Gnosticism is a collection of religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) above the proto-orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority of religious institutions.
A dying-and-rising god, life–death–rebirth deity, or resurrection deity is a religious motif in which a god or goddess dies and is resurrected. Examples of gods who die and later return to life are most often cited from the religions of the ancient Near East. The traditions influenced by them include the Greco-Roman mythology. The concept of a dying-and-rising god was first proposed in comparative mythology by James Frazer's seminal The Golden Bough (1890). Frazer associated the motif with fertility rites surrounding the yearly cycle of vegetation. Frazer cited the examples of Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis and Attis, Zagreus, Dionysus, and Jesus.
Dionysus-Osiris, alternatively Osiris-Dionysus, is a deity arising from the syncretism of the Egyptian god Osiris and the Greek god Dionysus.
George Albert Wells was an English scholar who served as 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.
Earl J. Doherty is a Canadian author of The Jesus Puzzle (1999), Challenging the Verdict (2001), and Jesus: Neither God Nor Man (2009). Doherty argues for a version of the Christ myth theory, the thesis that Jesus did not exist as a historical figure. Doherty says that Paul thought of Jesus as a spiritual being executed in a spiritual realm.
A Bible conspiracy theory is any conspiracy theory that posits that much of what is believed about the Bible is a deception created to suppress a secret or ancient truth. Some such theories claim that Jesus really had a wife and children, or that a group such as the Priory of Sion has secret information about the true descendants of Jesus; some claim that there was a secret movement to censor books that truly belonged in the Bible, etc.
Marcionism was an early Christian dualistic belief system that originated with the teachings of Marcion of Sinope in Rome around 144 AD. Marcion was an early Christian theologian, evangelist, and an important figure in early Christianity. He was the son of a bishop of Sinope in Pontus. About the middle of the 2nd century (140–155) he traveled to Rome, where he joined the Syrian Gnostic Cerdo.
The Christ myth theory, also known as the Jesus myth theory, Jesus mythicism, or the Jesus ahistoricity theory, is the view that the story of Jesus is a work of mythology with no historical substance. Alternatively, in terms given by Bart Ehrman paraphrasing Earl Doherty, it is the view that "the historical Jesus did not exist. Or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity."
The study of Jesus in comparative mythology is the examination of the narratives of the life of Jesus in the Christian gospels, traditions and theology, as they relate to Christianity and other religions. Although the vast majority of New Testament scholars and historians of the ancient Near East agree that Jesus existed as a historical figure, most secular historians also agree that the gospels contain large quantities of ahistorical legendary details mixed in with historical information about Jesus's life. The Synoptic Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke are heavily shaped by Jewish tradition, with the Gospel of Matthew deliberately portraying Jesus as a "new Moses". Although it is highly unlikely that the authors of the Synoptic Gospels directly based any of their accounts on pagan mythology, it is possible that they may have subtly shaped their accounts of Jesus's healing miracles to resemble familiar Greek stories about miracles associated with Asclepius, the god of healing and medicine. The birth narratives of Matthew and Luke are usually seen by secular historians as legends designed to fulfill Jewish expectations about the Messiah.
Criticism of the Bible refers to a variety of criticisms of the Bible, the collection of religious texts held to be sacred by Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and other Abrahamic religions. Criticisms of the Bible often concern the text’s factual accuracy, moral tenability, and supposed inerrancy claimed by biblical literalists. There remain questions of biblical authorship and what material to include in the biblical canon.
Bart Denton Ehrman is an agnostic New Testament scholar focusing on textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He has written and edited 30 books, including three college textbooks. He has also authored six New York Times bestsellers. He is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Richard Cevantis Carrier is an American ancient historian. He is a long-time contributor to skeptical websites, including The Secular Web and Freethought Blogs. Carrier has published a number of books and articles on philosophy and religion in classical antiquity, discussing the development of early Christianity from a skeptical viewpoint, and concerning religion and morality in the modern world. He has publicly debated a number of scholars on the historical basis of the Bible and Christianity. He is a prominent advocate of the theory that Jesus did not exist, which he has argued in a number of his works. However, Carrier's methodology and conclusions in this field have proven controversial and unconvincing to most ancient historians, and he and his theories are often identified as fringe.
Robert McNair Price is an American New Testament scholar who argues in favor of the Christ myth theory – the claim that a historical Jesus did not exist. Price is the author of a number of books on biblical studies and the historicity of Jesus.
The term proto-orthodox Christianity or proto-orthodoxy describes the early Christian movement that was the precursor of Christian orthodoxy. Older literature often referred to the group as "early Catholic" in the sense that their views were the closest to those of the more organized Catholic Church of the 4th and 5th centuries. The term "proto-orthodox" was coined by Bentley Layton, a scholar of Gnosticism and a Coptologist at Yale, but is often attributed to New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman, who has popularized the term by using it in books for a non-academic audience. Ehrman argues that when this group became prominent by the end of the third century, it "stifled its opposition, it claimed that its views had always been the majority position and that its rivals were, and always had been, 'heretics', who willfully 'chose' to reject the 'true belief'."
Traditionally in Christianity, orthodoxy and heresy have been viewed in relation to the "orthodoxy" as an authentic lineage of tradition. Other forms of Christianity were viewed as deviant streams of thought and therefore "heterodox", or heretical. This view was challenged by the publication of Walter Bauer's Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum in 1934. Bauer endeavored to rethink Early Christianity historically, independent from the views of the current church. He stated that the 2nd-century church was very diverse and included many "heretical" groups that had an equal claim to apostolic tradition. Bauer interpreted the struggle between the orthodox and heterodox to be the "mainstream" Church of Rome struggling to attain dominance. He presented Edessa and Egypt as places where the "orthodoxy" of Rome had little influence during the 2nd century. As he saw it, the theological thought of the "Orient" at the time would later be labeled "heresy". The response by modern scholars has been mixed. Some scholars clearly support Bauer's conclusions and others express concerns about his "attacking [of] orthodox sources with inquisitional zeal and exploiting to a nearly absurd extent the argument from silence." However, modern scholars have critiqued and updated Bauer's model.
The Christ Myth, first published in 1909, was a book by Arthur Drews on the Christ myth theory. Drews (1865–1935), along with Bruno Bauer (1809–1882) and Albert Kalthoff (1850–1906), is one of the three German pioneers of the denial of the existence of a historical Jesus.
Die Leugnung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart was a 1926 book in German by Arthur Drews on Christ myth theory.
Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth is a 2012 book by Bart D. Ehrman, a scholar of the New Testament. In this book, written to counter the idea that there was never such a person as Jesus of Nazareth at all, Ehrman sets out to demonstrate the historical evidence for Jesus' existence, and he aims to state why all experts in the area agree that "whatever else you may think about Jesus, he certainly did exist."
The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light is a 2004 non-fiction book by Canadian writer Tom Harpur (1929–2017), a former Anglican priest, journalist and professor of Greek and New Testament at the University of Toronto, which supports the Christ myth theory. Harpur claims that the New Testament shares a large number of similarities with ancient Egyptian and other pagan religions, that early Church leaders fabricated a literal and human Jesus based on ancient myths and that we should return to an inclusive and universal religion where the spirit of Christ or Christos lives within each of us.
The Lost Gospel: Decoding the Ancient Text that Reveals Jesus' Marriage to Mary the Magdalene is a book published by investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici and Religious Studies historian Barrie Wilson in 2014. It contends that the 6th century manuscript -- by Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor now British Library Add MS 17202 -- commonly referred to as "Joseph and Aseneth" is really a disguised history. The book's assertions are not supported by mainstream Biblical scholarship.
