Search for the Historical Jesus

Many assume, and some triumphantly boast, that the scholarship of the past 150 years has gutted the New Testament gospels and their story of Jesus. And no wonder: Popular articles and documentaries appear every year — often at Christmas and Easter — suggesting that Christian belief rests more on mythology, even on flat-out historical fabrication, than on genuine history. Moreover, a small but noisy movement, mostly among atheists and agnostics on the Internet and mostly disdained by scholars in relevant disciplines, now confidently declares that Jesus himself never existed at all — not even as a merely mortal Jewish teacher or peasant reformer. (See my previous column titled "The evidence for Jesus is early and powerful.")