[Per writings earlier than Mark] the object of Christian faith [Jesus] is never spoken of as a human man who had recently lived, taught, performed mi… - Earl Doherty

" "

[Per writings earlier than Mark] the object of Christian faith [Jesus] is never spoken of as a human man who had recently lived, taught, performed miracles, suffered and died at the hands of human authorities, or rose from a tomb outside Jerusalem. There is no sign in the epistles of Mary or Joseph, Judas or John the Baptist, no birth story, teaching or appointment of apostles by Jesus, no mention of holy places or sites of Jesus’ career, not even the hill of Calvary or the empty tomb. This silence is so pervasive and so perplexing that attempted explanations for it have proven inadequate.

English
Collect this quote

About Earl Doherty

Earl J. Doherty (born 1941) 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.

Go Premium

Support Quotewise while enjoying an ad-free experience and premium features.

View Plans

Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.

Additional quotes by Earl Doherty

[In the Gospels] many elements of the Jesus story [depend] on passages and motifs from the Jewish scriptures. [...] John Shelby Spong (in his Liberating the Gospels) regards the Synoptic Gospels as midrashic fiction in virtually every detail, though he believes it was based on an historical man.

Unlimited Quote Collections

Organize your favorite quotes without limits. Create themed collections for every occasion with Premium.

[The Epistle to the Hebrews chapter 8, verse 4] contains a grammatically ambiguous statement in the Greek: it says either that “If Jesus were on earth [meaning now], he would not be a priest” or “If Jesus had been on earth, he would not have been a priest.” [...] What my analysis does is show that, within the context of the passage and through deductive reasoning, the present sense, allotting the statement to the present time, cannot be supported; in fact, it can be shown that the author can only be applying it to the past.

Loading...