Editing G. A. Wells (section)

==Work on early Christianity==
Wells's fundamental observation is to suggest that the earliest extant Christian documents from the first century,<ref name=":0">{{cite web|url=https://infidels.org/library/modern/g_a_wells/earliest.html|title=Earliest Christianity|author1=G.A. Wells|website=infidels.org|language=en|quote=This earliest literature includes, additionally to the genuine Paulines, three post-Paulines ascribed to Paul (2 Thessalonians, Colossians and Ephesians) and also the letter to the Hebrews, the epistle of James, the first epistle of Peter, the three epistles of John and the book of Revelation.}}</ref> most notably the [[New Testament]] epistles by Paul and some other writers, show no familiarity with the gospel figure of Jesus as a preacher and miracle-worker who lived and died in the recent decades. Rather, the early Christian epistles present him "as a basically supernatural personage only obscurely on Earth as a man at some unspecified period in the past".<ref name=earliest/><ref>{{cite book|last=Price|first=Robert M.|author-link=Robert M. Price|editor=James K. Beilby|others=Paul Rhodes Eddy|title=The Historical Jesus: Five Views|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O33P7xrFnLQC&pg=PA65|date=4 February 2010|publisher=InterVarsity Press|isbn=978-0-8308-7853-6|page=65|chapter=Jesus at the Vanishing Point|quote=Some mythicists (the early G. A. Wells and Alvar Ellegard) thought that the first Christians had in mind Jesus who had lived as a historical figure, just not of the recent past, much as the average Greek believed Hercules and Achilles really lived somewhere back there in the past.}}{{paragraph break}}{{cite book|last=Price|first=Robert M.|author-link=Robert M. Price|title=The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qhyzNAEACAAJ|year=2011|publisher=American Atheist Press|isbn=978-1-57884-017-5|pages=33, 387f|chapter=Jesus at the Vanishing Point & The “Pre-Christian Jesus” Revisited|quote=[I]f we trace Christianity back to Jesus ben Pandera or an Essene Teacher of Righteousness in the first century BCE, we still have a historical Jesus. (pp. 387f)}}{{bulleted list|{{cite web|last1=Doherty|first1=Earl|author-link1=Earl Doherty|title=Earl Doherty's Response to Bart Ehrman's Case Against Mythicism – Part 28 (G. A. Wells)|url=http://vridar.org/2012/07/23/28-earl-dohertys-response-to-bart-ehrmans-case-against-mythicism-part-28-g-a-wells/|website=Vridar|date=July 22, 2012|quote=[G. A.] Wells interprets Paul as concluding that Christ had been born, lived and died on earth at an unknown time in the past, though he opts for Paul locating this during the reign of Alexander Janneus (103-76 BCE), known to have crucified hundreds of his rabbinic opponents.}}}}</ref> Wells believed that the [[Jesus]] of these earliest Christians was not based on a historical character, but a pure [[mythology|myth]], derived from mystical speculations based on the [[Wisdom literature|Jewish Wisdom figure]].<ref name="Wells.1999.wisdom">{{cite web|author-link=George Albert Wells|author1=G.A. Wells|title=Earliest Christianity (1999)|url=http://infidels.org/library/modern/g_a_wells/earliest.html|website=infidels.org|access-date=23 September 2016|quote=[This article was originally published in The New Humanist Vol. 114, No. 3. September 1999, pp. 13-18.] I have argued that there is good reason to believe that the Jesus of Paul was constructed largely from musing and reflecting on a supernatural 'Wisdom' figure, amply documented in the earlier Jewish literature, who sought an abode on Earth, but was there rejected, rather than from information concerning a recently deceased historical individual. The influence of the Wisdom literature is undeniable; only assessment of what it amounted to still divides opinion. ...The Jewish literature describes Wisdom as God's chief agent, a member of his divine council, etc., and this implies supernatural, but not, I agree, divine status.}}</ref>

In his early trilogy (1971, 1975, 1982), Wells argued that the gospel Jesus is an entirely mythical expansion of a Jewish Wisdom figure—the Jesus of the early epistles—who lived in some past, unspecified time period. In addition, Wells wrote, the texts are exclusively Christian and theologically motivated, and therefore a rational person should believe the gospels only if they are independently confirmed.<ref name="Martin.1993.p38">{{cite book|last=Martin|first=Michael|title=The Case Against Christianity|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wWkC4dTmK0AC&pg=PA38|date=March 1993|publisher=Temple University Press|isbn=978-1-56639-081-1|page=38|quote=[Per the canonical Gospels] According to Wells they [Christian theologians and biblical scholars] also admit that there is much in these accounts that is legend and that the Gospel stories are shaped by the writers' theological motives. Furthermore, the evidence provided by the Gospels is exclusively Christian. Given this situation, Wells says, a rational person should believe the accounts of the Gospels only if they are independently confirmed. [...] He points out that it is acknowledged by all biblical scholars that the earliest Christian writers—Paul and other epistle writers—wrote before the Gospels were composed. ...Wells maintains that they do not provide any support for the thesis that he [Jesus] lived early in the first century. Thus, those Pauline letters now admitted to be genuine by most scholars, and those letters that are considered probably or possibly authentic, are silent about the parents of Jesus, the place of his birth, his trial before Pilate, the place of his crucifixion, and his ethical teachings.}}</ref>

In his later trilogy from the mid-1990s; ''The Jesus Legend'' (1996), ''The Jesus Myth'' (1999), and ''Can We Trust the New Testament?'' (2004), Wells modified and expanded his initial thesis to include a historical Galilean preacher from the [[Q source]]:<ref name="Wells.Jesus.Down.Size" /><ref name="Wells.Reply.Holding">{{cite web|last1=George Albert Wells|first1=G. A.|author-link1=George Albert Wells|title=A Reply to J.P. Holding...|url=https://infidels.org/library/modern/g_a_wells/holding.html|website=infidels.org|access-date=24 April 2017|language=en|date=2000|quote=[Per the gospels, the historical Galilean preacher of Q is placed in a historical context consonant with the date of the Galilean preaching.] Now that I have allowed this in my two most recent relevant books [1996, 1999] ...it will not do to dub me a "mythicist" tout court. Moreover, my revised standpoint obviates the criticism ...which J. D. G Dunn levelled at me in 1985.}}</ref>
<blockquote>I propose here that the disparity between the early [New Testament] documents<ref name=":0" /> and the [later] gospels is explicable if the Jesus of the former is not the same person as the Jesus of the latter. Some elements in the ministry of the gospel Jesus are arguably traceable to the activity of a Galilean preacher of the early first century, who figures in what is known as Q (an abbreviation for ''Quelle'', German for ‘source’). Q supplied the gospels of Matthew and Luke with much of their material concerning Jesus’s Galilean preaching. [...] In my first books on Jesus, I argued that the gospel Jesus is an entirely mythical expansion of the Jesus of the early epistles. The summary of the argument of the ''Jesus Legend'' (1996) and the ''Jesus Myth'' (1999) given in this section of the present work makes it clear that I no longer maintain this position. The weakness of my earlier position was pressed upon me by J.D.G. Dunn, who objected that we really cannot plausibly assume that such a complex of traditions as we have in the gospels and their sources could have developed within such a short time from the early epistles without a historical basis (Dunn, [''The Evidence for Jesus''] 1985, p. 29). My present standpoint is: this complex is not all post-Pauline [there is also a historical Galilean preacher from the Q source] (Q, or at any rate parts of it, may well be as early as ca. A.D. 50); and if I am right, against Doherty and Price - it is not all mythical. The essential point, as I see it, is that the Q material, whether or not it suffices as evidence of Jesus's historicity, refers to a [human] personage who is not to be identified with the [mythical] dying and rising Christ of the early epistles. (''Can We Trust the NT?'', 2004, pp. 43, 49–50).</blockquote>

Wells clarified his position in ''The Jesus Legend'', that "Paul sincerely believed that the evidence (not restricted to the Wisdom literature) pointed to a historical Jesus who had lived well before his own day; and I leave open the question as to whether such a person had in fact existed and lived the obscure life that Paul supposed of him. (There is no means of deciding this issue.)"<ref>{{cite book|last=Wells|first=George|title=The Jesus Legend|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vmhtAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA19|date=1996|publisher=Open Court Publishing Company|isbn=978-0-8126-9872-5|page=19|quote=Paul sincerely believed that the evidence (not restricted to the Wisdom literature) pointed to a historical Jesus who had lived well before his own day; and I leave open the question as to whether such a person had in fact existed and lived the obscure life that Paul supposed of him. (There is no means of deciding this issue.)}}</ref>

With this, Wells allowed for the possibility that the central figure of the gospel stories may partly be based on a historical character from first-century [[Galilee]]: "[T]he Galilean and the Cynic elements ... may contain a core of reminiscences of an itinerant Cynic-type Galilean preacher (who, however, is certainly not to be identified with the Jesus of the earliest Christian documents)."<ref name=earliest/> Sayings and memories of this preacher may have been preserved in the "Q" document that is hypothesized as the source of many "sayings" of Jesus found in both gospels of [[Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] and [[Gospel of Luke|Luke]]. However, Wells concluded that the reconstruction of this historical figure from the extant literature would be a hopeless task.<blockquote>What we have in the gospels is surely a fusion of two originally quite independent streams of tradition, ...the Galilean preacher of the early first century who had met with rejection, and the supernatural personage of the early epistles, [the Jesus of Paul] who sojourned briefly on Earth and then, rejected, returned to heaven—have been condensed into one. The [human] preacher has been given a [mythical] salvific death and resurrection, and these have been set not in an unspecified past (as in the early epistles) but in a historical context consonant with the Galilean preaching. The fusion of the two figures will have been facilitated by the fact that both owe quite a lot of their substance in the documents—to ideas very important in the Jewish Wisdom literature. (''Cutting Jesus Down to Size'', 2009, p. 16)</blockquote>

The updated position taken by Wells was interpreted by other scholars as an "about-face", abandoning his initial thesis in favor of accepting the existence of a historical Jesus.<ref name="Voorst.2003.p660">{{cite book|last=Voorst|first=Robert Van|author-link=Robert E. Van Voorst|editor=James Leslie Houlden|title=Jesus in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=17kzgBusXZIC&pg=PA660|year=2003|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-1-57607-856-3|page=660|quote=[Per] ''The Jesus Myth'' (1999), [G. A.] Wells ...now accepts that there is some historical basis for the existence of Jesus, derived from the lost early “gospel” “Q” (the hypothetical source used by Matthew and Luke). Wells believes that it is early and reliable enough to show that Jesus probably did exist, although this Jesus was not the Christ that the later canonical Gospels portray.}}</ref> However, Wells insisted that this figure of late first-century gospel stories is distinct from the sacrificial Christ myth of [[Pauline epistles|Paul's epistles]] and other early Christian documents, and that these two figures have different sources before being fused in Mark, writing, "if I am right, against Doherty and Price - it is not all mythical." Wells notes that he belongs in the category of those who argue that Jesus did exist, but that reports about Jesus are so unreliable that we can know little or nothing about him.<ref>For a more brief statement of his position, Wells refers readers to his article, "Jesus, Historicity of" in Tom Flynn's ''The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief''. Prometheus Books, 2007, p. 446ff. - Per Wells, G. A. ''Cutting Jesus Down to Size''. Open Court, 2009, pp. 327–328.</ref><ref name="Wells.Reply.Holding" /><ref name="Wells.Jesus.Down.Size.myth.theorist">{{cite book|last=Wells|first=George|author-link=George Albert Wells|title=Cutting Jesus Down to Size: What Higher Criticism Has Achieved and Where It Leaves Christianity|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KuccAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT201|date=1 December 2013|publisher=Open Court Publishing Company|isbn=978-0-8126-9867-1|pages=201–202|quote=[Eddy and Boyd (2007)]  distinguish (pp. 24f) three broad categories of judgment, other than their own, concerning Jesus: 1. that “the Jesus tradition is virtually—perhaps entirely—fictional.” 2. that Jesus did exist [but with limited historical facts]... 3. that a core of historical facts about the real historical Jesus can be disclosed by research... Eddy and Boyd are particularly concerned to refute the standpoint of those in category 1 of these 3, and classify me as one of them [i.e. category 1], as “the leading contemporary Christ myth theorist” (p. 168n). In fact, however, I have expressly stated in my books of 1996, 1999, and 2004 that I have repudiated this theory, ...I have never espoused this view, not even in my pre-1996 Jesus books, where I did deny Jesus’s historicity. Although I have always allowed that Paul believed in a Jesus who, fundamentally supernatural, had nevertheless been incarnated on Earth as a man.}}</ref> Wells argues, for example, that the story of the [[Passion (Christianity)|execution of Jesus]] under Pilate is not an historical account, writing, "I regarded (and still do regard) [the following stories;] the virgin birth, much in the Galilean ministry, the crucifixion around A.D. 30 under Pilate, and the resurrection—as legendary".<ref name="Wells.Jesus.Down.Size">{{cite book|last=Wells|first=George|author-link=George Albert Wells|title=Cutting Jesus Down to Size: What Higher Criticism Has Achieved and Where It Leaves Christianity|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KuccAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT16|date=1 December 2013|publisher=Open Court Publishing Company|isbn=978-0-8126-9867-1|page=16|quote=[F]rom the mid-1990s I became persuaded that many of the gospel traditions are too specific in their references to time, place, and circumstances to have developed in such a short time from no other basis, and are better understood as traceable to the activity of a Galilean preacher of the early first century, the personage represented in Q (the inferred non-Markan source, not extant, common to Matthew and Luke; cf. above, p. 2), which may be even earlier than the Paulines. This is the position I have argued in my books of 1996, 1999, and 2004, although the titles of the first two of these—''The Jesus Legend'' and ''The Jesus Myth''—may mislead potential readers into supposing that I still denied the historicity of the gospel Jesus. These titles were chosen because I regarded (and still do regard) [that the following stories;] the virgin birth, much in the Galilean ministry, the crucifixion around A.D. 30 under Pilate, and the resurrection—as legendary.}}</ref> Many scholars still note Wells as a mythicist.<ref>{{cite web |last=Doherty |first=Earl |title=Book and Article Reviews, The Case of the Jesus Myth: ''Jesus — One Hundred Years Before Christ'' by Alvar Ellegard |year=1999 |url=http://www.jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/BkrvEll.htm |access-date=2011-10-07 |quote=G. A. Wells, the current and longstanding doyen of modern Jesus mythicists. Wells' invaluable work has influenced an entire generation of those who research and write on this subject. |archive-date=5 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305001802/http://www.jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/BkrvEll.htm |url-status=dead }}{{bulleted list|{{cite book|last=Ehrman|first=Bart D.|author-link=Bart D. Ehrman|title=Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hf5Rj8EtsPkC&pg=PT15|date=20 March 2012|publisher=HarperCollins|isbn=978-0-06-208994-6|page=15|quote=[Among New Testament scholars] The best-known mythicist of modem times ...is George A. Wells.}}|{{cite book|last=Casey|first=Maurice|author-link=Maurice Casey|title=Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths?|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YTFiAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT25|date=16 January 2014|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|isbn=978-0-567-01505-1|pages=10, 25|quote=I introduce here the most influential mythicists who claim to be ‘scholars’, though I would question their competence and qualifications. [...] [G. A. Wells] was convinced that there was no historical Jesus, and wrote more than one book to this effect. More recently, he modified his views, especially in the light of relatively recent work on what many scholars call ‘Q’.}}}}</ref><ref>Eddy and Boyd (2007), ''The Jesus Legend'', p. 24.</ref>