1 It is not the case that none does, as is often claimed or implied. See, for example, Carlston, C. E., ‘Prologue’, Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research (ed. Chilton, B. and Evans, C. A.; Leiden: Brill, 1998) 1–8, at 3Google Scholar; Byrskog, S., ‘The Historicity of Jesus: How Do We Know That Jesus Existed?’, Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus (ed. Holmén, T. and Porter, S. E.; 4 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 2010) iii.2183–2212, at 2183Google Scholar.

2 Van Voorst, R. E., Jesus outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000) 6Google Scholar. See e.g. Meier, J. P., A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1991) 87Google Scholar.

3 Wells, G. A., ‘The Historicity of Jesus’, Jesus in History and Myth (ed. Hoffmann, R. J. and Larue, G. A.; Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1986) 27–45, at 27Google Scholar.

4 Barna Group, Talking Jesus: Perceptions of Jesus, Christians and Evangelism in England (Ventura, CA: Barna Group, 2015) 5, 9Google Scholar.

5 Van Voorst, Jesus outside the New Testament, 14.

6 See Wells, G. A., The Jesus of the Early Christians (London: Pemberton, 1971)Google Scholar; idem, Did Jesus Exist? (London: Pemberton, 1975)Google Scholar; idem, The Historical Evidence for Jesus (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1982)Google Scholar; idem, ‘The Historicity of Jesus’; idem, The Jesus Legend (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1996)Google Scholar; idem, Cutting Jesus Down to Size: What Higher Criticism Has Achieved and Where It Leaves Christianity (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2009)Google Scholar; idem, ‘Is There Independent Confirmation of What the Gospels Say of Jesus?’, Free Inquiry 31 (2011) 19–25Google Scholar.

7 See Ehrman, B. D., Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2012) 19Google Scholar.

8 See, for example, Brodie, T. L., The Gospel according to John: A Literary and Theological Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

9 Price, R. M., Deconstructing Jesus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2000)Google Scholar; idem, Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable is the Gospel Tradition? (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2003)Google Scholar; idem, ‘Jesus at the Vanishing Point’, The Historical Jesus: Five Views (ed. Beilby, J. and Eddy, P. R.; London: SPCK, 2010) 55–83Google Scholar; idem, The Christ-Myth Theory and its Problems (Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2011)Google Scholar. Brodie, T. L., Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2012)Google Scholar.

10 Carrier, R., ‘Thallus and the Darkness at Christ's Death’, Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism 8 (2011) 185–91Google Scholar; idem, Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2012)Google Scholar; idem, ‘Origen, Eusebius, and the Accidental Interpolation in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.200’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 20 (2012) 489–514CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘The Prospect of a Christian Interpolation in Tacitus, Annals 15.44’, VC 68 (2014) 264–83; idem, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2014)Google Scholar.

11 Harpur, T., The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light (Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2004)Google Scholar; idem, Water into Wine: An Empowering Vision of the Gospels (Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2007)Google Scholar. Harpur held his post at Wycliffe College, Toronto, from 1964 to 1971.

12 Hoffmann, R. J., ed., Sources of Jesus Tradition: Separating History from Myth (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2010)Google Scholar; Thompson, T. L. and Verenna, T. S., eds., ‘Is This Not the Carpenter?’ The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus (London: Equinox, 2012)Google Scholar. Thomas Thompson, a Hebrew Bible scholar, has also written a volume arguing against the historicity of Jesus. See Thompson, T. L., The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David (New York: Basic Books, 2005)Google Scholar.

13 For comprehensive responses, see Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? and Casey, M., Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths? (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014)Google Scholar. For Price, see Beilby, J. and Eddy, P. R., eds., The Historical Jesus: Five Views (London: SPCK, 2010) 84–103Google Scholar. For Brodie, see Freyne, S., ‘Closing the Door Too Early’, Doctrine and Life 63 (2013) 4–8Google Scholar; Murphy-O'Connor, J., ‘Understanding the World of the Ancients’, Doctrine and Life 63 (2013) 9–15Google Scholar; Norton, G. R., ‘A Question of Methodology?’, Doctrine and Life 63 (2013) 16–24Google Scholar; Corley, J., ‘Review Article: Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus. Memoir of a Discovery’, Irish Theological Quarterly 79 (2014) 177–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Harpur, see Porter, S. E. and Bedard, S. J., Unmasking the Pagan Christ: An Evangelical Response to the Cosmic Christ Idea (Toronto: Clements, 2006)Google Scholar. For Carrier, see especially Gullotta, D. N., ‘On Richard Carrier's Doubts’, Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 15 (2017) 310–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a critique of one of the key arguments of those denying historicity, see Gathercole, S. J., ‘The Historical and Human Existence of Jesus in Paul's Letters’, Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 16 (2018) 183–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Brief references to the debate can also be found in some other works, e.g. Hengel, M. and Schwemer, A. M., Jesus und das Judentum (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007) 180, 206Google Scholar.

14 Porter and Bedard, Unmasking the Pagan Christ.

15 Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 5, see also 71, 333; Casey, Jesus: Evidence and Argument, 3, see also 36–41, 203.

16 E.g. Albert Schweitzer's complaint that the scholarship of Albert Kalthoff, a leading mythicist of the early twentieth century, produced controversy that was ‘wearisome and unproductive’. Schweitzer, A., The Quest of the Historical Jesus: First Complete Edition (Philadelphia: Fortress, 2001) 283Google Scholar.

17 Bauer, B., Kritik der Evangelien und Geschichte ihres Ursprungs (3 vols.; Berlin: Gustav Hempel, 1850–1)Google Scholar.

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19 Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 2.

20 Stanton, G., The Gospels and Jesus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002 ²) 144Google Scholar.

21 Carrier does, however, see Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 8.4 as providing a ‘hint’ that some sectarian Christians may have doubted Jesus' historicity. See Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, 350.

22 As Maurice Goguel rightly noted, ‘the question discussed by the Docetists was not whether there had lived a man in the time of Pilate named Jesus, who acted, suffered and died, but the problem was to determine the nature of His manifestation’ (Goguel, M., Jesus the Nazarene: Myth or History? (London: T. F. Unwin, 1926) 90Google Scholar). The literature on docetism is extensive but see Verheyden, J. et al. , eds., Docetism in the Early Church: The Quest for an Elusive Phenomenon (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 See n. 13.

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27 Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 124–42, 355–436.

28 Wood, Did Christ Really Live?

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30 Van Voorst, Jesus outside the New Testament, 6–17; idem., ‘Non-Existence Hypothesis’, Jesus in History, Culture and Thought: An Encyclopedia (ed. Houlden, J. L.; 2 vols.; Oxford: ABC-Clio, 2003) i.658–60Google Scholar.

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32 Acharya, S, The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold (Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited, 1999)Google Scholar; idem, Who Was Jesus? (Seattle, WA: Stellar House Publishing, 2007)Google Scholar; idem, Christ in Egypt (Seattle, WA: Stellar House Publishing, 2009)Google Scholar; idem, Was There a Historical Jesus of Nazareth? (Seattle, WA: Stellar House Publishing, 2014)Google Scholar. Acharya S. was the pen name of Dorothy Milne Murdock.

33 Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 30.

34 E.g. Wells, ‘The Historicity of Jesus’, 27.

35 Some have also changed their thinking. There are, for example, considerable differences between subsequent editions of Drews, A., Die Christusmythe (Jena: E. Diederichs, 1909)Google Scholar. See also Wells, Cutting Jesus, 329.

36 What follows is indebted to the useful summary found in Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 30–4.

37 The key non-Christian witnesses to Jesus’ historicity that are the subject of debate are: Josephus, Ant. 18.63–4, 20.200–1; Suetonius, Claud. 25.4; Tacitus, Ann. 15.44.2–4; Pliny the Younger, Ep. 10.96; Lucian, Peregr. 11, 13. See R. E. Van Voorst, ‘Jesus Tradition in Classical and Jewish Writings’, Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, ed. Holmén and Porter, iii.2149–80.

38 Although this may not be strictly necessary. See Noll, K. L., ‘Investigating Earliest Christianity Without Jesus’, ‘Is This Not the Carpenter?’ The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus (ed. Thompson, T. L. and Verenna, T. S.; London: Equinox, 2012) 233–66Google Scholar.

39 Harpur, The Pagan Christ; Freke, T. and Gandy, P., The Jesus Mysteries: Was the Original Jesus A Pagan God? (London: Thorsons, 2000 ²)Google Scholar; Acharya S, The Christ Conspiracy.

40 Brodie, Beyond the Quest, 185.

41 E.g. Atwill, J., Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus (Berkeley: Ulysses, 2005)Google Scholar.

42 E.g. Brodie, Beyond the Quest, 185.

43 Edwin Johnson was a professor of Classical Literature at New College, London. His initial, relatively sober, critique of early Christianity, Antiqua Mater: A Study of Christian Origins (London: Trübner, 1887)Google Scholar, advocated the non-existence of Jesus, but was followed by other, more adventurous works, including The Pauline Epistles: Re-Studied and Explained (London: Watts & Co., 1896)Google Scholar, a book that dated the Pauline epistles and the gospels to the 1500s.

44 Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, 52–3.

45 It is important to note that this label is not one that is necessarily accepted by proponents of this position. Price, for example, has argued that he would prefer the position to be called ‘New Testament Minimalism’, stressing, as he sees it, the continuity with an approach found in the Hebrew Bible scholarship of Thomas L. Thompson, Philip L. Davies and others. See Price, R. M., ‘Introduction: Surprised by Myth’, Bart Ehrman and the Quest of the Historical Jesus of Nazareth (ed. Zindler, F. R. and Price, R. M.; Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2013) xvii–xxxv, at xviiGoogle Scholar.

46 Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 3. See, for example, Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, 4.

47 There are exceptions. Harpur, for example, does dedicate a chapter in The Pagan Christ to the term (15–26). However, his understanding of myth is indebted to that of Joseph Campbell, whose work is popular but problematic. See Segal, R. A., ‘Joseph Campbell's Theory of Myth: An Essay Review of his Oeuvre’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 46 (1978) 97–114Google Scholar.

48 Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 3.

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51 See, for example, Callender, D. E., ed., Myth and Scripture: Contemporary Perspectives on Religion, Language, and Imagination (Atlanta: SBL, 2014)Google Scholar. It is perhaps all the more surprising given how significant debates about myth have been in the study of the New Testament, most famously provoked by Rudolf Bultmann's project of demythologisation (Bultmann, R., New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (ed. Ogden, S. M.; London: SCM, 1985)Google Scholar) or, more recently, Mack, B., A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1988)Google Scholar; idem, The Christian Myth: Origins, Logic and Legacy (London: Continuum, 2001)Google Scholar.

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56 Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 14–19; Casey, Jesus: Evidence and Argument, 10–41; Van Voorst, Jesus outside the New Testament, 6–17; Weaver, The Historical Jesus, 45–71.

57 Case, The Historicity of Jesus, 32–61; Drews, A., Die Leugnung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Karlsruhe: G. Braun, 1926)Google Scholar; Goguel, Jesus the Nazarene, 1–28; Robertson, A., Jesus: Myth or History? (London: Watts & Co., 1946) 41–92Google Scholar; Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 124–42, 355–436; Wood, Did Christ Really Live?, 18–28. It is important to note the importance of the second German edition of Schweitzer's work in this respect. See Paget, J. Carleton, ‘Albert Schweitzer's Second Edition of The Quest of the Historical Jesus’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 88 (2006) 3–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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60 Smith, W. B., Der vorchristliche Jesus (Giessen: Töpelmann, 1906)Google Scholar; idem, Ecce Deus.

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67 Massey published widely but his views on the historical Jesus can be seen in Massey, G., The Natural Genesis (2 vols.; London: Williams and Norgate, 1883) ii.378–503Google Scholar; idem, The Historical Jesus and Mythical Christ (Glasgow: Hay Nisbet & Co., 1887)Google Scholar.

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69 There are some surprising omissions in most accounts. The work of Robert Taylor is usually ignored as is that of John Allegro, the Dead Sea Scrolls scholar. See Taylor, R., The Diegesis: Being a Discovery of the Origin, Evidences, and Early History of Christianity (London: R. Carlile and J. Brooks, 1829)Google Scholar; Allegro, J. M., The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross: A Study of the Nature and Origins of Christianity within the Fertility Cults of the Ancient Near East (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1970)Google Scholar.

70 Van Voorst, Jesus outside the New Testament, 13.

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74 Goguel, Jesus the Nazarene, 53.

75 Brodie, Beyond the Quest, 117.

76 See Jones, F. S., ed., The Rediscovery of Jewish Christianity (Atlanta: SBL, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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78 Stillingfleet, E., A Letter to a Deist, in Answer to Several Objections against the Truth and Authority of the Scriptures (London: W. G., 1677) 53–4Google Scholar.

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81 Berkeley, Alciphron, 13.

82 Gibbon, E., The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. i (London: Strahan and Cadell, 1776) 309 n. 63Google Scholar. A similar intent is evident, for example, in Blount, C., The Two First Books of Philostratus concerning the Life of Apollonius Tyaneus (London: Nathaniel Thompson, 1680)Google Scholar.

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86 Herrick, ‘Blasphemy in the Eighteenth Century’, 106. Later deists would be more blunt: Jesus ‘did not even exist as a man, he is merely an imaginary or allegorical character, as Apollo, Hercules, Jupiter and all the deities of antiquity were’ (Paine, T., Examination of the Passages in the New Testament (New York: Thomas Paine, 1807) 48Google Scholar).

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88 Wright, N. T., ‘Jesus’ Self-Understanding’, The Incarnation (ed. Davis, S. T., Kendall, D. and O'Collins, G.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) 47–61, at 48CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Bultmann, R., Jesus and the Word (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958 ²) 13Google Scholar.

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98 E.g. Casey, Jesus: Evidence and Argument, 43–59.

99 Carrier, R. C., Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2012)Google Scholar. See also Lataster, R., ‘Questioning the Plausibility of Jesus Ahistoricity Theories: A Brief Pseudo-Bayesian Metacritique of the Sources’, Intermountain West Journal of Religious Studies 6 (2015) 63–96Google Scholar.

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101 E.g. Lataster, R. and Carrier, R., Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate among Atheists (Scotts Valley, CA: Raphael C. Lataster, 2015)Google Scholar.

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103 Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 6–7.

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108 See the remarks of Casey, Jesus: Evidence and Argument, 9 concerning Doherty, E., Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus (n.p.: Age of Reason Publications, 2009 ²Google Scholar).

109 E.g. Byrskog, ‘The Historicity of Jesus', 2183 n. 1; Powell, Jesus as a Figure in History, 251.

110 Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, 21.

111 See Casey, Jesus: Evidence and Argument, 4–5.

112 Brodie's religious order has now prohibited him from writing anything further. See Treacy, B., ‘Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Official Dominican Response to a Controversial Book’, Doctrine and Life 64 (2014) 2–4Google Scholar.

113 Weaver, The Historical Jesus, 71.

114 Earlier versions of this paper were delivered at seminars in the universities of Cambridge, Durham and Stockholm, as well as at the British New Testament Conference. I would like to thank participants for their constructive feedback and encouragement.