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Author(s): G. A. Wells
Publisher: Open Court
Date: 1998-12-30
Format: pdf
Language: English
ISBN/ASIN: 0812693922
Pages: 350
ISBN13: 9780812693928

Does the New Testament story of Jesus contain any elements of historical truth, or is it pure legend? Professor G.A. Wells is the foremost contemporary exponent of the purely legendary, or "mythicist" view. In The Jesus Myth he presents an up-to-date, radical, and well-reasoned argument, drawing upon his sure grasp of the wide-ranging evidence.
Wells contends that the accounts of Jesus in the four canonical gospels not only contradict each other, but are also not in harmony with the earliest Christian documents, which never present Jesus as an itinerant preacher, a performer of miracles, born of a virgin, associated with Nazareth, or executed under Pilate.
The gospels were composed after A.D. 70 by unknown individuals who could not have been eye-witnesses to the events they describe. All the earliest non-Christian testimony, pagan and Jewish, is dependent upon Christian accounts. The frequently voiced notion that there is independent corroboration of the life of Jesus from "Roman records" or elsewhere is wishful thinking.
The Jesus Myth, which follows Professor Wells's earlier, highly acclaimed work, The Jesus Legend (see page 15), contains a new investigation of the historicity of the gospel miracles, a detailed look at the earliest non-Christian testimony to the existence of Jesus, and a provocative discussion of the New Testament Jesus as an ethical guide. There is also an afterword by the distinguished Christian scholar Roderick Tyler, whose criticisms of Professor Wells's arguments led to the new presentation in The Jesus Myth.