I attended SBL (Society of Biblical Literature) last weekend, and listened to a talk by Bart Ehrman, the darling of the New Atheist crowd. He said he has a new book coming out in March 2012 (with HarperOne I believe), Did Jesus Exist? on the Jesus-Myth theory. (I also heard that it will be an ebook only.)
Basically he is going to argue that the Jesus-Myth theory–that Jesus never existed and was fictionally cobbled together from myths and legends–is a bunch of bogus nonsense.
There was also a paper presented by Brent Landau (U. Oklahoma), “Jesus Never Existed”: An Intellectual History of the Jesus-Myth Thesis which also debunked the Jesus-Myth. He said that, as far as he is aware, no one has ever presented a paper at SBL advocating the theory. He said it is a pseudo-scholarly fringe movement recently popularized by the New Atheist crowd.
A real disappointment. Ehrman’s scholarly works on New Testament textual development are excellent, and I’ve frequently cited them in classes I’ve taught. His more recent popular writings have, unfortunately, taken a polemic tone and indicates he is on a personal crusade to end Christianity.
Not so fringe as you might think. A forthcoming volume on the question hopes to address the issues within an academic setting for the first time. At the very least, it hopes to reopen it to a broader academic audience. Details:
http://www.equinoxpub.com/equinox/books/showbook.asp?bkid=504&keyword=verenna
Thanks for the update. I look forward to reading it.
I think Ehrman’s main theme in the last decade or so is that the ancient sources available to us will never give us anything like an accurate portrait of the historical Jesus. He has a point, although it’s possible that his rampant atheism may lead him to a somewhat reductionist viewpoint about the value of scripture as source material.