This site recommended by Earl Doherty!

Earl Doherty is an atheist who believes that there never was a man named Jesus Christ.  He believes the Gospels were probably written as allegory and never were expected to be thought of as history.  At first his theory sounded pretty far-fetched to me, but he makes a good case for his view.  Check out his site, www.jesuspuzzle.org or his book The Jesus Puzzle.

However, the primary reason why I've got this page here is that he has another book, Challenging the Verdict, which is a critique of Lee Strobel's companion piece, The Case for Christ.  While The Case for Faith is philosophically oriented, The Case for Christ is historically oriented.  It purports to show that there is good reason to believe the Gospel accounts are accurate historical documents of the life of Christ.  Doherty's Challenging the Verdict attempts to show that there is in fact very little evidence for the Gospels being accurate depictions of history.  Note that while Challenging the Verdict does touch upon Doherty's Christ-myth theory, it is not dependent on it.  Challenging the Verdict attempts to show that regardless of whether there was an actual Jesus Christ or not, the Gospels are not historical documents.

Since I'm sadly weak in history knowledge, I fully admit that nobody should give any weight to any opinion I might give about whether Strobel or Doherty is right or wrong on the historical issues.  What I can say is that Doherty does do a good presentation and at least to me seems to shred Strobel.  Also note that Strobel and his experts seem to ignore Doherty.  If Doherty was all wet, I'd think that Strobel would be anxious to take Doherty to task.  So, here's what I have to say, go ahead and read Strobel's The Case for Christ, and Doherty's Challenging the Verdict and make up your own mind!

By the way, Mr. Doherty has read my critique here of Strobel's The Case for Faith and gave my critique praise.  Thanks, Earl!