New Testament scholar Victor Paul Furnish wrote the following in the conclusion to his review of a volume featuring mythicist and minimalist scholars’ perspectives on Jesus:
The mythicists, in particular, summarily dismiss prevailing views about Jesus and the Gospels as governed by religious interests; arbitrarily apply paradigms derived from the study of ancient Near Eastern literature and mythology to first-century Christianity; and mistakenly assume that the presence of mythic and legendary elements in the Gospel narratives makes them ipso facto worthless as historical sources. Moreover, most of the contributors take little account of the role of the Christian communities within which the New Testament writings originated, to which they were directed, and for which they provide, unquestionably, firsthand historical evidence. In sum, while several of these essays provide helpful readings of the ancient sources, or raise provocative questions about using them, nothing that is presented or argued here requires abandoning the evidence commonly offered for the historicity of Jesus.
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