The Christ Myth


The Christ Myth, first published in 1909, was a book by Arthur Drews on the Christ myth theory. Drews, along with Bruno Bauer and Albert Kalthoff, is one of the three German pioneers of the denial of the existence of a historical Jesus.

History

19th-century historical criticism

Drews emphatically argues that no independent evidence for the historical existence of Jesus has ever been found outside the New Testament writings. He denounces the Romanticism of the liberal cult of Jesus as a violation of historical method, and the naive sentimentalism of historical theology which attributes the formation of Christianity to Jesus's "great personality".
He mentions the key names of historical criticism that emerged in the late 18th century and blossomed in the 19th century in Germany.
Consequences have been dramatic.
Drews uses the new findings of anthropology collected by James Frazer with his descriptions of ancient pagan religions and the concept of dying-and-rising god. Drews also pays extreme attention to the social environment of religious movements, as he sees religion as the expression of the social soul.
Drews argues that the figure of Christ arose as a product of syncretism, a composite of mystical and apocalyptic ideas:
1. A Savior/Redeemer derived from the major prophets of the Old Testament and their images of:
2. The concept of Messiah liberator freeing the Jews in Palestine from Roman occupation and taxation.
3. Mixed with the patterns of Persian and Greco-Roman dying-and-rising godmen — godly heroes, kings, and emperors, whose stories inspired the new anthropological concept of dying and rising gods popularized by Frazer – such as Baal, Melqart, Adonis, Eshmun, Attis, Tammuz, Asclepius, Orpheus, Persephone, Inanna, also known as Ishtar, as well as Ra the Sun god, with its fusion with Osiris, Zalmoxis, Dionysus, and Odin, figuring in mystery cults of the Ancient Near East.

The Jesus Cult and the Mystery Cults

Drews points out the marked similarities of the early Christ cult to the existing and popular mystery cults – a theme already developed by W.B. Smith and J.M. Robertson, and later echoed by Maurice Goguel and reprised by the older brother of G.A. van den Bergh van Eysinga and van Eysinga himself. The rapid diffusion of the Christ religion took place in a population already shaped by and conversant with the sacred features of the mystery cults.

Mithras

The Christ Myth is sprinkled with comparisons between the Mithraic mysteries and the cult of Jesus. Although the god Mithras was not exactly a dying-and-rising god, some similarities are meaningful. Especially the sacramental feast which allowed the initiated to experience a mystical union with the god.
Mithraism, imported from Persia to Rome, spread rapidly through the Roman Empire in the 1st century, and was considered a certain rival to early Christianity. The major images show the god being born from a rock. The central theme is the hunting and killing a bull with lots of blood pouring out. The sun was portrayed as a friend of Mithras, and banquets with him on the hide of the bull. Females played no part in the images or the cult. The cult was popular among soldiers, and was likely spread by them.
Few initiates came from the social elite, until the revival in the mid-4th century. Drews claims that the figure of Jesus seemed more concrete, his story more moving, and it appealed more to women and the underdogs of society. The premature death of Emperor Julian was one of the causes of the Jesus mystery eventually winning over the Mithraic mysteries.

Christianity and the historical personality of Jesus

Drews asserted that everything about the story of Jesus had a mythical character, and that it was therefore not necessary to presuppose that a historical Jesus had ever existed. In fact, Christianity could have developed without Jesus, but not without Paul, and certainly not without Isaiah.
Drews concludes in the last chapter, "The Religious Problem of the Present":
The Christ-faith arose quite independently of any historical personality known to us ;... Jesus was in this sense a product of the religious social soul and was made by Paul, with the required amount of reinterpretation and reconstruction, the chief interest of those communities founded by him. The historical Jesus is not earlier but later than Paul; and as such he has always existed merely as an idea, as a pious fiction in the minds of members of the community...the Gospels are the derivatives...for the propaganda of the Church, and being without any claim to historical significance... is a group-religion...the connection of the religious community..., a religion of the individual, a principle of personal salvation, would have been an offense and an absurdity to the whole of ancient Christendom.

''Christ Myth II – the witnesses to the historicity of Jesus'' (1912)

Critique of circular historical theology

Arthur Drews published a second part to his book, Die Christusmythe II: "Die Zeugnisse für die Geschichtlichkeit Jesu", to answer objections of scholars and critically examine the historical method of theologians. Joseph McCabe, who started life as a Roman Catholic priest, produced a translation of Christ Myth II as The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus, published both in London and Chicago.

Historicity of Jesus

The preface of this classic book states: "The question of the historicity of Jesus is a purely historical question to be settled with the resources of historical research."
In Ch. 3, "The Methods of Historical Criticism" of Part IV, "The Witness of the Gospels", Drews denounces the unscientific methodology principles of theological history which have been used in Schweitzer's The Quest for the Historical Jesus, the new theological vogue since David Strauss, and resulted in a long string of Lives of Jesus. Drews criticizes historical theology as not respecting the rules of non-Christian historical method, and giving way to "sentimental intuitions" and "basic circularity" of argumentation, where the existence of Jesus is presupposed, but not evidenced by outside sources. He takes as example the case of Johannes Weiss.
ritics are convinced of the historicity of the gospels a priori, before investigating the subject... to seek the "historical nucleus" in tradition...How is it that Weinel knows the of Jesus so well before beginning his inquiry that he thinks he can determine by this test what is spurious in tradition and what is not?...The gospels, it seems, are to be understood from "the soul of Jesus", not from the soul of their authors!..Johannes Weiss... acknowledges that in all his inquiries he starts with the assumption that the gospel story in general has an historical root, that it has grown out of the soil of the life of Jesus, goes back to eye-witnesses of his life, and comes so near to him that we may count upon historical reminiscences...There is a further principle, that all that seems possible... may at once be set down as actual... all theological constructions of the life of Jesus are based... the historicity of which is supposed to have been proved by showing that they are possible... Johannes Weiss is a master in... way of interpreting the miracles of Jesus... If any one ventures to differ from him, Weiss bitterly retorts: "Any man who says that these religious ideas and emotions are inconceivable had better keep his hand off matters of religious history; he has no equipment to deal with them" ... Weiss's Das älteste Evangelium...he tries to prove that... Mark is merely incorporating an already existing tradition. "Not without certain assumptions", he admits, "do we set about the inquiry..."

Drews, like Schweitzer in his Quest, focuses mostly on German liberal theologians, while mentioning Ernest Renan only en passant. He completely ignores Baron d'Holbach, the first to publish a critical Life of Jesus, with his Ecce Homo! .

The Jewish witnesses

The Epistles of Paul, and doubts about their authenticity: . Their lost text was reconstituted by Adolf von Harnack in Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God, 1921]
The leader of the Tübingen School of theology, Ferdinand Christian Baur, in Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi, had established as genuine the four chief Pauline Epistles — Romans, Galatians, First Corinthians and Second Corinthians — and that Paul in the Acts was different from the Paul of the Epistles.
Drews stresses that in the Germany of the 1900s, the genuineness of those four chief "Paulinae" "is so firmly held by that any doubt about it is at once rejected by them as not to be taken seriously." This fear didn't stop from doubts the likes of:
  • Bruno Bauer, the first to declare all Paul's epistles to be 2nd-century forgeries;
  • the English radicals Edwin Johnson, John M. Robertson, Thomas Whittaker;
  • the Dutch radicals G.J.P.J. Bolland, Willem C. Van Manen REVINCEBAT IV
"nstead of doing so, uses the most complicated arguments from the Scriptures and the most determined dialectic, when he might have acted so much more simply." Why not, for example, in "in order to convince Peter that he is wrong in avoiding the tables of the Gentiles?".
Theologians have a ready-made "psychological" excuse to explain Paul's silence on Jesus' life: The epistles are occasional papers that never have reason to speak expressly about Jesus, as if everything about Jesus had already been communicated orally, and did not need to be repeated in the letters. Even when "hese letters, swarming with dogmatic discussions of the most subtle character", remarks Drews. It's one more excuse that theologians invent to conceal a major difficulty. Paul's Christ does not point to the Jesus of the Gospels.
's depiction of the Crucifixion with 3 nails, no ropes, and a hypopodium'' standing support, c. 1545.

The witness of the Gospels

This important part IV covers a complete text criticism and historical criticism of Gospel scholarship in 1912, in 14 chapters:

The Suffering Servant of God in Isaiah 53

The book emphasized the role played in the formation of the figure of Jesus by the Old Testament character of The Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53, Jeremiah, Job, Zechariah, Ezechiel, etc. especially as presented in the Greek version of the Septuagint. tells the story of the human scapegoat who, on God's will, is turned into an innocent lamb offered for sacrifice:

3 He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;... 4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7... yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter... 8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away;... stricken for the transgression of my people? 9 And they made his grave with the wicked... although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him... when his soul makes an offering for guilt... 11...by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. 12...because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.

In ch. 7, "The Mythic-Symbolic Interpretation of the Gospels", Drews writes: – DS DS MS mean Deus, Deus meus, first words in Latin Vulgate
The mythic-symbolic interpretation of the gospels sees in Isaiah 53 the germ-cell of the story of Jesus, the starting-point of all that is related of him, the solid nucleus round which all the rest has crystallised. The prophet deals with the Servant of Jahveh, who voluntarily submits to suffering in order to expiate the sin and guilt of the people.

The Suffering Victim of Psalm 22

Isaiah 53 is seconded by the Suffering Victim in crucial Psalm 22, especially its lines: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? ; They hurl insults, shaking their heads. ; They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.. Other psalms present passages supporting the figure of the Suffering Servant of Yahweh

The righteous as personification of wisdom, his persecution and death

Drews also underlines the contribution of the character of the Just or the Righteous in the Book of Wisdom, and Sirach.
Drews adds:
According to Deuteronomy, there was no more shameful death than to hang on a tree ; so that this naturally occurred as the true manner of the just one's death. Then the particular motive of the death was furnished by the passage in Wisdom and the idea of Plato. He died as a victim of the unjust, the godless.
No one will question that the figure of Jesus in the gospels has a certain nucleus, about which all the rest has gradually crystallised. But that this nucleus is an historical personality, and not Isaiah's Servant of God, the Just of Wisdom, and the Sufferer of the 22d Psalm, is merely to beg the question; and this is the less justified since all the really important features of the gospel life of Jesus owe their origin partly to the myth, partly to the expansion and application of certain passages in the prophets.

...There is not in the centre of Christianity one particular historical human being, but the idea of man, of the suffering, struggling, humiliated, but victoriously emerging from all his humiliations, servant of God, symbolically represented in the actions and experiences of a particular historical person.

Features of dying-and-rising God

In Chapter 13, Drews emphasizes the mystery cult character of early Christian ecstatic reverence:

Reception

Germany

Drews managed an intense advertising campaign in Germany with lectures, articles, interviews. It caused considerable controversy. His work proved popular enough that prominent theologians and historians addressed his arguments in several leading journals of religion. In response, Drews took part in a series of public debates, which often became emotionally charged.
Drews led a militant campaign for his book, supported by the National Association of Free Religion Societies, and The National Association of Monists. which organized a huge debate on Jan 31 and Feb 1, 1910 in the Berlin Zoological Garden between monists and liberal theologians including Baron von Soden of the Berlin University. Attended by 2,000 people, including the country's most eminent theologians, the meetings went on until three in the morning. The New York Times called it "one of the most remarkable theological discussions" since the days of Martin Luther, reporting that Drews's supporters caused a sensation by plastering the town's billboards with posters asking, Did Jesus Christ ever live? According to the newspaper his arguments were so graphic that several women had to be carried from the hall screaming hysterically, while one woman stood on a chair and invited God to strike him down.
On Feb 20, 1910, a counter confrontation took place in the Bush Circus. The following year, on March 12, 1911 another follow-up debate was organized. In 1912, S. J. Case noted that within the last decade, doubts about Jesus existence had been advanced in several quarters, but nowhere so insistently as in Germany where the skeptical movement had become a regular propaganda, "Its foremost champion is Arthur Drews, professor of philosophy in Karlsruhe Technical High School. Since the appearance of his Christusmythe in 1909 the subject has been kept before the public by means of debates held in various places, particularly at some important university centers such as Jena, Marburg, Giessen, Leipzig, Berlin."

United States

Drews's international popularity was confirmed by the New York Times's critical review of his Christ Myth book on March 26, 1911, "A German's Christ Myth: Prof. Arthur Drews Carries the Higher Criticism to the Point of Absurdity". The anonymous reviewer recites the current objections addressed to Drews's Christ Myth book. He lists the general criticisms addressed by theologians, denouncing
...the pseudo-scientific vagaries... in a style redolent of the professorial chair of a German pedant... characteristics...are derived from Jewish ideals floating in the air at the time...This mythical personage was transformed into a demigod by St. Paul...virtually the creator of Christianity. His main grounds for disbelief in the existence of Jesus are the absence of any contemporary references to him except in the Gospels – a rather large exception, one would think. Passages of Josephus, Tacitus and Pliny are explained away as being late, or interpolated, or applying to the myth rather than to the person...

Dr. Drews proceeds ruthlessly to remove even this kernel and leaves virtually nothing in its place except a mass of floating ideas and ideals...concentrated around a non-existent personality...

denies the originality of the sayings attributed to Jesus, and considers them tainted with other-worldliness... is an argument in favor of...Monism...known as Pantheism...It is, however, just the sort of presentment which attracts the half-baked mind that cannot judge of historic evidence.

Russia

Drews's Christ Myth was to find an unpredictable reception in Russia, as his ideas reached the new Soviet Union leadership at the end of a very circuitous route – as a distant repercussion of the philosophy of Hegel and the reactions of his students, notably the relationship between Bruno Bauer and his young student, Karl Marx.
At the end of World War I, back on the social front, the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin had become the successor of Marx and Engels' socialism/communism, formulating his own Russian version of Marxism-Leninism of communism and atheism. Once the Bolsheviks gained power in the Soviet Union, Marxist–Leninist atheism became de facto the official doctrine of the state, under the leadership of Lenin, the Soviet leader from 1917 until his death.
Lenin was particularly receptive to the ideas of Bruno Bauer, a former friend and ally of Karl Marx when both were Young Hegelians. According to Zvi Rosen, in Bruno Bauer and Karl Marx, Lenin was eager to use Bruno Bauer's attacks on Christianity as agitprop against the bourgeoisie, as updated by Arthur Drews. He accepted Drews's thesis that Jesus had never existed as anti-Christian propaganda.
Lenin argued that it was imperative in the struggle against religious obscurantists to adopt revolutionary ideas like those of Drews, and demolish the icons of bourgeois society. Several editions of Drews's The Christ Myth were published in the Soviet Union from the early 1920s onwards, and his arguments were included in school and university textbooks. Public meetings debating Did Christ live? were organized, during which party operatives debated with clergymen.
However, this acceptance of his ideas in Moscow and the Soviet Union did not save Drews, a believer, from Lenin's attacks, for being a "reactionary, openly helping the exploiters to replace old and rotten prejudices with new, still more disgusting and base prejudices".
At home, the diffusion of his book in the USSR had no impact on Drews's modest life as a teacher in Karlsruhe and were of no use to improving his social lot.

Influence on Couchoud and G.A. Wells

In a different development to the West, Arthur Drews became influential on the formation of the "Jesus existence denial" theories of Paul-Louis Couchoud and G. A. Wells. Fluent in German, they had followed the huge academic controversy over the Christ Myth, and were able to read all of Drews's work in the original German. They both accepted and adapted Drews's main ideas. Drews had finally found some followers abroad, both in France and England. Wells, for instance, saw Jesus as a personification of Wisdom, which had appeared on earth in some indefinite time past. William B. Smith in the US, who also could read German fluently, remained a very close ally and a kindred soul.
In the same manner that Schweitzer is a seminal reference for historicists, Drews is a basic reference for the denial of Jesus historicity. Arthur Drews left his mark on practically the whole development of the Christ Myth thesis, which followed him.

Professional theologians

In Christ Myth II, Drews describes the cultural commotion:
Now the whole Press is engaged against the disturber of the peace...Opposing lectures and Protestant meetings are organised, and J. Weiss publicly declares that the author of the book has no right to be taken seriously. But among his fellows, within the four walls of the lecture-hall, and in the printed version of his lectures, Weiss assures his readers that he has taken the matter 'very seriously', and speaks of the fateful hour through which our science is passing.

Most significant theologian scholars immediately felt the need to take up the challenge and entered the debate sparked off by Drews's Christ Myth about the Historicity of Jesus. Most of the responses world-wide by theologians were violently negative and critical.
But Drews had some quality supporters, like the famous Orientalist Peter Jensen. Coincidentally, M. M. Mangasarian also published in 1909 The Truth About Jesus, Is He A Myth?. In 1912, William Benjamin Smith published Ecce Deus: Studies of Primitive Christianity,.

Albert Schweitzer

To discuss Drews's thesis, Albert Schweitzer added two new chapters in the 1913 second edition of his Quest of the Historical Jesus.
Ch. 22,, "The New Denial of the Historicity of Jesus" analyzes Drews's thesis, plus eight writers in support of Drews's thesis about the non-existence of Jesus: J. M. Robertson, Peter Jensen, Andrzej Niemojewski, Christian Paul Fuhrmann, W.B. Smith, Thomas Whittaker, G.J.P.J. Bolland, Samuel Lublinski. Three of them favor mythic-astral explanations.
Ch. 23, "The Debate About the Historicity of Jesus", reviews the publications of 40 theologians/scholars in response to Drews, and mentions the participants in the Feb. 1910 public debate. Most of the publications are critical and negative. Schweitzer continues his systematic exposure of the problems and difficulties in the theories of the Bestreiter and Verneiner — the Dutch Radicals, J. M. Robertson, W. B. Smith and Drews – and the authenticity of Paul's epistles and Paul's historicity as well.

The ''Christ Myth'' theological debate, in 1909–1913 and 1914–1927, tabulated by Peter De Mey

Peter De Mey, a professor of Systematic Theology at the Catholic Un. of Leuven, in a comprehensive paper "On Rereading the Christ Myth Theological Debate", cited and tabulated refutations from academic theologians in Germany, Britain, the United States, and France. De Mey offers a list of 87 books and articles: 83 publications in 1909–1927, plus 4 isolated odd ones. A near-unanimity of the responses cited by De Mey are opposed to Drews's conclusions, with some variations.
Thomas Whittaker, William B. Smith, Arthur Drews, Paul-Louis Couchoud, L. Gordon Rylands, Edouard Dujardin.

"Mythicism"

In their books, A.D. Howell Smith and Archibald Robertson popularized the use of mythicist, and mythicism. Both were adopted as a convenient shorthand for the "denial of Jesus existence", or the "thesis of non-historicity".
For Drews, Jesus historicity is the thesis, always affirmed and demonstrated first, while Jesus historicity denial was the antithesis in a Hegelian sense, always coming in second position, after the positive thesis. Same thing with Schweitzer, who, in the rebuttals in the 2d edition of the Quest, only speaks of Bestreiter der Geschichtlikchkeit Jesu, or Verneiner i.e. challengers, or deniers of the historicity of Jesus. Jesus has to be phenomenologically defined, before his existence can be denied.
Theologians claim that mythicism is a positive assertion, with the historicist only putting up a defense against the mythicists. For instance, Hoffmann decries Ehrman's book as "entirely inadequate as a defense".
In fact, historicists exhibit vastly different constructions of the historical Jesus — to the point of creating a "mess". Schweitzer never attacks an abstract anonymous doctrine. As a historian, he always addresses the arguments of specific scholars and writers, from the platform of his own personal arguments, avoids weasel expressions and specifically "names names".

"Jesus Historicists" vs "Historicity Deniers"

World War II put a stop to the public debate initially set off by Arthur Drews, until George Albert Wells, a professor of German at Un. of London, reignited it in the 70s with a series of books directly influenced by his readings of Bruno Bauer, Kalthoff and Drews in their original German.
A whole series of scholars have re-opened the debate by publishing major refutations of Drews's Christ Myth thesis, including Ian Wilson, R.T. France, Morton Smith, Graham N. Stanton, Robert Van Voorst, James Beilby and Paul R. Eddy, R. Joseph Hoffmann.
Various conferences have been held in the US and Europe, notably by the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, and the Center for Inquiry CFI, with scholars from both sides, such as Robert M. Price making contributions.
Major committees have been formed for communal examinations of the topics of historicity versus non-historicity, including:
With the spread of the Internet, the old theological controversy that was raging 100 years ago has percolated down to the public forum and known a recrudescence, with a "upsurge" of the non-existence thesis. Both academic and independent scholars have ridden the new boom with publications all aimed at discussing the Christ Myth thesis and its aftermath, including major works by Robert M. Price, Bart D. Ehrman, Richard Carrier, Thomas L. Thompson and Thomas Verenna, and Maurice Casey.

R. Joseph Hoffmann

is a historian of Early Christianity. Educated by Catholic nuns, he has remained a sentimental defender of the Church, a vocal advocate of Jesus' historicity, and a standard-bearer in the campaign against Arthur Drews's non-historicity thesis. He participated in the Jesus Seminar and the aborted Jesus Project. Hoffmann also runs an Internet blog, the New Oxonian. Hoffmann is well known for his witty, highly erudite and often acerbic style, and his penchant for complicated and extreme declarations. In May 2012, Hoffmann presented the defined as yet another round on the popular theme of "Consultation on the Historical Jesus". An introductory manifesto for the new group has been outlined in "Controversy, Mythicism, and the Historical Jesus" of May 22, 2012.
When listing the major refutations of the Christ Myth thesis, Hoffmann notes that the "important studies" are the five works by S. J. Case, F. C. Conybeare, Maurice Goguel, R. T. France, and Morton Smith. Hoffmann omits from that list many historically significant refutations such as Albert Schweitzer's critique of the Christ Myth in the added chapters 22 & 23 of the second edition of the Quest, or Robert Van Voorst's work.
Hoffmann has systematically used the New Oxonian for striking rhetorical blows at Drews's non-historical thesis. He does not hesitate to impute to Drews "a kind of proto-Nazi paganism".

yth-theorists have normally held that the gospel writers... wrote fraudulent or consciously deceptive tales... The elimination of James as a "prop" for the historical Jesus has been a priority of the myth theorizers... insupportable contention... amous for his academic inexactness and sensationalism...with the glaring mistake...Despite the energy of the myth school...It remains a quaint, curious, interesting but finally unimpressive assessment of the evidence... an agenda-driven "waste of time"... a quicksand of denial and half-cooked conspiracy theories that take skepticism and suspicion to a new low. Like all failed hypotheses, it arrives at its premise by intuition, cherry picks its evidence... defends its "conclusions" by force majeure... a dogma in search of footnotes... its most ardent supporters... have been amateurs or dabblers in New Testament studies... least equipped by training or inclination... manically disorientated, a kind of proto-Nazi paganism... Drews is significant largely because he created the flashpoints to which many mythicists return again and again...

Hoffmann has declared that the non-historicity thesis should no longer be ignored, but must be confronted head-on: "I have often made the claim that it has been largely theological interests since Strauss’s time that ruled the historicity question out of court." . Meaning that academics have ignored the Christ Myth thesis because of university expectations in favor of the historicity of Jesus.
Hoffmann can cite all the cases of PhDs unable to get a meaningful academic job. Not only David Strauss, but also Bruno Bauer was terminated as a professor at an early age. Arthur Drews, Paul-Louis Couchoud, George Albert Wells, Alvar Ellegard, retained their academic positions only because they were independent from a religious studies department. Thomas L. Thompson could not obtain an appointment in the US and found acceptance in Copenhagen. Gerd Lüdemann was not removed from the University of Göttingen but demoted to a non-credit course in ancient history and literature. Richard Carrier has embarked on a free-lance historian career. Not only Germany, but also the US both produce a surfeit of educated PhDs for the small number of professorships available. "Toeing the line" becomes vital for tenure. Years of study in the best universities do not guarantee prospects of a full career as an academic. Acceptance by future colleagues and chairmen of departments becomes a make-or-break condition.
Hoffmann has mentioned that Bart D. Ehrman's book, Did Jesus Exist?, is "exceptionally disappointing and not an adequate rejoinder to the routinely absurd ideas of the Jesus-deniers. For that reason... I have had to abandon my indifference and get back into the fight—on the side of the son of man.". Hoffmann has announced a major book, intended to become the master refutation of the Christ Myth thesis, in order to block the increase of its popularity, and to safeguard the integrity of New Testament studies

This essay is in part an attempt to clarify procedural issues relevant to what is sometimes called the "Christ-myth" or "Non-historicity" thesis—an argumentative approach to the New Testament based on the theory that the historical Jesus of Nazareth did not exist...The failure of scholars to take the "question of Jesus" seriously has resulted in a slight increase in the popularity of the non-historicity thesis, a popularity that—in my view—now threatens to distract biblical studies from the serious business of illuminating the causes, context and development of early Christianity...It is a preface of sorts to a more ambitious project on the myth theory itself and what we can reliably know–if anything—about the historical Jesus.

Many more similar books are in the works by academic and independent scholars, all capitalizing on the new wave of interest – a vogue similar to that of a 100 years ago. Major publishers are jumping in the bandwagon, welcoming the renewed discussion of Drews's Christ Myth thesis and the expanding public debate on Jesus' historicity versus non-historicity.