THE JESUS PUZZLE

BY EARL DOHERTY (PUBLISHED 1999 BY CANADIAN HUMANIST PUBLICATIONS.  ISBN: 0-968-6014-0-5)  380 pages

Most people who question the historicity of Jesus Christ, while recognizing that there are no contemporary references to anybody of that name, will usually acknowledge that there may have been an obscure person from around that time period who was the basis of the legendary Christ.  While they discount the miraculous and supernatural accounts of his life, they maintain that there probably was someone who at least resembled the human Christ character of the New Testament, a cult figure who may have been one of many who wandered around the Middle East, preaching an end-time, apocalyptic religion.

This hypothesis has been seriously challenged in Earl Doherty’s monumental book The Jesus Puzzle.  Doherty maintains that the traditional view of Christian origins is historically erroneous.  This view states that there were many splinter groups that formed shortly after the alleged crucifixion.  However, Doherty’s thesis is that Christianity could not have started with a historical Jesus and a small group of followers, simply because the Judaism of that time was hopelessly divided into many differing sects.

In laying out his thesis, Doherty employs a novel approach: He uses the Bible itself to disprove a historical Jesus.  Doherty takes on a chronological journey through the first century Jewish world, decade by decade, showing two distinct and unrelated strands emerging.  The first of these is seen in the earliest writings in the New Testament, the writings of the apostle Paul, who depicts a non-earthly savior Jesus.  The second strand focuses on Jesus’ alleged life and ministry on earth.

Doherty then points out a seemingly obvious fact: Shouldn’t the two strands have come about in the reverse order?  Certainly, if there were a historical Jesus, the earliest writings in the new Testament would have discussed his earthly ministry, since it would have been fresh on the minds of the people who knew him.  Yet Paul never discusses Jesus as an actual man who lived on earth.  It is only when the gospel of Mark appears, some twenty years later, that an earthly man is mentioned for the first time.  If Christ were, as Doherty maintains, an entirely fictional creation, this becomes understandable; the faith was growing by the time Mark was written (which Doherty dates somewhat later than the traditional date of around 70 CE) and Christians were developing the doctrines we now recognize as representing the essence of Christianity.  Consequently, it was essential for the early believers to place the mythical Jesus in some kind of historical setting.  Presenting Jesus as an actual historical figure became easier as time went on and witnesses from the time period he was said to have lived began dying off.  Doherty’s fascinating thesis serves to explain why the first references to a historical Jesus only begin to emerge after the time of Mark.

The Jesus Puzzle is one book that can change forever how the world views the “historical” Jesus and the origins of the Christian religion.  It also drives the final nail into the coffin of the idea that Christianity is, as its followers have always maintained, based on real history.