Toto

The Fabrication of the Christ Myth by Harold Leidner is framed as a legal brief for the High Priest Caiaphas against the charge that he convicted and executed an innocent Jesus. As a major part of this defense, Leidner shows that no such person as Jesus of Nazareth can be proved to have existed, and that Christians have appropriated the Jewish scriptures while they invented the passion narrative as a deliberate fraud meant to defame the Jews.

Unlike Doherty, Leidner is not interested in engaging or participating in conventional scholarship. He believes that all New Testament critics, including the liberals, are merely Christian apologists and "missionaries," and refers to New Testament scholarship as a "bogus enterprise" that "creates scenarios and takes over material from the social sciences to give the impression that Christianity has an authentic historical origin." His analysis of the details, however, seems more reasonable and temperate than this would indicate.

Leidner is of Jewish background, and is a very partisan advocate for Hellenistic Jews, including Josephus, Trypho, and the Jew who advised Celsus. He places them in a continuum of anti-Semitism ranging from pre-Christian Romans through Hitler.

Leidner’s thesis is that Christianity started after 70 CE as a reaction to the fall of the Temple, with a mythologized Jesus who was based primarily on Joshua son of Nun, and whose story incorporates many elements from the Septuagint and from Philo. (He traces the entire Passion to a reworking of Philo. He points out that Crossan has already recognized 3 points of similarity between Philo and the Passion Narrative, but a more thorough examination reveals at least 24.)

He departs most from the standard liberal textual interpretation by claiming that Paul’s letters were written after 70 CE, as Paul survived to that time, along with Peter and James. He dates Paul’s letters based on their links to 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, and on analysis indicating that the letters were written after the fall of Jerusalem. His thesis is that Paul was recruited to a missionary sect of Judaism in the Hellenic diaspora around 60 CE, that he worked primarily with gentile converts and near converts, and that his theology was a reaction to the holocaust of the Jewish War. He dates the visit recorded in Galatians to 74 CE. He thus rejects the vague church legends of martyrdom for Peter and Paul (as well as James); he claims that is why Paul is apparently alive at the end of Acts; if there were any material on his martyrdom, the author of Acts would have worked it into the narrative.

Like many others, he rejects Acts as fictional. And once you accept that Acts is fictional, he says correctly, there is no source for early Christian history, and no reason to date Paul's letters to 50 CE. He considers the reference to Jesus in the Testimonium a clear forgery, since it does not fit Josephus’ style and is not referenced by Christians who would have mentioned it if it had been there.

He also rejects the reference to James as a forgery (not just that "the brother of Jesus called the Christ" was added – he believes that the passage describes the stoning of anonymous persons.) His reasons for this appear to be that Paul’s letters indicate that James the Brother of the Lord survived past 70 CE, but he has no literary argument to support that. He is not explicit, but I imagine that he would argue that the burden of proof to show that the reference to James is not interpolated should rest on the Christians, since we have evidence of Christian forgery in Josephus.

Leidner’s style is polemical, which makes for an entertaining read, and he tends to solve some problems by putting the burden of proof on his opponents. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of interesting and valuable material in the book which deserves attention from more mainstream scholars.

The Introduction, Chapter 1, and Epilogue to The Fabrication of the Christ Myth can be read here.

The transcript of an interview with Leidner by Australian radio is here

Vorkosigan

Great review, Toto! Very useful! Another book for the list.

Michael