Earl Doherty

“The epistles attribute no teachings, no miracles, no appointment of apostles, no biographical details to the Christ Jesus they talk about. They focus entirely on the believer’s relationship to the heavenly Son and on his redeeming sacrificial death and rising. The latter are never placed in an historical earthly setting.”
― Earl Doherty, Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus

“One of the impediments to an acceptance of the myth theory is the apparent incredibility of the proposition that faith in Paul's Jesus the Son (and by extension, the Gospel Jesus) could have arisen with no historical basis. But we have to realize how much the educated ancient Jew lived within his holy books, as did many of those gentiles who attached themselves to Judaism. The Jewish scriptures offered a universe in themselves, in which the avid scholar and prophet could move and breathe. He governed his life by the writings. Like the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, he could construct whole philosophies from elements of scripture, aided at times by mystical experiences. [...] God's plan had to reside in scripture, for that was how he communicated with the world. All it needed was the right key, the right inspiration through the Spirit to unlock that coded information. [...] Paul's conviction that the Spirit was guiding him as he sought meaning from the sacred texts guaranteed that he would get the message he was looking for.”
― Earl Doherty, Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case For A Mythical Jesus