The Jesus Myth

Was Jesus a historical figure, or are the accounts in the New Testament pure myth? In THE JESUS MYTH, Professor G.A. Wells argues that the Jesus portrayed in the gospels-an itinerant preacher, a worker of miracles, born of a virgin, and executed under Pilate-did not exist. He contends that the descriptions in the four canonical gospels not only contradict each other, but are also not in harmony with the earliest Christian documents or the earliest non-Christian testimony to the existence of Jesus.

THE JESUS MYTH contains a new investigation of the historicity of the gospel miracles, with a special emphasis on exorcisms, a provocative discussion of the New Testament as an ethical guide, and replies to the arguments of apologists C.S. Lewis and Leslie Weatherhead. Christian scholar Roderick Tyler provides an afterword.

G.A. Wells is Professor Emeritus of German at the University of London. He has written books and articles on German language and intellectual history and is former president of the Rationalist Press Association in London. The author of THE JESUS LEGEND (Open Court, 1996), Wells has written four previous books on the subject of Jesus.