31. In addition to the following books by the most visible contemporary champion of the myth theory, the British scholar G. A. Wells, a number of older studies can be recommended. Of Wells's many titles, The Jesus of the Early Christians (London: Pemberton, 1971) is the most tightly argued; Did Jesus Exist? (London: Pemberton, 1986) is also worth noting, as is The Historical Evidence for Jesus (Amherst, NY. Prometheus Books, 1988). A "disciple" of Wells, Earl Doherty, has rehashed many of the former's views in The Jesus Puzzle (Age of Reason Publications, 2005), which is qualitatively and academically far inferior to anything so far written on the subject. Of older works worth consulting on the immediate context of Goguel's writing, see: Arthur Drews, Die Leugnung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Karlsruhe, 1926); Bruno Bauer, "Der Abschluss der neutestamentlichen Literatur", in Christus und die Caesaren: Der Ursprung des Christenthums aus dem r6mischen Griechenthum (Berlin, 1879); and G. A. van den Bergh van Eysinga: Hercules-Christus, Godsdienstwetenschappelijke Studien, vol. 1 (1947). There is now a reputable Web site devoted entirely to so-called radical criticism of' the New Testament: http://www.radikalkritik.de/ Klassiker.htm.

The number of scholars holding what became branded the "radical" view of the New Testament, a term that failed to convey sharp differences of opinion among adherents 'of the myth theory, swelled greatly in the late nineteenth and earlier twentieth century

Could Christianity be a Judaic or Jewish-Gnostic recollection of one of these earlier myths? Theorists in the nineteenth century making use of a variety of analogues ranging from pertinent to absurd began to be convinced it could....

6. A positive verdict on the historicity of the gospels would also have to depend on an assessment of the kind of literature a gospel is: the early myth theorists were often more forthright than their theological opponents in this regard, saying that the gospels were examples of first-century religious propaganda, created for the purpose of winning allies for the new movement. One gospel explicitly (John 20.30; 21.25) and one by implication (Luke 1.3-4) serves this purpose. This should raise an alert with regard to any secondary, historical purposes a gospel writer might have had in telling the story of Jesus. But again, that question is ruled out by motive: the only reason for telling the story is to exhort and to persuade ("kerygmatize" is a polite term used by biblical scholars), not to provide evidence. Thus we are thrown back on the principle that the reason for the gospel's existence is to propagate the myth of the redeemer as someone situated in history (thus human) but whose true home was heaven above (divine). Whereas the traditional biblical exegete begins with a Jesus who "becomes" a divinity through flukes of history, biblical interpretation, and (finally) conciliar edict, the myth theorists had wondered since before Schweitzer's Von Reimarus zu Wrede (English translation: The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 19 11)28 why the myth is so pervasive that it yields no purely historical data-no information which is not, in the language of biblical studies, "Christological." Regarded strictly from the standpoint of the literary hypotheses of the nineteenth century, the movement is from Christ to Jesus and not Jesus to Christ,29 and the famous Bultmannian dichotomy reckoned to save theology from its detractors-the distinction between the "Christ of Faith" and the "Jesus of History" disappears.30 The number of scholars holding what became branded the "radical" view of the New Testament, a term that failed to convey sharp differences of opinion among adherents 'of the myth theory, swelled greatly in the late nineteenth and earlier twentieth century31 before it was swept aside by a tide of historical scholarship that seemed to supplant its basic tenets with a succession of "quests" for more detailed information about the Jesus of history as he might be reconstructed from the gospels.32