Did Jesus Exist? (Wells)

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Did Jesus Exist?
Did Jesus Exist (George Albert Wells book).jpg
Author George Albert Wells
Publisher Prometheus Books
Publication date
1975
Media typeHardcover/Paper
Pages256 pages
ISBN 0-87975-395-1
OCLC 137341896

Did Jesus Exist? is a 1975 book written by the modern German language teacher and amateur historian George Albert Wells who speculated on the evidence of Jesus Christ. Wells argues there was no historical evidence of Jesus existing. [1] [2] A revised second edition was published in 1986.

George Albert Wells, usually known as G. A. Wells, was a 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 Bruno Bauer and Arthur Drews.

Contents

Wells has since modified his position, and in 2003 stated that he now disagrees with Robert M. Price on the information about Jesus being "all mythical". [3] Wells now believes that the Jesus of the gospels is obtained by attributing the supernatural traits of the Pauline epistles to the human preacher of Q source. [4]

Robert M. Price American theologian

Robert McNair Price is an American theologian who argues against the existence of a historical Jesus. He taught philosophy and religion at the Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary. He is a professor of biblical criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute, and the author of a number of books on theology and the historicity of Jesus.

Q source hypothetical collection of sayings attributed to Jesus, used as a common source (along with Mark) for Matthew and Luke according to the two-source hypothesis to the synoptic problem

The Q source is a hypothetical written collection of primarily Jesus' sayings (logia). Q is part of the common material found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke but not in the Gospel of Mark. According to this hypothesis, this material was drawn from the early Church's Oral Tradition.

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Reception

Bart Ehrman, in his Did Jesus Exist? (2012) stated: "The best-known mythicist of modern times — at least among the NT scholars who know of any mythicists at all — is George A. Wells...He has written many books and articles advocating a mythicist position, none more incisive than his 1975 book, Did Jesus Exist?. Wells is certainly one who does the hard legwork to make his case: Although an outsider to NT studies, he speaks the lingo of the field and has read deeply in its scholarship. Although most NT scholars will not (or do not) consider his work either convincing or particularly well argued." (p. 19). Wells, 86, provided an answer to these points in an article in Free Inquiry. [5]

See also

Christ myth theory opinion that biblical Jesus was purely fictional

The Christ myth theory is the view that "the story of Jesus is a piece of mythology," possessing no "substantial claims to historical fact." Alternatively, in terms given by Bart Ehrman paraphrasing Earl Doherty, "the historical Jesus did not exist. Or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity."

The historicity of Jesus is the question if Jesus of Nazareth can be regarded as a historical figure. Virtually all New Testament scholars and Near East historians, applying the standard criteria of historical-critical investigation, find that the historicity of Jesus is effectively certain, although they differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the details of his life that have been described in the gospels.

The term historical Jesus refers to attempts to reconstruct the life and teachings of Jesus by critical historical methods, in contrast to Christological definitions and other Christian accounts of Jesus. It also considers the historical and cultural context in which Jesus lived.

References

  1. "Did Jesus Exist?". Prometheus Books . Retrieved 2009-05-13.
  2. Robinson, John (1976). "Review: Did Jesus Exist?". Journal of Theological Studies . Retrieved 2007-10-17.
  3. Can We Trust the New Testament? by George Albert Wells (Nov 26, 2003) ISBN   0812695674 pages 49-50: "In my first books on Jesus, I argued that the gospel Jesus is an entirely mythical expansion of the Jesus of the early epistles. The summary of the argument of The Jesus Legend (1996) and The Jesus Myth (199a) given in this section of the present work makes it clear that I no longer maintain this position", page 50 states that Wells does not agree with Price: "My present standpoint is: this complex is not all post-Pauline (Q, or at any rate parts of it, may well be as early as ca. A.D. 50); and if I am right, against Doherty and Price - it is not all mythical."
  4. Can We Trust the New Testament? by George Albert Wells (Nov 26, 2003) ISBN   0812695674 page 43 states: "In the gospels, the two Jesus figures - the human preacher of Q and the supernatural personage of the early epistles who sojourned briefly on Earth as a man and then, rejected, returned to heaven - have been fused into one. The Galilean preacher of Q has been given a salvific death and resurrection."
  5. G.A. Wells, "Ehrman on the Historicity of Jesus and Early Christian Thinking", Free Inquiry, June–July 2012, p. 58-62. It is a 5-page, 4,100-word answer to Ehrman's book. Excerpts available online Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine , (1,000 words only).