The Jesus Puzzle Quotes

“I decided that to get at the historical Jesus, one should perhaps start by looking at his background: his parents, his family, the places of his birth and life. The Gospels, of course, contained a lot of that stuff, though they didn’t always agree. But one couldn’t prove the validity of the Gospel story by appealing to the Gospel story. But here was the problem I encountered. Using the Muratorian Project Index and my own search of the non-canonical material I had entered, I could find no references to the names of Mary and Joseph, nor to Bethlehem, Nazareth or Galilee, anywhere in the non-Gospel documents of the first century. I decided to look up the name of the man who one might say was the most crucial in Jesus’ life, namely, the man who had tried and executed him: the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. In the epistles, he appeared only in a single passing reference in 1 Timothy 6:13, at my date of 115. Elsewhere, in all the discussions about Christ’s death and crucifixion, he was nowhere to be found. I could not even locate a reference in Paul or any other epistle writer to the fact that Jesus had undergone a trial! Little did Pilate realize when he washed his hands, that he was washing himself out of the wider Christian record for about 80 years!”
― Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus

“—2 Corinthians 5:18— Paul says he’s been given the ministry of reconciling man to God. Didn’t Jesus do that in his ministry? Back in chapter 3—here —Paul says that God has qualified him to be the dispenser of his new covenant, but he doesn’t have a word to say about Jesus dispensing that covenant. And then he goes on to talk about the splendor of God’s work in sending the Spirit to inspire missionaries like himself. But where is the splendor of Jesus’ life and ministry? Wasn’t his work at least as important as Paul’s? Does Paul think God placed greater importance on his work than on Jesus’ work?
“I thought Paul was always talking about how humble he was.”
I pointed to my next passage: 2 Corinthians 6:2. “Well, how’s this for humility? Paul quotes Isaiah: ‘In the time of my favor I heard you, in the day of salvation I helped you.’ This is supposed to be God promising salvation. But when does this promise come to fulfillment? Was it in Jesus’ life and death? No. Paul points to his own ministry and says, ‘I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.’!”
― Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus

“Scholars had generally concluded that in all but the Supper scene, Paul was not quoting sayings of Jesus from his ministry. Rather, he was engaged in a practice common throughout early Christian preaching. Paul and his fellow charismatic missionaries of the Christ were relaying directives and revelations which they believed they had received directly from heaven, through inspiration, through visions and interpreting glossalalia (speaking in tongues), or simply through a study of scripture. [...] Others admitted that Paul had no sense of Jesus as an ethical teacher, but saw himself as the mouthpiece for a Christ in heaven who operated on earth in the present time of faith, through God’s Spirit. The footnote pointed to a couple of passages by way of illustration. One of these was 1 Corinthians 14:36-38: ‘Did the word of God originate with you? Are you the only ones it has reached? If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that what I am writing is also done by the Lord’s word.” [...]
Paul’s world seemed to be one of inspiration and revelation directly from God—and a competitive one at that. Once again, the atmosphere created by the early documents, by the voices of those who had been the heart and soul of the apostolic generation, was curiously out of sync with the picture crafted by the later evangelists.”
― Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus