Earl Doherty is the author of The Jesus Puzzle , a work published in 2000 by the Canadian Humanist Association arguing that Jesus never lived. Doherty argues that Paul and other writers of the earliest extant Christian documents did not believe in Jesus as a person that lived on Earth in a historical setting. Rather, they believed in Jesus as a mythical hero who suffered his sacrificial death in the lower spheres of heaven in the hands of the demon spirits, and was subsequently resurrected by God. This Christ myth was not based on a tradition reaching back to a historical Jesus person, but on the Old Testament exegesis in the context of Jewish-Hellenistic religious syncretism heavily influenced by Platonism, and what the authors believed to be mystical visions of the risen Jesus.

According to Doherty, the Jesus myth was given a historical setting only by the second generation of Christians, somewhere at the turn of the first and second century. Doherty claims that even the author of the Gospel of Mark, which he dates after 90 AD (considerably later than most New Testament scholars), probably did not consider his gospel to be a literal work of history, but an allegorical Midrashic composition based on the Old Testament prophecies. The story of Mark was later fused with a separate tradition of anonymous sayings embodied in the Q document into what became interpreted as the literal history of the life of Jesus. Doherty denies any historical value of the Acts of the Apostles, dismissing it as a late work based of legend.

Doherty has a degree in Ancient History and Classical Languages. He was introduced to the idea of a mythical origin of Jesus while he studied in London under Professor G.A. Wells (1926—), who has authored a number of books arguing a more moderate form of the Christ myth theory. Doherty claims to have used his (admittedly basic) language skills to have studied the original-language versions of the New Testament, and to have come to his views through a critical analysis of these texts in the tradition of historical revisionism.

Doherty currently (2004) lives in Canada and continues to take part in the scholarly discussions of the historicity of Jesus. His theory has raised some interest among the scholars in the field. Doherty's belief that there was no historical Jesus contrasts with the view of Rationalists who thought of Jesus as a real person whose story has only survived in oral traditions told in the language of myth.

External links and references

• Doherty's Web Site
• Review of The Jesus Puzzle by Canadian Humanists
• Another review of TJP
• More articles by Earl Doherty