Earl Doherty

Regarding the mythical origin of Jesus, Doherty was influenced by the work of G. A. Wells, who has authored a number of books arguing a moderate form of the "Christ myth" theory. Doherty's book The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? was published by Canadian Humanist Publications in 1999. His 2001 book Challenging the Verdict is a critique of The Case for Christ, an apologetic work by author Lee Strobel. Following a 2005 re-release of The Jesus Puzzle by his Age of Reason Publications imprint, he revised and expanded the book for the 2009 release Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus. Doherty also published the 2012 book-length rebuttal The End of an Illusion: How Bart Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist?" Has Laid the Case for an Historical Jesus to Rest. Doherty asserts that "Christianity began with a belief in a spiritual, mythical figure, that the Gospels are essentially allegory and fiction, and that no single identifiable person named Jesus lay at the root of the Galilean preaching tradition." Doherty argues in The Jesus Puzzle (2005) and Jesus: Neither God nor Man—The Case for a Mythical Jesus (2009) that Jesus originated as a myth derived from Middle Platonism with some influence from Jewish mysticism, and that belief in a historical Jesus emerged only among Christian communities in the 2nd century. According to Doherty, none of the major Christian apologists before 180 AD, except for Justin and Aristides of Athens, included an account of a historical Jesus in their defenses of Christianity. Instead Doherty suggests that the early Christian writers describe a Christian movement grounded in Platonic philosophy and Hellenistic Judaism, reaching the worship of a monotheistic Jewish god and what he calls a "logos-type Son". Doherty further argues that Theophilus of Antioch (c. 163–182), Athenagoras of Athens (c. 133–190), Tatian the Assyrian (c. 120–180), and Marcus Minucius Felix (writing around 150–270) offer no indication that they believed in a historical figure crucified and resurrected, and that the name Jesus does not appear in any of them.

Among authors sympathetic to the view that Jesus never existed, Doherty's work has received mixed reactions. The Jesus Puzzle has received favorable reviews from fellow mythicists Robert M. Price and Richard Carrier. Frank Zindler, former editor of American Atheist, in a review of The Jesus Puzzle described it as "the most compelling argument against the historical Jesus published in my life-time". George Albert Wells, who now argues a more moderate form of the Christ myth and who rejects Doherty's view that the mythical Jesus of Paul did not also descend to Earth, has nonetheless described The Jesus Puzzle as an "important book". R. Joseph Hoffmann considers that there are "reasons for scholars to hold" the view that Jesus never existed, but considers Doherty "A 'disciple' of Wells" who "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". Doherty has responded that his work owes very little to Wells. Writers who do not necessarily support the hypothesis that Jesus did not exist have found merit in some of Doherty's arguments. Hector Avalos has written that "The Jesus Puzzle outlines a plausible theory for a completely mythical Jesus." Bart Ehrman, an expert on textual criticism of the NT and Early Christianity, has dismissed Jesus, Neither God nor Man as "filled with so many unguarded and undocumented statements and claims, and so many misstatements of fact, that it would take a 2,400-page book to deal with all the problems... Not a single early Christian source supports Doherty's claim that Paul and those before him thought of Jesus as a spiritual, not a human being, who was executed in the spiritual, not the earthly realm." In a book criticizing the Christ myth theory, New Testament scholar Maurice Casey describes Doherty as "perhaps the most influential of all the mythicists", but one who is unable to understand the ancient texts he uses in his arguments.