Bill Mounce
For an Informed Love of God
For an Informed Love of God
Would it not be strange if the single most influential person in the history of the world never existed? Yet there are people who affirm that Jesus never lived, that there is no evidence to the contrary, and that any historical reference to Jesus can’t be trusted.
Earl Doherty defines “Jesus mythicism” as “the theory that no historical Jesus worthy of the name existed, 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 lay at the root of the Galilean preaching tradition.” New Testament scholar I. Howard Marshall refers to a Russian encyclopedia written during the days of Communism that reserves one sentence for Jesus containing this phrase: “the mythological founder of Christianity.” All you have to do is google “Jesus never existed” or read the Wikipedia article on the “Christ Myth Theory” to see many more examples.
It’s amazing that this idea is repeated over and over again, despite clear, factual evidence to the contrary.