Doherty

We now come to the final point. Here is point 12 from the Jesus Puzzle:

12) Well into the second century, many Christian documents lack or reject the notion of a human man as an element of their faith. Only gradually did the Jesus of Nazareth portrayed in the Gospels come to be accepted as historical.

We come now to point 11 of the Jesus Puzzle.

Here it is:

11) The initial variety of sects and beliefs about a spiritual Christ shows that the movement began as a multiplicity of largely independent and spontaneous developments based on the religious trends and philosophy of the time, not as a response to a single individual.

Evaluation:

We now turn to point 10 and the source Q, a source that many NT scholars see as behind the teaching that overlaps between Matthew and Luke, where some 200 and 225 verses in these two gospels run in a similar manner and with the view that these two writers did not use each other.

Now we come to Point 8 of Doherty's work:

8) All The Gospels derive their basic story of Jesus of Nazareth from one source: whoever wrote the Gospel of Mark. The Acts of the Apostles, as an account of the beginnings of the Christian apostolic movement, is a second century piece of myth-making.

Evaluation:

Just back from speaking at the Religious Newswriters in San Antonio, who were great hosts.

We pick up with point 7. Here it is:

Point 5 of The Jesus Puzzle discusses the influence of Platonism on Paul. Here is point 5:

In many ways we have already discussed point 3 in many of the comments on earlier posts. Here is point 3 stated:

We come now to the second point of the Jesus Puzzle. It is:

2) There is no non-Christian record of Jesus before the second century. References in Flavius Josephus (end of first century) can be dismissed as later Christian insertions.