Earl Doherty--subtitled--Did Christianity begin with a mythical Christ?
Once upon a time, someone wrote a story about a man who was God. We don't know who that someone was, or where he wrote his story. We are not even sure when he wrote it, but we do know that several decades had passed since the supposed events he told of. Later generations gave this storyteller the name of "Mark", but if that was his real name, it was only by coincidence.
Other writers followed after, and they enlarged on the first man's tale. They borrowed much of what he had written, reworked it in their own particular ways and put in some additional material. By the time another half century had passed, almost everyone who followed the religion of these storytellers accepted their work as an account of actual historical events and a real historical man. And so did the people who came afterwards, for close to two thousand years.
About two centuries ago, these "Gospels" began to be subjected to some searching examination. Not only were they found to contradict one another on important matters, it was eventually realized that they had been conceived and put together in ways, and with motivations, which suggested that they were not reliable historical accounts. Their fantastic and uncritical dimensions, such as the miracles and the involvement of God and the supernatural, placed them outside the genre of historical writing as we know it. That process of scholarly examination has continued to this day, with results that have undermined the very foundation of the Christian faith.
