The Historical Evidence for Jesus (Prometheus Books, 1982) ISBN 0-87975-180-0
- Religious Postures: Essays on Modern Christian Apologists and Religious Problems (Open Court, 1988) ISBN 0-8126-9070-2
- Who Was Jesus? A Critique of the New Testament Record (Open Court, 1989) ISBN 0-8126-9096-6
- Belief and Make-Believe: Critical Reflections on the Sources of Credulity (Open Court, 1991) ISBN 0-8126-9188-1
- What's in a Name? Reflections on Language, Magic and Religion (Open Court, 1993) ISBN 0-8126-9239-X
- The Jesus Legend (foreword by R. Joseph Hoffmann) (Open Court, 1996) ISBN 0-8126-9334-5
- The Jesus Myth (Open Court, 1999) ISBN 0-8126-9392-2
- Can We Trust the New Testament?: Thoughts on the Reliability of Early Christian Testimony (Open Court, 2004) ISBN 0-8126-9567-4
- Cutting Jesus Down to Size: What Higher Criticism Has Achieved and Where It Leaves Christianity (Open Court, 2009) ISBN 0-8126-9656-5
Editor
- Ronald (F.R.H.) Englefield, Language, Its origins & Relation to Thought, (Pemberton, 1977)
- Ronald (F.R.H.) Englefield, The Mind at Work & Play, (Prometheus, 1985)
- G.A. Wells Editor, J.M. Robertson, Liberal, Rationalist & Scholar, (Pemberton, 1987)
- Ronald (F.R.H.) Englefield, Critique of Pure Verbiage, Essays on Abuses of Language in Literary, Religious, & Philosophical Writings, (Open Court, 1990)
- David Friedrich Strauss, The Old Faith & the New, (Prometheus, 1997) [1st ed. 1872]
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Wells, G. A. (1999). "Earliest Christianity". The New Humanist. 114 (3): 13–18.
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ignored (help) - ^ a b Van Voorst, Robert E (2003). "Nonexistence Hypothesis". In Houlden, James Leslie (ed.). Jesus in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p. 660. ISBN 1-57607-856-6.
- ^ a b c d e Freethought Today, April/May 1985 : An Interview With Professor Wells - Jesus: "There Was No Such Person"
- ^ The total of the nine different pre-Gospel authors, invoked by Wells in his fundamental argument, assumes that each of the three post-Pauline epistles came from a different writer, and the three John epistles do come from the same pen.
- ^ Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, (1906), in 20 chapters (Transl. W. Montgomery, 1910, London. A new translation is based on the 9th German edition (1984) in 25 chapters, (2001, Fortress Press). Ch. XI, "The First Skeptical Life of Jesus", is on Bruno Bauer.
To respond to Drews's thesis in the Christ Myth I (1909) and Christ Myth II (1912, transl. The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus), Schweitzer added two new chapters in the 2d edition of 1913.
Ch. 22, "The New Denial of the Historicity of Jesus" (Die Neueste Bestreitung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu) analyzes Drews's thesis, plus eight supporting authors: J. M. Robertson, Peter Jensen, Andrew Niemojewski, Christian Paul Fuhrmann, W.B. Smith, Thomas Whittaker, G.J.P.J. Bolland, Samuel Lublinski.
Ch. 23, "The Debate About the Historicity of Jesus" (Die Diskussion über die Geschichtlichkeit Jesu), reviews the publications, mostly critical and negative, of 40 theologians/scholars in response to the theories of Drews and his support team in the Feb. 1910 public debate in Berlin, all labeled as Bestreiter ("challengers') and Verneiner ("deniers") — a group including the Dutch Radicals, J. M. Robertson, W. B. Smith and Drews. - ^ Arthur Drews, The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus in Past and Present — Klaus Schilling's summary in English. Full German original Die Leugnung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, Karlsruhe (1926), published as a pendant and counter response to Albert Schweitzer's Quest of 1906/1913, in the style of a Quest of the non-Historicity of Jesus, presenting a historical review of some 35 major deniers of Jesus historicity (radicals, Jesus deniers) in the 1780 - 1926 period
- ^ The journalistic moniker "mythicism" is convenient, but not as precise as "historicity denial" or the scholarly "non-historicity thesis", emphasizing that this position is in fact a negative Hegelian "antithesis" which can emerge only as a response, by opposition to the positive "thesis", "advocacy of historicity", which comes first. Other coinages have been used, "non-historicists", "ahistoricists", "existence deniers", etc. Although Drews was intellectually on the other side of the controversy from Albert Schweitzer, Hoffers notes that Drews "was temporarily a friend of Albert Schweitzer, the famous theologian and physician".
- ^ R. Joseph Hoffmann's foreword in The Jesus Legend, xii, 1996
- ^ Earl Doherty (1999): "Book and Article Reviews, The Case of the Jesus Myth: Jesus — One Hundred Years Before Christ by Alvar Ellegard" (1999), retrieved Jan 15, 2009
- ^ Price, Robert (1999/2000). ""Of Myth and Men A closer look at the originators of the major religions-what did they really say and do?"". Free Inquiry. 20 (1). Retrieved 2007-11-17.
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ignored (help) - ^ Flemming, Brain (2005). ""No god in the details"". 120 (4). The New Humanist. Retrieved 2007-11-17.
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ignored (help) - ^ R. E. Witt, "Reviewed Work: The Jesus of the Early Christians by G. A. Wells" The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 92 (1972), pp. 223-225.
- ^ Frend, W. H. C. (1972). "Review of The Jesus of the Early Christians. by G. A. Wells". The English Historical Review. 87 (343): 345–348.
Though Professor Wells has written a shrewd, challenging and entertaining book, his case fails.
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ignored (help) - ^ Van Voorst, Robert E. (2000). Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 14. ISBN 0-8028-4368-9.
- ^ Martin, Michael (1991). The Case Against Christianity. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. p. 67. ISBN 0-87722-767-5.
External links
- G.A. Wells, Earliest Christianity (1999, Secular Web)
- G.A. Wells, Reply to Rev. Dr. Gregory S. Neal, (Feb. 2000, Secular Web)
- G.A. Wells, Reply to J. P. Holding's "Shattering" of My Views (2000, Secular Web)
- G.A. Wells, A Resurrection Debate: The New Testament Evidence in Evangelical and in Critical Perspective (Revised ed., 2000, Secular Web)
- Jesus - History or Myth?. Online debate about Wells's ideas supported by David H. Lewis, “Escaping the gravitational pull of the gospels”, and his "Reply to William Loader, (Australian Broadcasting Corp., Religion & Ethics, Dec. 2005)
- G.A. Wells, Ehrman on the Historicity of Jesus and on Early Christian Thinking (Radikalkritik), excerpts from review of Bart Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist?, (Free Inquiry, June/July 2012 Vol. 32, No. 4).