The first of the additional nails that are coming soon is Maurice Casey’s forthcoming book, Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths? I’ve known for some time that Casey had a book in the works addressing mythicist claims directly and in detail, and am delighted that its publication is now imminent, as Jim West and Joseph Hoffmann have both mentioned on their blogs.
The second nail in the coffin is actually a book that aims to support mythicism. Tom Brodie’s book, Jesus Undiscovered? Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus, will offer more of the parallelomania that Brodie is well-known for. As a commenter on a recent post here on this blog put it,
Brodie’s book start[s] to make the mythicist’s case look less tenable. Each new dramatic parallel that is brought forward shows how easy it is to make differing cases, and well, as you say, is parallelomania…
The very fact that some mythicists have been able to claim that the New Testament is entirely based on pagan myths, while others have been able to claim that it is entirely based on stories in Jewish Scripture, shows that people who want to find precursors will do so, and will find diverse and even mutually exclusive ones. So mainstream historical scholars will look forward to Brodie further illustrating this problematic aspect of the alleged case for mythicism.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In