It appears that others have received the same e-mail I did. The good news is that mythicists only charge non-mythicists for the chance to win the big bucks. You can win $1,000 with no entry fee if you make the case that Jesus did not exist. So why spend $50 to make a case when there is zero chance you’ll be awarded the prize? Anyone who reads this blog regularly will have seen how mythicists construct their arguments. So I say to all readers: enter the competition for the mythicist prize! Then you literally have nothing to lose except the printing and postage costs.
The runner-up essay in the 2010 contest actually highlights a theme that I’m reading a paper on in SBL in Atlanta in November. The term in the New Testament that many assume means “Nazarene” as in someone from Nazareth is very likely to mean something else, and is probably related to a self-referential term used by the Mandaeans. That essay gets details about Mandaic language and literature wrong, and illustrates well that this isn’t a scholarly competition (if anyone was in any doubt). But the topic itself is an important one, and I’m looking forward to spending time working in this area between now and November.
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